Literacy Builders

For the Love of Learning

Instruction

Professional Hugs

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I have the good fortune of spending most of my days in the company of great teachers thirsting to reflect and refine their practices. However, many of the conversations that I have with teachers about how to get kids to talk and think deeply and become stronger readers and writers are overshadowed by the current educational climate that places great emphasis on “measuring” progress.  Great teachers know that so much that happens in teaching and learning are things that cannot be measured and reconciling this with our data driven teaching world leaves us feeling a bit beaten and beleaguered.

Today as I talked with teachers, they began to share how it feels to teach in a world which demands things with which we don’t agree.  We talked about how important it is to find ways that help us reconnect with the things that we value as educators.  One teacher shared that one of the things that she does to help her reconnect with her visions of great teaching and learning is to read her all-time favorite book about teaching reading and writing.  When I asked her which book that was, she named Joanne Hindley’s In the Company of Children.

Her mention of this title and her practice of rereading a beloved book made me nostalgic because when I was a classroom teacher, this was my go-to book, too.  I had a ritual of reading this book every August before the new school year began. In a review I wrote several years after reading this book for the first time, I described this book as

…beautifully crafted to reach the practical yearnings of classroom teachers. It has the perfect mix of pictures and student examples and explanations that transport teachers into the classroom and help them envision what a workshop looks and feels like. Every word invigorates—no matter whether you are a novice or a seasoned veteran, this book is rich with layers of thinking that inspire new ideas about teaching reading and writing.

This was the book that helped me picture what I wanted my classroom to look and feel like–it reconnected me with my vision for great teaching and learning. When I asked the teacher who reminded me of this lovely book what it was about In the Company of Children that appealed to her, she said, “It gives me the hug I feel I need as a teacher.”

This idea of looking for professional hugs appeals to me, and I suspect different people do this in different ways, which has me wondering what do you do when your teaching batteries need to be recharged? Do you have a go-to book? We’d love to hear what reconnects you with your best vision for teaching and learning!

On Raccoons and Educational Reform

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On Saturday morning, I went outside and found trash strewn all about my driveway.  Cursing the animals that feast on what I throw away, I went about picking up their mess. Eager to get on with the walk that I had originally planned, I hastily lifted the lid of my trashcan to dispose of the waste and discovered this:

Needless to say, I was startled to see a live animal in my garbage can–I screamed, slammed the lid down, and went inside and got my husband. Shaking all over and speaking animatedly about the creature that I had seen, my reaction fed my husband’s reaction. He jumped out of bed and readied himself to protect me from this potentially rabid, wild animal invader. He donned gloves and grabbed a shovel and stood back as he cautiously pried the lid off the can.

When it was open,  we both peered inside at the raccoon balled up atop our refuse.  He didn’t hiss or growl or make whatever defensive noises raccoons are known to make. In fact, he stood eerily still as he stared up at us with helpless, timid eyes.  At that moment, I realized how small he was.  After a night of foraging, he was the baby who was left behind.  And he needed help. He didn’t need me to stand dialing animal control to discuss options and possibilities. He was stuck and he needed me to tilt the can so that he could get out and find his family and go about living his raccoon life.

As the drama of this incident ended in the instant that we pushed over the trashcan, I laughed at both my reaction and its similarity to education. Children peer at us with the same innocent expression quietly asking for our help but instead of simply responding to their needs, we become paralyzed by fear.  If I help in this way, will it align with the Common Core State Standards? And if I do this, is it a tier two or tier three intervention? And exactly how will I measure the result so that I can be sure that it is reflected in my annual review of professional performance?  

All of the changes and educational reforms have us deliberating and questioning our sensibilities when meanwhile, the only way to make sure that children are not left behind is to be the kind of teacher who looks into their pleading eyes and gives them what they need as learners.

