My Summer Vacation Essay

I am lucky that in the school district where I work, teachers put together a 2-day workshop for new and current teachers to come and think together before the school year begins.  It’s simply called Leadership Academy.  I do think of these people as leaders because like many of us educators, this is all done on their own time and with no monetary reward. 

Dave Stuart, Jr. was the keynote speaker.  He is an teacher, father, educational blogger and author of the ebook  These Five Things, All Year Long.  He shared a story about Warren Buffet asking his pilot to write down 25 professional and personal goals.  Dave invited the audience to do the same and gave us a time limit.

I quickly began jotting down my goals.  The next part of this activity was to put a star next to the 5 most important ones.  And after that…

He shared Warren Buffet’s admonition to ignore the rest of the list.  The idea is that working on any of the other goals will take time and energy away from the top 5.

So, it’s in the spirit of less is more that I am narrowing down my focus from three questions to one.  Instead of:

1. How can I help my students build a reading life with purpose?
2. Can I help my student build reading connections with a more capable buddy outside of the classroom experience? 
3. Can goal setting be used to build independence and confidence with reading?

I want to think more deeply about question number 1.  I need to start by examining what my current purposes are for reading.  And NerdCampMI reminded about the most important reason.  As you might have guessed, it’s not easily measured and doesn’t make up any of the current standards or testing questions.  And I’ glad it doesn’t.

I was reminded how to find joy in reading again. Instead of just reading to find information, I remembered to read to find the joy in life.

In her last post, Josie asked:

What are you currently reading that supports your questions about teaching and learning?

I just finished reading the illustrated chapter book, Cody and the Fountain of Happiness by Tricia Springstubb and let me tell you why this character makes me happy.  Tricia Springstubb has created a character that finds beauty and fun wherever she goes.  Cody is the epitome of the phrase “the joy of life.”  New visions of ordinary things take form through her eyes.  These are just a few:

• she is proud that her teenage brother’s number one talent is sleeping
• she has pet ants outside her house
• she meets a boy calling for his grandma’s deaf cat
• her favorite fact is that the lining of the gut replaces itself every three days and this means you may have your own new talents

My big revelation about my reading life didn’t come from standards or a district curriculum.  It came from the discovery of a shared look at the beauty of life.

I need to be ready to listen so I can get to know my students’ reasons for reading and to help them experience this delight in the discovery of literacy.

What’s the best book that you’ve read this summer and what does it show about your reading life?

Learning to Grow as a Team Member

In Mary Kate's last blog she invites us to choose three questions to consider this school year.  While I haven't constructed three questions, I do have one that I've been exploring this summer. How can I be a more productive and contributing member to all the grade level teams I collaborate with?  Luckily for me, another literacy coach in our district marked this book on Goodreads The Art of Coaching Teams - Building Resilient Communities That Transform Schools .  

 
What are you currently reading that supports your questions about teaching and learning?  

It was the subtitle that mainly grabbed me, "Building Resilient Communities."  Keeping with my self-promise of more reflection through writing I've been reading this book in small parts and recording my quick thoughts. 

Reading this book makes me even more thankful for those I get to collaborate with each day.  As a reading support teacher and literacy coach, I feel welcomed at team meetings.  I feel my voice is heard but sometimes worry that it could be overheard.  And if I'm truly honest, not all meetings are created equally.  There are those uplifting meetings, the less productive, the frustrating, the empowering, and all the in between.  I think we have all been there. 

So, the question is how can I personally help contribute more productively once the team has established the purpose for each meeting?

I am about a third of the way into this book and so far it focuses on what we can do as a team that will build our trust and help us become more productive toward our goals for student learning. Here are just a few of my notes and thoughts that this reading has guided:

•   I have to know myself as a learner and a person.  What qualities do I have to contribute to the team?  The author suggests that we know who we are and what we want to be.  I think that this is not always easy for educators.  As a whole it seems that educators are quick to express self-doubt and slow to admit our contributions or accept specific compliments.  

•   Work on keeping commitments and clearly state the purpose for the team meetings while keeping in mind different team meetings have different purposes.

•   Ask one another for feedback.  When teams get into the practice of regular feedback, members are able to be  more open with one another in monitoring progress.   

•   Reflect regularly as a team. Not only reflect on student learning but also reflect on how the team is functioning.

•   Continue to build a culture of listening

•   Celebrate Success - Big or little, we just can't get so bogged down that we forget to celebrate!

•   Acknowledge areas for growth - be honest with one another in a respectful way, in the spirit of keeping to team norms and reaching our purpose.

•   Practice appreciating one another and be specific.  

•   Play and have fun together! All of us can do that right?!  But in all honesty how often do we have the time or make the time to just have fun with those on our teams?

When I think about working with others whether that is with students or adults, 
I always think about trust.  I love that this book repeatedly reminds us that we have 
to work at building trust with one another no matter how long we have worked together.
Trust is truly at the core. 

Building Success Through Questioning

Josie invited us to join her in reimagining our work.  Thank you, Josie.  I read the beginning of Life Reimagined online.  Can I borrow your book?  I’m loving the positive outlook on this next adventure in life.  So here’s what I’m seeing for the next school year.

As I get ready for my second year of teaching reading recovery, I am looking forward to building on what was accomplished this year.

But in order to do that, I need to recognize what strengths came out of my training and also what was missing.

Strengths

·      I really enjoyed the time that I was able to spend digging deeper into each child’s reading skills.

·      The support of the other reading recovery teachers in my training class was invaluable and it to have others to problem solve the typical issues with doing something new.

·      I felt like things really worked when the child and I were both excited about the book.  The reading seemed both easier and more enjoyable at the same time.

What was missing?

·      I’m not sure that I always saw my students as readers, especially when reading was difficult for them.  I could also see that even the children themselves and their classroom teachers had trouble seeing the readers inside.  Could helping our children to build a reading life where they have reasons to read and share their ideas help themselves and others to recognize them as readers?

·      Sometimes it seemed like I was the only one building reading connections with my child and in a reading recovery lesson it was more like a teacher and a student.  Who could they build a less formal reading connection with?  Is there a more capable other outside of the classroom and tutoring relationship that could be supportive in this role?  For some that might be home support, for others that might be an older buddy within the school.  Can I help to make introductions and time to make these connections for every student?

·      The greatest challenge seemed to be in having the children build independence and confidence in their own literacy accomplishments. Can this be done through goal setting?

So I am left with these three questions to work on solving this year:

• 1.     How can I help my students build a reading life with purpose?
• 2.     Can I help my student build reading connections with a more capable buddy outside of the classroom experience?
• 3.     Can goal setting be used to build independence and confidence with reading?

            It often seems to be questions that move life’s progress forward.  When I was younger, I would bombard my dad with questions.  I learned that he was most open to my wonderings when he was doing something he loved.  In his case, it was gardening.

            One of my friends and colleagues, Mary Lee Hahn has got me gardening again.  It will be fun to see how these ideas and the garden grows this year.

I know there are more questions than answers in this post, so I invite you to frame your reimagining into three big questions that you can explore this school year.  Let’s collaborate this school year.  Josie and I will look for questions to highlight in future posts during the upcoming school year.  We’re looking forward to hearing from you.

This tree frog joins in saying, "Happy Summer!"  It's not over yet, let's keep collaborating.

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?