Take My Hand

Here – take my hand.

Allow me to hug you,

warm you,

help you.

We can talk.

You seem so alone.

You hide at the wrong end

of binoculars-

so, so far away.

Will you return,

gain better sight of possibilities

or continue your retreat?

Please let me

hug you,

warm you,

help you. 

We’ll talk.

I miss you and

wish you would

come back.

Alice In Wonderland - a lot to say about teaching

       I've been re-reading Alice In Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll, which I do every couple of years.  It seems to me that it has something of value to learn for us teachers.  What Carroll says, in several ways, is that we have to be flexible, look for serendipitous moments to enjoy, and just quit worrying so much about doing things perfectly.  I refer today to one set of words from chapter five:    


       "Who are YOU?" said the caterpillar.
          This was not an encouraging opening for a conversation.  Alice replied, rather shyly, "I--hardly   
        know, sir, just at present--at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must  
        have been changed several times since then."


    When we enter the classroom each day we have spent time thinking and planning with great concern for our students.  We watch them as they enter, welcoming, but also, in our minds, questioning.  
   We ask: 
         How does he look? 
         Why does she frown? 
         Does she have the work she forgot yesterday? 
         What are the words I can use to support him since his dad is out of work?  
         How can I find time for him to do some computer work since he doesn't have one at home?  
         When can she do that needed interview since she takes care of her younger siblings all evening?  
         He looks so tired;  did he get to eat breakfast?  
         Why is she not walking in with her friends?
         Where did he go?  I thought he walked in, but now he's gone back into the hall.
         I saw her slam out of the car this morning;  I wonder what happened with her mom? 


     And then we teach.  Lewis Carroll seemed to understand kids so well.  As Alice did, I think our students change several times during the day, week, month.  It's up to us to notice, respond, and teach.  I wonder if Carroll knew how challenging that is?

A Question of Coaching Responsibility

I love the idea of collegiality, of gathering with my co-workers to discuss all aspects of teaching.  We have many such discussions at school and they are both challenging and inspiring.  But when we teach, we are behind the classroom door with our students, and it can be a lonely place.

I’ve been wondering about something that caught my attention in these past weeks of beginning conversations with the staff members.  I wrote about the conversations earlier, how rich they were and how exciting to begin the year that way.  However, I’ve also thought about these kinds of talks in a different light, that they fill a void in teachers’ lives.  Despite the talks that occur in staff meetings, teacher workrooms, hallways, and playgrounds, teachers can still remain lonely.  It’s rare to have someone actually ask to watch students with them, to discuss instructional strategies or to offer resources they might find useful.  The few visits from the head of school each year have different goals of evaluation and feedback for the record.  It is sometimes not collegial, often something just to be completed.   With the rather recent advent of teacher coaches in schools, conversations with a colleague that focuses on one’s teaching and the improvement of student learning can help a teacher feel less alone.  Using a term that’s collegial, as a coach, I am certainly there for them!

And so, my wondering is how to continue to help the loneliness that lurks in the classroom for teachers.  They wonder if what they are doing is the right thing.  They wish perhaps to talk only about themselves and their questions about students and teaching, along with worries about having enough time, enough knowledge, and enough stamina to get through the week.  They are lonely. 

I’ve had conversations with my own students about loneliness and used poems to unearth feelings that hide underneath smiling faces.  Now, with teachers, my job is to do that same thing, to encourage feelings of loneliness to emerge, and then to swirl them away through observations and conversations, to let them know we’re all in this teaching work together, that they are not alone.  Naomi Shihab Nye wrote “The Rider” about a boy roller-skating his loneliness away.  I wonder if teachers keep so busy that they don’t take time to consider what good talks might mean to their professional lives and their teaching?  It might be time for all schools to consider that coaching can mean emotional support to a staff as well as professional development.

                 About Teachers

You can find me always behind that door.

I reach

out to each student more and more,

so I teach.

But sometimes on the harder days

I cry.

And I can’t figure out why I’m in a haze,

and lie

to myself that all will pass by in the morn.

