I was reading The Alchemist the other day and decided to have a cup of tea. With my tea came this wonderful line on its tag, "Your choices will change the world". This hit me on several levels because it was SO connected to what I was reading, but it is also connected to much of what we have been discussing.
I truly believe that when given choice, the possiblities are endless. Isn't learning about those possiblities? Isn't it about the idea of thinking about things in a way you never thought about them before? Those students in Laura's group were able to discover their inner writing voices because of choice. This happened because of the choice that Laura made.
What does this line say to you? Can choices change the world? I love the idea that choice is so powerful that it can and does change the world. Please take the time to consider this idea of choice. What does this mean to you? What do you choose to respond to in terms of this line? Write to it. Consider the idea and just write and don't think! Make it a quick write if you want to...but think about the implications of this line.... Of course if you need to think then you may choose to do so!! It is, ultimately, YOUR choice!! However you choose to do this, please write to it!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Monday, February 11, 2008
Reading, Rereading and Reflecting...
Darlene had a suggestion for our blog and I think it is a great one! This week I am asking that you take some time to navigate your way through the blog and do some reading, some rereading and some reflecting. If you click on each post, all of the comments will be listed below it. Take this time to go back through the different posts to see what people have written before you and after you. Notice how the conversations take twists and turns. Feel free to comment again after a certain section or not! If you have missed a post, then take the time to weigh in now! Remember, this is our place to continue our conversations, to ask questions, to ponder and make sense of our teaching in this crazy culture that we call education! Below is some of the rough thinking I have been doing about all of you and your school as of late! I am working with a colleague on a book proposal on "The Improvisation of Teaching" if you will. As I mentioned this is a very rough draft, but I am hoping it captures some of what I sense that day in class. We are trying to speak about the art of teaching and the role that each of us plays in that.
Energy is Catching!
A big part of my work is working directly with teachers. As I was driving to the Windham school I realized half way there that I had forgotten the registration forms for class that afternoon. As I turned around to go get them I called Laura and told her. Laura is a long time friend and colleague. We worked together in the “good ole’ days” and team taught every chance we could. We had a rhythm teaching together and got energy from each other as we discussed, planned and executed great teaching moments! Her response was to take my time, but to be SURE to see her because she did the coolest thing with her students that day. I hung up the phone and smiled, not remembering the last time I had heard that kind of energy in her voice about teaching. What HAD she done? I couldn’t wait to find out what brought on such a flurry of excitement.
When I arrived she accosted me with a great smile and a stack of papers saying, “you HAVE to see this!” This is the lesson she told me about.
Laura described talking with a colleague about her job and how it had become on of shuffling and mastering paperwork. She was finding herself getting bored with the constant need for grades, accountability and testing. She was experiencing a great deal of sadness about the state of teaching and what she was required to do. So, after this conversation she decided to make the time to do some poetry with her students. She uncovered a treasure of images from another teacher and hung up one of the photos, asking the students in her small remedial group to brainstorm words and phrases that came to them as they looked at the image. She listed everything they said. As she looked at the list she realized that they were focusing on the sights. She spoke of the other senses and asked each of them to think about what it would smell like, sound like and feel like to be in this setting. And the list went on. After they brainstormed, she told them they were going to take some time
(Insert Laura’s piece about the process)
I knew I would be meeting with Laura and her 16 colleagues that afternoon. After visiting various classrooms the wheels in my head were turning. I had come with a solid plan for that day’s class and it would be fine to do, but I also knew myself well enough to know that this “energy” theme was going to make it’s way into our class that day. It, in fact, was imperative that it did because this was the school that I drove away from just before Christmas thinking about how it was a pressure cooker and that at any moment the roof of the school was going to blow off with all of the pressure that was building. (You have no idea just how vivid this image was, and the fear that had been instilled in me as a child from my mother about not getting near the pressure cooker…because it could explode at any moment and kill me…was overwhelming. I was afraid, afraid for these teachers and afraid for our kids!) The administration had made the decision to move to a basal program and this group of incredibly talented, creative, intuitive, artful teachers were breaking under the pressures to complete so many pages within so many days. The art of teaching was slowly being squelched out of them in the name of test prep, basals, worksheets and time pressures. I could see, feel and sense their utter distress of what was being required of them. These were seasoned teachers who love children, the prospect of what each new day would bring and here they were being reduced to reading manual after manual and reciting from that manual and giving assignments that they themselves knew were meaningless. They were drowning in these manuals, they were suffocating under the heavily-laden expectations of what these programs would “supposedly” do for test scores.
