A String Around My Finger

Take two minutes to write about something you did over the summer, or something that's happened recently. I'll warn you, as I do my students, that you will be asked to share.

Those were the directions we received at the opening session of this year's Professional Learning Community. Each school year, for the last four, our school system's English Language Arts department has used our mandatory monthly meeting to sponsor small, interest-based groups. We read a book and discuss it, apply it to our practice, and share the results. It's great in theory, but over the years, I have been somewhat disappointed in the outcome.

Even so, I am open-minded about this year, and I hope the experience will be enriching. Already it's given me reason to pause and think.

Today, when we were required to put pen to paper, the first topic I considered was the time Heidi had to be carried down the mountain. I stopped writing a few words in, though, because I didn't want to explain to the group who Heidi was.

More than half the people there (including the facilitator) know her personally, but that wasn't enough: I did not feel safe enough to put that part of my life out there, even though it was a really good story. By the time I had rejected that topic, two minutes had ticked away to one, and I had nothing on my paper. After that, it was kind of a lame scramble to fulfill the requirement, and so, to be honest, my piece was nothing I cared to share. But I did.

I, too, ask my students to write and share, and I know the value of a safe learning environment, but sometimes I get distracted by the objectives of the lesson and forget how hard it can be to find a topic you care about, especially in the treacherous landscape of middle school.

Today was a good reminder.

What is Literacy?

Before I left for my grammar PLC yesterday afternoon, my friend advised me to cheer up. "At least you'll have something to write about," she said.

"Don't worry about me," I told her, because I wasn't worried at all. I was attending as a teacher who had assigned out of context grammar worksheets and given a quiz on pronoun agreement in the last couple of days. Surely I would be embraced by the group.

That's not quite how it went down, though. Just as we were getting started, one of the other members entered the room breathlessly. "I have a question about grammar!" she announced. "How do you teach transitive and intransitive verbs?" she paused dramatically. "You see the text book," and here she opened it with a flourish, "only mentions action and linking verbs. What do we do about that?"

I happen to know the difference between transitive and intransitive verbs (hint: it has something to do with a direct object), but the discussion that followed was about whether it is reasonable to expect the same from sixth grade students, and what our objective might be for such an expectation. Will it make them more fluent writers? Will it make them better communicators? Is it worth not only the instructional time but also the engagement credibility you would be forced to spend on such an endeavor?

"I just think they should know basic grammar," the original teacher declared. "At some point it becomes a matter of cultural literacy."

Others posited that perhaps that was specialized knowledge that might not be a top priority for sixth grade. "Do you know the sixth grade science curriculum?" I asked her. She admitted that she did not. "You're a functional, productive citizen," I told her, "even without a sixth grade science education. It seems like you're doing okay."

She allowed that she was, and the conversation moved on.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

So, I'm running this Professional Learning Committee for the English Language Arts department in our district. I've posted about it here before. The idea is sound: it's supposed to be a continuation for teachers who have participated in our local Writing Project, and so the focus is on using our own writing to support our teaching of writing.

Up until now, my main complaint has been that we weren't allotted enough time to meet and share our writing and teaching experiences. That situation was aggravated last month when we were canceled because of snow, but what can you do?  Back in December I arranged to have a guest speaker for our March meeting. It's tomorrow. Yesterday and today, four out of the ten people in the group have e-mailed to say that they won't make it. Given that there are typically a couple of people who are absent without notice, I'm probably going to cancel the speaker. It seems like a waste of someone's time to ask them to speak to a group of four or five, especially a group over half of whose members couldn't be bothered to show up.

I feel angry and discouraged.  Facilitating this PLC is a voluntary position, and right now it seems like it's been a pretty big waste of time.

Maybe It's the Moon

Despite the fact that my PLC folks didn't seem to have a lot of appreciation for edublogs, I do. I'm not ashamed to admit that I find them helpful and even inspirational at times. For example, two of the bloggers I read regularly seem to be struggling with some of the same things that I am right now, and they have both defined the issues and expressed their concerns much better than I have. I invite you to take a look.

