Does anyone want to become a judge because they know how to write a claim, evidence and reasoning paragraph?
Has anyone played scales on a clarinet and decided music was their life’s calling?
Did you ever fall in love with someone because of their SAT scores?
No?
Me neither.
In fact, I’m sensing legions of dissatisfied English/Language Arts professionals who bought into the dream of teaching the worth and beauty of communication rising up– an undercurrent of questioning and pushback to forces that represent the opposite of love of language. I’m pretty sure no one became an English/Humanities teacher because they wrote cursive well. They became a teller of stories.
In our data-driven world, we are forced to look at tiny points, a sieve of information that never shows the whole sky.
This doesn’t mean all data needs to be destroyed, any more than I am suggesting we sit around the just “feel the stories” — ew, no.
Look at Pernille Ripp’s work: she balances the formula with the big ideas so beautifully. Her project, Planting A Seed: Our Refugee Project should be our model. Look even closer: students are doing the highest level of Project Based Learning with self-assessment (annotating the way that makes sense to them?! REVOLUTIONARY. Sorry – sarcasm crept in. I’ve been showing students authentic annotations for years, and when true scholars use them, and for what purposes.)
I’ve spent going on eleven years trying to keep ahead of the curve, be innovative, and growth-minded. It is a bit galling to have old-fashioned thinking creep in like it’s something new. It’s not. We’ve solved many notions, and yet many ideas still keep being trotted out. We need to bury some ideas once and for all:
Don’t assume kids of poverty are somehow helpless or disengaged. by nature. And never, ever assume their parents don’t love them.
Don’t start the year out without providing some foundational love of reading and writing lessons. The skills will come. Skills without purpose are meaningless and thin.
Now, DO:
Go back to the top of this post and look at the work of StoryCorp.
This weekend after spending nearly a full work day on lessons from outside sources, editing, and refining to suit my students’ instructional path and understandings, I then turned my attention to creating a OneNote Unit class notebook based on my ‘fear’ unit. My growth and love are curriculum and method planning and delivery: my student teacher noticed and said I would be a great methods instructor at her university. Maybe someday. But in the meantime, I’m still honing my craft by reading, reflecting, sharing, and altering. (If you want me to share this OneNote file send me an email: k.c.love@comcast.net)
But after dealing with some anxiety since September about how things are going to work, I’m trying to balance outside directions, incorporate, and make sure my work is supportive and supported.
No small task. In fact, it’s kind of terrifying.
My passion is creating units: curating the choicest resources (texts, media, discussion topics) is enjoyable for me.
I realize Heinemann is a publishing company and wants to sell books. Does that preclude that the resources are somehow less credible because they’re sold? Well, you can be the judge of that. I found this article useful, especially since I’m learning about instructional coaching and some of the pitfalls and potholes one can step into. Maybe it’s my confirmation bias speaking, but I found that the “better” column included many of the practices I do all the time, and the “not good” column stems from mandated or top-down practices.
The article continues to quote John Hattie, a resource I will be forever grateful to my new admin for introducing me to:
John Hattie’s Visible Learning research focuses on not just what works in schools but what works best. Hattie reminds educators to base instructional decisions on the evidence from their unique classroom situations, to “see learning through the eyes of their students” and create a learning environment where “students see themselves as their own teachers” (Hattie, Masters, Birch 2016). This type of approach suggests that making a true impact on student learning requires teachers and leaders to spend time talking about what they actually see happening in their classrooms, to ask why, and to deeply consider the impact on student learning — not coverage. To plan based on real student needs, not a theoretical scope and sequence.
So, while planning, I’ll continue to ask myself these questions–it’s what I do.
Start with your district’s curricular goals: Before you move into your next, planned curricular unit, carefully reread the goals presented at the start of the chapter or in your district’s standard’s document.
As you work with students, make notes on not only on how close they already are to meeting a goal but also specific attitudes, thinking, and behaviors they show in relation to it.
Gather more information: When you sit down to plan the launch of the next unit, talk with a colleague about how the current unit connects to the goals of the upcoming unit
Launch the next unit using images or video, collaborative problem solving, listing, quick writing, or drawing so students can activate and share prior knowledge; make notes about the information that students already come to class with —yes!
Add this information to your prior notes and conversations, noting which goals will be important for each student (a checklist will do this quickly!)
Make it relevant for students: Work with your students to understand the broader goals you’ll be teaching toward and help them to personalize goals for themselves. Relevance is crucial for rigorous learning because, as Kylene Beers and Bob Probst say, “Rigor without relevance is just hard.”
