3 Tips to Help You Survive as an Innovative Teacher

Recently I saw the fantastic movie Chef.



I am not a big movie-person, but this was my kind of upbeat, feel-good movie (with a super-cute kid).
I would have liked it no matter what, but it especially touched me because I really identified with the chef.

He was passionate and creative, but not everyone appreciated his passion and creativity.
He had innovative ideas about food, but his boss (Dustin Hoffman) wanted the same old, same old. Ultimately, chef realized that he could not be true to himself while cooking someone else's menu.

I am the chef. My beliefs about learning and literacy are strong and passionate. I can not, in good conscience, serve up the chocolate lava cake just because it has always been on the menu. But I realize that, while I was rooting for the chef,  this was not a battle of good and evil. The chef was not right. He simply had to follow his passion. The people who wanted the boring, traditional food were not wrong. They wanted what they knew would give them comfort.

Everyone got something to eat, and everyone was satisfied. As a diner, I would never eat the exotic food the chef cooked, no matter how beautiful it looked or smelled, no matter how many rave reviews it got. That kind of food is out of my comfort zone;  I'm not going to try squid tentacles or animal innards. This perspective helps me have compassion and understanding for the parents and colleagues who want learning to be served up as worksheets and spelling tests. It's familiar. It's comfortable. It may even, for some students, get the job done.

As a teacher, I want everyone to be excited about my "cooking." Like the chef, I work hard to create fresh, innovative and delicious learning opportunities for my students. Like the chef, I pour my heart and soul into my work and feel devastated when the haters hate.

How do we, who believe in kids over content, stay strong despite the fact that teaching is one of the most disrespected professions of all time?

Smile

I've been advised to smile more. I am pretty serious! I'm working on smiling, even if it is fake, because I believe in fake it til you make it. I think of it as a yoga pose. Turn corners of mouth upward. Breathe. Calm the mind. When I have to deal with difficult people, it does no good to argue with them. They want chocolate lava cake! I am not going to change everyone. I can smile and try to stay calm inside even when people are rude.

Connect

It's bizarre how I can feel so crazy in one setting and so normal in another setting. It's all context. When I am talking to the chocolate lava people I start to question myself. Give kids a wide selection of books and time to read? Try to meet individual learning needs? Am I insane?  It would be so much easier to have closed-ended, easy-to-measure goals. I could "cover" what's in the book (created by someone who doesn't know MY students!) and call it a day. I could go home and have a normal life. It wouldn't matter that my students would wait passively for me to tell them what to learn. It wouldn't matter that some students wouldn't be challenged. Life would be simple. 

It is only when I connect with other educators that I feel that what I am doing is right. Twitter chats are an amazing place to find your people. Critics call it the echo-chamber. Maybe,  but there is something fortifying about spending time with people I respect tremendously and seeing my work reflected in their ideas. It gives me the strength to go back to my "real world" (which is NOT the echo chamber and where I feel like #1 freak) and carry on. 

Share

We know so much about why we do what we do. Most innovative teachers spend hours and hours (and hours and hours and hours) reading, writing, listening, learning, presenting and connecting with other teachers in the never-ending honing of our craft. It is frustrating when people who know little about education have strong opinions based on nothing substantial. I have started parent education sessions at my school, and I believe they are as important as the work I do with kids in the classroom. Most parents are interested in learning more, as well as experiencing the type of learning their children are experiencing. 

Being a teacher will never be easy. Being a teacher who thinks, questions and pushes against the status quo requires great perseverance. Never will we all agree on the best way to educate or the purpose and meaning of an education. Remember, we all eat differently. As long as the food is healthy, it's ok. Education is as basic as nutrition; it's a building block of human life. 

Do your best, keep learning, and stay true to you. 

A Teacher's Ode to Read-Alouds

One of my main goals this year as a language arts teacher is to build a community of readers, writers and thinkers. I am employing several different strategies in pursuit of this aim. One of the most exciting and pleasurable is class read-alouds. A few months back, I read Principal Joey's post "Stop Trying to Make Your Kids Read." It really struck a chord with me, and I left this comment (which I am only partially sharing here because it was SO LONG)

I completely agree with you about reading aloud. In fact, I devote a LOT of time to read aloud with both my 4th and 5th grade classes, and that time is probably having the biggest impact of anything I am doing in my quest to create a true community of readers.
Some of the reasons I think that read aloud is so powerful in my classroom are:
•I give the students choice. I keep an ongoing list of recommended middle grade books that I am interested in reading. I choose about 5 of those and have the students privately vote via Google form. This way, each student can choose the one they really want, and no one knows who voted for what. This creates a feeling of ownership and excitement before we even begin reading.
•I am an avid, lifelong reader. Not only do I read very fluently, but I know where, when and how to stop and teach. I do not pre-plan my read aloud “lessons.” However, I use read-aloud to teach almost everything, from literary devices to vocabulary to reading strategies. I am able to do this because of the confidence I possess from being a real reader.
•The more we read together, the more shared history we have as a reading community. We naturally make text-to-text connections, and no one is left out.