The Habit of Thinking

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Every family has its traditions and since my children were little, my husband and I have always made it a point to check in with our two boys at dinner by asking them to share their day’s “best” and “worst.” Through the years, we have been regaled with stories about what happened on the bus, school assemblies, games on the playground, and other highs and lows of their daily lives.  “Best and worst” has become an important family tradition, but as my children grow older, I wonder if reflecting on the day’s events is enough.  Might I need to do more to inspire their conversation and thinking skills? In mulling over my options, I decided to add a new conversation prompt at dinner and follow up “best and worst” with “What’s your new idea?”

When I began this, my children were perplexed.  After sharing a story of a music teacher who all but dashed his best friend’s hope of becoming a musician,  my sixth grade son, Matthew, looked at me with squinty, confused eyes, “What do you mean, ‘what’s my new idea?’” he asked, almost annoyed at the extra work required of this new layer of thinking. But I coached him to think about why that story struck him as the day’s low. As he began to reflect, he quickly shared that his new idea was that there’s absolutely no truth to the adage “sticks and stones will break your bones, but words will never hurt you.” He thought out loud about the pain of a punch versus the power of words and he decided that while a bruise or a bump might last for a week, words can stay with people forever.

I was struck by how a simple question had the power to elevate the quality of our conversation and wondered if I had stumbled upon beginner’s luck or if, perhaps, I was witnessing the beginning of a shift. Since beginning this ritual of asking, “What’s your new idea?”, we have had many interesting dinnertime conversations. We have talked about society’s infatuation with movie stars and have formulated the idea that perhaps we need to choose our idols carefully.  “Wouldn’t it be better,” my third grade son, Nathan, thought, “if we admired scientists and inventors and other people  who help to change the world?” On another occasion, my older son Matthew described his plan to construct a Lego universe, sharing that his big idea was that he’d need to create a capital city because after all, “all roads lead to Rome.”

As we’ve habituated reflecting on our living and learning, I’ve noticed that the practice of asking, “what’s your new idea?” has begun to spill over into other aspects of my children’s lives.  One night, my older son announced that his summer reading plan would involve rereading the Harry Potter series.  This time, he decided, he would read it much slower and flip back and forth between the pages to find how things connect. (His plan, I swear!) He told us that he had already begun to do this and “he had a new idea.” As he read, he noticed that when everybody else was referring to Voldemort as “You-Know-Who,” Dumbledore’s position was “…I have never seen any reason to be frightened of saying Voldemort’s name” (The Sorcerer’s Stone, p.11) which made him think that there might be some sort of mutual respect between Voldemort and Dumbledore.  It is his plan as he continues to reread to follow this theory and see if he finds other places that support this idea about Dumbledore and Voldemort’s relationship.

Time has helped me to realize that our dinnertime conversation is a shift.  In fact, it is a shift that mimics the fourth shift of the Common Core Standards that emphasizes text-based responses.   When I ask my children “what’s your new idea,” I am prompting them to regard their lives as text and question, analyze, interpret, evaluate, and integrate new ideas.  No matter whether individuals do this by thinking about what happened on the playground or closely reading the words or illustrations in a book, the benefit remains the same: they develop a habit for critical thinking. As a conduit to problem solving, innovation, and creativity, critical thinking leads not only to infinitely more interesting dinner conversation, but also to a higher achieving student body and even better, to a more insightful citizenry.

Shorts

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First, watch this short, Bastille, from a collection of shorts about love and Paris called Paris, Je T’Aime (Paris, I Love You).

Bastille, in a little more than five minutes, gave me something that has stayed with me since I saw it in our local, independent theatre in 2007. This story of a man rising to an occasion and becoming his “best self” by pretending his way into it has become a metaphor for finding my way through changes I want to make in my life (Denton, 2007, p. 21). I have thought of this short a few times a week for the last five years, although I have only watched it three times (including the viewing just before linking it to this blog.)

