#TeachingIs

Monday marks the beginning of Teacher Appreciation Week, May 4-8, 2015.  I love the initiative started by the Center for Teaching Quality to take back the narrative, take back the public story of education. All too often our news outlets are filled with stories of regret, of ridicule, and of shame in our public education systems.  But in this coming week, the Center for Teaching Quality is encouraging teachers to use the hashtag #TeachingIs to open the doors of our classrooms and share what it means to be a teacher today.  Rather than the conversation of education being told by those outside the classroom, it is time for teachers to share their joys, their struggles, their fears, and successes.  The story of what teaching is must be told by teachers.

My friend, fellow high school English teacher, and PASCD member, Brianna Crowley, put together this video to share the #TeachingIs initiative.

And so here is my #TeachingIs story:

Teaching is
     twenty-two voices clamoring
     for space, for a taste, for a chance
     to be heard, to lead, to learn
     in the span of eighty-five minutes,
     marked at both ends by bells
     that yell at students and teachers
     where to be and when,
     dictating how long to connect and to what.
Teaching is
     skillfully sliding, seamless
     into facilitator, coach, counselor,
     confidante, cheerleader, learner,
     disciplinarian and librarian,
     before the period brings learning
     to a close.
     But as a lover of literature,
     of well-crafted lines,
     of stories that sing from their bindings,
     a teacher hands over the pen,
     shows students how to see
     the blank, white page as more
     empowering than scary
     and education as something that
     expands and extends
     beyond the mark of a period.
Teaching is
     teasing out
     the nuance,
     teaching students to do
     the same.
     Look for the purpose,
     the bias, the audience,
     consider the meaning,
     the cost and the claim.
Teaching is
     the art of
     figuring out
     how to turn
     mandates into moments
     of meaningful mastery,
     how to advocate for collaboration,
     for cross-content connection,
     how to share the story of
     learning as more than just numbers
     shared as data and charts
     under headlines which cry for reform.
Teaching is
     being present,
     bearing witness
     to the joy and the tears,
     the laughter and fears,
     to listen and share
     the diversity of stories
     that enter our hallways
     and slip into our classrooms
     each day.
     We are more than the
     numbers and marks on a page.
     Our classrooms, a platform,
     where student stories take stage,
     helping students find voice,
     recognize power in choice,
     and encouraging resilience
     instead of silence.
   
 

Opening Up

I am jovial. I wear my heart on my sleeve, as the idiom goes. Teachers and students playfully tease me that I cackle. Yup, like a witch. Big and loud. When I laugh, which is quite a bit, it echoes down the hallway. And early on in our new school year, I cackled a lot.  See, we start our semester in tenth grade English writing "This I Believe" essays, personal essays that focus on a core belief.  Not only have I found these essays to be a great way as a teacher to get to know my new students, but it is also a wonderful tool to help begin building our classroom community. We get to know one another, we have opportunities to contemplate rhetoric and style, we search out mentor texts, and we spend a great deal of time reading and responding to one another's short essays. Students share their beliefs about love, about life, about pets, about loss, about magic. I have been working on an essay about my cackle.

A few weeks ago, as we were in the midst of our drafting process, a student shot me a quick text message after school via our daily homework text service.  I use Celly, an awesome tool for sending students quick reminders and a way for students to quickly contact me without us having to share cell numbers.

I responded, letting the student know that she was welcome to write about her experiences and reflect on how they helped to shape her belief.  I have had students share a great deal through our process of writing "This I Believe" essays over the years. Students have shared their experiences about losing parents, about family members who suffer with addiction, about loved ones who have ended up in jail, about struggling to overcome their own difficulties with illness.  Through our writing, we reflect on how these experiences as well as others have helped us grow in our beliefs and come to understand what it is that we hold to be true. We share ourselves, and we also have valuable conversations about the subtitles of writing a personal narrative versus crafting a well-written personal essay. So this was not the first time that I have been asked this question.

