Tagged!

I was just “tagged” by my friend and colleague, Kevin, in this virtual game of Blog Tag, which seems to allow folks to post a question and begin a conversation among many bloggers.  This “tag” asks folks to describe their “work space.”  Kevin, being a 6^th grade teacher, described his classroom.  Although I still consider myself a teacher, I no longer have a classroom.  For the past 6 years, I’ve been working as the Inservice Coordinator for the Western Massachusetts Writing Project.  My workspace looks like this:

• A small office in Bartlett Hall at UMass Amherst (8 x 12) painted hospital green with a grey rug that is stained. It is over-crowded with three desks, book shelves, a computer, filing cabinets and overflowing piles of folders and papers on my desk.  Students smoke outside the front door of the building which is directly below my office and smoke drifts up and in through the windows that I leave open so as not to swelter in my overheated office.  I share this space with the Director of WMWP, Bruce. 

• My workspace is also my home where I spread my work out between my study cubby (literally a 5 x 5 space), my dining room table and my bed—because this is the sunniest room in my house and I am far more productive awash in sunshine.

• My workspace is also the many schools I travel to to facilitate professional development for teachers.  This ranges from the more optimal–a cozy elementary school library with large work tables and a working group of 12-20 teachers, to the less than optimal—a 100 degree cafeteria freshly smelling of the day’s fish sticks and fries and a “working” group of 120 teachers.

All less than optimal, but I guess what I consider my true workspace is the “professional home” created by the many teachers in the network of the National Writing Project—and that is a work environment where I feel support, challenge and respect. So, now I “tag” Cindy, Karen, Bud and Paul. 

More thoughts on “continuity.”

For more thoughts on this word “continuity” as it relates to the work of National Writing Project sites, see the thinking my colleague Kevin and I did as we set out to begin writing about continuity at our own writing project site, WMWP, at the NWP at Work writing retreat this in July 2006.  Go to Kevin’s Meandering Mind.