On Friday, the opening writing activity (OWA) asked my students to think back on their first month (3 weeks really) of school and set some goals for the trimester and the year. It also asked them to write down some steps for achieving those goals.

On Saturday morning, a colleague and I presented at NJCTE. The theme of the fall conference was writing, and our topic was building a writing life and strengthening your teaching. The presentation explored five revisions teachers can make to improve writing instruction in their classrooms, one of which was actually writing—not the students but the teacher. We asked participants to interrogate their writer identity. As I presented my writer identity, one of my statements was I am a writer who gets cranky when they don’t write.