Make goals visible (Serravallo 2015) for the class as a whole and as individuals; classroom charts and other learning tools like those suggested by Kate and Maggie Roberts can help (Roberts and Roberts 2016)
Provide time for student reflection: As you design each day, include chances for student reflection. This is an opportunity for learning to sink in and become sticky.
You might still move through the teacher’s guide lesson by lesson as you learn this method — that’s OK! Keep student learning goals in mind, and you will be on the right track.*
*I’ve never had a teacher’s guide for any lesson, and I look forward to my district’s frameworks when those are completed.
No, this is no small task, but important…very important. All of my credentials (National Boards, NWP/PSWP work, summers of workshops and additional professional development on my time/dime, reading, reading and more reading) don’t mean squat if I’m not putting it into practice. I can’t wait to work with a coach from the district on a teacher-action research project I began years ago, and thank goodness my admin saw that the work needed to continue, and thought of me. These moments I’m so grateful for, because working in a vacuum was sucking the air out of me.
And that’s scary.
curriculum…must…escape!
But not as scary as not being the best teacher I can is.
Your neck tingles. You feel the hot breath, tinted with salmon bones and gooseberries, mingle in your cheaply-shampooed hair; feeling unprotected, vulnerable, and instinctually aware, you know someone just played the research card, and it feels like a bear attack–wild, demobilizing and terrifying. How do you survive?
Remember that word ‘collaboration’ we’re so fond of? Well, this is where it’s put to the test. When our personalities and teaching styles clash with others, and deductive reasoning paints us in a pedagogical corner, we’re left with few other options than to go to the research well and find other credible experts who support our own teacher-action research and experience. Sometimes it seems our own knowledge and experience aren’t worth the certificate paper it’s printed on. Conversely, when we are convinced of our methods, so sure that our approaches are the best and right, we do so at our peril and ignore a balanced approach. In other words, we’re all trying to do our best, but what if others don’t see our best as credible?
The specific controversy is about independent reading time. There are hundreds more in education. Here are the links to the authors:
Strategic, solid teachers are constantly striving to hone their craft, and honor their own life experience. Shanahan argues that independent reading time is a waste of time. I claim trying to make teachers into robotic close-reading drones is worse. Far, far worse.
After reading the key points, I condensed these ideas:
Asking anyone to sit for twenty minutes with a book/text of their choice and independent reading level feels hollow and difficult. If you use it for babysitting time while you check e-mails, etc. students quickly grasp the hypocrisy. When they read, you read.
Make your shared text time as meaningful and enlightening as possible in order for students to return to their independent reading time armed with confidence and courage. This is THEIR time, their passion, which leads me to the next point:
And ELA teachers: there is no question we have it tough, but our work has never been more important. My observations and anecdotal data collection includes the increased amount of time students, especially of poverty, spend consuming media and not creating.The struggle to convince students into having faith in me, that we’ll get to use their laptops for creative ends, and bear with me while we do forumulaic mandates. But yes, I’ve seen good close-reading lessons, controversial discussions and working through big thematic, enduring understandings fill their minds with good stuff.
This blog post by John Spencer sums it up for me, and something I hold dear: “Should Schools Be More Confusing?” Yes. And teachers should allow each other to practice research and ask the tough, inquisitive questions, too.
“We’re developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won’t be able to think.” –Rod Serling
Um, gee, I don’t know! Not sure where writing fits in with the reading skills focus our district has taken. Intended to be transferable, skills hold the place of being the ‘how to learn’ idea. They are the workhorses of education: many educators feel once a skill is taught, it can be liberally applied to cure any ill. Alas, they are not a panacea, but the good intentions are there. If skills are too much the focus, they become the leech or bleeding, and knowledge building misdiagnoses may occur. Point being: many good ELA teachers are confused by a skills-only focus. But that’s a conversation for another time.
If third-grade students can figure out how to be nice to one another, then it is my hope that we can learn how to again, as well. Maybe on October 20 we can have a classroom discussion on what comments do to us emotionally and psychologically. Stay tuned.
For the past two years, I’ve shared Julian Treasure’s two powerful TED Talks about listening and speaking. I wish my PLC would watch them together and come to some understanding of how we can communicate to our full potential and then was reminded there is no magic wand or quick fix. And, we’re not broken either, just new and working out our particular personalities. But I can have my students watch them, gleaning the best advice he offers. All my students shared in an interest survey they would like quiet when reading or writing — heavy cognitive demands. And yet, those who talk continue to do so. Continue to interrupt, fill in the spaces of quiet, step on others thoughts. There are many reasons for this, which Treasure outlines in his ‘filters’ of listening bullet points.
