Double Headed Serravallo

#SOL19: March 26th

     It was literacy night at the school where I taught/coached for 18 years, and I love to go back there on nights when families return.  I secretly hope that students I taught years ago come back with their younger siblings so that I can catch up.  I also look for parents and ask for updates on how they are doing.  It used to be just my second grade students, but now it's kids that I worked with as a literacy coach.  This evening was a mystery themed literacy night, so I scanned the room looking for students like a detective on the case.  I spotted one, and made my way across the gym to chat.

     He is a current 8th grader at one of our middle schools, so I had seen him recently in the hall, but I had a better chance to chat this time as he was making a mystery note from old magazines.  He was a student I knew as a coach, so I've been checking in with him since he was a third grader.  His little sisters were sitting across from him, also cutting and searching in magazines to create a masterpiece all her own.

     From across the table, his littlest sister started talking to me about her creation.  I glanced down, and then I spotted it: a double headed Serravallo!  In her creativity, she had taken my favorite literacy guru, and turned her into a double headed Jennifer Serravallo.  It dawned on me that perhaps even our students see that Jen Serravallo has the literacy wisdom of at least two people in one person!  I chuckled a bit, and wondered what type of magazines the teachers had put down as sources of print. Apparently Heinemann catalogs were on the table somewhere...  

     As they got up to leave, I took a picture of the three siblings.   They all looked right at the camera, and the littlest one even held up her creation to be forever cemented into my memory of the night.  It's no mystery why I love moments like these at family literacy nights.  

 

***Thanks Katie and Kim for letting me slice with your students again today!