Inquiry Roadmap

Thus far, I’ve taken a lot from this first part of the partnership week. My road map is full of “stops” representing all of the wonderful writing activities that we’ve done. At each stop I’ve had different questions that have caused me to stop and ask questions about my own teaching practice and the process of a writer.

Blogging to Retain Teachers?

Today’s Murray Card activity really got me thinking about how we approach teacher retention through professional development and connections. In my discussion with Steve, I started by explaining what my past experiences taught me about the need for a positive environment in the classroom (for both teachers and students). As we talked, I thought about how many people leave our profession discontent. I also thought about what was “ranted” about…particularly the need for teachers to hold each other accountable. I thought about the fact that there are some (very few) bad teachers who never seem to be held accountable, who never grow as professionals and who add to the negativity of the school building. This got me thinking further about how these teachers often are the ones that dominate the school culture…sometimes they’re the mentors who hammer in classroom management, diluting our job to nothing more than guards who control behavior.

Steve’s conversation and his own writing then got me thinking about where can teachers go to hash out new ideas and feel validated for trying to be innovative. The answer (possibly)–blogs. Teacher blogs are so awesome, I think of www.freetech4teachers.com, a website my husband showed me, that is all about innovative technology in the classroom. I think about how excited it is being in a professional development where great ideas are being churned out, and how exciting it is to get a new activity for the classroom. That’s what keeps people in our profession, and that’s what makes our profession important and relevant. We come up with new ideas all the time, but sometimes we don’t share them–because when we do we get told all of the bad things from the negative nancy’s in our school.

I’m interested to think about how the mass increase of social media will impact the teaching profession–and by this I mean helping teacher stay innovative and excited. How can blogs help create a more connected community that works together in a positive way?

Here’s something I’ve been playing with to visualize my thinking: http://Pixton.com/ic:v6959nqt

Classroom Culture and Inquiry

What is "good" classroom culture. This is something that I have been grappling with for the last 3 years. I've always been told that a classroom culture that is engaged, positive and pushing for greatness will lead to students growing.

As I think back over the institute experience, I think this is the most important take-away I have. We never talked explicitly about culture, but the significance of classroom culture was woven throughout all of the demos, through our writing into the day, throughout the improvisations and all of the other discussions and moments of inquiry. The culture of our summer institute group was so amazing. We could share our inquiries, we could wobble and we could disagree in a space which pushed us to really expand our understanding of writing instruction.

I think this phenomenal culture can be attributed to two things: 1. The fact that we're all at the institute means that we have a common goal and that 2. Because of our invested interest and our honesty we created an environment that lead to use meeting those goals. That's what we want to create in our classrooms--a culture of openness that allows for students to be honest and push each other. An environment in which all students feel connected with common goals--even if it means wobbling and being uncomfortable in some instances (because that's where learning happens).

After our demos today we were sitting around talking about our classrooms and some of the difficulties that  we've encountered--whether it be from districts or fellow teachers. When we were talking I realized that we've all encountered similar experiences, and we're all grappling together to create the best dynamic for our classroom, while measuring the demands of common core and our districts. I realize we all work to become better at our craft and to help students see themselves as source for knowledge.

I am grateful for all of the time spent wobbling with fellow teachers, as well as gaining new insight about how to help my students becomes masters of their own voice.

Graphic Organizers: To use or not to use?

Sarah's demo caused a lot of wobbling for me. I thought it was really interesting to look at all of these different models. There was a lot of push back to using graphic organizers because they can be so constraining. As I'm looking around the room, all of these organizers take me back to my days in elementary school. We only worked with 5 graphic organizers, but I realize there are so so many organizers for writing, and even though by nature they are constraining there must be some use for them. There must be some reason that they all exist and that for years they have been shared with students.

