I've fallen off the blogging wagon. This month I am participating in the Two Writing TeachersSlice of Life blogging challenge. Each day during the month of March, participating students and teacher bloggers are sharing a slice of their daily life, writing a small moment to share with readers. I have been so impressed reading the daily posts from educators and especially from students. There are multiple classrooms - high school, middle school, even some elementary school students - who have written, posted, and responded to others every single day so far.
I have failed.
But here's the thing. I am okay with that.
There was a time when every misstep, every shortcoming, every time I fell short of my goal, I would spiral into an anxious little mess. Self-deprecating comments easily came to my lips, and I would let the mantra of "good enough is not good enough" loop like an earworm through my brain.
Flickr image by Pierre Metivier
And then I started to see this type of thinking replicated in my high school students. Not all that long ago, I heard my six year old son call himself "stupid" under his breath when I corrected him on a math problem he was working on at home. I watch my young sons and my students fall into the same thinking traps that I do. I watch them let a missed answer, a missed grade, a missed honor snowball into a global sense of failure.
It took time for me to recognize how my own words and actions might be framing the thoughts and actions of the young people I work with. How can I inspire and encourage resilience if I continue to be so critical of myself?
I had this same conversation with my student teacher just the other day. She is an amazingly talented undergraduate who is working hard to take over my multiple preps and get to know my 150+ students. Having just finished our first unit in our honors tenth grade English classes, which she designed, she is in the midst of grading 57 elaborate multi-genre projects. I hear her make fun of herself in front of the class when students ask if they are graded. It is something that many of us do. It is good not to take yourself to seriously. However, I have learned that if you vocalize more self-critical comments than positive ones, it does impact how others interact with you. We have talked about how to frame the instructions she gives in the classroom, how words really do matter. Even in seemingly simply, seemingly benign situations, how we choose to use our words can frame how those around us interact with one another.
I have been accused of being overly enthusiastic, positive to the point of being Pollyanna-ish. But here's the thing: I would rather my students, the world, view me as a positive force of good rather than a pessimistic, self-critical complainer. If I want my students to view themselves as positive forces of change, then I need to view myself as one, too. If I want my students to talk about themselves as strong, empowered, resilient learners, then I need to provide them opportunities to use language to reflect on how they have made changes and learned from mistakes. If I want my students to succeed, I must be an example of how to make mistakes, acknowledge failure, and move on.
In January, I bought myself a gift, a bracelet engraved with a quote from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." I wear it every day as a reminder that I am resilient, that I am enough.
I love how chatty they are when they come back into the common area at Green Acres Assisted Living facility. My Public Speaking students planned and prepared throughout our week together for this interview and have just finished recording their interactions with the residents of our local retirement facility. Working in partners, they prepared questions to learn more about the childhoods of our local senior citizens. Then, my students used the StoryCorps app to record their interviews. And now that their interviews are complete, they can't stop chatting about all they have learned.
"Did you hear that they have been married for 73 years?" "Her husband died just a year after they were married." "Her family's home burnt to the ground and her brothers, sisters, and parents all living together in a tent until they could afford to rebuild their home." "He lived through the Great Depression." "Did you see all the World War II medals he had."
It was easy to see they were nervous when we first entered through the double doors of the facility. They chatted nervously with their partners, a bit apprehensive. But 20 minutes later as they emerged from their interviews, students could not wait to share all the surprising connections and stories they had heard. My high school students were excited to share the stories they had heard.
"Ms. Ward, I'm sorry we're late. But when she mentioned that she had lived through the Great Depression, I just wanted to hear more, so I asked her a few more questions and lost track of time."
My students wanted to sit with our elderly residents and learn.
This is the value of connecting our local community to what is happening in our schools. We learn with one another, from one another. This is what school should be.
You can hear some of the stories that we've collected over the past year by rolling over the image below and clicking on the individual interviews you'd like to hear.
By 8:00 this morning, already 30 students and staff had voted, and our poll had only been open for 15 minutes. There is a buzz about books in our building. Even the principal popped by to chat with me about books at the close of first hour. "Have your read Unbroken? So powerful!"
