Writing Life Reimagined

Several months ago Mary Kate and I were thinking about goals and celebrations.  Mary Kate asked: "How do you balance celebrating progress and setting goals in your lessons?"  Today I am celebrating that even though I haven't met my personal goals for writing, I have learned several lessons through the journey.  

Last summer we set out to review our joint blog with the goal of setting up some guidelines for ourselves.  I was feeling so inspired and so certain that this would be the year, the year that I would blog consistently.  We set up an every two-week plan.  I just reviewed our blog posts from this school year, our posts averaged about every two months.  I could feel defeated, I could be resigned, but it is early in summer break and I'm feeling hopeful.  Also I just read Life Reimagined the Science, Art and Opportunity of Midlife by Barbara Bradley Hagerty and one lesson from this book is it's better to go for your dream Plan A than to fall back on the comfortable known because the only thing worse than failing at Plan A is not trying at all!  So I've decided that rather than take the defeat and retreat path I'm going to think about the lessons I can gather from this blogging experience to help me be a new and improved writer and a renewed teacher.

Here's what I've learned so far. At the end of the school year as I reflected, I realized that I needed to write more in order to make my daily thoughts more clear to myself.  It isn't the act of blogging that's missing, it's the lack of writing, but it is not for a lack of reflection that I'm not writing.  I reflect constantly, maybe to a fault.  Ask my two grown children, now teachers themselves, they will tell you that I drive them crazy with questions and my over thinking.  So yes, I reflect.

Here's lesson #1 for me  - I can reflect in my mind but to truly shape the reflections and take action, I need to write.  Without the writing, my reflections are scattered.  It is harder to build on my personal thinking without the daily or at least weekly writing to capture and hold my thoughts.

Connections to my teaching.   

It's taken me a while to come home to writing, but I finally have the inner desire for writing to help me untangle my thinking to solidify my learning.  As a teacher I need to make this visible to young learners, help them see the importance of capturing their thinking and questioning on paper. When teaching writing I am not as worried about kids polishing one piece, as I am concerned with process and helping students use their voice and interests and attempting pieces and parts several ways.  Yet I don't apply that to my own world.  I am overly worried about blogging having a readership and that I have nothing novel to give to the readers.  This makes me more sensitive to the young writers who hesitate to share their thoughts or hesitate to even get their thinking on paper.

Lesson #2

Goal Setting.  Mary Kate and I reflected and set goals we even talked about holding one another accountable to these goals.  We were very gentle with our reminders to one another.  We respectfully took turns nudging and we respectfully took turns moving on without meeting our guidelines.  

Connection to my teaching.

We have talked a lot about goal setting in our building.  This just reinforces that for a goals have to have meaning to students and ownership.  Students need to know how to accomplish the goal and what it will take to make it happen.  The teacher and the student have to know their role for the goal.  There has to be some type of self-monitoring along the way.  While Mary Kate and I knew our goal well and we knew we weren't making our goal, we didn't stop and re-evaluate our purpose and our progress.

Lesson #3

The most successful posts were the ones that we discussed and collaborated on from idea stage to early draft.  There are few things that I treasure more than the reading or writing conference with students.  The conference for me is the gem in the workshop that truly lets me into the thinking, planning, and experiences of young readers and writers.  Conferences, both peer and teacher, allow students to talk and then take action.  The talk and the feedback during the conference is often the spark that renews and builds energy for the reader and writer.  The same must be true for me with writing.  Rather than being so extremely private with my blogging ideas, I need to conference more with my blog partner, Mary Kate, who I thank for staying positive and encouraging.  Talking through ideas really does help spark my writing.

As I mentioned, I just finished reading Life Reimagined by Barbara Bradley Hagerty.  Just a few highlights - Midlife is not too late to try something new.  She spoke to the writer in me as the author was a NPR journalist, she lived on deadlines and thrived on them to accomplish her writing.  But it was the telling of the story that she loved and what she wanted to focus on in the next phase of her career.  What a perfect book for me at the perfect time as I reimagine my own writing life.

Join us by sharing what you are reimagining in your teaching as you regroup over the summer break?