As I continued to think about my conversations throughout the year with many of the teachers, one common theme ran throughout. “How am I supposed to do all that I “have” to do and also get to do the things that I KNOW are what my students need?” Laura made a very deliberate choice on this day and the results blew every single person who knew these children out of the water. Me, I am always humbled by the voices of children, but I am never surprised. In fact, I expect those kinds of thoughtful, creative voices to come out. They crave the opportunities for their voices to be heard, their thinking to be explored and valued. The more we take this out of our curriculums, the more they will show us, again and again, just how critical it is!! We MUST listen to our kids!!
So as I entered class that afternoon I knew I was about to improvise, as Laura had improvised that morning with her students. I was going to teach from a place of not knowing, a place that I knew most of these teachers needed to go, a place where we could be authentic in both our teaching, our discussions and our learning together. I started out by telling the story of hearing Laura’s voice on the phone and the energy that I heard there. I posed the question about “What gives you energy?” and then Laura shared her story with great enthusiasm and sheer pleasure! You could see that this had allowed her to tap back into the reason she went into teaching in the first place. She allowed herself, gave herself the permission to go back to a way of teaching that she is masterful at; a kind of give and take that combines the thoughts and the thinking of both the students and the teacher. It is a collaborative effort that kept everyone engaged. It was thinking on her feet. She didn’t know she would move into the other senses until she realized and made the change on her feet that they needed more information other than just the visuals from this image. This is GREAT teaching! It takes us places we don’t know about. Just as this class would take a turn and take us all somewhere that I had no idea about!!
When I asked again the question about energy I felt the pull of those who wanted to talk about what took energy away…as that is what is most on their minds…that is what they spend much of their time thinking about…but I really wanted them to get back in touch with what gives them energy and so I redirected. Remembering…that I did not know where this conversation would lead, but I did have a very specific sense of where I did not want it to go! Not into a bitch session, but to a constructive place where each teacher could look at their teaching from the point of view of what is good for them and their students. They were quick to respond and what followed was powerful. There were conversations about different things people had tried, on the sly, with their students and the celebration of what they might do next. After this discussion we went into what I had planned, but what permeated the entire two hours was the feeling of possibility. There was hope in the air and that is something I have not felt in a long time.
The goal of the day was to share with the group part of my library of children’s literature that I use all of the time to teach. We are reading Katie Wood Rays Wondrous Words. I brought in some of my favorite children’s literature and asked teach pair to choose a book and read it like a writer. Most chose a book they had never seen before and the excitement on their faces was contagious as they poured over The Napping House and Where Are You Going Emma? with great interest and engagement! They laughed and read as though they had not had a good dose of good literature in a long time. One teacher commented that she wished her children were still young so that she could read some of these books to them! After each pair shared what they had found about craft, I asked them to dust off some of their old favorites and to bring them into their classrooms. I talked about how I use all of these books over and over to teach reading comprehension strategies, writing craft, text structure, vocabulary and the list goes on. Getting to know just a couple of books really well allows us to use them over and over. Nothing spectacular about what we were doing, but what was spectacular was the engagement and the willingness to go through these texts with hopeful eyes. I cannot accurately explain the shift that I felt in the energy in the room, but I can only trust that you will believe me that it was there!
