Flip This: A New Year’s Resolution

I’m not one to make New Year resolutions.  They amount to so much wishful thinking, empty of any conviction.  The gym where I work out will be packed with “resolutioners” for the next month or so, people sitting on machines texting and chatting away, mostly in the way, believing they have some resolve to exercise more or lose weight.  By mid February, their numbers will dwindle away.

This year, however, I am resolved to flip my classroom.  The motivation to execute this flip comes from two places.  Our school’s recent work and thought around CCSS  has me frustrated, has me wondering why, if we are serious about affecting meaningful change at the classroom level, we are treating these new standards in exactly the same way we have treated the standards and accountability reforms preceding CCSS.

Secondly, I believe there is an important connection between space (place or environment) and the learning and living that happens in that place.  The design of classroom space sends clear messages about the work and expectations of that place.  Further, I have become more disciplined in articulating what I believe about literacy and learning.  I have become more deliberate, principled in designing and enacting lessons aligned with those beliefs.  If I believe that literacy learning is an active process -  enacted in social contexts, realized through our use of language, and influenced by place/environment – then it makes little sense to isolate people in individual desks all facing some font of all that is good and standardized.

This flip we are about to enact is not solely of my making.  To simply rearrange the desks, revise my syllabus, and plod along as before would be nothing more than new clothes for the same old wolf.  We have to enact this plan together.  We are, as the sign says in our school’s entry way, a community of learners.

Therefore, we spent a semester building empathy.  We have worked our best in the former space trying our best with the former design.  We often shoved desks around or left the room all together for more accommodating space – the library or computer lab.

As semester one developed a death-rattle and wheezed its last breaths, I asked my classes to take a few minutes and create a list.  I asked them to write about what we do in our classroom.  Students paired up to merge their lists and begin a conversation about the work of a reading and writing rich classroom.  Together then, we roamed the landscape of that first semester looking or patterns, routines and rituals, habits of mind.  I wrote their synthesized list, the actions of readers and writers, on our white board.

Next, I gave each student a large sheet of construction paper and these instructions:  Given this list we have created, I want you to redesign this space to accommodate those actions. Anything goes.  Nothing is too ridiculous.  Should we all have ipads?  Do we need live music?  Room service?  Imagine this room completely empty.  Map out your design for a new space.

    

With the new designs mapped out, I asked students to write a brief description of their design pointing out key features and their connection to a reading and writing rich classroom.  Using a “crowd sourcing” protocol we rated each design and identified the top three ideas in terms of creativity/innovation and feasibility.  As great as it would be, I can’t get ipads for each student.  With our rationale articulated and some concrete design plans, I set about scrounging, begging, and stealing in order to realize our new plan.

Here are some pictures of the redesign in progress:

         

Not pictured is an open mic / stage space which we will use for “open mic” Fridays and for CP4s dramatic interpretations of the plays they’ll be reading this semester.

Speaking of open mic and dramatic performances, I need to point out that redesigning this classroom space is only phase one of my resolution to flip my classroom.  This whole process has recalibrated my thinking about the hows and whys of what gets enacted in my classroom.  We have a new classroom space, now what??  My students and I will begin exploring and envisioning new possibilities on day one.  I can’t wait to see what happens.

The Good Stuff

“It is mistake to want to be a poet more than want to write poems.  There is a difference if you can feel it.”  Lucille Clifton

A few weeks back I posted the poem “Southbound Trains.”  After this year’s NWP/NCTE annual meeting, I left with that adrenalin high that comes from hanging with amazing teachers, folks comfortable with ideas and theory, people who love and understand language.  Writers, all of them.  There was an ache, though, at this year’s meeting, an anxiety churning in everyone’s belly, an uncertainty about the future.  I think the poem was born of that curious subtext, a juxtaposition of potential and risk, of fear and hope.

I wrote the poem in that post-conference, train-travel euphoria -  a stream of consciousness and word association effort which I thought had some clever moments.  I posted the draft under the tag “practice what we preach” in what turned out to be a weak effort at making the point that teachers of writing must be writers themselves.