I ended that comment with:

I have much more to say on this subject…I think I will write a post about read aloud!

I have so much to say about this I don't know where to begin!!!!

As a Teaching/Learning Tool
In my experience, reading aloud is a vital tool for teaching everything and anything about reading. I recommend reading the classic Mosaic of Thought by Ellin Keene to understand how the act of making our thinking transparent during reading aloud helps children become better thinkers and readers. I also like the book Constructing Meaning by Nancy Boyles. These signs, which hang on the wall all year long, are from that book and we refer to them frequently during discussions.

We also have great opportunity to discuss vocabulary strategies, and often students will request to add an interesting new word to our growing word wall. 

My Non-Lesson Plan How-To

I do not write lesson plans for my read alouds. They evolve spontaneously. I attribute this to the fact that I do not "teach" reading so much as I share a genuine love of reading with my students. We choose, together as a class, books that no one (including me) has already read. I get recommendations from our fabulous school librarian, as well as some amazing members of my PLN who are avid readers and reviewers of books for this age group. 

The student librarians for each grade add the book to our read-alouds wall, and tag it "currently reading." After we finish the book, we go around the circle, and each student rates the book 1-5 stars, saying why they gave it the rating they did. The librarian keeps notes of each rating, figures out the class average and adds it to the wall. 

Most activities during or immediately after reading are focused around discussions and written responses. 

We have Skyped with other classes who are reading the same book, which has been a really fun experience. We have taken visual notes, written blog posts from the point of view of a particular character, written reviews on Goodreads, watched the movie and compared/contrasted book and movie, and in two weeks we will be Skyping with Holly Goldberg Sloan, the author of our latest read-aloud, Counting By 7's. 

We have discussed author's purpose, genre, metaphor, symbolism, word roots, and how authors sometimes "break the rules" of formal writing (which they are allowed to do because, presumably, they know the rules really well). 

We use these books as "mentor texts" for our own writing, which is getting better and better as we grow our understanding of and appreciation for the craft.  

What Do the Kids Say?

As much as I adore read-alouds, they do take time. And, like every teacher, I worry that there is never enough time to do everything. As a student-centered teacher, I value the input and opinions of my students, and I use surveys to gather this data. So I recently surveyed my classes to find out THEIR opinions of read-alouds.

Of my 30 students, I had one student say no and one say yes, after a short break. I also asked them to explain, in writing, their choice. Here are some of their responses:

I love read-alouds! I don't even want to think about stopping them, even for a short period of time. When you read aloud, you and other classmates help me understand things that I wouldn't understand if I read that book on my own. - Julia, 4th grade

I love the fact that I have been exposed to different genres that I wouldn't even think of checking. I think we should keep it going and read more. GO READALOUDS!!!!!!! - Jagger, 5th grade

I want to continue read alouds because when we finish a book, we want to read more books that are related to that book. I think it really helps people find the right books for them. -Nahila, 4th grade

I think we should keep doing read-alouds because it's a chance for everyone to settle down and get comfortable. For me, it helps write in different types of ways. -Arin, 5th grade

I would like to continue because they are fun to listen to and the story is always good. -Evan, 5th grade

Communities Share Stories
If you are still reading....you may be as passionate as I am about this topic. So you may enjoy this story that illustrates how reading aloud connects us as a community in special ways. I just finished reading Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick with 4th grade.  This incredible story is told partly through illustrations and partly through words. Towards the end of the book, the characters in the two stories meet up and the words and illustrations combine to tell the rest of the story.

When we got to this picture, I stopped reading for the day.

I challenged my students to use their iPads and what they knew to see if they could find out where the characters were. Several of them were excited that they were able to figure out that the characters were at the Queens Museum.

A few days later, I flew to New York for a conference. As the plane was landing at LaGuardia, I looked out the window to see that we were directly over this sight! My seatmate must have thought I was crazy as I scrambled to find my phone so I could take this photo for my students.

Further Reading

Why Reading Aloud to Older Children is Valuable

How a Reading Promise Can Forge Families and Shape Lives

Read Aloud: Why 15 Minutes a Day Matters

Matt Renwick's Top 10 Takeaways From the Read Aloud Handbook

The Warmth of a Shared Experience 

Trust a Teacher

Perk up your listening ears and you will notice that everyone has an opinion about teachers. Parents have strong viewpoints on which teachers are "good" at their child's school though Parent A and Parent B might strongly disagree on which teacher is the best.

Politicians are forever searching for a way to measure good teaching. Should good teaching be rewarded with better pay? How, then, will we measure good teaching? And, of course, bad teachers should be forced from the classroom!