If only

I can stop these feelings of loss I mourn.

I teach.

New Blog - with a group of students

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I'll be writing with a group of students on the edublogs platform.  I thought it would be nice to begin a new blog with them to teach them how to manage a blog (many parts) and how to write a Slice of Life per the Two Writing Teachers blog that I've found so inspiring and supportive.  We had our first class Thursday, a whirlwind 60 minutes.  They looked at blogs, chose their titles and filled out information so I could create the blogs. We brainstormed ideas for the first post, which will be due next Tuesday, hard copy, so we can share and talk about comments first, then learn how to post.  They are so excited and I think a little bit disappointed that we all weren't up and publishing immediately.  If you have a class or even a few students that would like to interact and share with my group, I'd love it.  Let me know in the comments, or in the comments at my new blog, Writing Works.

Planning With My Colleagues

          I’ve created a way of planning on a chart that’s been helpful to me and the teachers with whom I work.  Sometimes we create the chart together, and sometimes I do much of the planning and the teacher adds or subtracts to it according to what she or he believes are the needs of the class.  Certainly response by students can change the plan.  When, for example, some first drafts of a writing assignment are read, a different lesson may be needed before moving on to another draft, or additional conferring with individuals and small groups, etc.  Here is a sample of part of one chart created with another teacher as we were beginning a few weeks of writing experiences with her students.

      Date   -  Weekly Goal    What Teachers Do          What Students Do

Monday – During Workshop Goal-Support for personal essay- something near and dear to one’s beliefs/heart – similar to a personal column piece-requires some research   Explore two topics - 1st draft of one	Read – I Want To Be by Thylias Moss, about a girl who discusses all the choices she has in the world.  The point is to have students ponder who they are, what they believe in, what is important to them.  Give copies of music essay by Julia B., but read together.  Review page of the basic parts that are expected in this kind of essay.  Let students brainstorm ideas that might be important ones for them to write about.  (Another set of essays to use for examples is available for individual student study.)	Discuss their beliefs, what is important to each.  Create a personal list after filing out the page called ‘first brainstorming’.  Share many kinds of columns and essays for students to read, then come together as a group to share what was found.      After this session, independent writing time.  The assignment is to write about two personal topics identified as personally important to see where it leads.  In a few days, they should choose which is the one they’d like to develop.
Wednesday – During Workshop Examine what is working well with the students.  Share the positive and the negative-identify needs.	Make available the time for a productive conversation, listing tips from the group along with challenges.  During quiet writing time, individual conferring about the writing so far.

The plan will continue being filled in as we talk together and choose the paths the students need.  It’s fun to work together, pooling resources and discussing what we’ve seen in the student work.

Good Teaching Is A Conversation

Tuesday Slice of Life

Something I did this past week:

Last year, in several whole group sessions with teachers, I used the saying, “good teaching is a conversation”.  I believed it, and used it to help us all contribute to the current topic being discussed.  I can’t remember where I found it, but the sentence became so meaningful to me that I have it written at the beginning of my planning calendar so I won’t forget it, especially when I’m conferring with my colleagues. 

Since I’m writing this for my blog post, I thought I should search Google it to see if I could find the saying's origin.  While with slightly different wording, there were thousands of sites with references to the quote, but it seems that the most recent reference can be to an article by Eileen Shakespear from the Coalition of Essential Schools.  In it, she also Googled the idea, and found a reference to “good talk about good teaching” by Parker J. Palmer to in a 1993 issue of Change magazine.  Shakespear’s ending is eloquent:  With our colleagues, knowledge that influences practice grows as we share it and “work it” with each other. Good talk is difficult but it makes our work more powerful, satisfying, fun, and beautiful.

I met with four colleagues this past week, to talk over their goals for the year, what they need right now, and how things might work differently (if they wished) in the various literacy areas of their teaching.  I was inspired, and spoke with each more than the hour we had planned.  We had great conversations; even I would say, powerful.  We created plans, looked up resources, brainstormed about specific lessons, enjoyed talking about certain students and their abilities and needs, and shared about our personal lives.  I can’t imagine if I was sitting alone at my desk and someone told me to plan a lesson for ten year olds in personal narrative that I would create anything as vibrant and exciting as the teachers and I planned together. 

