Found Poem

In Language and Literacy class today we made "found poems," an exercise where you take snippets of another author's words to create your own work of art. My classmate Kimela (see her blog here) and I created the following borrowing the words of Paolo Friere and Bryan Stevenson. 

Knowledge re-invention
In this Restless world
Can only be changed if the narrative changes
Rich and guilty
Poor and innocent
reconcile the poles of contradiction
Education must begin with the solution
obviate thinking?
That’s ivory tower isolation,
the narrative changes
but only in communication.
Relationships,
no docile listeners,
just critical co-investigators in dialogue together.

My Fridays: twos to twelves, highs and lows

Teaching 2 year olds in the morning and 12 year olds in the afternoon is an interesting leap in the space of a day. Each come equipped with their own unique sets of joys and perils, especially as a roaming Language and Technology teacher.

2 year old highs: Putting French Caillou on the laptop for kids to roam past as they play, while sitting with students one on one and engaging them in a social French moment, playing a guessing game about colors. I am discovering that one on one face time with these youngsters makes a huge difference in the quality of their engagement.

2 year old lows: Showing a student my iPad and watching him unplug it an and announce, "I unplugged it." To which I say "Great! Can you plug it back in?" Naturally he responds by moving to put the plug in his mouth. I am recording this whole thing, and the video ends as I fumble for the cord and say in a much different tone "No, don't put it in your mouth!" The learning experience about 2 year olds here is pretty obvious.

12 year old highs: So many sweet wise souls that I get to spend 10 minutes with one on one. I am constantly amazed and challenged by how much they know and how much they can do. How can I keep ahead of them? How can I keep their momentum going when I only see them once a week? I want more time with them to accomplish even greater things. This high is really a combination of all sorts of bittersweet highs when it comes to teaching 12s.

12 year old lows: This is my favorite, and has become a high in retrospect because it's just too dern awkward and funny. A particular 12 year old emailed the following to his mother from my email account: "all the babies all across the world were decapitated and slottered

love headless horceman aka joe*" along with this picture:

What's cool is that he edited this photo and wrote the email, addressed it, gave it a subject ("headless babies"), attached the image, and wrote something in the body of the message with minimal involvement from me. He followed all the parameters of my instructions and accomplished all my goals for the engagement perfectly! It's only too bad his silly Language and Technology teacher didn't think to specify that all content "shared" had to be appropriate. Of course Joe's mom was NOT THRILLED about the creepy email from her son... the worst part is probably that I did read what he wrote, but I didn't really THINK about how inappropriate the content actually was. After all, I am the one who had doll heads decorating my house for halloween in the first place. I watch violent movies and laugh at gross jokes and count South Park among my favorite shows. I'm probably not a very appropriate person in general. Which is why I am grateful for this incident, simply because it taught me that I'm going to have to sharpen that appropriate-dar if I'm going balance working with 12 year olds and parents and my own depraved twisted home-life. I'm sure a few more embarrassing lapses of judgment like this and I will have it down. NOTE TO SELF: 12 is not old enough for headless baby humor, particularly when said humor is sent to Mom without further explanation. Supervision still a must, or metaphorical plugs will be placed in metaphorical mouths and result in metaphorical electrocution.

2s and 12s! SO different and SO the same.

Dreaming of a Classroom of Wonders: A Reader's Response to Ladybugs, Tornadoes, and Swirling Galaxies

If Ladybugs and Tornadoes are doing anything to me, they are making me start to DREAM BIG.

I have a new fantasy.

My own Language and Technology classroom.