But one word caught the ear of my third-period class, and it became a teachable moment for the rest of the day. When we lose credibility in our spoken word, one of the sins is being dogmatic. They said out loud, “What is that?!” and I told them I was so proud of them for stopping and asking. Fourth and fifth periods said nothing, going along until I stopped the film and asked them if they knew what that meant, and no, they did not. I said that is an example of metacognition, what third-period did showed they didn’t understand something and then wanted to find their way back.
And then I explained what it meant and we thought of examples.
I choose this word because that seems to be the current theme of the hour: many are dogmatic in their educational and political practices, speaking their opinions and not allowing any processing time. We all display times of dogmatism from time to time. All I can do is keep myself in check and weigh out passion from dogmatism, research and risk to capriciousness.
And we all could use some time to listen to each other more. Starting at third period, I timed a three-minute quiet break, where all they were asked to do was listen, and write down the noises/sounds they heard. They loved it. In this era of cacophony and mayhem, perhaps that is one gift I can offer more frequently– time in their own heads.
Is it just me or does one become a veteran teacher far too soon in one’s journey? Meaning, how did I get so old?! Well, as scary as that is, it’s better than the alternative, right Poe?
Allow me to present the context: through December I have a student teacher, and boy oh boy am I happy to know her. She’s going to be a fantastic teacher, wants to do well and jump right in. This has been an especially chaotic start to the new school year for me: our administration takes great care and time to balance the master schedule, so it’s had to change multiple times to get it right. When one considers how many of our students need what is called “Essentials” in our district (it’s probably called that other places, too), it changes the dynamic quite a bit. To the point, for me personally I gave up my planning period and will be teaching six periods a day, so having an eager student teacher/intern will be enormously helpful.
One of the requirements of her program is a three-day scoped lesson, and since she and I are both enthusiastic fans of all things macabre and October, we sat down to discuss a possible text. One of the first short stories I planned on handing over to her was The Monkey’s Paw. I’ve used this story for many years and add the Vimeo film, too. It’s accessible in terms of understanding themes/tropes (be careful what you wish for! Magic has a cost! Be grateful for what you have!) and is grand, classic fun.
And that was the problem.
As I am describing the story, written in 1902, with its archaic language and cultural tropes (exotic foreign lands! Grand Fakir! Seargent Major in the grand India wars….!) her eyes seemed to glaze over, not in boredom, but in overwhelmed fear: these old stories are not this generation’s stories. She’s two years older than my oldest son, and if I may make one sweeping generalization about millennials it’s not that they haven’t read the classics, but perhaps have rejected them because they are not multicultural or diverse. Coming from my old white lady perspective, many of my beloved stories are from a narrow Victorian smelling salts place of overly tight corsets and ladies locked in boxes/towers/coffins.
The Monkey’s Paw is not a place to start when you’re a 23-year-old student teacher.
I put the word out on the Notice and Note page:
I’m going to the well once again — 🙂 I have a great student teacher, and many of the classic horror stories are not in her wheelhouse. We’re thinking of her three-day filmed lessons of doing RL8.3 and a scary story. Things like The Monkey’s Paw or The Raven are not comfortable for her necessarily, so was wondering if anyone knows of poetry or short story horror that’s more contemporary? The guiding question is ‘what do we know as readers that the character(s) don’t know?’ among others. Please and thank you–
To all of you: you honor me with your amazing resources and suggestions. What I think we all struggled with though was at the heart of my question: something more contemporary. I should have just flat-out said: diverse. Multicultural. Not Dead White Guy. Not that there’s a darn thing wrong with dead white guys. Those are some of my favorite guys.
From Notice and Note Educator Experts:
But these are wonderful pieces of literature, and though I’ve used most of them extensively, have some new ones to check out:
I want to thank you all for your suggestions and insights: it reminds me again that we cannot do this alone. It’s up to my student teacher to poke around and find one that feels comfortable for her now, just like all of us have and had to do. She’s going to craft and curate her own stories to tell — and I can’t wait to hear them!
I am not a Tarot card reader, though I’ve always appreciated the art, both the visual art and the reading art of it. The reading of people is an art form I lack, woefully. Sometimes human behavior mystifies me, and I fill in my lack of knowledge with pure lizard brain responses. Or maybe it is that I read people all too well, but haven’t developed the kind, soft tools to maneuver or add nuance to these interactions, especially when they go south. Unfortunately for my personal and professional relationships, this doesn’t always take the form of gentle, self-reflective musing, but bursts forth, unconfined, in a shower of detritus, flinging emotional responses. In other words: me and my big mouth.