Much of our conversations included questions:  How do you see your class as a whole?  Where are the students who will need extra scaffolding?  Who will be the leaders?  What can happen to enhance different student strengths?  What mentor texts will be helpful in ____________ assignment?  Have you considered . . .?  Do you have. . .?  What time do you think you can commit to  . . . ?  What do you think . . .?

Most of our sessions concluded with some plans that were definite, and the needs of each were listed.  Some of the conversations put some ideas on a hold list, to be researched a bit more by each of us, with a deadline for completion.  All of the conversations were learning ones between colleagues.  We listened, questioned, considered, disagreed or agreed, and we had a really good time doing it.

I am so happy I have a job where I may have many, many good conversations, and hope always that they will result in good teaching, as that saying goes!

I Have Pickles!

             A Teacher's Need

It occurred to me this weekend that the profession of teachers is such an unsettled profession that I’m not sure how we survive, but we do!  First, it must be because we love children, and then second, we love learning.  There are basic precepts that most of us follow, techniques change with the times, and with continuing research, new ideas appear that we entertain.  We keep up or we don’t.  There are those, especially recently, who argue over what makes a great teacher, that indefinable nugget that means success with students.   It would be terrific if they would agree, then we would have a list to follow.  However, they don’t.

So, great teaching to me means having a great deal of resilience and grit.  And because our profession is often defined tenuously, it helps to include some things in our lives that are definite, assured, and dependable, like pickles.

I have so many decisions to weigh in my job and so many ideas wandering around in my head that keep saying pick me, pick me.  It’s wonderful to enjoy the definite beginning, middle and end of something so I can relax, enjoy the process, and complete something that is tangible, like pickles.

And at our local farmer’s market last Saturday, while filling my basket with tomatoes and cantaloupes, I spied a box of small cucumbers, plenty of them.  I know I needed thirty for my recipe and snapped them up.   By Sunday, I had a gallon of sweet pickles sitting in a jar in my refrigerator and some smaller jars ready to fill next week to give as gifts.  I am happy that the pickle recipe kept me from making any decisions.  I counted, bought, sliced, soaked, boiled, stirred and cooled.  Nothing to it!  I have pickles!

But I’m still going to continue being a teacher!

Guest Blog Post

        This afternoon, come visit the marvelous Two Writing Teachers blog.  I’m honored to write a guest post for them about the first days of school and the importance of starting the writing process with students from the very beginning.   I hope you enjoy it, and take away some ideas for your own start to the school year.

       

The Words, The Words, Where Are The Words?

Tuesday slice of life, Aug. 16, 2011

The Words, The Words, Where Are The Words?

       Sometimes the words

       don’t work.

       The labor is too intense.

       No poem is born.

       I think I may wait

       until the words

       come a bit easier.

I wrote this poem, trying to find one way to share my feelings with students when I can’t get started with a writing idea, and to let them know that sometimes I can’t get started, too. 

Sometimes in the classroom when we have writing time, I see students fiddling with their pencils, getting up to get a drink or another writing instrument.  I see they are struggling with finding an idea that that editor in their heads will approve.  How I help depends on the student.  When I know that they usually don’t struggle, and have plenty of ideas percolating in their notebooks, I leave them alone.  When it’s a student who muddles through consistently, and I’ve seen the slim entries in their notebooks, I try to intervene in a variety of ways.  Sometimes my aids work, sometimes not.  I do believe that as a teacher, I should try, but I also believe that there are students who are challenging to help, even resistive.  Here are a few ideas I use with those students. 

I have conversations with students that include questions about life outside school, sports played, musical pursuits, current status of friendships, etc.  Just talking can help a student begin an opinion about something, and then I encourage the writing about it.

There are lots of poems to use for student response, but the one that can be fun, because anything goes and it works for all ages is Judith Viorst’s poem “If I Was In Charge Of The World”.  If the student will begin just listing all the changes he or she would make, sometimes one thing on the list is what I respond to with “how would you do this?”