Nancy Ellingson, my former high school writing teacher and now facebook friend and cyber-colleague, didn’t let me get away with that pretense.  She commented on the post offering some editorial guidance.  What followed offers a remarkable glimpse, I think, at what writing is and what writing can do.  Writing isn’t about the poem – it’s about connecting, about creating something together, and about the learning that happens when we are guided by someone like Nancy through the wreckage of our attempts.  Our correspondence over the poem has me rethinking what I “knew” about teaching writing and about responding to my students’ work.

Nancy’s reading of the poem was line, even word, specific, without losing sense of the whole.  She celebrated the successes, questioned the wobbly parts, and called me out where she saw me taking short cuts – my use of the word “shit,” for example.  Readers, she taught me, attend to a writer’s words with intelligence and sincerity.  Readers deserve the same quality of attention from writers.  Her comments had me back pushing words around the page with the same zeal I’d had on the train that morning.

Further, our correspondence over this poem had us exploring pedagogy and thinking about how we become the teachers we become.  Consider this bit from one of Nancy’s emails: “I’ll say it again: I am happy to read what you have to say about learning/teaching. It makes me a bit sad, though, to recall all the days/weeks/years I sat everyone in rows (later in groups a lot) with the lecture-questioning method. My “method” came partly out of seeing what was around me in the schools, partly out of ignorance, and maybe mostly out of fear of loss of control…All I know is that I loved the kids.”

Stories, like the following, from the same email ease the sting of regret far too easy to see in hindsight:  I just received a note from an old student who had endured an awful life and then landed in my freshman class. She went on to have a very hard life, but is now graduating as a nurse! She said she wrote a poem in my class and that I thought it showed great promise. She has held dear that small encouragement for lo these many years as one of the only good memories from school – just a small and rare bit of encouragement. It is scary and wonderful to be a teacher.”

Besides our discussions of the poem and of teaching and writing, Nancy and I began filling in the details of the 25 years of life that have played out since I left her classroom as a high school senior.  We shared some stories of the triumphs and challenges and how eager we are to spend the holidays with our families.  “Southbound Trains” is in its third iteration, but I know the poem itself is really beside the point.  The sediment suspended in the currents swirling around the poem – that is the good stuff.

Let’s Tinker

Some people tell me I talk about my own daughters too much.  I get that; I get my fill of self-absorbed “my-kids-are-perfect” parents at the soccer fields and swimming pools of our summers.  So I won’t post today about Jaycie or Jaelyn, but I do want to talk about Jaycie’s 5^th grade teacher, Mr. Canada.  First, check out this video of their class: http://www.kplr11.com/news/kplr-bike-power-edwardsville-il-5th-graders-112911,0,5120021.story

What do you notice?  Maybe watch it again.  Write about it.  What do you notice?

Here are a couple of things I see: First, I noticed the space, the actual classroom.  You get a pretty good glimpse of it at the :17 mark and having been in the room a few times, I can tell you that glimpse hardly does it justice.  Mr.Canada’s classroom looks more like a workshop than a classroom.  Computer equipment and hacked radios and lamps, batteries and generators, light bulbs, solar panels, toy car parts, video cameras, you name it, lie scattered about.  There are no rows of desks facing front, no podium, no chalkboard – at least not one that isn’t covered in student work.  Not one at which students stare like the back wall of Plato’s cave.

I heard this:  “What started as a lesson in alternative energy turned into ten-year olds tinkering – turning everyday items into solar-powered fun.”  Tinkering, yes.  Kids in Mr.Canada’s class tinker.  They prototype, build models, test them, fail spectacularly and then try again.  They do this work collaboratively; they solve problems together. Jaycie (One kid story, sorry) and her partner’s car couldn’t overcome a rolling friction problem.  They scrapped their car and tried another until they solved the problem. They write about their results; share them, celebrate them. They challenge and question one another.

Each kid in the class has built and adds to a web page – web pages – one for each subject and then some.  The pages are a record of the kids’ learning.  Not just a record, the pages are yet another space for learning, for prototyping and writing and collaborating, for failing and trying again.

