Forgiveness for Going off the Diet

Have you ever noticed how appealing everything looks on a holiday table? The turkey, cooked to a beautiful golden brown, sits as a centerpiece of perfection. The green beans with a hint of garlic and balsamic are served on a silver platter. The breads are placed in lovely woven baskets lined with a festive towel. There is cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes and squash and every dish looks more appetizing than the next. Eagerly we fill our plates with a little of everything and when we sit down, we glance at the plate. It seems a bit full, slightly daunting. But we don’t care. It’s the holidays. On the holidays, we feast.

Afterwards, we unbutton our pants and begin to feel a little remorse. It all looked so good on the table, but when the table is cleared, we take Zantac and promise to start the diet again tomorrow.

As I meet and talk with teachers about better reading and writing instruction, I realize that balanced literacy is perceived a lot like the holiday feast. Mini lessons. Guided reading. Shared reading. Choral reading. Reading conferences. Read aloud. Strategy Groups. Word Study. Interactive writing. You name it. It’s all beautifully packaged and presented at conferences, workshops, faculty meetings, and books by renowned and respected experts. As educators, we take bits and pieces of these ideas and put them on our teaching plate and attempt to clean up every morsel. However, at the end of the teaching day, we are often left with something akin to the indigestion we feel at the end of the feast, only now, we don’t have a fasting plan that will restore us to our previous level of comfort in a relatively short amount of time. The dissonance creates feelings of exasperation and worse, inadequacy. We wonder, how is this all do-able?

I have met countless teachers ready to throw in the towel and quit balanced literacy. They are ready to go back to the basal and traditional reading groups and when this happens, I remind them that nobody gets it all right on the first day out. Even Vincent Van Gogh, master painter, said, “I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” And that’s what we have to do, too. Yes, it is true, the people selling balanced literacy present it on silver platters, but that is only because they have had lots of time to practice serving it up on paper plates. Like Van Gogh, they kept at it. They sought out whatever information they could: they read, they planned, they practiced, and they talked to whoever they could about it.

Contrary to how it may feel at times, balanced literacy is not a feast. It is the meant to be a steady diet of solid reading and writing instruction. And like any good diet, it needs to be learned in moderation with the knowledge that from time to time, we’ll mess up. When that happens, we call it a day, and start new tomorrow, knowing that it won’t be long before we, too, will be ready for the fine china.

The Importance of Talk and Collaboration

Tired and weak from a sleepless night of coughing and waking to blow my nose to achieve five minute increments of clear breathing, I spent this past Saturday in an unusual way—idle.  I sipped tea, sucked lozenges, and burrowed under the covers…with my computer on my lap.  I spent the day surfing the web and mining little gems here and there. 

One “find” that I came across was a podcast by Jennifer Allen, a literacy coach from Maine and Franki Sibberson, a library media specialist from Ohio.  These are two of my favorite educators and I jumped at the chance to listen to them talk together.  In this brief interview, Franki queried Jenn about her work as a coach, specifically the job of helping veteran teachers outgrow their best ideas.  It was interesting to hear her ideas about working with teachers to perfect their craft after so many years and if you’re interested in hearing what she had to say, you can listen to the podcast or read that transcript at http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/1274.cfm.  What stuck with me, however, was the notion that Jenn shared that in order to refine their practice, the thing that veteran teachers crave most is “collaboration and talk.” 

Hours after first listening to this intriguing conversation, I found myself watching an interesting TED video http://networkedblogs.com/8wLHY featuring Dr. Sugata Mitra from India.  As an educational researcher, Dr. Mitra has done some ground-breaking work about how people learn and people’s motivation for learning.  He’s famous for putting computers with internet access in slum walls and rigging up video cameras to watch what poor, undereducated children do with this technology with little to no instruction. Fascinatingly, these children played with it until they figured it out.  Dr. Mitra discovered that once one gets it, he shares with others.  How did these children learn?  Through collaboration and talk. 

For me, a theme was clearly emerging.  People, not just veteran teachers, crave collaboration and talk.  When we talk to others, we merge our thinking in ways that leads us to important “a-has”  that inevitably expand our minds.  As our minds expand, we refine our thinking which leads us to be more productive—no matter our practice or trade.

As a staff developer, I work with a lot of teachers who crave the opportunity to collaborate and talk with others.  It is a common lament that there simply isn’t enough time to sit down to share ideas.  And the bottom line is, they’re right. 

That said, that’s not an excuse not to talk and collaborate.  Technology has given us the tools we need to extend our conversations beyond the walls of our classrooms..  Any teacher wanting to engage thought-provoking conversation can log on to the internet and venture into the world of educational chats and discussion boards to engage in amazing collaboration and talk.    If you don’t know where to go, I suggest starting at the Literacy Builders Discussion Boards.  Our boards are ready and waiting for you to share your thinking.  This week I added an “issues in reading workshop” thread that I hope you will log on and contribute to.  While you’re there, check out the other threads as well and become part of collaborative community that wants to help all of us feed our innate desire to talk in order to “outgrow our best ideas.” 

Professional Learning Opportunities: Always Available

As recently as three years ago, I was the person who checked email every three days, read books for information, and went to conferences to learn and talk to other teachers.


Little by little, that all began to change.

It started with email. I went from once every three days to once a day.

Then, I got a blackberry.

Now, I check email every ten minutes (or so).

As far as books go, I still read books. I love books. But now, some of them come via Amazon on my Kindle and…I have discovered I can get information—good information---on the Internet.