And finally, one topic that works well for me is to ask about other people.  What has the student noticed that indicates that a person is having some kind of problem?  It may be a friend that’s had a recent disappointment, a parent that is stressed about something at work, or someone at school this particular student knows has struggled in some way.  Helping the struggling writer think about someone else can motivate the writer to describe the person, the problem, and even to project further into a ‘what if’ scenario.  Here again, I’m just digging deeper into what this student knows, to help her or him see that they have indeed a wealth of interesting things to write about.

             I wonder what you do when a student struggles?

At The Beginning of School-Thoughts of Reading

August 12, 2011

The 10 for 10 picture book gathering yesterday made me start thinking about my reading and where it's taken me through the years.  It would be fun to have students reflect on their history and what kind of reader they think they are today.

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.  ~Anna Quindlen, "Enough Bookshelves," New York Times, 7 August 1991

My life with books began very early, in a grandparents’ home, where I lived until I was five years old.  My father was killed in World War II in the Pacific, a young pilot, shot down somewhere near Leyte Island in the Philippines.  The plane was never found.  And so my mother and I lived with her parents until I was five, when she re-married.  I give this information because both my mother’s and my father’s parents were avid readers, and being with them so often in my early childhood set my path toward the crazed reader I am today.

I was the only grandchild on both sides of the family until I went to school.  Everyone wanted to read to me!  My mother was an artist, and wrote and illustrated stories for me.  One grandfather loved Shakespeare.  No matter that I was young, he still read the poems, the plays, even a biography of Shakespeare to me.  A grandmother was a pianist, and taught me the language of songs.  I learned the music of the classics, but also hymns, the words of Stephen Foster, the carols of Christmas.  When I visited my father’s parents for weeks in the summer, the first thing we did was visit the library, to gather a pile of books for me.  I saw them all reading, in the afternoon, during the hot parts of the day, during a ‘siesta-time’ of sorts; and also during the evening, after listening to an occasional radio show.  Remember this was before television!  How could I not be a reader!

Until I was in junior high, we lived in a little town, without a library.  I mostly had to depend upon books we owned, magazines subscribed to, and the very small collection of books at my little school.  There was one gift that came every couple of weeks, called the bookmobile!  I can still imagine my clomp, clomp, clomping up the metal stairs of that big van, greeting the librarian who traveled with it, and racing to the children’s section.  I was allowed five books, only five, so I learned to pick the biggest books I could find, and, as I grew older, sometimes was able to persuade my mother to check out some of the adult books I thought would be good.  In those days, I couldn’t check out just any book; I was restricted to the children’s shelves.  Still, it was a wonderful day when the bookmobile rolled into town and as soon as it left, I began to count the days until the next time.  Here were the books called the Betsy-Tacy books, the Lad, a dog, books, and Nancy Drew.   Others sneaked in, too, like biographies of Benjamin Franklin, Helen Keller, and Rembrandt.  I read as many kinds as I could find-and sifted the words into some kind of recipe just for me.

         The inscription over the entrance to the library at Thebes, one of the oldest libraries in the world is that libraries are ‘medicine for the soul’.  When I was twelve, my family moved to the city, where there was a real, wonderfully big, library.  I spent many hours there, discovering authors like Louisa Alcott, Jane Austen, Ayn Rand, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway.   I had moved into the adult world of literature.  Teachers at school introduced other names.  I read, and read, then read some more. 

What do books do for me?  The words of a wonderful writer can turn me into a woman who is struggling with her place in the world in the seventeenth century, a teacher on an island in New Zealand, or a mother who is trying to save her children from the Nazis.   I celebrate those words – teaching me to be the best person I can be in our world.  In other ways, the author’s words also turn me into people I cannot be:  a black woman struggling as a maid in Atlanta, Georgia, in the 1950’s, a teenager who is facing troubles with friends, a person with a debilitating disease.  They give me other points of views, other ways to think of living.  I say to them:  Turn me into something else, writers of the world.  I want to know about those other people, how they live, work, play, and love.  I want to know how they become who they are, how they survive.  Give me your words.