The man in the short became who he needed/wanted to be by pretending. He imagined what the man he wanted to become would do in the same circumstances, and then he practiced that. I can translate this strategy into any dimension of my work on myself. To have a cleaner house, I can ask myself what people who maintain routines for sustaining an orderly environment do. Then I can copy them and practice these routines until I become someone with an orderly home. To become a better mother, I can look at the language of intelligent mothers and consciously assume their vernacular, practicing until I can own this vocabulary myself. If we become our habits, then we become new people by creating new habits, and we create new habits by first imagining them.

When I saw Bastille, its message of pretending toward becoming was not a new idea to me; I have read it in many places. The strategy, however, found a resting place in my thinking after this short became a metaphor for anchoring this paradigm for practice to my daily life. I think about this short all the time and anyone I talk to at length hears about it.

In their session at IRA a couple of weeks ago, David and Meredith Liben recommended using short, complex texts with students as we support them in developing stamina and proficiency in more difficult material. Kim and I have been thinking about short texts vs. longer pieces, and questions have arisen: Can we communicate the power of text with short texts? Can we develop readers using short texts? Can we sustain them or, better yet, teach them to sustain themselves? We think so.

As educators, Kim and I have both appreciated the advantages shorter texts offer, i.e. students can read through the entire piece in one lesson, students can reread them in even less time, short texts are less threatening than longer texts, and brevity can actually increase complexity (consider the haiku, for example). We hope the Common Core encourages educators to give themselves permission to broaden their ideas about what constitutes texts, especially short texts. A painting is really a short text. A video clip is, too. And how would readership change if middle and high school teachers used some of the more profound and/or clever picture books with their students? I would love to sit in on a high school discussion of Jon J. Muth’s The Three Questions, which would naturally connect to reading Tolstoy.

We can say with confidence, however, that the unintended side-effects of abandoning novels, of missing opportunities to connect ideas across longer texts, and of diminishing stamina for reading texts that require patience, are not the intention of the Common Core crafters. We recommend that you embrace short films, short stories, novel and article excerpts, etc. as viable opportunities for students to learn new ways to dig into text and think about ideas. We also recommend that you hang on just as tightly to longer texts, to novels, to read alouds connected over days and weeks, and to intricate ideas that unfold in connections that make a thinking reader whisper, “Wow!”

Coixet, Isabelle. (Director). “Bastille.” Paris, Je T’Aime. Ossard, Claude & Von Schenk,

Burkhard (Producers). (2006). Paris, Je T’Aime. First Look Studios: Thousand Oaks, California.

Denton, Paula. (2007) The power of our words: Teacher language that helps children learn.

Turner Falls, MA: Northeast Foundation for Children.

Liben, David and Meredith Liben. (2012). “Text Complexity and the Common Core Standards:

What’s a Practitioner to Do?” IRA 57th Annual Convention, Chicago, April 29-May 2,

2012: Celebrating Teaching.

Matters of Consequence

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If you were to say to the grown-ups: “I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with a geranium in the windows and doves on the roof,” they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: “I saw a house that cost $20,000.” Then they would exclaim: “Oh what a pretty house that is!” –The Little Prince

A man crashes his airplane in the Sahara. He wakes to find a little prince from another planet with him in the desert. The little prince anxiously explains that he has a rose bush that he loves and has left behind on his home planet. The prince is afraid that his sheep will eat his beloved rose bush in his absence and he grows increasingly distraught at the prospect of the bush’s demise. The pilot, involved in his efforts to repair his plane and concerned for his own survival, is annoyed by the prince. In ever more distress, the little prince asks the pilot a barrage of questions about the thorns on his rose and what purpose they serve, and the pilot, increasingly distracted, responds without thinking. Shocked by the response, the little prince asks the pilot if he really believes what he is saying. The pilot responds in frustration:
“Oh, no!” I cried. “No, no, no! I don’t believe anything. I answered you with the first thing that came into my head. Don’t you see—I am very busy with matters of consequence!”
***
Teachers wrestle with distributing instructional time among competing “matters of consequence.” Even under scrutiny and pressure to adhere to linear and categorical models of instruction, there remains a commitment among teachers to teach children to think. Think about words, ideas, stories, even about challenging concepts, such as justice or peace or the ways they plan to change the world.
The complication, of course, is that district, state, even federal instructional directives largely focus on discrete content rather than ways of thinking and knowing. “Others” have decided that particular instructional standards are the matters of consequence in classrooms. And the district, state, and federal others are interested in numbers: percentiles, rates, and scores.
Much like the quote from The Little Prince that opens this essay, teachers say to the others, “I have a student who loves to read. He has favorite authors and he carries books with him everywhere. He reads when no one asks him to. When I see him, he begs to read me his favorite passages. He laughs and cries at the places the author intended, and he is happiest when he is reading. Will you come meet him?”

