Someone hacked into my Facebook account and got it suspended on April 9. I am still locked out and still discovering all the little things I've lost -- a connection to my late sister's account, memories from the past 13 years popping up on the same day, connections with my global network of friends, family, and colleagues.
It's worse than when my house burned down, which I mentioned earlier in this post. Naturally, I had to write my story about what happened, and since personal narrative is my favorite mode of writing, that's the one I turned to. And as a former newspaper reporter and someone who people know can write, I was able to get it published almost as soon as I finished writing it.
This story is a great way to show students how to respond when something bad happens and what writing about a relevant and current issue can look like. Feel free to share the mentor text with students and discuss topics, including:
- purposes for writing
- how multiple modes of writing can be blended into one piece
- how writing can be organized beyond the five paragraph essay
- how single sentence paragraphs can be used to achieve a specific effect
- digital citizenship and how to stay safe in an online environment
Part of me just wants to crawl back into bed and wait for this all to go away. But I know better than that. Crying in my Wheaties isn't going to solve the problem.
Instead, I'm taking these lemons and making lemonade.
I started by writing my story on our sister site to help teacher entrepreneurs avoid the same hassle and protect their online businesses. And now, I'm working on recovering my losses. Not just money -- but time and emotional bandwidth that I should have dedicated to creating resources for you, studying for my classes, and working on my graduate projects. But I'm not going to ask for money.
Instead, I'm asking you to invest in the resources you need at a deep discount. It's a win-win for you and me. You'll have a limited-time opportunity to get 50% off any reThink ELA product or first month of a membership with the coupon code LEMONADE22 until Saturday, May 7.
You can use your coupon code to purchase the following:
180+ Days of Quickwriting: If you're not quickwriting in your classroom yet, now is a great time to develop a writing practice with this year's students so you can be ready to hit the ground running in the fall. Includes reflective end-of-the year writing prompts to help students process their learning and you grain valuable feedback from them.
Explode the Moment Narrative Writing Project: This is a perfect unit to end the year. Students can choose their own topics and write their own narratives -- even blend the narrative mode into an argument or other mode of writing -- just use the article I linked to above as an additional mentor text.
A Time for Change Writing Project: If you have students who are itching to make a difference, this project can help inspire them to choose their passion and write about it. Includes multimodal mentor texts created by young adults.
First month of Curated Short Stories Library: We provide video, audio, print, and paired resources for your favorite short stories -- along with professional development resources to engage your students in reading.
First year of Grammar Conversations: We've selected the big concepts you need to teach and provided the resources you need to talk about grammar with students in the context of their own writing.
Use the coupon code LEMONADE22 from TODAY to May 7 to take advantage of this sale.
You missed out!
Then go make sure your recovery email on your Facebook account is up to date, your credit cards and Paypal accounts are NOT tied to your Facebook account, that your Instagram is also not tied to Facebook, and that you're using an authenticator app such as Duo for extra security.