At this beginning of the school year, I often turn to the topic of reading and how I get so excited to think of the worlds I can introduce to students.  I hope I can find wonderful books for them that will add to the experience of their individual reading lives.   

Switching Writing Identities

Monday, August 8, 2022


     I've been writing in a variety of ways lately, and have also lately observed that it's a challenge to keep all the parts separate, to keep all the balls up in the air in the balanced way I would like.  I'm creating a literacy newsletter for my school, writing for my blog almost every day, and recently working on WFMAD, Laurie Halse Anderson's August writing challenge.  I need different resources for each kind of writing, different ways of thinking at the task, and sometimes even different places to write so I can feel productive.  It makes me wonder how I'd like teachers to think about this as they work with students in all the various writing genres.  What conversations can this lead to?  As teachers, should we set up the writing places first, but discuss the importance of finding places that are ideal for the different kinds of writing?  Helping student awareness that writers think about this part of the writing process might be very helpful in the classroom.  

Examining Reading Habits - Great Conversations

August 5, 2011

This is sometimes what I feel my TBR list looks like!

 My Reading Habits – Wondering What Students Do, Too?

Sometime early in the year, I’ve always liked to have students write about their reading habits, what they’re currently reading, what kinds of things they read besides books, what they love and what they don’t.  I usually write too, to let students know how diverse reading habits can be.  Those who are avid readers will see that I’m usually reading several books at a time, as they do, and those who are less enthusiastic will see that reading behavior doesn’t just mean books. 

Here’s a sample of my reading during a regular day:

o   The local newspaper.  I read the front-page articles, and if especially interested, finish them when they move to the inner pages.  I check the baseball stats for the Rockies, I read certain columns in the local news section and the funnies and my horoscope.  This is wake up reading, starting the day with words, coffee, yogurt and cereal.

o   Several times a day, I read blogs from my online reader, and then turn to the e-mail.  On e-mail, I receive newsletters from Choice Literacy and NCTE, which I skim, and save for the future if some of what is shared looks like I’ll want to look again.

o   For writing inspiration, I am currently reading from Roger Rosenblatt’s Unless It Moves The Human Heart.

o   For non-fiction, which I read a bit at a time, I’m reading The Food of a Younger Land:  The WPA’s Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II American, by Mark Kurlansky.

o   For teaching, I am re-reading Becoming A Literacy Leader by Jennifer Allen, and articles I’ve downloaded like the recent tips that Two Writing Teachers shared on Facebook, the Stenhouse Blogstitute articles, and some from Education Week.  I also read the NCTE journal, In The Middle.

o   For pleasure, and lately for teaching, I’m reading Cynthia Voigt’s latest novel, Young Fredle.  Our school librarian and I are planning to hold weekly book groups through the holidays called ‘looking for Newbery’, so she and I are reading the books that are creating Newbery talk for the coming award.  And, I read magazines like Orion, High Country News, The Smithsonian, Sunset, and a local one titled 5280. 

That’s it, mostly.  You who are readers know that readers will pick up anything to read just a bit, to see what it’s like, or to skim something interesting.  When I share some or all of this with students, they begin to examine their days, and realize that they’re really reading more than they think.  I didn’t add texts, but they will, along with Facebook.  After discussions about what we read, the next step is how do we read each kind of print?  And then, sometimes questions come about how fast, which mean ‘how much to skim and when’?  And, where is the most productive place for focused reading? 

Making a list of what is currently being read supports great conversation, which leads to other conversations, some lessons in different approaches to different kinds of reading, and recommendations by peers.  Reading, critical to all learning, is one of the topics that can’t be ignored just because students appear to read well.  There’s a depth and a breadth of individual learning to consider. 