I have been sharing the story of Mr.Canada’s class with anyone who will listen.  Most are impressed with the work, surprised it’s the work of a fifth grade class.  Several wish theirs could be such a class but bemoan, “technology and I just don’t get along.”  And I guess that brings me to my point.  What Mr. Canada and his students are doing isn’t about technology.  What Mr. Canada has to teach us is not computers.  Canada’s class is a clinic in process pedagogy, in design thinking.  The work he asks of students, the work he does himself with students is grounded in a belief that we learn collaboratively, apprenticed to a skilled craftsman.  His class is grounded in a belief that learning is discursive – driven by language.  His is a class which understands we learn by trying, failing, and trying again.

When AHS again gets some precious time to talk and work with colleagues, I move we spend that time building solar-powered cars or writing fan fiction or re-designing our classrooms.  I suggest we write about what happens when we try out our cars.  Let us then talk about what building cars, writing fiction and designing classroom space has to do with teaching and standards and the future we envision for our students.

Southbound Train, a poem

The following is a draft of a poem I started while riding the Amtrac home from Chicago last week.  It is a poem that really should be read aloud, and if I did it right, the piece should gain momentum, pick up speed as you go.  And for those with tender ears, the language is PG 13.   One last thing, please note that I placed this post in a new category, “Practicing what we Preach.”  I hope for this to be a space for us to share our writing and/or responses to what we’re reading.

Southbound Train

What river is that, south of Joliet?

The Illinois, I suppose or

a tributary, a vascular brother or sister

sluicing Chicago’s shit south.

My shit, could be

but not yet, not

that fast

My shit won’t sicken

they’re already stricken

with other ailments,

the wounds of living – they’re

bad enough.

My shit don’t stink

to me

or not to me.

I’ve

run out of questions

and that’s the worst place to be

Simply floating along afraid of what’s next

clutched close to the vest

some other clichés born of some truth

grown from some root now rotten, forgotten

so that all that remains

are empty refrains

mouthed breathlessly

by those on this train.

We stare out windows, leaning on elbows

memorizing the names

of each town with a stop

a tavern, a church

barstool or pew

Hardly a difference. We are already naked.

There is nothing to lose

TWICP2 28 November

TWICP2  Looking Forward.

This week, rather than looking backward, I want to try and make visible my thinking as I envision the week ahead.  We have tossed several unwieldy balls into the air, chainsaws might be a better metaphor, and I have to think about how to keep them aloft (or which to let fall).  Those chainsaws are: 1) Finishing our study of To Kill a Mockingbird 2) Our “This I Believe” collaboration with students in Florida 3) Putting the finishing touches on our second quarter portfolios 4) The second quarterly assessment focused on writing.  Ugh!

To aid in my lesson planning, I try to build in scaffolding, a weekly skeleton for the course.  In CP2 that scaffolding looks like this:

Monday:  Writers on Writing

Tuesday: Writers Workshop

Wednesday: Literature Study

Thursday: Writers Workshop

Friday: Quiz and Literature Circles

I think that Writers Workshop this week has to be given over to the “This I Believe” collaboration.  My students have to get their essays saved as pdfs and uploaded to our shared wiki.  Our partnered class already has their essays and voice recordings uploaded.  I don’t want to hold them back.

Wednesday I intend to facilitate another gallery walk for the last nine chapters of To Kill a Mockingbird.  I intend to kill two birds, not mockingbirds, on Friday.  We will write timed essays on prompts connected to the novel.  These essays will serve as our final “test” for Mockingbird and will also give us a timed writing sample for the portfolios.

Whew – it is going to be a busy week with only one remaining before portfolios are due.