I purposely use the vague and almost meaningless words "good" and "bad" to introduce the idea that perhaps we need to look at teaching and teachers through a different lens.

What I think it boils down to, in the most basic way, is relationship. Teaching is one half of a relationship.

The teacher-student relationship is archetypal. It is certainly not dependent on a classroom or a school. As I think deeply about teachers and teaching and what I consider to be a good teacher, I keep coming back to trust. As a student (or a parent of a student) I must give over a certain amount of trust to the teacher. This is what, I believe, is being eroded with our personal and societal preoccupations with measuring and quantifying teaching.

As a teacher, you must earn your student's trust. You must commit to do the hard work necessary to be worthy of that trust. You must reinvent yourself, your practice, your lessons, your knowledge. You must deeply understand the way in which each class and every student is unique. To be a true teacher is to want to be in relationship with students, to realize that you teach human beings, not subject matter.

On the flip side, teachers are also special and unique. Teachers are not machines. We are not robots. We can not be expected to talk alike, work alike, manage classrooms alike, have the same notions of what is most important for our students.

As a student and a parent I have my ideas of what good teaching looks like, sounds like, and feels like to me. I also try to remind myself to put these expectations aside, to trust a teacher who may, in many ways, differ from my ideal of a good teacher. Each caring teacher imparts a different lesson.

From time to time I hear the question, "Will computers replace teachers?" With good software and instructional media, can't I learn whatever I want to learn without a teacher? Good instructional design (designed by humans!) is an excellent way to reach learners. However, learners are individuals and instructional software and materials can only reach so far into a learner's soul.

Will computers replace spouses? Will computers replace having children?

"Computers are magnificent tools for the realization of our dreams, but no machine can replace the human spark of compassion, love and understanding." -Louis Gerstner

A story-

Some years back I wanted to learn to play the guitar. I envisioned singing my favorite songs and strumming easily in accompaniment. It was difficult and frustrating to be a beginner, and I had to tap into everything I knew about being a learner.

First of all, I found a teacher. But after weeks of lessons, practice, chords and scales, I still couldn't play a song. I began to get antsy. I started to question my teacher.

When he finally taught me a song, it was not a song I chose, but a song he chose. I was beginning to really question whether I had the right teacher. Other friends with other teachers had learned to play songs early-on. Why was he making me suffer? Why did my first song have to be a difficult jazz song? Why, why, why???

Being a teacher myself, and one who reveres the teacher-student relationship, I calmed myself. Trust him, I thought. He is the teacher. You are the student. He is your guide; you must trust him. Finally he allowed me to choose a song. I chose "Here Comes the Sun" and boy, was I excited. I will tell you that no beginning guitar student has ever played such a complicated and lovely rendition of "Here Comes the Sun." Not just chords, my teacher taught me every note and nuance of the song. The proof came when I played for my friend, Scott, an extremely accomplished guitar player. Scott had been playing guitar for decades, and had not taken a lesson for many years. When he heard his beginner friend play "Here Comes the Sun," he requested my teacher's phone number.

The other day a friend told me she was interested in trying yoga. I mentioned how much I like my studio, that she might want to try a class. She said she had a yoga program on her wii fit. Now, I have to admit I don't have a wii fit, so I don't speak from personal experience. But it seems to me that while a wii fit might be a decent tool for getting a little exercise, I have a hard time imagining how the wii fit could hold a candle to a real yoga teacher who sets the mood, imparts bits of wisdom, adjusts certain poses and guides the journey. I can't imagine the wii fit having a passion for yoga. I have trouble imagining a new student falling in love with yoga through the generic program that is created basically the same for everyone. I will take a real teacher over a machine any day of the week.

Be Happy

If you cringe at mushy, philosophical mumbo jumbo, you might want to skip this post. 

As I walked around my neighborhood tonight, following my 4 year old on his two-wheeler noticing the vibrant purple-pink of the bougainvillea and the sweet scent of the jasmine, appreciating the fact that it was still quite light out at 7:30 pm, savoring a Sunday night before a Monday holiday with less than two weeks left until summer vacation..the line that kept repeating in my head was this one:

Happiness is not having what you want; it's wanting what you have.

Wanting more, having goals, desiring...that is good and important. It is the place from which all creative energy flows. But taking time to really appreciate all that you have, that is heaven on earth. 

Another line I read years ago in a book really struck me. I've long forgotten the book (I do recall it was a Robert Anton Wilson book) but the line, I think it was the last line in the book, was "Positive energy is as real as gravity."

I love that. 

Now, what place does this have on EdTech Workshop? Have I lost my vision, my focus? Apparently I have, if only for a moment. I know there are those who hate this type of talk. How can you waste space writing about happiness and positive energy when there is so much suffering in the world?

How can you not?

For those of you who have taken the time to read this and any of my humble thoughts here on my blog, thank you. 

and thank you, Randy Son of Robert, for sharing your lovely image on creative commons.