Inside-Outside--Discovering New Ideas

Tuesday Slice of Life, August 2, 2011

Collecting words and phrases that help writers imagine stories and pictures from their lives can be another way to help writers discover ideas and start writing.  When I give this lesson, I actually just begin with a few phrases, and then let the chart fill with ideas from the group.  At the same time, I’ve suggested to students that they find a place toward the end of their notebooks for lists and seed ideas.  We add to it every now and then just as a way for me to show students the breadth of what can go into their notebooks.   Here are some starters used in the past:  first-lasts, inside out, upside down, left out, after dinner, found, lost, it’s the name of the game, night-day, expectations, out the window. . .   Please add your own. 

            After our brainstorming session, it’s time to write, and as I’ve said before, the ideas are still personal choice.  I just ask that they record these ideas as described above in case they need a new idea sometime.

Here is my choice for today:  a poem from the words, Inside-Outside

Inside, at 60 beats a minute,

my heart is resting,

accumulating layers

of life on the outside.

These layers, like tree rings,

remain hidden inside,

and show only a peek to the outside

of the sometimes sweet

and occasionally bitter

when we add a pinch of salt

and then a lot of sugar.

Inside, my heart is racing

but you might not know

until I tell you, on the outside.

            I’d like to add that I’m not really satisfied with this poem.  I feel it needs something that I can’t yet figure out.  I’ve worked on it for quite a while, and messed with different lines, frustrated that it just won’t go right!  As I worked in the classroom with students, I would have shown them my process, all the cross-outs and changes, demonstrating that sometimes things don’t always go so well, and that’s what happens with writers.  As the French poet Paul Valery said, “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.”

A Gift of A Glass of Water

Monday, August 1, 2011

If you’ve read my blog recently, you would know that I recently became a grandmother again, to a quite small granddaughter named Imogene.  We are happy to have this new person in our lives, and look forward to knowing her as we know her older sister, and older cousin.  Because of this new arrival, I’ve had the pleasure, with a few challenges, of caring for Imogene’s older sister who is a few months over two.  We’ve had as good a time as ever one can when life is rather disrupted and we didn’t really plan for this because we thought there was about two more weeks left, and of course, two year olds don’t plan ahead at all!  Really, it has been a pleasure to have more time with this lovely young lady.  Her name is Ingrid and she has spent one night with us often, but not three or more!  And, certainly she’s never been asked to visit her parents and this new small and uninteresting thing, and then say goodbye to them each day.  We’ve asked her to comprehend a new idea, while continuing her usual good behavior, and then to go live for a while with people she loves and is comfortable with, yet we know she misses her home and her parents (although she’s too young to realize it).  We’re asking a lot!

As I have cared for Ingrid and watched her behavior these few days, I have wondered if there is something to connect to our students in this.  Throughout the year, we ask similar things of all the students.  We want them to act civilly, no matter what, to work with new people-adults and classmates, to meet challenges without falling apart, and even to eat differently than usual.   With a two year old, it’s not so easy to know what she’s really thinking, but I’ve found that a hug and maybe even a glass of juice helps divert attention from something that seems frustrating.  In the classroom, one of the things I often do is to suggest that a student who appears to need some kind of break should go get a drink, take a walk down the hall and back, and sometimes I even get a big glass of ice water for the student, a small token that shows I care.   Drinking the water gives the student time to relax and to contemplate what is really going on.  Often, he or she is then able to confide more, and I am able to offer some advice.  With a two year old, diversion is the key, and a hug along with that diversion gets us going again.  With any other age, words can be the ending help, but not before the break in the behavior.  A gift of a glass of water helped me often. 

Old TVs and Teaching

Monday, July 25, 2011

        This past week we had a wonderful guest, a friend from college.  We keep in touch and see each other every few years.  She is from Boston, and along with visiting her in Boston with my husband, I’ve been lucky enough to see her also when I traveled there with students.  We spent the past four days visiting, catching up, sharing details about our own children and their spouses, and much about our grandchildren.  Her oldest is now in college while mine is just finishing elementary school.  It was great to re-connect and to have so many hours of talk, about old times we shared and some things I didn’t know she had accomplished in her career, about today’s times, and what is going on right now. 