In my utopian teaching position, I see each class for an hour or longer every. single. day. They spend an hour in this Classroom of Wonders, perfecting the art of inquiry and letting their critical thinking skills explode. The walls will be filled with their questions, their thinking, and their learning on big proud poster board and chart paper, complete with their colorful drawings. There will be tubs and tubs of books, art supplies, and comfortable inviting spaces to delve into work. There will be computers, good ones, that work and have interesting and useful programs to expand their thinking and their creativity. May I dream slightly bigger still? There will be no less than 3 Macbook laptops (or dare I say, iPads?) complete with GarageBand, iMovie, and iPhoto. Depending on their age, students will use these programs to express their thinking process or create works of art. They will be immersed in technology, with iPads brimming with apps, and scaffolds to their learning, and other experiences to enchant and unlock their minds. They will talk with and exchange ideas with friends across the globe and learn techniques for pursuing the questions that interest them.

Obviously, when I call this dream-space a Classroom of Wonders, I do mean wonders in the Ladybugs, Tornadoes and Swirling Galaxiean manner of "I wonder?". As the authors of the book put it, "The purpose of using 'I wonder' is that it gives the student ownership of the question and therefore a reason for seeking the answer" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1408). In my perfect world, Language and Technology will be a daily exercise in critical thought, open exchange of ideas, student-driven learning, and meaningful engagement with the tools of knowledge seeking. Similarly to the way the authors of Ladybugs see it, "This is all natural. The kids are everywhere, spread out with their work, engaged in their thinking, working at their own pace. We move around the room conferring with kids, helping them move from one step to the next" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1567). THAT is what I want learning to look like in my dream classroom. There's just something about this description that gives me a visceral reaction; it feels right.

So many things squared with my thinking in these latest chapters of Ladybugs, if the inspiration for my dream classroom didn't make that clear enough. One thing in particular has been a huge area of focus and growth for me, and that is honoring student choice and promoting critical thinking in my lesson plans. I could not underscore the importance of such choice better than Buhrow and Upczak Garcia when they say "We let them choose topics, whether it is with their personal narratives or with inquiries, because choice energizes them. Choice generates curiosity and adventurous thinking. Choice creates momentum. Choice allows for more in-depth inquiry. Choice encourages independence and builds self-esteem. Choice makes learning matter to the kids. Choice encourages metacognition and reflection" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1708). The role of choice and ownership has been made abundantly clear to me, and now I am simply fine tuning the best ways to go about guiding and supporting students in these choices. After all, "rarely do we find that kids are distracted or bored when they are working on something that they've chosen" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1708).

Another aspect of Anne and Brad's classroom that I love is how interactive the kids' work is. This squares with my thinking because I also value the social role of learning, and how responding to others or being responded to can enrich your own thinking. I felt like patting myself on the back to read: "Recently we have been experimenting with simply writing our comments on sticky notes and putting them directly onto the work" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1936), because sticky notes are already a major part of our classroom flow. The idea of expanding their many uses to include responding to the work of other researchers is simply genius and a must-try.

At the same time my thoughts are squaring with the ideas in the book, the same ideas are also challenging me and pushing me to think in new directions. For instance, I completely acknowledge the wisdom behind the idea that: "the kids are deciding for themselves what to explore. We might provide ideas and background knowledge, but they choose. It is also their questions and learning that drive their inquiries. Our goal is for them to follow their wonderings and learning, not ours" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L.1740). In my first inquiry-based project attempt, I am guiding students to create presentations about any topic involved in a UN country they chose to study a few weeks ago. I want to drive home the fact that this project should be something THEY want to learn about and share, but for some students it still feels like pulling teeth, and I get the sense they are trying to read from me some cue of what they should be doing. It's almost as if the students don't know how to run free with their own inquiry; for instance, one student knows he is interested in soccer players. But when I try to get him asking questions about this topic, I get blankness in response. Part of it I think is the (in his mind) loathsome task of so much writing that is making him balk. As I continue reading Ladybugs, I learn more ways to reach students like this and to get them as fired up about their inquiries as the students in Ladybugs. My reading has led me to understand that students like the one in question need to be taught the procedures of inquiry and can't be expected to walk in the door the first day knowing how to inquire. Extremely helpful have been the "Scaffolding Strategies for Inquiry Projects" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1583), which I should have used more liberally while I was sitting with this particular "stuck" student. I am pointed now in the direction of valuing the actual critical thinking taking place over the method of getting there; why not be his scribe if getting writing out of the way will help him get to the meat of his thinking and push him to new edges? He can practice the tedium of handwriting in other areas of his school day, but not when the momentum of his thinking is at stake! Scribes can be great for emergent writers as well as ELLs.

