Recently, I ran into a former colleague in Denver who asked about my "new life" at Cornerstone. She was eager to hear about the Cornerstone schools and teachers, she was curious about ways the cities in which we work are different than Denver, whether the frustrations we experienced in our work as staff developers in Denver were similar or different. I paused and sighed, hardly knowing where to begin. My learning curve, as they say, has been more than steep and I wasn't sure I could capture the essence of my learning in a few words.

Of course I began by speaking about Cornerstone kids. I described the faces I had looked into recently in a Philadelphia kindergarten, the writing from Talladega displayed on my refrigerator, the quotes from Cleveland children I regularly receive via email. I told her about the changing school and classroom environment in so many Cornerstone schools and the efforts so many have made to elevate literacy to a level of focus and concern for the whole community. I told her how extraordinarily lucky I feel to have colleagues like the Cornerstone staff who challenge my thinking, cause me to re-sculpt ideas and engage me in problem solving that sometimes wakes me in the night.

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Cornerstone Front-page News in Jackson, Mississippi

DEEPER THINKING SKILLS GOAL OF PROJECT - December 13, 2001
By Cathy Hayden, Staff Writer
The Clarion-Ledger

Tiara Miller studied the picture of an animal's tail in the story book her teacher held.

"I think it's a giraffe, because its tail is all the way up there," speculated Tiara, 6, a kindergartner at Lake Elementary.

In one sentence, she made a prediction about the Eric Carle book, Do You Want to Be My Friend? and analyzed why she thinks her prediction is correct.

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