This is the third year I have organized a March Book Madness bracket for high school students and staff. During the month of February, I sent out a Google form survey for all our students and staff to share their favorite books. This year, we received over 140 suggestions. The books that were recommended more than once made it onto our final bracket. And then yesterday, March 1, our voting kicked off.
A large poster went up in the hallway outside my door to display the contending books and let our community know how to get in on the voting. Our first day of voting, a choice between Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Paper Towns, was an easy choice for our community. We are not a group of muggles at Ionia High. We're into some serious book magic. Harry won easily among the 36 students and staff that voted. And then we got to draw a name from those that voted to win a signed copy of Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist. The winner? A special education teacher in our building.
And I think that's where the buzz began. Because by the close of first period this morning, I had already surpassed the number of voters from the day before. Students and staff passed me in the hallway and tapped me to ask, "So you're really giving away signed books?"
Yup.
We connected with Jay Asher online who is sending us some books. And Ruta Sepetys is signing books for us. And Ernest Cline. And Tiffany Schmidt. How? Twitter! How have we built book buzz? Twitter! I've been tweeting authors from my classroom account to ask if I can send them books to sign for our giveaway. When they've responded, I've read them aloud in class. Students start talking about authors. About books. And then they've joined in, talking about authors and books online and in class. We created a hashtag to talk about books online - #IoniaReads
So by the close of today, we were mad about books. It seems quite fitting since today turned out to be World Book Day!
It's the first day of March, and in addition to being the start of our March Book Madness challenge, it also marks the start of the month long blogging challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. The Slice of Life (#sol17) blogging challenge is in its tenth year and invites bloggers of all ages to share a small slice of their day. Why a small slice? As author and educator Ralph Fletcher writes, "The bigger the issue, the smaller you write," with the idea being that our voice becomes clear when we focus on a unique, peculiar detail. "Put forth the raw evidence, and trust that the reader will understand exactly what you are getting at."
In the midst of my second hour class, my tenth grade students working to peer revise their multi-genre writing projects, I received "the call." You know, the one that every parent dreads. My son's elementary school was calling to let me know that he was sick at school. And so the scramble began to find subs and make arrangements to go pick him up.
That's how I found myself snuggled next to him near the fireplace watching TED talks this afternoon when we both should have been sitting in our respective classrooms. He would pick a talk, and then I would. I selected Sisonke Msimang's talk titled "If a story moves you, act on it," and my son picked Sam Kass's "Want kids to learn well? Feed them well." As we scrolled through the TED site, my son saw the picture and title for Alejandro Sanchez Alvarado's talk titled "To solve old problems, study new species." Mom, we have to watch this one! What is that even a picture of?! And by the time we got just a few minutes into the talk both of us were hooked, especially when Alvarado declares: "...if you don't feel like a complete idiot most of the time, you're just not sciencing hard enough."
Alvarado calls his audience to run toward ignorance: "We actually need to bring all of our intelligence to becoming stupid again - clueless before the immensity of the unknown. Because after all, science is not really about knowledge. Science is about ignorance. That's what we do." Both my son and I loved this. His warm head resting on my arm, my son whispered, "We have to be detectives." And he's right.
Alejandro Sanchez Alcarado ends his speech saying, "We scientists need to teach our students to long for the endless immensity of the sea that is our ignorance." I couldn't agree more. Innovation will emerge from our ignorance. We must teach our students to be comfortable with the unknown, to dwell in it, to question it, and propose interpretations and solutions. Innovation comes from inquiry into our own ignorance. Our students need more opportunities to develop their own lines of inquiry, and this means that teachers must be comfortable with being uncomfortable, with not having all the answers. Because, to adapt the old adage, if we teach as we have always taught, students will only ever learn what they have always learned. That is not innovation. That is just tradition.
We, students and teachers, need to recognize the potential that lies in our own ignorance. It is our opportunity for innovation.