But about twenty minutes following our text exchange, my phone rang. My dad was on the other end of the line, many miles away, three states between us, telling me that his biopsy had come back earlier that day showing cancer cells growing in his stomach. Cancer. My dad has cancer.

The next morning in class, as we are working on drafting our "This I Believe" essays, the student approached me to share where she was in her drafting. It was late in the class, the bell about to ring. She began her essay sharing her experience of coming to terms with what she learned from her father's death as a result of cancer. I couldn't read the whole essay. I started to cry. Trying to pull myself together, I quickly explained to the student that shortly after our text exchange, I learned that my father has cancer. I will never forget the compassion, the empathy, and the maturity of her response. She turned to me and said, "I'm not going to pretend that our experiences are the same. Everyone deals with cancer differently. But I do know that this is a difficult and scary time. I'm sorry."      

At the close of our class the following morning, she handed me an envelope.  "I know that I should have been working on my draft last night, Ms. Ward, but I wrote this instead."  She walked out of the room with some friends on her way to her next class. Inside the envelope was a five-page letter, typed, single-spaced. She shared with me her experiences, her struggles, her beliefs - her story. Later that night, when parents were filing into my classroom for our Back to School Night, the student's mother came over to introduce herself. The student's mother shared that her daughter had showed her the letter shortly after printing it out the previous evening. She was able to share things through this letter that she hasn't ever said, her mother told me. The experience that the three of us shared - student, parent, and teacher - help to reinforce the power of personal writing and the need to open up space for empathy in the classroom.

Personal writing is not tested by our Common Core State Standards (CCSS). We have state rubrics for expository/informational writing and another for argumentative/persuasive writing. We do not value stories. Just under a decade ago, every one of the other English teachers I worked with had their tenth grade students complete "This I Believe" essays. This year, I am the only teacher. And, I have had to fight to keep it in my curriculum, arguing the value of personal writing. It is an addition to our core curriculum. It is something extra that I have my students complete. I have been told that the assignment does not have value.

My student writers draft, craft, and revise their personal belief essays, post them to our class blog site, revise based on feedback, meet with me in writing conferences, again revise based on feedback, adapt their written essays to video presentations, and then post their written and video creations to our online writing portfolios. As we write we find mentor texts, discuss written and digital rhetoric, and perhaps most importantly, empathize.  We share our stories, hear one another. We build a community of thinkers and writers. We value reflection. We value revision. We value empathy. But these are not skills that can easily be bubbled in on scantron tests.

I understand the need for accountability in the classroom, the desire to demonstrate progress. However, with so much emphasis being placed on high-stakes state testing as the measure of that growth, we inevitably under value those skills that are difficult to measure - resiliency, grit, empathy, creativity, reflection, and revision.  And as so many have already argued, these are the skills that students will need as they move into an unpredictable job market. Testing a student on whether or not he or she can identify the mood of a short passage of literature does not measure how successful the student will be upon high school graduation. Focusing exclusively on how well students know, or even on how well they can apply, a particular set of literary terms to a text does little to prepare them for the world outside the doors of school. Instead, we need to open up our thinking about what we value. What value is an education that excludes the individual's experience? What value is learning that does not incorporate complex critical and creative thinking skills that take time to develop? What value is school when it does not open up opportunities to learn from mistakes, to revise thinking, to reflect? What value is a class that does not encourage learners to empathize?

I opened up to my student. She opened up to me. Together we wrote, we reflected, we revised, we collaborated. We learned together. There is value in that. There is so much value in opening up.

Writing for the World

Teaching is about helping students become more than just book learners. It is guiding them to be life learners. And that means that teachers, myself included, need to set up classrooms that are learning environments for everyone in that classroom - teacher included.

