Going Forwards and Backwards!

Poetry Friday fan?  
       Head to Jen Vincent's web site, Teach.Mentor.Texts.  Thanks for hosting Jen!
The title seems to have a double meaning, considering all that is happening (or not happening) to educators lately.

       I wrote this poem a while ago as a holiday wish for my colleagues, and have pulled it out again because of all the recent controversy about teaching and testing. I've changed some of the wording to fit today rather than the holidays.  I think teachers are just great, and am happy to share the poem in their honor.  A Poem That Speaks Forwards and Backwards!

        This is a lesson from Kelly Gallagher’s book Write Like This, which includes the poem The Lost Generation, found here.  I loved taking this challenging exercise and applying it to my own life right now.  It would be great to do with older students.  It is also similar to Marilyn Singer's Reverso poetry books here.

Feeling Grateful Before and After Thanksgiving, Too

              I have written recently of my many blessings; this past Thanksgiving was rich because of them.  When counting the blessings this year, I must include being welcomed into a writing community mostly through the Two Writing Teachers blog.  It has been a life-changing experience for me as a teacher, to meet teachers all over the world who will talk (write) about their teaching lives with such dedication to and compassion for their students.  Years ago, Adlai Stevenson said, “On this shrunken globe, men can no longer live as strangers.”  I imagine it would interest him to see just how small our world today has become because of the Internet.  I am grateful to be a part of this new kind of community.

As part of the community, I reflect on those words written by others, many times about their teaching experiences.   One of the words that describe what I’m ‘hearing’ is resilience.  According to the online Free Dictionary, the definition of resilient is marked by the ability to recover readily, as from misfortune.  I often wonder if those who do not teach understand how resilient teachers must be in their day-to-day challenges while teaching?  There are a number of times, when a lesson must be adjusted (read changed, dropped, or interrupted) because of circumstances beyond the control of the teacher and/or the students.  While beginning a lesson, when students are settling into the group, one may burst out crying and run from the room.  Another might get sick, right there, in the meeting area.  Someone might say, “I have to go really bad!”   The electricity may go. Two students might whisper to tell that they have to talk about their conflict, right then, right now!  This is beginning to look like a list poem.

Of course, we realize there are often glitches in the plans and one must be flexible enough to make changes.  We are ready and know that we’ll find ways to make up time lost because we take care of the sudden problem even if the lesson must be abandoned.  We make time for that which is most important, the students.  I’m sorry that I don’t remember where I found the following link, but this man, Michael Josephson, a radio commentator and founder of the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Ethics and CHARACTER COUNTS, has re-worked a piece by a teacher named Taylor Mali, who wrote a strong response to a critic who was putting down teachers.  It’s called Making Lives, and shows well what teachers do in the very midst of being resilient.

One year when my school site was downtown near our capitol, I had planned on the very first day to walk the class to that capitol to climb to the top and look out over the city.  We were going to write our first notebook entries there, with the caption “this is my world to explore”.    On the morning of the first day, I glimpsed one of my first students arriving, with his mother helping.  He was moving slowly up the stairs on crutches!  My mind whirled as I greeted him with a big sympathetic smile.  This day was changing already, but we had a very good start to the year (in the building).  Do you have a story to tell about your resilience?  I imagine you have more than one.  Give yourself a pat on the back for “making lives”.

Seeds and Promises

        The nights are chilly, the cicadas sing, and the moon is sharply bright in the crisper air.  Although autumn is my favorite season and I’ve even written about it here, there is a part of me that is mournful as I say goodbye to summer and the joys of easy days and gardening, being outside so many hours, eating and playing and working.  I was so excited this year because I finally had some stalks of hollyhocks mature enough to bloom.  It’s been challenging to get them going, yet they did grow tall this summer and bloomed in all kinds of colors, including the startling black.  I am sad to say goodbye to all those beautiful things, to see them droop and fade. 

However, while contemplating all this, I am looking forward too to the yellows and reds and oranges, that final blaze of autumn before the fire disappears into winter’s ashy colors.  Each season holds something good.  I see my flowers fading, but they also give promises for the spring, their seeds.  I move to the hollyhocks with a small paper bag and pull the tiny baskets of seeds left by each bloom.  Marigolds are next, then zinnias, each seeded bloom placed into the bags, put into the garden basket to store until spring. 

As I worked, I thought of these recent beginning days of school and the promises, as seeds hold, that teachers give students for the year to come.  Teachers work so hard to prepare just the right environment so that each student will be able to grow.  They water with kindness, provide knowledge like fertilizer, and tend the learning from the first day to the last.  Like seeds that flourish, teachers have started planting their classroom gardens with promises of a prolific blooming season.  Perhaps I’m not so mournful after all, because I see promise everywhere I look.

New Teachers Inspire

March 12, 2011 The 12th day of slice of life challenge - WOW!

Instead of being lazy on a Saturday morning, sipping my coffee while reading the paper & greeting a day full of hours to spend on my own pleasurable projects, I spent this morning doing mock interviews with prospective teachers. They have finished two-thirds of an alternative licensing program in which I participate as an advisor to a teacher & the intern assigned to him or her. This morning, along with all their own obligations, most in the program also gave up their Saturday mornings to practice one of the important aspects of job-hunting, the interview. Each one spent 20 minutes with me, answering my questions, then asking their own, & discussing what I know of the expectations of an interview from a school's point of view. We then reviewed their resumes, looking for ways to be noticed within the many resumes sent to schools, looking for ways to 'grab' someone's attention.

When I read that we are losing the best & the brightest of this new generation to other careers, I stew about the coming years in schools-public or private, worry about my grandchildren's education, & mull over the state of teaching as a career itself. This morning I had some of my concerns blown away.

The new teachers I spoke to inspired me. The things they said showed me that good hands are coming to take on the difficult tasks of education. These teachers clearly are already inspired to work hard to do well for their students, & as they are interns (read 'student teachers'), the inspiration comes as a shared responsibility. Their mentor teachers are the ones who are the teachers in charge; the interns have limited power in the groups. Even so, they still demonstrated care & concern for students, for the achievements they aided & for the relationships that were being made, even if only for a little while. I was impressed by their broad knowledge & ability to articulate some of the "why's" & "how's" of teaching lessons.

By the end of the morning, I was happy to have given up the Saturday leisure. It will be a memory to hold me when I read of all the controversies that are lately occurring in education. I will know a new force of educators is on the way, who will carry on the tasks of what is important - to teach children, to foster learning, to love the job no matter what.