Pressing On by Ruth at Two Writing Teachers

Stop Questioning? by Dina on Reading Free

(The second one is a really cool blog. Allow me to cite their "About Us" entry: He’s in his twenty-seventh year of teaching language arts; she’s in her third. He teaches 6th grade in a self-contained classroom in the Alaska interior; she teaches 7th grade in a rotating class middle school in an urban hub of upstate New York. What brings them together: the simultaneous launching of the workshop approach to reading and writing in their classrooms, pioneered by Nancie Atwell.

Doug Noon and Dina Strasser both blog about their teaching experiences and met through the wild and crazy interlinking of the edublogosphere. Now, they join forces to explore one of the most promising and status-quo-busting approaches to literacy available today. )

Now THAT's what I'm talking about.

Facilitator's Blues

That writing project PLC that I'm facilitating met today. Early in the year we agreed to reflect on our teaching and write about it regularly. Way back in September, people felt like 2-3 times a week was an achievable goal. Flash forward to a rainy Wednesday in December. Three of the original participants were not able to make the meeting today, so our group was eight. Seven had writing. Most had composed what they brought specifically to have something to share with their writing group. Not quite what we had in mind, and because I'm in a group myself, it was hard to tell if people think that these meetings are time well spent.

The other part of our session was spent talking about teacher blogs. Last time, everyone agreed to read a few and write up a brief "blog talk" to guide our conversation about this relatively new publishing opportunity. How are teaching blogs valuable? would have been the guiding question had I put it on the board. There was some interesting discussion about what's out here in the blogosphere, but my impression was that not many of the teachers in the group view edublogs as either a valuable resource or a viable outlet for expression.

We don't meet again until February. When this PLC was originally proposed, I expressed my reservations about how little time was available to meet, and I still wonder what writing project objectives can be achieved in seven hours spread over eight months. Ultimately, though, I realize that my role is to provide an opportunity. What everyone does with it is up to them.

PDTR-OCP

Tomorrow I'm facilitating the first session of the Professional Learning Community that I mentioned earlier in the summer (twice, actually, here and then here). I'm a little anxious, I confess, but the ELA Department ordered a book I recommended, I've been reading a lot of articles in search of the best material for our group, and I think I've found an angle worth pursuing. The book calls it "professional development through reflection-oriented communities of practice." Kind of a mouthful, no? Basically it involves writing about what goes on in our classroom, sharing it with others to get their input, all the while reflecting upon it ourselves. It's kind of like "write to learn" for teachers, but the best thing about it to me is that it includes key elements of the Writing Project, of which this PLC is supposed to be a continuation: teachers as writers, sharing practice, writing groups, and self-directed professional development.

We're going to hammer out the details when we meet, but I wanted to get the idea in written form, because that is the idea. (And, I'll let you how it goes tomorrow, because that is also part of the concept.)

It'll Change You

I just got off the phone with my friend who is taking our local Writing Project's Summer Institute. Like everyone I know, myself included, she was hesitant to give up five weeks of her summer, but we just spent thirty minutes talking about how awesome it is. "I can honestly say that there hasn't been one minute that I felt was a waste of my time," she told me. That's pretty amazing when you're talking about two weeks of four 6-7 hour days of professional development with three more weeks to go, but I was right there with her. "Are you jealous?" she teased me.

"Yep," I answered. We talked a little bit about the WP Continuation PLC that I'm supposed to facilitate next year and what it might look like. "Where does personal writing for the teachers fit in?" I wondered.

"I think it's crucial," she said. "They have to write outside and bring it in. You don't understand it until you've done it, but the writing is key to building community." Then she told me the most surprising thing of all... this teacher is pretty well-known and admired for her creative projects and unit plans. "I'm done with projects," she said. "From now on, there's going to be a lot more writing in my class, and it's going to be authentic writing. I don't care what it looks like; I just want to see what my kids have to say."

Wow. That's what I have to say.