Another new idea that came to me was the importance of modeling to help students develop their budding inquiry skills. As the authors of Ladybugs remind us, "Through good modeling the students gain greater access to meaningful language" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1894). For instance, "We start out with very simple structures and routines for sharing that include oral responses that occur after someone shares...As time goes on, responses can be more complicated and can incorporate comprehension strategies such as making connections, questioning, or inferring" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1894). Providing those structures and routines are what my initial plunge into this inquiry project was lacking, and is something I will be sure to put thought into in the future. One technique I can try to do is more out loud thinking. Buhrow and Upczak Garcia sometimes like to "stop as we are reading and think aloud, although quite often the kids are making their inner conversations audible. They just start wondering and thinking aloud. We encourage this, because one child's question often leads to other kids thinking more about the topic" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1531). From now on I will find excuses to think aloud in front of students, and do what Brad and Anne do by turning it back onto the students with the question "what did you notice me doing there?"

With so much wonderful food for thought, I naturally have a lot of thoughts that continue to circle in my mind. I thought it was interesting the way Buhrow and Upczak Garcia pose the question: "Why constrict them? Why not help them share their thinking and make it big? For us, the thought of being neat translates into stifling creativity and inhibits our ELL's ability to communicate with us in various forms" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1621). My thought: How would parents react if I told them we would not be writing on lined paper or practicing the basics of letter formation this year? The bottom line is that ESPECIALLY in private school, there are just certain things parents expect to see. I'd like to find a compromise here because I value the perspective Buhrow and Upczak Garcia present here. I'm thinking that perhaps neatness and handwriting can be focused on during other parts of the day, but during LT in the Classroom of Wonders, students can be uninhibited by these concerns that come second to quality thinking. 

Being in a mixed age setting, I am constantly rolling over ideas of ways to get meaningful interactions across the grade levels. I love the idea that "Getting the kids to share their thinking in a big and bold way also inspires other writers in other grades" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1879), because that is exactly what I am trying to achieve. I would hope that through modeling, scaffolding, and practice, "The community becomes deeply involved in each other's work through presentations of research projects, making connections, asking questions, and writing comments..." (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1916). Still circling in my mind is the question of "How?" How do these teachers keep track of all of this free-form learning and exploring, balancing this qualitative learning with the demands for quantitative results? I'd like to march in to my principal on Monday morning and declare my need for my own Classroom of Wonders, but how do I fit in the kind of data a principal or parent would expect to see from all this freedom and extra time with the students into this model of student-driven learning? I'm still grappling with this question as I fantasize about ways to make my dream a reality, or at least a closer approximation to my ideal teaching format. I want so badly to create what Ladybugs has created, "an environment and sets of routines that allow the kids to be in a comfortable place to share and respond" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L.1916). I want to encourage the hum and the buzz of active, authentic learning, to be able to share in the feeling of success described when the authors say their classroom environment" is truly charged, and the pride in their eyes when they share their work is something we see frequently" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 1936).

My next order of business is to take what I can from my dream classroom, the Classroom of Wonders, and make what I can of simply a class of wonders. Perhaps if I can prove my merit in this small space, a grander space for us to stretch out in will be on the horizons.

Theory in Practice; It's Not JUST About Me

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The world, and indeed the classroom, does not evolve around me.

Pretty simple concept to grasp, right? Yes in theory, but in practice, it's a topic that comes up often in my highs and lows.

I have been known to tout the wisdom "your worst qualities are your best qualities and vice versa," but never has it been so clear in my own reflections as this past round of TIP recording. My highs and my lows both tend to originate with my accepting the old adage, "it's not about me."