One funny story my friend told  happened last year when she called a tech person to her house to help her connect the black box to her old TV so it could convert from analog to digital feeds.  She said that he kept turning her TV off and on, off and on, and finally said he thought it was broken.  She told him to just turn it on and wait a minute to give it time to warm up.  He looked at her quizzically, not sure what she meant. He’d never heard the term, warming up.  She did some quick calculations and realized that her TV was possibly older than this young man, and had never seen anything that wasn’t an immediate turn-on.  We laughed and talked about some other things where this might possibly apply.

Since then, I’ve been wondering if I use any words in the classroom when students have no idea what I’m referring to?  Could it be that connecting with certain old things metaphorically is so out of date that students today would have to do some quick research in order to understand, or need some quick explanation?   It may be important as a teacher to understand that if one is a generation or more older than students, or even some colleagues, conversation can grow to be awkward sometimes.   It’s like thinking about Clark Kent, and wondering where he might change into Superman when all the pay phone boxes have disappeared.  What in our world will he do?  Or, in the song “The Telephone Hour” from the musical “Bye, Bye Birdie” some of the lines wouldn’t make sense, except that because they are brief enough, I suppose today they could be sent in a text.  The song can be found here.  Does “pinning” still happen?  Does anyone “go steady” today?  I believe my middle school students just say “going with”.   One final example concerns another form of communication, slow mail.  From my earliest teen-age days, I remember a Pat Boone song, “Love Letters In The Sand”.  Has someone already written a song about heartache from a tweet?  I’m not sure, but when we teach about metaphor in our writing lessons, perhaps we should begin to find new connections for student lives today.  I hope readers will think of other examples.

Connections With My Teaching

      Tuesday Slice of Life

        In an earlier post, I wrote about planning for a trip, and the three ingredients that seemed important to help the trip be successful.  In today’s writing, I’ve tried to connect those previous ideas to the classroom.  I’ve made several attempts to explain some concepts I value for the classroom, for achieving success with any group or activity.  At first, it was difficult for me to be specific without just diverging into examples of activities.  I’ve written several drafts, and never found a definite way to say what I wanted until last weekend, I saw the documentary Buck, the story of the man called ‘the horse whisperer’.    Some of his words can be found on his website:  I’ve started horses since I was 12 years old and have been bit, kicked, bucked off and run over.  I’ve tried every physical means to contain my horse in an effort to keep from getting myself killed.  I started to realize that things would come much easier for me once I learned why a horse does what it does.  This method works well for me because of the kinship that develops between horse and rider. 

As I read these words by Mr. Buck Brannaman, and the three points I made earlier in order to create success for any experience, all seemed so connected to one another that when I tried to write about one separately, the other kept popping up, too.  Here they are again:

1.       Trust within the group so that everyone feels fully open to a new experience.

2.      Allow everyone to anticipate what is needed and participate in the planning.

3.      Build in time for flexible thinking, in case something wonderful presents itself that supplants other plans.

         These connect to the expectation at my school that we work to help students take risks, to experiment with new ideas of learning.  The school offers much choice in both the learning as well as the communication of that learning.  For example, a student might do quite good research to answer a particular question of personal interest, but choose to stay with the (for him or her) comfortable communication device of a report.  Some of my students were able to dash these pages off with ease, yet became reluctant when asked to create some other kind of product to communicate the findings, like a newspaper, a video, or a multi-media presentation.  My responsibility for each, and for the whole class, was to create that atmosphere of trust within the group so that each felt safer trying on a new kind of learning, a new experience.  In the movie, Buck showed how he waved a flag on the end of a stick to tell the horse which way to move around him.  He waved it often, to show the horse that it was not scary, was a safe thing, and used only for communication.