As a teacher, I believe that some of my best lessons have happened when I am also in the seat of the learner, learning right alongside my students. I've learned more about my own writing process as I've written with my students. I’ve learned that I have to commit to the writing process, not just to this or that essay, much like I ask my students to fully engage in writing as a process. I can’t just sit down at a computer and bang out a couple of pages, hurriedly assembled sentences and paragraphs. Like I ask my students, I need to remember that my written work is a reflection of who I am, of who I want to be. And so as I heard author James McBride once say, I must remember that “writing is rewriting.” As such, I must never look at a piece of my own writing as finished, and in turn, encourage students to return to their writing again and again and again. After all, aren’t the writers we remember those that looked at writing as a series of rewrites? Walt Whitman rewrote Leaves of Grass five times! Writing is a process that involves reflection, revision, and rewriting. Because I’ve recognized this in my own writing, I must open up space in my classroom for students to do the same. This means that I’ve had to stop assigning essays that students turn in only once, essays that I would labor over my commenting on but students either never read or did anything with the feedback.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve changed how I teach writing. Students can’t just turn in an essay to me. Instead, I ask my students to reflect on their writing goals following each writing assignment, contemplating how they addressed their previous goals with each assignment, reflecting on their progress as writers. Often times, I see essays multiple times, stressing each time that revision is not merely editing. And perhaps the biggest change to my teaching of writing involves who reads my students’ work.

Students are often asked to just write for their teacher. A single reader. What I’ve found is that the more I can open up my classroom to more authentic and meaningful writing experiences, the more invested my student writers are in the pieces they produce. The web has been immensely helpful in this process. Instead of turning in an essay on the themes of Elie Wiesel’s Night, I have students post their essays to our classroom blog site, where they can read each others’ work and give feedback. At the beginning of the semester, students write their own personal narrative essays on a core belief, in the style of NPR’s “This I Believe” program. I’ve found that when students share these essays with one another, post them on our class blog site, they generate an immense amount of feedback, and in turn, students ask to revise their essays. They ASK to revise! Later in the semester, I ask students to write editorials for our local newspaper, create web pages, and respond to each other using online discussion boards. When students learn that their writing is going to be seen by an audience other than just the teacher, they are more invested in the process of writing. They are engaged.

I Believe

It took awhile.

After teaching nearly 500 students how to write "This I Believe" essays, I finally got off my procrastinating hiney and submitted my own. Since writing mine, I've had the pleasure of reading and watching another 100 or so 16-year-olds present their personal narratives in my World Literatures class. And, I also helped bring the essay project to other teachers in my district. Now, all 10th grade students have an opportunity to share their beliefs with their peers and teachers. It is a significant lesson in the power of voice - for teachers and students alike.

I just found out yesterday that the essay I submitted was published to the NPR "This I Believe" website - http://thisibelieve.org/essay/70654/. And just like my students, I can't express the thrill I felt at learning my piece was published. I hope that I can find ways for the next 600 students I teach to experience that same thrill of having their voice heard.

Killing Them Softly?

It all started with Billy Collins’ poem “Introduction to Poetry.” I read the poem to my third block class, and then asked them to spend a few minutes writing a response, reflecting on how they encountered poetry in school. They started their written reflections, but I couldn’t hold this conversation back. They wanted to talk. Students are taught to analyze poetry for rhyme scheme, meter, and literary devices. They’ve been asked to list countless metaphors, similes, and lines of alliteration. They’ve circled and defined vocabulary words. A few teachers have asked them to memorize Shakespearean sonnets. Some students suggested that poetry always seemed to be left for the end of the year, squeezed in during the last week - only if it fit.

The conversation changed directions when one student raised her hand and timidly suggested that school killed poetry. She has learned to hate poetry because she thought it was all about “digging for the hidden meaning.” Her voice was joined by an echoing chorus of agreement. The conversation grew as we started to talk about their experiences with reading in general. English class was all about “over analyzing” a work of literature, ripping apart the text, leaving it dissected on the page to expose some secret innards. Students thought their teachers saw secret symbols everywhere. When I asked the students what they thought the purpose of such activities were, a few voices volunteered the answer they thought I wanted to hear: “Because it teaches us to look at a text more critically.” And then one shy voice near the back of the room called out, “School’s not really about learning but more about adapting to particular teacher’s expectations. I interpret a text like my teacher tells me to.” My students felt that the purpose of school was to train individuals to be good at jumping through hoops. And this is where the real discussion began.