I joined Diigo.(search litbuilder)

I joined Twitter. http://twitter.com/kimyaris

(I have yet to join Facebook).

And now, I have a constant stream of cutting edge information coming across my desk at every hour of every day.

Some days, I feel like I can’t keep up. The things to see and do and learn online are endlessly fascinating. I start clicking at five in the morning and I look up and it’s noon and I’m still in my pajamas. I’m smarter, but man, when will I have time to do the work I’m paid to do?

As a staff developer, I am often caught in the crossfire between teachers who want more professional development and administrators whose hands are tied because of dollars. I have watched ‘not enough training’ become an excuse for abandoning new ideas and approaches in the classroom on countless occasions. In an age when I am wondering how to scale back my learning because it seems to consume too much of my time, I wonder how it is possible that educators feel like there isn’t enough information to do the job well.

As I mull over my thoughts about this school year, I am thinking about building personal learning networks and harnessing technology for professional growth and development. I have done some of my best learning at home in front of my computer in the company of thousands of like-minded educators. The question now is, how can we help ALL teachers recognize that professional learning opportunities abound, you just need to know how to access them?

Something New Every Day

Every time I receive an email from one of the administrators I work with, I smile each time I see her signature. She has cleverly placed these words in bright blue letters to remind educators each and every day of this important message:

“Learning from a teacher who has stopped learning is like drinking from a stagnant pond.”

Indonesian Proverb

At the moment, I am in the process of defining one hundred terms related to literacy. Until I began this venture, I felt confident about my understanding of teaching reading and writing. I am finding that each time I sit down at my computer to write, I toil with the subtleties of language and question what I know. Each definition becomes a quest to confirm my understanding and as I read for validation, I find I don’t know some things as well as I thought.

Two of the terms that I recently set out to define were “mentor text” and “touchstone text.” My first thought was, “Easy! We use these terms interchangeably so whatever I write for one I can cut and paste for the other.” Oh, how I wish it were so simple.

As I sat thinking about these two terms and synthesizing the information in my head, it occurred to me: These terms do not mean exactly the same thing. A touchstone text is a book or piece of writing that a teacher uses as her “go-to” text for classroom discussion and demonstration. A mentor text is the book that a writer lays alongside her when she writes to guide her decisions about writing. The difference is subtle but significant.

My understanding of these terms will impact how I teach students and teachers about the role of mentor texts and touchstone texts in the writing workshop classroom. It reminds me that in my recent teaching, I have forgotten to encourage children to find and use mentors to guide them as they write.

Some days I am absolutely overwhelmed by what I am learning. Other days, I am awed and inspired. But I can safely say that there is not a day that I do not learn something new that humbles me and reminds me of how much there is to learn about being a good educator. A recent IRA publication by authors Jan Miller Burkins and Melody M. Croft called Misguided Reading came in the mail yesterday. I am devouring its short 130 pages because I need to know and understand Guided Reading better. I suspect I’ll have some new learning to share with you next week but in the meantime I ask you this: What are you learning?

Learning Boosts

As teachers, we all need a lift at some time or another. Sometimes we attend a conference, sometimes we read a book, sometimes we collaborate with colleagues, but sometimes, none of that is practical. We’re busy; but yet, our teaching needs a boost.

Whenever I feel I need a lift and there’s no professional development on tap, I take out my tape recorder and press record as I teach. Long after the lesson is over, I play back the recording and transcribe what transpired verbatim. As I type, I relive the lesson in slow motion. Sometimes I cringe at my words. “What was I thinking?” I wonder aloud. But sometimes I find myself saying, “Wow, I can’t believe what happened there.”

My transcribing sessions of late have helped me realize some important things about my teaching including:
• When pushing kids to go deeper into their reading, they need time to think. Most of them don’t say profound things when I ask one question. They need time to think.
• Most kids need to summarize the text before they are able to reflect on the themes highlighted in a text.
• When I take the time to say, “Can you say more about that?” kids rise to the occasion. They seem to always reach deeper to find something new to say. That surprises me.

When we understand what works well in our teaching, we can duplicate it over and over again. When we understand what isn’t working, we can steer clear of the obstacles. If you feel like your teaching needs a boost, take out a tape recorder. You, too, may be surprised at what taking time to reflect might teach you about being a better teacher.

The Shroud of Secrecy

This weekend, my brother was a vendor at a local woodworking expo. As a show of moral support, I stopped by to see him. As I made my way through the crowd (and it was surprisingly crowded), I stopped to admire all sorts of beautiful, one-of-a-kind works of art.

In the far corners of the room, I noticed large groups of people gathered to listen to what other hobbyists and professionals had to say about perfecting finishes or more precise saw cuts. All those folks recognized there was information out there to help them do what they do better. They embraced the opportunity to learn.

One day during the week past, I presented a mini workshop at a nearby school district. The crowd was respectful and listened politely. When we broke out into groups, a teacher asked me, “Did our administrators tell you we don’t know how to teach reading?”

This question left me dumbfounded. I didn’t know what to say.

This is not the first time I have met a teacher suspicious of a professional development initiative. Instead of learning being an opportunity, it is an insult. They are curiously suspicious, loathe to admit that there might be gaps or things that they don’t know about teaching.

The woodworkers reminded me that we all have things to learn about our craft. Just like they don’t attend seminars because they are incapable of creating beautiful things out of wood, teachers don’t attend professional development because they don’t know how to teach children.
Beautiful, one-of-a-kind works of art are the culmination of study, practice, and reflection. If we want a masterpiece, we’ve got to embrace every opportunity to learn.