But the others cannot get an idea of the boy at all. They do not understand. The teachers have to say to them, “There is a boy in my class who scored in the 98% percentile in reading on the standardized test.” Then the others would exclaim: “Oh, what a smart boy! We want to meet him! You are a wonderful teacher!”

While smart teachers fight to commit to instruction that is rich and deep, we cannot escape the details of measures and the public pressures of others. We are overwrought by rubrics. We are in a quandary over questions others have decided are essential. But we find points of instructional meaning, even when the directives we receive make little sense, rather than deciding not to believe in anything. We want to continue to read beautiful books, ask questions that don’t have one answer, and show children ways to think about tremendous and beautiful ideas. But we feel pressure teach as if we are preparing for some timed, physical fitness test on live television, and we sometimes find it hard to think of anything else. This might please the others, but it doesn’t do much for the the boys and girls, or teachers.

If we say to the most beleaguered teachers, “Read this book. It might change your life or the lives of your students,” then they are overwhelmed. But if we say to these teachers who have almost forgotten that they love children’s literature and open-ended conversation, “Teaching with this picture book will help your students meet standard ERA172BT376.47…m.” Then they respond with relief, “Ahhhhhhhhhh!” They do not believe that higher-order thinking is unimportant. But they are tired, and searching for a way to satisfy the others while also honoring themselves and the students for whom they work.
***
The little prince begins to sob as he imagines the violence the sheep might commit against his rose bush, and the pilot realizes his insensitivity and describes his thoughts:
The night had fallen. I had let my tools drop from my hands.
Of what moment now was my hammer, my bolt, or thirst, or death? On one star, one planet, my planet, the Earth, there was a little prince to be comforted. I took him in my arms, and rocked him.
***
Sometimes, when it seems the educational leaders and policy makers have gone amok, we are inclined to let the instructional standards drop from our hands and ask, “Of what moment now are standards or rubrics or standardized tests? We want students to develop literate identities and articulate their own important understandings. We have to teach them to feel, to think, to love, to question, to connect, and to create proficiently.” This is the truth.
But we see the other truth, too. We often understand the efforts of the others, working to help us teach intentionally, analyze the instructional standards, and look critically at how our teaching translates into learning. Most educators actually believe in standards. Who is not in favor of focusing instruction, aligning what we teach with what we test, or lifting expectations of students? Who doesn’t want ALL children to become proficient at reading and writing? And this, too, is truth.

So we have to figure out how to marry both worthwhile endeavors: teaching the instructional standards and teaching everything else. We have to make a hard case for read aloud, for dialogic discussions, for social justice, for teaching children to think, for talking before writing, and for showing children in lots of different ways that they are matters of consequence. We need to articulate both a rationale and practical ideas for teaching children the instructional standards while also doggedly defending creativity, independent thought, higher-order thinking, and every one’s right to change the world.

Note: This blog was originally published at www.janmillerburkins.com. and also appeared at http://engage.reading.org/READING/Blogsnbspnbsp/BlogViewer/?BlogKey=f4f9af7d-92db-477a-af8f-a60782d6f991