Their pent up frustration came flooding out, and the 10 minutes I had planned to spend on using Collins’ poem to introduce the need to balance glossing with an appreciation of literature, turned into a very meaningful 45 minute discussion on what my students felt about their educational experiences. The students felt that the purpose of school was to pump students full of expectations and discrete facts without encouraging any real learning to take place. They weren’t asked to come up with the problems; they were given them. They weren’t asked to discover any new solutions; they were told the answers. When I asked students how they could advocate for real learning opportunities in their classrooms, a girl who had been attentively following the conversation but hadn’t yet spoken volunteered that she thought honors students didn’t know how to rebel against such a system. After all, they had proved they were very good at working within it. It broke my heart to hear such frustration and sense of powerlessness.

Arthus Erea, a high school student in Vermont, expressed a similar sentiment in his recent post over at Students 2.0:

Frankly, I think schools are becoming far too business-like. Many of my peers often think of school as unpaid work. Of course, professionalism is continually emphasized as the highest principle for which students must strive. Schools even use the same reward/punishment system as the workplace: good grades = good job = $$$ and failing school = unemployment ≠ $$$. I think this is the core of what is wrong with schools: all students are expected to be professional students. That is, it is expected that we will only learn if we are forced to do so either because we desire the reward (grades) or fear the punishment (failing). In fact, this is setting up students to hate learning.

Many authors have written on the dangers of an educational system based on such bribery. Alfie Kohn's book Punishment by Rewards declares,

When we repeatedly promise rewards to children for acting responsibly, or to students for making an effort to learn something new, or to employees for doing quality work, we are assuming that they could not or would not choose to act this way on their own. If the capacity for responsible action, the natural love of learning, and the desire to do good work are already part of who we are, then the tacit assumption to the contrary can fairly be described as dehumanizing. (26)

Are schools killing our students’ desire to learn? In an educational system so focused on standards and high-stakes tests, teachers find it difficult to balance their required curriculum, already packed with multiple 500-page classic novels and units on every culture in Africa, with student-chosen reading materials and self-directed learning opportunities. Very few students have the opportunity to seek out information. They are given it. How can we encourage students to be life-long, self-motivated learners in a system that is not based on developing problem-solving skills but instead rewards students for regergitating facts? When the time crunch of the semester bares down on us, it is easier and faster to teach students functional knowledge (information that is memorized and repeated) rather than promote a conceptual understanding of the themes and ideas we are teaching. Our students know our curriculums, but do they understand what they have been taught?

The conversation with my students has me contemplating how much conceptual, self-motivated learning really takes place in my classroom. How much of a say do students have in exploring issues, developing questions, and searching for solutions on a daily basis? Even though I have been incorporating more student choice into assignments and using formative assessment techniques to guide how I teach, I know that I also rely on what might be considered traditional methods of teaching – give students the information on auxiliary verbs, ask them to memorize it, and test them on it. I struggle with my role as a teacher, attempting to find a balance between being a coach and being a conveyer of facts.

I believe there are somethings that we must just know (e.g. our times tables, that potato does not end in an "e", etc.). These are the functional bits of knowledge that students must know. However, I believe the learning that sticks with us is more concept-based, that is, a type that provides the broader conceptual framework holding together the various knowledge-bits. For example, in talking with a student not long ago, he explained that last year his math teacher not only taught students how to use pi in mathmatical equations but also had the students do experiments with a number of circles to prove that the ratio of the circumference to its diameter was indeed the same number, pi, each time. "I just thought it was a number that people memorized, but now I know why." It's the difference between knowing something and understanding it. When students in my class select an issue currently facing a non-western country to research and present to an audience outside of our classroom, they understand that particular issue and how it affects the culture in a much deeper way than I would ever have time to teach. The student poses the problem, seeks out the background research, proposes solutions, and presents the information in the hopes that change begins to happen on that issue. Students are engaged and invested in these types of learning opportunities. And in talking with my students the other day, they seem to be begging for these types of experiences.