One such big mouth moment happened recently. When these moments happen, I think, analyze, reflect and seek to gain understanding so I can avoid it in the future, handle it differently, and get to the root of the issue. I will always respond to a student in tears with a protective momma bear instinct, but in this case, I question my biases that have been brewing for months now. I am angry at how children have been left out of this conversation, intentionally and egregiously by a certain politician and his followers. Let me restate: not left out, but further abandoned and marginalized with exacting motives.
These motives are embedded with so many historical precedents it boggles the mind. Do we ever learn?! No outcome for this amount of hatred is going to have faithful, hopeful, or loving landing spot. We crashed the towers fifteen years ago, and we’re still falling hard to the ground.
There are many Muslim students at my school who are anxious, even slightly terrified, of current political events. When I saw a child in full Muslim dress, of whom we have many, and this child is distraught, did I overreact because not only are students of this faith currently being targeted by a certain ‘politician’ and his minions? Did I grossly project my concerns, or what I’ve been witnessing, absorbing that level of anxiety? And if that is even a tiny possibility–what do I do now?
He is also seditiously targeting Hispanic and Latino students as well. And the white kids are most likely confused, and the Black children have been hearing the angry, ignorant banter against them for generations. Please do not misunderstand: reflection is painful — if this bias in any way informed my response then I need to get myself in check. It was just a girl crying because of all the emotions that come with being a 7th grader, and trying to follow the rules. And when she didn’t follow the rules and was chastised by another person, she was upset and came to me. Nothing more. Right?
Today is the fifteenth anniversary of 9/11. As it gets further away, the children are younger and have no living memory, but their families do. And we’ve gone further away as a nation from the place we were on September 12. Or at least I feel this way–that may not be true. I honestly don’t know anymore. I do know I am feeling more protective, more vigilant, and less tolerant of deceit and bigotry. Especially when it comes from family, whom I have no control over, or friends, which I do. I cannot imagine being a teacher and considering voting for one of the candidates. He has told us exactly who he is. We need to believe him.
As for our students from all walks of life, experiences, creed, color, faith and nationhood, I am asking my colleagues to consider one thing — we are living in a new situation and context that we have not faced before as a nation or as teachers. If you had told me fifteen years ago that we would be in this place now with normalized lying and hate mongering I wouldn’t have believed you. We flew flags, we prayed, we cried, and we held the hearts of heroes in our hands. We wanted them and their families to be helped, supported, and nurtured. Now Congress won’t pass funding to help the first responders who have many long-term health issues. I am not sure where the money that was raised went. Did it make it to the families? And why is a politician allowed to make the same false arguments and conclusions that were done to Japanese Americans during WWII? How can his followers be so hypocritical, and forget painfully learned lessons?
The tower tarot, when upright, is a sign of upheaval, disaster, and chaos.
Just like a wall.
When upside down, it’s avoidance of chaos. Just like when the walls come tumbling down.
I am self-reflective, but let this be known: I will always stand up for a crying child, and never apologize for this. Sometimes my big mouth is right, and I hope we all have better ears to listen. I have faith in this, and faith in myself to get this right.
This is how our 7th Grade ELA PLC formed last year: we were a tribe. Close, respectful, funny, collaborative. We have new people this year, but already we get along great. It must be tough to come in new to a situation: I moved so much growing up I am attuned to making sure to assess the lay of the land before going gangbusters. Listen, watch, and learn: and know first impressions are only one impression, and like the wrapper on a candy bar should probably be thrown away before consumption.
Each group has its own culture, for better or worse, and if you’re not feeling at least some of these things on Duckworth’s poster, then it may be time to find a new tribe.
Here’s to my tribe this year: I’m here for you, as I know you are for me.
Someday, maybe, I’ll work on my Doctorate, and I am fairly certain what my focus will be the power of storytelling. It’s been a subject I’ve researched for years. We are all narrative learners. I struggle with putting things in tidy boxes of informational versus narrative. I could make a case that all learning is information, or all learning is narrative. But it’s both.
And what makes us human, to me, is our need for a story. Perhaps elephants, dolphins, and whales tell their babies stories, and I know experience is certainly passed down. Unless of course, you’re an octopus–incredibly intelligent, but have no means of passing it along to the next generation. “Their knowledge dies with them.”