TWICP2 7 November

This Week in CP2 7 November
My teaching and thinking this semester have been influenced by, among other things and people, two journal articles: William Broz’s English Journal article “The 800 lb. Mockingbird” and Erik Reese’s essay in Orion “The Schools We Need.” Broz argues that teachers have to own their part in the fact that students are not reading what we ask them to read. Our methods are encouraging non-reading strategies like a reliance on Spark Notes. I see direct connections between these non-reading strategies and Erik Reese’s worries about the state of education. Reese unpacks a peck of student observations regarding their own education:
• Many teachers show no passion for their subjects.
• Many teachers don’t seem to know their subjects very well.
• Teachers often have very low expectations for their students and very lax standards (late work is rarely penalized).
• Many teachers are afraid to engage students in real critical thinking or actual dialogue; they simply rely on handouts and lectures.
• Assignments don’t seem relevant to students’ “real” lives.
• Many teachers only “teach to the test.”
• The majority of the work is far too easy and leads to boredom.
• Students express an overwhelming feeling that only their attendance and test scores are important to teachers and administrators.
As a newly minted teacher entering a classroom 20 years ago, I did not envision what Reese and Broz describe for my classroom. I do not want to wear the jade of years. I refuse to make apologies for what I ask of my students (I heard a teacher say, “This will be the least boring of the boring stuff we do, I promise). I became a teacher because I know words and language matter. As compared to the majesty of Moby Dick or the compassion of To Kill a Mockingbird, the indignation and angst of Catcher in the Rye, the courage and humor of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, yeah Spark Notes are pretty damn boring. Enough proselytizing (I hope I am preaching to the choir!).
I want to talk about what happened Wednesday in CP2. Wednesdays are our lit days, a chance to engage the literature of the course. Because I have become sensitive to the charge that literature study and creative writing (a course I also teach) is so much fluff, a nice diversion but hardly the stuff of rigor, hardly what our students need to survive in the “real” world, I’ll quickly quote educator and writer Sheridan Blau who argues, “Literary reading and literary study, as they are ordinarily sponsored in rigorously conducted English classes, teach students an intellectual discipline that defines critical thinking in every field and fosters academic success in every subject” (More on the desperate need for creative, innovative thinkers in another pending post).
So, students came to class Wednesday having read through chapter 14 of To Kill a Mockingbird. Here is what we did:
1) I assigned each of our six reading groups one chapter of those 9 through 14. I asked each individual to spend some time writing in her/his writer’s notebook about what s/he felt was most significant in her/his given chapter.
2) The reading groups then assembled to share individual responses. These conversations were rich and animated and punctuated with the off-topic silliness we’ve come to expect from this section. The groups then synthesized those varied responses in a single prompt written on a piece of chart paper (Damn, I left those charts at school. I will edit this post Monday to include the prompts they came up with).
3) We then passed the chart paper, rotated one step counter-clockwise so that now each group had the prompt created by their neighbors. For 5ish minutes the groups discussed the given prompt and wrote a response.
4) Rotate. Read prompt, first response, add second response. The intent was to rotate so that each group saw each prompt. Time didn’t allow for that, so after three rotations I returned charts to their original group.
5) Each group took stock of what was written on their paper and prepared to report out. What is important for us to know about your chapter?
6) Each group’s report triggered follow-up discussions, connections, new questions, clarifications. We sprinted through characters and scenes, themes and frustrations. We talked at length about the nature of knowledge – What do the kids know about Boo or about Ms. Dubose? How do they know it? How do they begin to un-learn some of those things?
One group’s prompt was “Why is it a sin to kill a mockingbird?” This prompt had us, during the group discussion, listing “mockingbird characters,” those characters who are misunderstood and treated unfairly even cruelly as a result.
Clearly, from the discussion, the students “got” this. They listed Boo and Tom and Ms. Dubose. Someone even pointed out that Scout was something of a mockingbird character in that Aunt Alexandra won’t let her be her tom-boy self. Ms. Caroline punished her for knowing how to read.
Here is my dilemma, my question and frustration. The kids have no problem empathizing with the characters. They understand the unfairness, the hurt and pain that comes from failing to see things from another’s point of view. What they do less well is apply those lessons beyond the pages of the book or beyond the class discussion. As our lesson was kicking off this Wednesday, a fight erupted in the hall outside the room. This class gets distracted when a pencil falls from a desk or when someone sneezes. It’s almost impossible to recover from the distraction of a fight. In the struggle to get everyone seated and back on track, a racially insensitive remark was made about the combatants in the hall – another near terminal distraction.
How do I move from literary analysis to application beyond the page? I don’t think I teach literature to teach moral lessons, but the disconnect between what these students say about the book, and how they treat one another in the halls is striking.
A glimpse at the week:
Monday: Writer’s Workshop. Finishing MLK essays for submission. Six students entered their essay in the contest
Tuesday: Writer’s on Writing. We read and discussed the Donald Murray essay “Trying on the Essay.”
Wednesday: Gallery Walk discussion of To Kill a Mockingbird
Thursday: Writer’s Workshop. Students began drafting their first piece connected to our reading of mockingbird.