When I make it not about me in the classroom, the level of engagement and authentic learning increases tremendously. This is something my coach brought to my attention when she visited my class and observed me teaching French through repetition, then through a book project where the words they could include in the book had already been chosen for them... by me. She challenged me to think about the questions we hear in our Language and Literacy class on a regular basis: Whose voice is being heard? Whose words/questions are being honored?

This has become my mantra as I seek to revolutionize my approach to instruction. In my mind I am constantly asking myself "are their questions honored? Are their words honored?" as I design curriculum and engagement activities to promote student-centered and critical learning practices.

My first step in the right direction came from a frightening event where me, our science teacher, and a group of 6 kids got attacked by a swarm of yellow jackets while measuring the trees in the audobon next to the school. (Read my attempt to turn horror to humor in my blog post about the experience here). Understandably, kids had a lot of thoughts and questions about this traumatizing event, which I took as a message from them that this was a topic they were thirsty to know more about. In my growing flexibility and ability to toss out teacher-centered plans in favor of student-driven new directions, I encouraged these questions and left them open ended, because as Strieb taught me, “Naming often closes off discussion because, for some people, once you name something, there may be nothing more to say about it” (Cochran-Smith and Lytle, 1993, p.126). In my goal to have a classroom that puts more energy into honoring student inquiry rather than teacher directives, I let their questions be, and instead invited the class to create a KWHL chart (Know, Want to know, How to learn, Learned). I laid out the chart on a large piece of chart paper and invited students to write what they "know" about yellow jackets and what they want to know about yellow jackets on sticky notes to stick into the appropriate column. We then came together and discussed what we knew, what we wanted to know, and how we would go about finding our answers. Sure, a perfectly fine lesson planned around The Paper Bag Princess got tossed out the window, but as I am constantly reminding myself: It's not about me or my beautifully planned lesson. In this moment in time, they didn't care about the Paper Bag princess, they cared about their healing stings and their newfound phobia of the outdoors, and getting to the bottom of why this experience occurred. For the next few weeks, it informed both their engagement in informational text, as well as the topics of their creative writing, like in this delightful poem by one of my 2nd graders:

Riding on the high of this successful student-centered inquiry moment, I dove head first back into my Language and Technology class, taking with me my expanding edges in facilitating a student-driven learning experience. I abandoned the "j'aime" books that only showcased MY words, and instead invited students to choose a country to study in honor of UN Day. For half of the students, the engagement I designed was perfect, and they were able to pick out facts from a kid-friendly article about the UN and collaboratively record and report them with their partner. For the other half of the class (the younger half), I quickly realized I should have differentiated a lot more for their developing literacy needs. The younger students were somewhat overwhelmed by the open-ended nature of the task with minimal teacher directives, causing interest to wane, which is where scaffolding would have come into play. A quick revisit to Flint reminded me that “when teachers provide appropriate scaffolding to struggling readers and writers, they create a learning environment that presents challenges in a supportive context; provides security through successful risk taking on a daily basis; and includes opportunities for students to begin assuming responsibility for their learning” (Flint, 2008, p.364). Of course in my development as a teacher-guide, I want my students to be successful risk takers, take on challenges, and assume more responsibility as critical thinkers and knowledge seekers, but some of them needed more support in reaching these goals. Undaunted, I went back to the drawing board and created a graphic organizer with some starting off points and some spaces for student inquiries to be inserted. The project is open-ended, in that if one aspect of their research captures their imagination, they are free to pursue that topic as the focal point of their project.

For example, this student who chose to study China quickly got through the initial questions and even her own question about Chinese holidays, which led her towards something that truly piqued her interest, the Dragon Boat Festival.