In Newkirk’s book, Minds Made for Stories, he explores the question of how knowledge is developed. It’s a fantastic read and supports my own instincts about the power of storytelling when it comes to any content area.
But why is this–in the vernacular of our times–even a thing? I detect a bias here, and ‘us versus them’ in the content area arenas.
Recently Wells Fargo caused outrage because of this ad campaign:
Because of public outcry, artists and actors protested and the ad campaign has been pulled. (Why can’t we do that to a certain presidential nominee?) Clearly, Wells Fargo jumped on the STEM bandwagon and forgot to add the rogue branch of the acronym, “A” — for Arts. This push toward only mathematics and science is dangerous, but I don’t think it’s a cause for outrage necessarily. But it is a place for a conversation: what do we value? What do we support — financially, socially, and emotionally? And what do we want to be when we grow up? Is there a bias of brains? Why do we constantly misdirect the topic, continually focused on the myth of left versus right brains? These fallacious and hollow debates about skills versus content, lecture versus ‘guide on the side.’ Enough. This is not the conversation to focus on, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
This simple fact — that knowing stuff is inseparable from being able to read stuff — is why great teaching will always be concerned with both skills and content. Sadly, since the majority of educators who implemented the Common Core State Standards did not read and reflect upon their introductory matter, it became popular (and fallacious) to declare that content isn’t what counts — skills are. In the CCSS era, there are no distinctions between science and social studies and English teachers anymore; we’re all reading teachers, right? And thus was won a great victory by champions of literacy everywhere!
Skills are important. But they are only one side of the story.
Here is the other side:
All we do as humans is based on a story we must tell. An adventure we seek, a problem to solve, our heart is breaking and we want to fix it. Someone is lost and we want to find them. Something or someone attacks our humanity and we want to slay the monster.
As you’re planning units, I urge you to look at your content through the lens of storytelling: what motivated the person to learn? What motivates you? What are your burning questions?
Remember this is not a zero-sum game. We can be ballerina scientists and athletic botanists. If you want to talk more about ideas you have or thinking about doing something amazing with stories and science/math, I’m here.
If you don’t see it you don’t have middle school teacher x-ray vision. Sorry. Thanks for playing.
Today was our first day back.
Wait. Let me try again.
Today was our first day back!
The increase in exclamation points tripled this past year. But mental exclamation points serve to keep us going. We are only as positive as our punctuation, people. All in all, a really good day. Woke up at 3:45AM instead of 3, didn’t stress about anything really, knew it would be a little chaotic, and managed to adult hard getting myself and my new student teacher coffee. I say ‘new’ which seems redundant because I’ve never had a student teacher before, so the new is for me.
Folks were surprised I’ve never had a student teacher before. I said ‘building human capacity’ wasn’t a top priority for some administrators in the past.
Was diplomatically complimented this morning: my ideas may not have been reaching the staff or have had a receptive audience but now there is someone in place who can share my ideas. So I’ve got that going for me. Wait, what just happened? It’s cool, it’s cool. Last year was the first time in a long time I was on a functional, responsive and collaborative PLC. But with our turnover in my building, it would be easy to assume no one listens to me because they might not like me. Nope, that’s not it. They just don’t know me. Literally. There and gone. And to my credit, those who do know me tend to like me. I’ve got a 99% success rate.* No one listens to anyone when the staff is on survival mode. This year, too, I’m on a great PLC grade level team. I can’t wait to work with veterans and rookies alike. But I may have blown it already when it comes to first impressions. *sigh* But first impressions are easy to make and difficult to untangle.
What first impressions do our students make?
Well…
The schedule on this first day involves students getting schedules, and shorted ‘nice to meet you’ classroom times. I put white butcher paper and markers on the table with directions to talk, scribble, doodle, etc. This young man created this piece of art, and when I asked him about it, apparently it’s a mouse. See the big ears? And the long body?
Yes, yes I see it. And so does your group of wannabe alpha males at the table.
We’ll take care of this on Day II. I have some impressions already, too.
Postscript:
The bigger picture…the dragon especially is poignant.
*Standard deviation of likeability scale not subject to peer review.
This is how our 7th Grade ELA PLC formed last year: we were a tribe. Close, respectful, funny, collaborative. We have new people this year, but already we get along great. It must be tough to come in new to a situation: I moved so much growing up I am attuned to making sure to assess the lay of the land before going gangbusters. Listen, watch, and learn: and know first impressions are only one impression, and like the wrapper on a candy bar should probably be thrown away before consumption.