Our group talked about how these models don't suit us, but they may suit struggling writers. This brought a lot of discussion for the whole group. Lil caused us to all wobble by asking why do we share these (admittedly) constrained organizers with our students who struggle and they never can break a part from the constraints. Should we have students just write out ideas and work out the organization point later? But then the question remains, are these outlines for organization or to generate ideas? Do we use them for both? I think that Sarah's activity was great to show use that graphic organizers may have some use, but we need to figure out what helps us as a writer, which will always vary. I'm a fan of arrows (as seen below), but I know some students may find my scribble confusing. I'm not using my outlining to shape the paper--I'm using it to generate ideas, organization comes naturally for me once I sit down with my ideas to write.

This came after years and years of trying different models. This came after watching teachers do this on their own papers to show their own thinking. This is making me wonder where do activities like this fit into our process.

Thank goodness for Wendy! She's really helping me through this process and thinking about the theory of what we want to see and what our system requires to happen in practice. I think there is a perpetual fight between educational theory and practice and we're all wobbing somewhere in the middle.

Thinking about purpose...

Lacy's comment about the idea that audience and purpose being viewed as a constraint has prompted me to think a lot about my own inquiry into the effects of "standardized" writing assignments. There's been a lot of talk at among our Summer Institute group especially about writing assessments. There's a lot of tension about rubrics, writing prompts and how we use writing to assess our students. I'm not sure where I fit in on the spectrum of assessment.

I love writing to enjoy the art of writing. I love the risks that I can take when I write in my daybook and when I am exploring new genres, and I learn a lot from that writing. BUT I have learned a lot from other more academic writing. I have gained a lot from writing research papers--especially when it comes to writing about literature. I think there is something refreshing about producing an "academic" text. I also like knowing what my reader wants to see. When I write in my graduate classes, I write for an audience of two--myself and the professor I am writing for. I know my audience, I know what is expected and I like playing with the content to fit that description. Obviously there are constraints, and some hate that, but I don't. Maybe that makes me weird?

I also recognize that I am a product of Teach for America--a data driven organization. TFA is big on assessment. As a matter of fact, the first thing you have to do is create a standards-aligned assessment. Once you do that you figure out the skills and content that students would need to demonstrate mastery--backwards planning. I never learned that in my education classes, but it has helped me tremendously over the years. Some say "people get fired for teaching to the test" but those teachers were teaching the answer is "a"... In Readicide, Gallagher notes, teaching the to test isn't bad, so long as the assessment is a good assessment. I think rubrics and assessments can measure both growth and mastery so long as they written to expected standards and they are held to a rigorous level. Again, I stress that I am a TFA-alumni and the training I received from them has really shaped me as a teacher.

TFA is so data driven because they have show why they are beneficial organization--especially in areas where they are taking positions from more experienced teachers to go to first year corps members. TFA notes that their mission is to close the achievement gap that marks a distinction between students based on socio-economic factors. Students who fail tests don't go to college, students who never go to college perpetuation the cycle of poverty. That's why TFA is so big on assessment, it is the way to get kids out of poverty...the tests matter, and that's okay, so long as they are good tests. I think the biggest problem isn't that education relies on testing and assessment, but that this process have been outsourced to corporations...but that's another rant for another day I suppose.

Day in the Life

Permission to Write

I've been thinking a lot about the latter part of today, especially with Ben's awesome demo on "writing badly" and what that means to each of us. The culture of the room was awesome, because we could all share, laugh and reflect together. I wonder how to cultivate this culture in the classroom so that this activity would be just as successful for students as it was with us.

I've also been thinking a lot about voice. We've talked about voice in writing, but there is something profound about our speaking voice too. I was contemplating what Lisa Delpit notes about the language dynamics of our classrooms--and how the teacher's voice dominates the classroom discussion. I'm not sure how to address that. I know that was the case in my history classroom, but I'm wondering if the skills based approach of the English classroom could transform that.

Thursday has prompted a lot of questions and thinking, but not a lot of writing so I apologize for the brief post.