We followed this up with a trip to the library, where as much as possible students used the library resources independently to locate books on their topic of choice. Chloe quickly found a whole section on Dragon Boat festival and immediately began devouring the books right there on the floor between the stacks. Would this have been the case if I had told her "Chloe, you are assigned Canada and you need to find out the population, their currency, and name one historical Canadian figure"? Just like Buhrow and Upczak Garcia state in Ladybugs, Tornadoes, and Swirling Galaxies, my goal "is to make an academic environment where all inquiries are valued and kids have the dispositions or the attitudes and inclination to work independently" (Buhrow and Upczak Garcia, 2006, L. 540). I believe my growth in becoming a guide who facilitates rather than "the one who has the knowledge" is allowing my class to evolve in this direction.

Again and again I am reminded by these student-driven engagements full of energy and enthusiasm that it's not about me. And the more I make it not about me the more authentic and alive the learning in the classroom becomes, despite my growing pains in scaffolding as I push these edges of mine.

The same mantra can be applied to my reoccurring lows, which often focus on the challenging behavior of particular students. As I examined my highs and lows across the month, a pattern began to emerge in the way I deal (unfruitfully) with these challenging behavioral moments. On more than one occasion I recorded a feeling of guilt and remorse after using a sarcastic tone with students. In Conscious Discipline, Bailey discusses the role trigger thoughts play in a teacher's response to a challenging situation. In the self assessment found on page 31, I learned that my most engaged in form of trigger thoughts is “magnification” (Bailey, 2000, p.31); indeed, I checked every single box in that category. I've been reflecting on this, and I think my tendency to magnify a situation into something "I can't stand" or is "intolerable" leads me to try to lighten the stress by turning to humor, or rather to my preferred brand of humor, sarcasm. While indulging in magnification, I sometimes feel like I will burst if I don’t release my mounting tension, but the truth is, sarcasm relieves my tension by taking it out on the kids. I am working to remind myself that I have choices and I am in control of my reactions to stress. I don’t HAVE to use sarcasm and furthermore, I CAN stand the situation. In fact, I'd argue that it's my job to stand the situation, and to exercise self control. As Bailey reminds me, “Self control is an act of love and a moment-by-moment choice” (Bailey, 2000, p.34). There are better ways to cope with frustration than sarcasm. This becomes even more vital in consideration of Wood's assertion that “teasing, joking, and especially sarcasm are painful to the seven-year-old” (Wood, 2007, p.88). Of course the last thing I want to do is inflict emotional pain with my words or demeanor, and doing so completely undermines the work I do to model friendship skills and kindness. What's more, sarcasm makes it about me and making me feel better, and causes me to lose grasp of the opportunity to turn the moment into a teachable one.

It's not about me, but it's not NOT about me either. It's about that balance between myself and my students, where we share in the responsibility of their learning. I think I am getting closer to becoming that problem-posing educator who advocates with students and supports them in owning their own learning. He describes such a teacher quite eloquently when he says, "the problem-posing educator constantly re-forms his reflections in the reflection of the students. The students—no longer docile listeners—are now critical co-investigators in dialogue with the teacher” (Freire, 1970, p.81). My job now is to become an expert on scaffolding, so that co-investigation is possible for ALL students, and they are given just the right amount of autonomy balanced with a guiding structure. This plays into my longstanding goal of becoming a better more efficient planner, as scaffoldng well requires knowing several steps into the future and having well assembled plans. I have a feeling this balance will be a lifelong study.

 Lastly, I absolutely must share my all time favorite Freire quote (okay so we've only read two chapters, but my favorite SO FAR): “The teacher is no longer merely the-one-who-teaches, but one who is himself taught in dialogue with the students, who in turn while being taught also teach. They become jointly responsible for a process in which all grow” (Freire, 1970, p.80). This quote holds special significance for me as a literal student of teaching. I am so grateful to my students, some of whom have been with me for 3 years now, and the patience and grace in which they tolerate my learning curve as I learn to become a better teacher. Perhaps then, my mantra should not be "it's not about me" but rather, "it's not just about me." Because in many ways, this teaching journey IS about me: it's my career and my life's calling after all; but it's about me in collaboration with them, and that collaboration is what I am discovering teaching to really be about the more I read, study, and experience with my little teachers.

It's not just about me. We're all in this boat together.

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