            I could give numerous ideas for lessons in how to build that trust (and wave the flag), and I’m sure many of you have great ideas too, but I will focus on the basic philosophy instead.  In order to build trust (point number one), I have to do points two and three, consistently.  An underlying concept of this for a teacher is to “say what you mean, and do what you say”.   For example, on the first day, if I say that building a community means that everyone has a voice, not just the teachers, I must start by insuring that everyone is allowed to participate in any sharing that occurs.  And, considering Buck’s words, I must be attuned to why students act the way they do, this time, what might be reasons they become reluctant to share?  Is it fear of exclusion, fear of being wrong, and being embarrassed?  Are the behaviors learned in order to get attention, both good and bad?  Do they miss the comfort of the previous classroom?  I need to intuit the answers as well as I can, and fast.  In lieu of using old lessons that I know are helpful, I must be willing to accept new ideas for reaching our community goals.  I can be a part of the discussion, but not the only part.

            As for point number three, I must be patient, looking for an opportunity to invite or accept changes when serendipitous opportunities arise.  One example of this happened when we had a tornado warning one day.  We had been planning to write, and I had a lesson all ready, but the experience of staying in a safe part of our building, and inner hall, gave me an insight to my big, most-of-the-time brave, almost-adult middle-schoolers.  Many showed they were more than a little scared, so when it was over, we wrote about fears, what scared us, and maybe why, if we knew why.  It was a satisfying time for the group that brought us all together to some common ground.

        Building trust from the first minutes of the first day of school makes us teachers happy and the students happy.  As I watched the movie, Buck, I realized that the trust building in school is exactly like gentling a horse. 

       I wonder what everyone does to create trust in the classroom, or to help those you work with to create the trust?

Anticipation - Vacation

Tuesday, June 14, 2011

     The Merriam Webster Learner’s Dictionary online says that the word anticipation can be used in two ways:  1) a feeling of excitement about something that is going to happen and 2) the act of preparing for something.  I am picking up my grandson today at our airport so that he can fly again tomorrow with my husband and me to Sanibel Island, on the gulf side of Florida.  This is the grandson who moved away this year; he’s ten and we’ve taken him on a trip every year since he was four, although only this far away last year and this trip.  We are anticipating the week with such excitement, have planned what we want to see and do with multiple lists, although we certainly are flexible enough that if something else better comes along, we’ll go there!  We have also planned lists of what we need to bring with us, like plenty of sunscreen and insect repellent, comfortable clothes for beach combing and bird watching, and the pertinent paperwork in order to fly and take care of ourselves in medical emergencies, plus journals, pens, pencils for writing, and books to read at our leisure.  We have planned big! 

     So, as I have been anticipating this trip with such excitement, as definition 1 says, and I have been anticipating each of our needs according to definition number 2, I am again making connections to work, and wondering where this all fits into how I teach?   There is so much whirling around in my head because of my own anticipation, but it seems to narrow to only a few things:

§            Trust within the group so that everyone feels fully open to a new experience.

§            Allow everyone to anticipate what is needed and participate in the planning.

§            Build in time for flexible thinking, in case something wonderful presents itself that supplants other plans.

         I’ve had such fun with the building of this trip, and know I’ll have fun in the next week, hoping to find new ideas for writing too!  And actually, I believe that later I might write more fully about the three points above, and how they really look in the classroom.

What To Do With All The Goodbyes

June 2, 2011

How should I finish the goodbyes?

I’ve spent the past weeks

finding good, appropriate, warm, special, and creative ways

to say goodbye:

to students who are leaving our school to continue on to high school,

to students who are leaving to attend other schools,

to teachers who are leaving because they’re moving

or because they want a change in their careers,

and to our head of school

who also is moving to another life challenge. 

I feel I am ready to stuff all the goodbyes into one beautiful box.

It will hold all the emotions. 

It will contain the tears and best wishes,

hugs,

waves,

cheers,

good lucks, and

I’ll miss you’s—the fluttery feelings of heartache

that I don’t want to feel anymore. 

They’ll be packed into the box,

shut and taped down for this year,

until next time,

when I ready myself for endings again. 

It reminds me of playing Bingo,

when one stays at the card,

dutifully marking the numbers as they’re called

when you see some on your card. 

Slowly, the squares are taken, and the line is made. 

BINGO is shouted, and it’s over,  

someone has won,

and it’s over. 

You’ve done all you could,

played,

and won or lost, and it’s over. 

That’s how goodbyes feel. 

It’s time to put them all away this year.