A Glimpse Inside Writers Workshop

This week in CP2

Monday: “Writers on Writing.” We read, wrote about, and discussed the chapter “Unforgettable Language” from Fletcher’s book What a Writer Needs.

Tuesday: Writers Workshop. Drafts of the MLK essay were due. Students were to conference their drafts with peers and/or with Mrs. Gibbons and me.

Wednesday: Students are discussing TKAM. We’ll use a three-column guide to help students summarize and make connections.

Thursday: Writers Workshop. Students are revising their MLK essays.

Friday: Esperanza Rising presentations. During the 25 minutes we have before lunch, students have been working on culminating projects for our reading of Esperanza Rising. They will present these projects Friday.

So here are some things I noticed in CP2 this week: Tuesday’s writer’s workshop rises up, a continental divide of sorts for our semester. I noticed a shift in momentum and energy, a new seriousness in attention to task and each other. And the funny thing is, the writing we shared on Tuesday was pretty horrible, but horrible in a good way.

I have asked my students to write this essay for SIUE’s contest honoring Martin Luther King’s birthday for the ways in which it will stretch us as writers both in terms of audience (contest judges) and in terms of our proximity to subject matter. On our first trip to the computer lab to work on these papers, I noticed nearly all students on Dr. King’s Wikipedia page. Some nuanced this research with other sites conjured up with Google.

The resulting drafts brought for conferencing this Tuesday were more and less sophisticated, paraphrased biographies. Each draft I read had sprinkled throughout, surface level error consistent with a drafting process where writers were wrestling with the rhetorical demands of audience and purpose and now a less familiar subject matter.

We could have slammed the brakes on the process Tuesday and wailed in frustration, “Jeez, you haven’t even spelled his name right!?” or “You can’t even write a complete sentence.” We could have stopped and turned our workshop day into a spelling lesson or one on comma use – you just can’t link independent clauses together with a comma damnit! How many times do I have to say it?

Rather, we started talking about the challenge of writing about this iconic historical figure in a small way, a locally meaningful way, in a way we hope gets noticed by contest judges. We agreed these judges probably know King’s biography pretty well; they don’t need to read a report on his life.

Someone (Ok, maybe it was me) pointed out that we’ve been reading literature in class: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, Esperanza Rising, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Perhaps we can find ways to write about our experiences reading these books. How has this literature influenced our thinking – allowed us to understand the King legacy in new ways? (Still a daunting task, to be sure)

Students began whittling out the “reporting” and encyclopedic voice of their drafts and started writing in more local ways, in voices grounded in experience and wisdom, with courage and compassion (I don’t think I am overstating this) and aren’t those things – courage, wisdom, compassion part of King’s legacy?? One student is writing about the football team, a diverse group working together toward a shared goal. He makes a powerful analogy comparing team jerseys to skin color.

When I asked how many thought they’d follow through and actually enter their essay in the contest, nearly half the class raised hands. Some are in it for the extra-credit I offered for submitting an essay. I get that (they have to write the paper for their portfolio; they don’t have to enter the contest). Other’s though, are proud of what they are writing.

This Week In CP2 28 October

This week in CP2

Out of a desire to give our PLC team some sharper teeth, I will do my best to maintain a “this week in CP2” thread on our blog. I hope to make visible and available to all of us, the rehearsing, theorizing, and designing we all do, but which is too often done in our own heads as we shower or drive to work or….ugh sleep (I hope I am not the only one who dreams about school. That can’t be healthy).

So…this week in CP2: First, know that I have structured a week in CP2 to include two writer’s workshop days – Tuesday and Thursday. These are days devoted to writing and designed to support writers as they work on a collection of finished writing each quarter.
Just a quick bit of comp theory here to provide some context and foundation: I talk with my writers often about the relationship between writer, audience, and subject. That “triangle” is stretchy. I can manipulate the distance between writer and audience or writer and subject. For example, in a journal or diary writers are writing about themselves for themselves – a very small triangle and, arguably relatively easy writing to do. If/when I ask students to do some research, I am asking them to write about a subject matter further removed from themselves. They “close that gap” through research.
With the start of the second quarter, my sophomores are writing essays for SIUE’s Martin Luther King contest. This assignment provides an authentic audience and, as evidenced by the eye-rolls and groans, stretches them in terms of their relationship to subject matter. They have been writing about themselves most of the first quarter, something they are too good at  Now, I am inviting students to write about Dr. King’s legacy and to what extent it lives today. I like this contest for the ways it allows me to stretch students in terms of audience and subject matter. In addition, this writing nicely compliments the literature we have been studying: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, Esperanza Rising, To Kill a Mockingbird.

