Day 26 First-Rate Teachers #SOL17

Tonight, while surfing on Twitter, I stumbled upon this article from 2004, written by Donald Graves. Entitled, "What I've Learned From Teachers of Writing", it's a fascinating piece. I particularly was interested in the section where Graves details what he believes first-rate teachers do:

"They are highly literate. Good teachers are voracious readers who read for personal and professional enjoyment. They write for themselves, their students, and for broader audiences through publication." (Donald Graves)

So many of us here in the Two Writing Teachers community live this each day. We are also members of the Nerdy Book Club and read widely for ourselves and to be able to recommend books to students. We listen to podcasts about books and writing and send each other Voxer messages about these very ideas. All this month, here we are, living the writerly life, often reflecting on our teaching and publishing our work to a wider audience of educators. We read each other's posts, comment, and are often inspired to try a genre or craft move that another teacher blogger used. 

Donald Graves thinks we are first-rate, and who am I to argue with the late, great Don Graves? Here's to all of us, who are highly literate in the hopes that our students will join us and be highly literate, too.