If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.

Wu-Men

As I type these words, the school year is winding down in the U.S. One of the great misconceptions about teachers and summer is that we have the next couple months off. Whether paid or not, we know we're still at work. But there's no doubt either that after all the storm clouds in schools - the budget cuts, the testing mania, the leaky roofs, the continual noise and push for the next big thing - there is something wonderful about the summer season.

For one thing, our lives are so much quieter when the students are gone, and we've got a few moments to pause and reflect on what we've enjoyed most about them this year. We can set a new rhythm for our days, instead of being governed by clocks and bells not our own. I love the quiet revelry of summer - after a great year in schools, it's a gift. After a lousy year, it's an even bigger gift, because I finally have the chance to figure out where I went wrong.

We're headed into our annual two-week summer break from the Big Fresh, while we gear up for our workshops throughout the country. But before leaving, we've got a few features this week to help you reflect on your year, and put those finishing touches on summer communication with parents. We'll be back in early July, with lots of new materials posted all summer long to help you plan your best fall ever. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

www.choiceliteracy.com

Free for All

The Indiana Department of Education's Buddy Project has a terrific summer resources page for teachers and literacy coaches, the "Top Ten Ways to Help Parents Prevent Summer Brain Freeze." Besides an amazing number of links, the page includes a simple parent newsletter template you can use to send a note home to next year's students and families:

http://www.buddyproject.org/jfy/teachers/articles/summer.asp

If you're responsible for designing, leading, or participating in a mentor program next year, you might find our Mentor Interviews: A Protocol of Questions useful in your work this summer. These questions can be used for everything from choosing new mentors before summer orientation, to troubleshooting when problems with mentors emerge:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/379.cfm

Important Site Access Note: We'll be performing a server upgrade at midnight on Tuesday, June 17th. There may be temporary interruptions in service over the following two days as individual Internet Service Providers orient to the new server. Thanks in advance for your patience.

For Members Only

What fun it is to celebrate how far students have come late in the school year. This week's six-minute video features a whole-class discussion among Lauren Scott's second graders of metaphors for synthesis. After the discussion, Lauren and her principal Karen Szymusiak talk about what took place all year long to foster such sophisticated chat:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/628.cfm

Summer is a time when many of us have a chance to catch our breath and reconsider how we are spending our time. From the Choice Literacy Archives, Jennifer Jones suggests a "Planbook Scavenger Hunt," which is a way to use last year's planning notebook or calendar as a datasource for analyzing what projects are taking up too much of your time, and how you might free up time for the work you value the most:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/355.cfm

If one of your goals this summer is to catch up on all the issues of the Big Fresh you just didn't have time to read, the Big Fresh Archives has all the links to back issues on one page. If you're a new member of Choice Literacy and at a loss at where to begin exploring, these archives also a great starting point for exploring the 500 features and videos currently available at the site:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department62.cfm

That's all for this week! Remember, we're off for the next two weeks on our annual summer break. We'll be back again in early July.