Season's Greetings

When I was a little girl, every year in school we drew names for Pollyanna gifts. There was always a price limit like one or two dollars, and kids would bring the wrapped presents in and put them under the classroom tree. We opened them during the Christmas party, and I always remember being disappointed because I never, ever got a Lifesaver book. It wasn't even that I liked Lifesavers that much (with the exception of butter rum... now those were really good), but the book was so cool, and it was something my parents would never buy for me.

Remarkably, all of this took place in a public school, way before the phrase "politically correct" was ever dreamt of. Nowadays, in the diverse school I work in, some of us don't even think the secretaries in the office should construct their annual "holiday" display, even if it only consists of empty boxes wrapped in winter-themed paper surrounded by colored lights. We know what they're trying to say. And this afternoon, as I listened to the winter concert, I wondered how Santa and Silent Night could possibly be appropriate, even at this Most Wonderful Time of the Year.

For 'Cause

It's super-duper hard to hold on to a student-centered focus. That's why I moved away from the workshop back then. It takes a tough combination of confidence and humility-- it's hard to have the humility to step out of the way and let the students learn, and so any teacher who does that is constantly second-guessing herself, trying to find a balance between direct instruction and student practice. From the outside, such an approach doesn't always seem "rigorous" enough, and since many people equate rigor with value, it takes confidence to stand behind this philosophy.

For all those reasons, it can be kind of lonely, too.

The Slippery Slope

Sixteen years and a couple of months ago, I got my first teaching job. My assignment was to teach four one-hour English classes of 25 sixth graders each. I had finished my M.Ed. the December before and had spent the spring substitute teaching. I was ready for my own class. My training, as far as teaching literacy skills, had been primarily whole language. When I took my language arts methods class in graduate school, the notion of whole language was entirely new to me. I hadn’t thought about how kids learn to read and write since I had been in elementary school 20 years before.

In my mind, the essence of whole language was that you didn’t tell the students what to do, you gave them opportunities to acquire the skills of reading and writing on their own. This was a radical concept for a product of basal readers and grammar work sheets (which I loved, by the way). But the notion of students engaged in readers and writers workshops, practicing the skills of reading and writing on books and topics of their choice was enthralling to me. The vision of a classroom that was a community of readers and writers resonated deeply, and I knew that I wanted to create such a place and spend my time there.

So I did. The first year I taught was the first year of a new basal reading program adoption. The reading specialist proudly presented me with 125 brand new textbooks that I knew I didn’t intend to use. She was visibly shaken when I told her so.

“Here are your vocabulary books,” she offered.

“I don’t need them,” I replied.

“You should probably take them anyway,” she pushed in a soft drawl that almost covered her dismay.

The next day I had a visit from the county language arts supervisor. “What is your plan for the year?” she asked. I spoke passionately and at length, describing the program I envisioned; I showed her my collection of trade books, the area I set up for journals and writing supplies, the reading log I would use, my “State of the Class” binder, my bulletin board with publication opportunities. I also mentioned the resistance I felt from the reading specialist and other experienced teachers in the building. “I think you should do it,” she said. “You can’t hurt the kids if you do what you believe is right, and you clearly believe this is right.”

I took her advice and ran my class in pure workshop form. Students read and wrote on topics and in genres entirely of their choice. I experimented with ways to keep track of their work and ways to hold them accountable for their reading and writing. Together, we published a newspaper, had a voluntary essay-writing seminar, and wrote fan letters. Individually, my students kept writers journals, and wrote poetry, fiction, letters, essays, graphic novels, and more. They were published in the newspaper; they entered and won contests, and submitted their writing to journals. I read their writing and taught mini-lessons to address their needs.

At that time we had the "Literacy Passport" exam at sixth grade which tested reading, writing, and math. 100 students took it. A third were on free and reduced lunch. A quarter spoke English as a second language. Thirty percent were white, thirty percent Black, thirty percent Latino, and ten percent Asian. Of the hundred who took it, 99 passed the writing, and 97 passed the reading. I didn't know anything about analyzing test data back then, but now, 15 years later, I understand how extraordinary those results were.

So, you would think I would continue with my program exactly as I constructed it, year after year, tweaking the paper work and the mini lessons to more accurately keep track of and assist my students’ progress, right? Wrong. Each year my writing workshop became more adulterated, literally. I moved, gradually, from a student-centered approach to an adult-directed class. My students still did a lot of writing, but I assigned much more of it. Why?

Moderation

We were at dinner at some friends' last night, and the subject of my blog came up. Our host expressed some interest in reading these "reports from the trenches" of public education. He is a parent in our district, and his wife is a teacher at my school, and as the evening went on, we touched on a wide range of education and school-related topics, for example engagement vs. rigor-- why is there a perception that they are exclusive? Another was should all administrators have a teaching license, and should they be required to teach at least one class? We also talked about heterosexual privilege, and later "liberal" white parents who won't send their children to diverse schools. Several times throughout the night, he looked at me and said, "I feel a blog post coming!" We laughed, but he was right, those are all good topics. The only problem was that we stayed up talking until 2:30 A.M. and I've spent my day foggy-headed, resting and recovering, not writing. I feel lucky that there was a blog post at all today.

Back in the Day

I have several students this year who are voracious readers. These kids read a couple of hundred pages a day and power through 4 or 5 novels a week. Do they stop to think about what they've read? Probably not very often, and so I try to engage them in conversation about their reading, even beyond our class assignments. The other day, a student was telling me about a series of books she had recently discovered and that she was enjoying very much. "You know what?" she said. "I've decided that I really like old-fashioned books."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Like books published in 1988," she explained, "there's just something quaint about them."

Life in Century 2.1

Today I reserved the laptop cart for my students to work on an assignment. Second period, three kids to a table, laptops open, room is silent, because everyone's engrossed in typing their writing piece, and one student looks up. "Wow. It's just like Panera or Starbucks in here," she notes. There are a few nods of agreement, and then everyone goes back to their own screens.

Keep it Short

Sometimes I wonder if I ask too much of my students. I understand the value of high expectations, and I'm not proposing a lower bar for quality, but rather for quantity. I believe that if we shorten what we ask for, but demand that the product be well-considered, well-written, and well-edited, then we are helping the students and ourselves.

I'm still working out the details, but it all started with Nancie Atwell's proposition that examining and composing free verse poetry can teach almost any writing lesson, and as a result, over the past few years, I've developed a fondness for the "micro assignment." I've decided that I want my students to write briefly, but exquisitely. Kind of like the writing equivalent of an amuse-bouche-- in the cooking world, it's widely believed that if you can execute that one perfect bite, you're golden.