Something else is going on in CP2 this semester, something worthy of it’s own essay, but I think it also connects to the MLK assignment we’ve begun. Classroom management is an art. In working with a student teacher and a challenging section of sophomores, I am reminded what a complex and difficult art. Here are some things I think I have learned about classroom management, beliefs which my current CP2 Cohort challenges every day.
When I taught at the Alternative School working with some of our districts most difficult students, I learned that I could accomplish almost nothing without rapport. I built rapport by talking with kids, simply showing an interest in them as people and being vulnerable in front of them, talking about myself. Often, whatever agenda or lesson I had, had to come second to just talking, being with students. I don’t mean that to sound like some corny endorsement of our schools mantra: relationships, rigor, and relevance. Whatever successes we might have enjoyed at the A-School, they came about because of rapport (And I wasn’t always able to establish rapport with every kid).
Second, engaging students was my next strongest management (and I don’t quite like the metaphor of “managing” kids) tool. Engagement is something different than busy. I didn’t want to keep them busy. I wanted to keep us engaged. Perhaps I need (I will) write more about that difference. As one example, I might point to the MLK essay discussed above. When writers take some ownership over and responsibility for their words, when they write for genuine purposes and audiences, they are engaged. And, you’d be amazed at how different their writing looks!
Lastly, I want to say that passion and enthusiasm are contagious. I genuinely love to read, to write, and to share those experiences – both the triumphs and the challenges. It is much easier for my students to take our work seriously if I do as well.
Of course, classroom management cannot be distilled down to three bullet points. It’s a nuanced, complex process. We are all in the process of becoming better managers of our classes. I know I rely on rapport, engagement, and passion as I work with my classes.

Looking ahead. My students have drafts of their MLK essays due Tuesday. I will write soon about how I set up writing groups and how I teach students to talk with each other about their writing. We will read deeper into Mockingbird, and our lit circle groups will be working on culminating projects for our reading of Esperanza Rising. I hope some students take up the invitation to use prezi and/or pbworks for their projects.
One last note, last quarter students wrote “This I Believe” essays. See ThisIBeliev.org. I have partnered my class with another in Florida to share these essays and perhaps even publish them online. As I work out the details of this partnership with the Florida teacher, I will share them with you

Open Letter: Dear Telegraph Editors

Open Letter in Response to Alton Telegraph Editorial of 24 October: “Don’t Blame State’s Failures on NCLB”

     Despite the headline encouraging a quest to find blame, I agree with the sentiment of the last paragraph – that pointing fingers won’t accomplish anything.  In the essay’s penultimate paragraph editors argue that all stake-holders must roll up sleeves and “do the hard work of turning these trends around.”  Certainly.  I concur.  What rarely gets unpacked, however, in these ubiquitous commentaries on the state of education is what is meant by “do the hard work.”  What does that look like? 

     The X-ray analogy editors employ is interesting but in need of nuance.  Assessing the state of education via the use of a one-time, one-size-fits-all test is akin to taking a photograph of said injured leg with a Polaroid and then having a photographer diagnose a cancer from the blurry image.  Further, we are not in need of more diagnostics.  We need treatment!

     I began my teaching career in a small high school in northern Wisconsin in 1992.  Our school was gnashing nails and kneading foreheads over an ambitious reform movement “Goals 2000.”  Department meetings were given to aligning curriculum with these goals, building assessments, and analyzing data – the results of these assessments.  Teachers rolled up sleeves and worked hard.  With sincerity and professionalism, we enacted our curricula, freshly aligned and regularly assessed.

     NCLB succeeded Goals 2000.  Department meeting agendas insisted on aligning curriculum, distilling courses down to their essence, building assessments, and analyzing data.  The conversations I am hearing about the Common Core State Standards, the latest and perhaps most ambitious mandated top-down reform, are beginning to play from the same script.  If we are to “turn these trends around,” if we are to have a different and more healthy conversation about the state of education by the next iteration of Goals 2000, then we must do something more, something different than align curriculum and write tests.  We must interrogate, collaboratively, how and why we enact curricula in the way we do. 

