On a whim, I applied for a grant from Fund For Teachers to attend the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. You can imagine my surprise when my principal walked in on the morning of April 5th to announce to my class that I had received the grant! My nerves oscillated between excitement and fear, as I realized that I was going to have to put myself out there as a writer for the first time. This July I will be traveling to Iowa to participate in two Writer's Workshops: "Novel Bootcamp" and "Driving Through the Dark - Writing a Story in a Week".  My students are my inspiration for this trip. We are adopting Lucy Calkins' Writing Workshop next year and I thought the best way to understand the workshop model of teaching was to first be a student in a workshop myself. Here are excerpts from my grant proposal: Writing is a personal passion of mine. I’ve always felt that my strength lies in my ability to express myself and my creativity through written words instead of ...