^{Photo credit: dro!d on Flickr}

Creating an Authentic Classroom

My second semester students are revising the third drafts of their “This I Believe” essays, adapting them into speeches. Earlier this year I decided to spend the first few days of class on something besides hokey introduction games and diatribes on my syllabus. Inspired by NPR’s weekly broadcast of short essays on the theme of belief, I created an introductory lesson that not only gets students talking and writing about their core beliefs, but they also start our class by exploring the values and ideas that separate and connect cultures.

Reading through their drafts over the last few days, I am again surprised and appreciative of just how much my students put of themselves into these essays. They open themselves up, expose their hearts, make themselves vulnerable, knowing full well that I will be asking them to share their writing with their classmates. My desk is scattered with hand-written drafts about the betrayal of a first love, neatly typed pages about the loss of a beloved pet. Students write about their faith in their fellow human-beings, their joy at finding happiness in even the smallest moments. I have a student who shares a heart-wrenching story about how she learned to trust again following what seemed insurmountable family problems, and another who writes of the debt we owe to the mentors that have lit our path.

This semester, I’m trying a few new twists with the assignment. Last semester, I had students not only present their essay as a speech to the class, but I also video-taped each student as a way to have students reflect on effective verbal and non-verbal presentation skills. I encouraged students to submit their essays to NPR and rewarded them with extra credit. And while both of these opportunities gave students a way to adapt their writing to a specific audience, they received limited feedback. This semester I’m going to give students a couple of options for how they present their essays to a specific audience.

Students will have an option of either presenting their speeches to the class or recording their presentations for a video podcast. Either way, the students will have an opportunity to review their presentation skills and set goals for later presentations. Additionally, for those that opt to complete the podcast, I’ll have the students post them to our Ward’s World Ning, where others in our class can view and comment on the presentations, allowing for even more feedback on their writing and presentation skills. The added incentive will be that these podcasts will also act as an introduction for our pen pals from Morocco, India, and Liberia who will also be accessing our Ning.

My goal is to find more ways for students to write and interact with authentic audiences. I feel very fortunate to have access to technology in my classroom that makes it possible for me to facilitate connections between my students and those all over the world. I see these connections as a way for students to put a face on their world, increasing the potential for future connections. And not only are my students making those connections, but so am I. We are learning together, and isn't that what an authentic classroom should look like?

Crying in Class

Every day is different. It’s what I love about teaching. Even though I’ve taught the same tenth grade World Literatures course for the last four years, it’s different each semester. It’s different each class period. It keeps me on my toes, always thinking about the content, the curriculum, anticipating student questions and concerns.

It was a conversation that started last year in one of my classes that prompted me to make some changes in my curriculum. When a student emphatically declared in class that one person can never really make a difference, one person cannot change the world, I knew I had to rethink my curriculum. How could someone so young feel so disempowered? So this fall instead of immediately jumping into didactic grammar lessons, I decided to begin on the very first day with an essay. I began a few short weeks ago by having students brainstorm and later draft essays on the theme of belief, taking inspiration from the weekly National Public Radio’s broadcasts of “This I Believe,” a program where listeners write and share short, personal narratives about a core belief. I knew adding in another essay would mean rethinking how I structured my course, but what I never anticipated was how much my students’ writing would change me.

I didn’t anticipate tearing up in class as my students began to brainstorm ideas together on the board. I believe in taking inspiration from those around you. I believe in the power of a pet. I believe that what you put into the world comes back to you. I believe loss teaches you to live. I never anticipated choking up at Back to School Night as I explained to parents their students’ progress on the essays. Having read initial drafts, watched students peer revise, and commented on good drafts of essays, I saw how students took a vague prompt – what do you believe? – and crafted responses that were meaningful, but I did not anticipate wiping away tears as students presented their essays to the class last week. I believe in the power of kindness. I believe in learning to love myself. I believe in everyday heroes. I was awe-struck by how much students were willing to share of themselves so early in the class. I have been carrying their essays around with me for the last week, their words echoing in my head.