     This is, I know, much harder work.  It asks of teachers to be vulnerable, to inquire, and to – heaven forbid – have a theory and to test that theory.  This work is being done.  Teachers at AHS meet regularly in meetings to write together, inquire into practice, and to support each other in grounding that practice in theory.  This hard work of writing, collaborating, theorizing, and reflecting has the power to transform classrooms and schools. 

     And there is support for this work.  The Cultural Landscapes Collaboratory (CoLab), a conglomerate of National Writing Project Sites, amazing teachers, and institutions like the St. Louis Art Museum, is exploring what it means to be educated in the 21^st century.  They envision and design classroom practice grounded in sound theory, and they collaboratively support the enactment of this practice.  Such work begins in the CoLab’s summer institute which brings teachers together for a month of intensive inquiry into practice, of writing and sharing together, of envisioning what is possible – as opposed to what is.  This summer institute is the catalyst of change. 

     What starts in the summer institute continues in a variety of ways.  The CoLab offers professional development for schools which is responsive to the needs of that particular school and its students, for schools recognizing the need to do more than align curriculum and write assessments.  The CoLab offers a thread of graduate courses built on collaborative, writing-based theories of learning. 

     There are teachers and schools doing the hard work alluded to in “Don’t Blame State’s Failures on NCLB.”  The Colab and its growing network of teachers are re-writing the narrative of education in America.  Who is reading it?  Who is willing to support it?

Affecting Change

I owe Russ Hagen an apology.  I taught English with Russ at Rice Lake High School.  It was my first job; I was 23.  Ugh!

I remember a department meeting where we worried over the implication of Goals 2000, a reform movement of the early 1990s.  It was the CCSS of its day, a NCLB predecessor.  Russ and I locked horns that day.  We had become mired in an unwinnable and wrong-headed debate over teaching grammar.  Russ was a veteran teacher, someone who’d lived many pedagogical and philosophical swings of the pendulum.  Russ had lived through, participated in the phonics v. whole language debate and recognized a certain futility in it.  He knew what I have been arguing lately that what we do is of little consequence as compared to how and why we do.

Russ was frustrated that teaching English had become very “fad” driven.  One year we teach phonics.  The next, whole language.  Wait long enough and we’ll be charging “back to the basics.”  I challenged Russ on that point (I’d given up winning the grammar debate).  The pendulum may swing, I acknowledged, but “when you shut your door Russ, are you really doing anything different?”

“Yes!”  he asserted.

“You do not!” I challenged. “You shut your door and do what you’ve always done.  You march through your filing cabinet August to June.” Despite any initiatives or reforms, little changes where the rubber meets the road.

Gods I was brash and disrespectful.  Russ, I am sorry and I have become you in surprising ways.  I see the same cycle of policy and debate – CCSS just the latest incarnation of Goals 2000.  The grammar debate still rages; see the latest issue of English Journal. It’s as if we are all trapped in our own versions of Groundhogs Day, the Bill Murray movie.

The PLC leadership of AHS’ English Department is fighting to see that the opportunity represented by CCSS doesn’t become just another swing of the pendulum.  I don’t think many would disagree that educational change is needed.  Our PLC argues that agents of that change are teachers working collaboratively, writing together, sharing practice as inquiry, and looking regularly and with intentionality at student work.

English Department PLC leaders met last week to try and still the pendulum, to try and affect pedagogical change at the classroom level.  We did that by writing, by sharing practice.  We read a short text, and using a protocol known as “Save the Last Word” unpacked the ideas of the text.  We made personal connections to the text, and we discussed the implications of those ideas and connections to our classroom.  Lastly, we changed our angle of vision and asked ourselves how this sort of work allows us to integrate the academic practices expected of CCSS.

We all left that day feeling renewed, motivated (when was the last time you left a professional development experience feeling renewed and motivated?)  We committed to prototyping these practices in our classrooms and sharing our experiences and new questions.  Please watch for Chloe, Angie, and Dave’s reflections here in the coming weeks.