I am not saying all of the pressure dissipated, but there was a sense that as we went through a stack of children’s books and read them as writers, that they would and could bring some of these ideas and others back to their students and make the choice to tweak their days to include good literature and choices in their writing. Each pair shared their book with great enthusiasm and respect, remembering those favorite books that needed to be dusted off from their shelves.
I got an e-mail from Darlene who was in class with us last night. She wrote simply,
Tomasen,
YOU are definitely my energy in teaching! Darlene
And as much as I’d love to take the credit for this, I reflect and realize that it was the energy of the group that gives us energy in our teaching. We are all in this together and as long as we can continue to have conversations about what we KNOW in our hearts to be good teaching…then we too will survive this ridiculous right wing swing in the educational pendulum that has so many of us scratching our heads, even banging our heads and waiting and wondering how long it will be before we find some sense of equilibrium! I too left with the hope that we can and will endure and even facilitate the move towards a better education for all of our kids!
Energy is Catching!
A big part of my work is working directly with teachers. As I was driving to the Windham school I realized half way there that I had forgotten the registration forms for class that afternoon. As I turned around to go get them I called Laura and told her. Laura is a long time friend and colleague. We worked together in the “good ole’ days” and team taught every chance we could. We had a rhythm teaching together and got energy from each other as we discussed, planned and executed great teaching moments! Her response was to take my time, but to be SURE to see her because she did the coolest thing with her students that day. I hung up the phone and smiled, not remembering the last time I had heard that kind of energy in her voice about teaching. What HAD she done? I couldn’t wait to find out what brought on such a flurry of excitement.
When I arrived she accosted me with a great smile and a stack of papers saying, “you HAVE to see this!” This is the lesson she told me about.
Laura described talking with a colleague about her job and how it had become on of shuffling and mastering paperwork. She was finding herself getting bored with the constant need for grades, accountability and testing. She was experiencing a great deal of sadness about the state of teaching and what she was required to do. So, after this conversation she decided to make the time to do some poetry with her students. She uncovered a treasure of images from another teacher and hung up one of the photos, asking the students in her small remedial group to brainstorm words and phrases that came to them as they looked at the image. She listed everything they said. As she looked at the list she realized that they were focusing on the sights. She spoke of the other senses and asked each of them to think about what it would smell like, sound like and feel like to be in this setting. And the list went on. After they brainstormed, she told them they were going to take some time
(Insert Laura’s piece about the process)
I knew I would be meeting with Laura and her 16 colleagues that afternoon. After visiting various classrooms the wheels in my head were turning. I had come with a solid plan for that day’s class and it would be fine to do, but I also knew myself well enough to know that this “energy” theme was going to make it’s way into our class that day. It, in fact, was imperative that it did because this was the school that I drove away from just before Christmas thinking about how it was a pressure cooker and that at any moment the roof of the school was going to blow off with all of the pressure that was building. (You have no idea just how vivid this image was, and the fear that had been instilled in me as a child from my mother about not getting near the pressure cooker…because it could explode at any moment and kill me…was overwhelming. I was afraid, afraid for these teachers and afraid for our kids!) The administration had made the decision to move to a basal program and this group of incredibly talented, creative, intuitive, artful teachers were breaking under the pressures to complete so many pages within so many days. The art of teaching was slowly being squelched out of them in the name of test prep, basals, worksheets and time pressures. I could see, feel and sense their utter distress of what was being required of them. These were seasoned teachers who love children, the prospect of what each new day would bring and here they were being reduced to reading manual after manual and reciting from that manual and giving assignments that they themselves knew were meaningless. They were drowning in these manuals, they were suffocating under the heavily-laden expectations of what these programs would “supposedly” do for test scores.
As I continued to think about my conversations throughout the year with many of the teachers, one common theme ran throughout. “How am I supposed to do all that I “have” to do and also get to do the things that I KNOW are what my students need?” Laura made a very deliberate choice on this day and the results blew every single person who knew these children out of the water. Me, I am always humbled by the voices of children, but I am never surprised. In fact, I expect those kinds of thoughtful, creative voices to come out. They crave the opportunities for their voices to be heard, their thinking to be explored and valued. The more we take this out of our curriculums, the more they will show us, again and again, just how critical it is!! We MUST listen to our kids!!