I am impressed by the student who could stand up and so eloquently share her fears about being the only black face in a sea of white peers. What will they think? I am touched by the student who shared how she takes inspiration from her mother who chose not to let a medical condition tell her what she couldn’t do. I am humbled by the essay from a student who rediscovered the gift of happiness while sharing a meal with her mother in the food court at the mall.

During the first few days of class, I asked a group of 15 and 16 year olds to let down their guard and share their inner-most beliefs with their peers and with their teacher. I never anticipated that they would earnestly take up this request. I should have. I am ashamed of myself for expecting less. And I am saddened that I do not think most adults could have completed this same assignment with the heart, integrity, and honesty that my students did. I believe age does not equal wisdom, and for that reason, I believe students must be heard. When they are, they change the world, one person at a time. As their teacher, I am proof.

This I Believe

I scrapped the generic getting-to-know-you games this year. I’ll talk about the syllabus and classroom rules in a few days. Instead, I started my first day of classes prepping students for their first essay. Yes, I’m that English teacher that assigns students homework on the first day.

It dawned on me not long ago that so much of what I teach in the World Literatures curriculum revolves around belief – what do others believe and why, what do I believe and why, what do my students believe and why. It is our beliefs that often separate us. Pick up any newspaper or scroll through the headlines on the BBC News site and you will find it riddled with international strife, civil wars, and conflict. Whether it is over land rights, religious convictions, or attitudes about women, children, marriage, what have you – our world seems to be unraveling over differences between various belief systems. Unfortunately, if this is all students learn from a World Literatures class, they walk out of the classroom as global observers not participants, their us versus them attitude intact. Isn’t it interesting what people in India believe, but what does that have to do with me? So this year, I wanted to find a way to start out my classes by presenting students with an idea we come back to throughout the course - although our beliefs may be different, we are all connected regardless of culture by the same basic desires, fears, and needs. It’s all a matter of perspective. I wanted students to begin to question what it is that makes us human. Yes, a tall order for the first day of class. Luckily, National Public Radio came to my rescue.

I look forward to the Monday broadcasts of All Things Considered because that’s when I hear the weekly essay segment “This I Believe,” a portion of the program where listeners both famous and not are invited to share their essays on a core belief. I find myself in tears most Monday afternoons, either because the essays are so clearly from the heart or because the essayist has me laughing a bit too hard for my Monday afternoon drive home. I’ve been listening to the essays since they began broadcasting them a few years ago, so I’m not really sure why it took me so long to make the connection. To help students explore the beliefs of others, they must first explore their own beliefs! And that’s where I started today.


As the students came in, I had a line of yellow tape dividing the room in half, a seeming separation mark. I handed out a questionnaire asking students to consider a whether they agreed or disagreed with 15 statements. People can change. Life is fair. It is always better to tell the truth. And then I clicked on my overhead projector to show a copy of Martha Collins’ poem “Lines,” at first only showing the title and asked the students –what do lines do? They separate. They divide. They box us in and segregate us. And then I read them the poem…

"Lines" By Martha Collins
Draw a line. Write a line. There.
Stay in line, hold the line, a glance
between the lines is fine but don't
turn corners, cross, cut in, go over
or out, between two points of no
return's a line of flight, between
two points of view's a line of vision.
But a line of thought is rarely
straight, an open line's no party
line, however fine your point.
A line of fire communicates, but drop
your weapons and drop your line,
consider the shortest distance from x
to y, let x be me, let y be you.

What else do lines do? They connect us. Although our beliefs may be different, they come from a similar place. Beliefs are like lines. If we take just our first impression of the line, it divides us. But when we take the time to examine the line, our beliefs and the beliefs of those around us, we will see that they also connect us.

Each student took a place on that taped line on my classroom floor. If they disagreed with the statement, they took a step back. If they agreed, they took a step forward. We spent the first day of class talking about our beliefs. Tomorrow, they will begin writing their own essays for the “This I Believe” program.