Regular readers will recognize that I'm relatively new to the Project-Based Learning (PBL) method of inquiry outlined by BIE, but not new to the approach. Looking back on the Cultures Projects my high school students completed nearly a decade ago when I asked them to research an issue currently facing a non-western culture, do something to help that issue by connecting with organizations working on it, and then present their research to our school community, I can see clear connections to the PBL approach in my earlier curriculum designs. Whether you call it project-based learning, authentic assessment, passion-driven inquiry, connected learning, or flipped learning - all of these approaches circle back to the idea that students are at the center of their learning. Students need choice in their inquiry topics and voice in how to share their work with a real audience. Voice. Choice. Purpose. These are the cornerstones of the project-based approach.
I have had the opportunity the past couple months to teach the PBL approach alongside my principal to interested teachers in my building during our faculty meeting time. We've crafted driving questions, discussed group dynamics, and brainstormed community connections for our authentic audiences. A number of teachers are getting ready to try their first PBL designed unit in the coming weeks. Excitement and anxiety are swirling. And not just for our teachers. This is not only a new approach for teachers in our building, but it is an entirely new approach for our students as well.
In anticipation of sharing the PBL approach with my colleagues, I designed a mini-PBL project for my tenth grade honors students as an example of what the PBL process looks like in action. In November, my students and I took a hike, circling around our school, wading through milkweed meadows and climbing pine trees. Why? For our unit on texts focused on the theme of "The Natural World." We were looking for inspiration. Students read works by Barbara Kingsolver, Emma Marris, Walt Whitman, and more. We used our texts as mentors to guide our thinking and inquiry. And then I presented our driving question: "What is a local environmental issue that you can address?" We used our nature walks as inspiration to look carefully at what was impacting our local environment. We noticed butterflies and bees, trees and bats, garbage and water pollution. So we had to do something to help.
Students have real purpose and real audiences for the research they took on. My students taught elementary school students, interviewed hunters, built beehives, made posters to stop littering and promote recycling, tested our drinking water quality, and so much more.
At the start of the new year, even though school was not yet back in session, my student editors and I kicked off our literary magazine. But this is not your ordinary school literary magazine. Instead, we were inspired to start a state-wide online and published magazine to showcase teen poets, writers, essayists, and artists in our great Mitten State. We call ourselves MIteen Writers. And to inspire the many writers in our state, we started an Instagram account to share daily writing prompts.
Our first prompt:
For the first day of the new year, let's start with just one word. Grab your notebook and brainstorm a list of touchstone words. Which will you select to be your #oneword for 2017? Your one word should serve as an inspiration, a reminder, as a call to action for your year.
Share your word below, or better yet, snap a pic of your brainstorm and word selection. We can't wait to see what your #wordfor2017 will be!
When our classes resumed last week, I brought this prompt into my high school classroom. Unlike last year, when I had the students brainstorm in their notebooks and then share their one word on a sticky note tacked to the cabinets in my classroom, this year I had my students add their one word to an index card. Why the change? Because last year their touchstone words lived in my room. And they lived in my room for only a portion of 2016. Come June, our words were stripped from the walls and tossed into the trash in order to ready the room for a new batch of students in the fall. For a word, a resolution, or a mantra to have power, it must be present. It must be ubiquitous.
So this year, we added our words to index cards. We decorated our cards, shared them in a gallery walk around the room, and then we tucked them away. Some students stuffed theirs into the folds of their wallet or the front pouch of their backpack. Others asked for tape to add theirs to the inside door of their locker. Still others planned to tape theirs to the mirror at home, pin it to the wall near their bed.
Mine - "grow" - stayed tucked in my writer's notebook for a few days. I had made my list, just like I asked my students to do, and selected my word. But I knew something wasn't ringing true. It didn't feel like my word quite fit. It was headed in the right direction, but it wasn't a perfect fit.
It wasn't until this past Sunday afternoon, when the yoga instructor at the Y asked us to set our intention for our afternoon practice that I figured out what it was. Sitting cross-legged on my mat, she asked us to let our intention rise as one word inside us. Let it resonate.
And that was it. That's my word.
Resonate.
Grow was on the right track. I wanted a word for 2017 that moved me into new spaces, into innovation. But my hope for 2017 isn't that I grab for a wild variety of ideas and watch them grow, hope they grow. Instead, I needed a touchstone word that called for me to be intentional, to have vision, to ensure that my actions resonated with my priorities and that priorities resonated with how I was spending my time and energy.