So as I entered class that afternoon I knew I was about to improvise, as Laura had improvised that morning with her students. I was going to teach from a place of not knowing, a place that I knew most of these teachers needed to go, a place where we could be authentic in both our teaching, our discussions and our learning together. I started out by telling the story of hearing Laura’s voice on the phone and the energy that I heard there. I posed the question about “What gives you energy?” and then Laura shared her story with great enthusiasm and sheer pleasure! You could see that this had allowed her to tap back into the reason she went into teaching in the first place. She allowed herself, gave herself the permission to go back to a way of teaching that she is masterful at; a kind of give and take that combines the thoughts and the thinking of both the students and the teacher. It is a collaborative effort that kept everyone engaged. It was thinking on her feet. She didn’t know she would move into the other senses until she realized and made the change on her feet that they needed more information other than just the visuals from this image. This is GREAT teaching! It takes us places we don’t know about. Just as this class would take a turn and take us all somewhere that I had no idea about!!
When I asked again the question about energy I felt the pull of those who wanted to talk about what took energy away…as that is what is most on their minds…that is what they spend much of their time thinking about…but I really wanted them to get back in touch with what gives them energy and so I redirected. Remembering…that I did not know where this conversation would lead, but I did have a very specific sense of where I did not want it to go! Not into a bitch session, but to a constructive place where each teacher could look at their teaching from the point of view of what is good for them and their students. They were quick to respond and what followed was powerful. There were conversations about different things people had tried, on the sly, with their students and the celebration of what they might do next. After this discussion we went into what I had planned, but what permeated the entire two hours was the feeling of possibility. There was hope in the air and that is something I have not felt in a long time.
The goal of the day was to share with the group part of my library of children’s literature that I use all of the time to teach. We are reading Katie Wood Rays Wondrous Words. I brought in some of my favorite children’s literature and asked teach pair to choose a book and read it like a writer. Most chose a book they had never seen before and the excitement on their faces was contagious as they poured over The Napping House and Where Are You Going Emma? with great interest and engagement! They laughed and read as though they had not had a good dose of good literature in a long time. One teacher commented that she wished her children were still young so that she could read some of these books to them! After each pair shared what they had found about craft, I asked them to dust off some of their old favorites and to bring them into their classrooms. I talked about how I use all of these books over and over to teach reading comprehension strategies, writing craft, text structure, vocabulary and the list goes on. Getting to know just a couple of books really well allows us to use them over and over. Nothing spectacular about what we were doing, but what was spectacular was the engagement and the willingness to go through these texts with hopeful eyes. I cannot accurately explain the shift that I felt in the energy in the room, but I can only trust that you will believe me that it was there!
I am not saying all of the pressure dissipated, but there was a sense that as we went through a stack of children’s books and read them as writers, that they would and could bring some of these ideas and others back to their students and make the choice to tweak their days to include good literature and choices in their writing. Each pair shared their book with great enthusiasm and respect, remembering those favorite books that needed to be dusted off from their shelves.
I got an e-mail from Darlene who was in class with us last night. She wrote simply,
Tomasen,
YOU are definitely my energy in teaching! Darlene
And as much as I’d love to take the credit for this, I reflect and realize that it was the energy of the group that gives us energy in our teaching. We are all in this together and as long as we can continue to have conversations about what we KNOW in our hearts to be good teaching…then we too will survive this ridiculous right wing swing in the educational pendulum that has so many of us scratching our heads, even banging our heads and waiting and wondering how long it will be before we find some sense of equilibrium! I too left with the hope that we can and will endure and even facilitate the move towards a better education for all of our kids!
Monday, February 4, 2008
What are you doing?
What are you doing with your students in writing right now? What is something you have done that was great, not so great, or downright horrible? Take some time to write and reflect upon your teaching of writing...right now!!
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