Resonate.
It is a word that calls me to reflect on how I am helping my students' voices resonate in our world.
It is a word that asks to me pause, to consider what I am asking of others, what I am asking of myself.
It is a word that inspires me act with empathy, with compassion.
"Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering." - Matthieu Ricard
Emma Marris's recent TED Summit talk has me dipping back into Richard Louv's The Last Child in the Woods. I remember reading and connecting with Richard Louv as part of my summer institute experience with the Pennsylvania Writing and Literature Project. His book, asking how we can foster our future environmental stewards, remains vivid for me. Examples shared in his book of running through the woods as youngsters, imagination hand-in-hand with a do-it-yourself creativity, creating forts and capturing frogs, perfectly capture my childhood.
Back in June, I had the good fortunate of sitting just nine rows from the front of the stage to see Emma Marris share her talk in Banff, Alberta, at the TED Summit. I scribbled furiously in my notebook as she presented. And there was this moment toward the close of her speech in which she mentioned the wild space growing on an abandoned rail trestle above the streets of north Philadelphia when it all clicked together.
I know this space. I have driven by it without thinking of it many times. You can see it when you are riding the Media - West Trenton train (although I still think of it as the R3 line). What Marris highlighted in her speech was the juxtaposition of all the life found in this abandoned space as compared to the concrete school playground that abuts the trestle. And this got me thinking about my own students in rural mid-Michigan.
My students have a different awareness of nature compared to those students I taught in the suburbs of Philadelphia. And yet, it is not quite as different as you might imagine. Yes, the winters here are much more harsh. My Michigan students are quite used to temperatures that dip below freezing and wind gusts that make it nearly impossible to see the road as a result of drifting snow. Some of my students live on farms. In fact, there is a small farm on the campus of my school. Students learn to cut the hooves of their goats, care for piglets, and even castrate the animals. Many of my students are hunters or have family members that are. A good number of my students, boys and girls, know how to field dress a deer. Teaching in the suburbs of Philadelphia for thirteen years, I know that I can count on one hand the number of students that had even heard of the term "field-dress".
But here's the thing. When I started my second unit with my current tenth grade students just a few weeks back, a unit focused on our relationship to nature, very few of my students reported spending a regular amount of time in nature on a weekly basis. I asked students to think about how much time each week they spent in nature. The response was overwhelmingly, "Each week? I'm not in nature each week." But here's the thing. They are. For as much time as my students report spending on homework, sports, video games, binge watching Netflix, they are also outside. They are hunting on the weekends, waiting for the bus, practicing on the soccer field, running each afternoon on the country roads near their home. My students defined spending time in nature as time that a person went hiking or visited the state recreational area near our school. Nature was something that a person went to visit, not something found in our backyards. And my guess is that this is also true for how my previous students in the Philadelphia area would define nature.
This is the point that Emma Marris made in her TED Talk!
So as we started our second unit of study, we needed to get hands on with the nature around us. And that started with a number of trips outside. We walked through the milkweed meadow across from our school. We played with the goats in the barn. We grabbed our writer's notebooks and went outside, exploring the impact our school structures made on the local environment. Rather than focusing on dissecting the literary elements of the texts included in our unit's study, we opted to use our readings as mentor texts meant to help us explore our driving question: what is a local environmental issue that I can address? We turned our unit on the nature around us into a project-based learning opportunity that culminated in authentic research and local action.
It's research week for us, and we've been getting hands on with our research! On Wednesday, our tenth graders used a Google Hangout to learn from Ms. Ondrea Spychalski, the Water Projects Coordinator at the West Michigan Environmental Action Council. Then on Thursday, we used a Hangout to learn from Ms. Emma Marris (check out the videos below). Students also interviewed staff and volunteers at Ionia's animal shelter on Thursday as they volunteered their time. On Friday, we have a crew of students cleaning the vacant lot in town across from our McDonalds, teaching Rather Elementary students about trees and bees, and we have a group canvasing local businesses about their recycling habits. We are learning hands-on!
Connecting with Ms. Ondrea Spychalski from the West Michigan Environmental Action Council
