Musings of a Teacher on the Edge

 

Why did I sign up to take 2 full weeks away from my already tiny summer break? I’m a teacher on the edge that’s why. On the edge of what? I’m not sure. I’m constantly battling with self doubt and also brimming with passion. These 2 things are at odds with one another and it makes me feel crazy sometimes. I call my classroom “controlled chaos” however this year I think I lost most of the control part. So here I sit,  a teacher who hates writing due to some mysterious writing trauma in my younger years I guess, in a writing class to try to get that passion part of me to beat the self-doubt for once so that I can overcome my fear of teaching writing. 

I have always been a good student. I just followed instructions, did all my work, and got good grades. Writing, however, is different. When given specific writing constraints and structure, I was able to do well, but anything left to interpretation or creativity just causes me extreme anxiety and I have no idea where to start.

Our first assignment is a perfect example of my anxiety. The instruction simply being, “bring a piece of fresh writing”. Agghhhh! What would I write about, what do they really want to see, what will they think about my writing, how does it compare to other’s writing, will it be good enough? 

When given a task that is very structured and straightforward such as a resume, business letter, or email I feel like I excel because it is about being professional, organized, and to the point. However when it comes to any type of free writing or less structured I struggle because I doubt my creativity and just want to get to the point because that is easier for me. 

I don’t remember any writing assignments I had as a child, so I’m not sure how I was taught. I’m assuming it was a structured routine since that is what happens in most classrooms. I’m not sure if that writing routine is a help or hindrance to us as early writers. The only time I can remember specifics about writing is in college. The horrible thing was that I felt good about my assignments until I got my grade. It would have been fine if I just didn’t care. Then I would know why I got the grade I did. However that was not the case. I tried very hard, but just couldn’t seem to get what the teacher wanted even after his feedback. It was very frustrating to me and just made me shut down. 

My goal for my students is to be able to express themselves freely, bring their own personality and perspective into their writing, and enjoy writing. Some students have that ability by themselves which is awesome, but for most I haven’t been able to instill that creativity, freedom, and joy because I don’t have it myself. I end up making writing very structured and sentence frame based. Boring sentence frames might I add because I am the one who is helping them create their writing and I’ve already established that I lack creativity in my writing. 

I’m pushing myself outside of my comfort zone with this fellowship because I want to learn to let go of the doubt that keeps me from being free with my writing so that I can eventually pass that freedom on to my students. I plan to document my adventures in this fellowship to help me, other teachers and my future students in the writing journey. 

Day 1- The nerves are real! First assignment, write about anything. Not this again! I have no idea and I don’t want to be wrong. I write about the first thing that pops into my head, my daughter’s horse riding experience the day before. This is easy for me to talk about because I love her and it was so much fun. I know that it will not be as great as everyone else’s work, but oh well, at least I’m done.

Next up, a demo about self-regard as a writer. Well I have none, so here we go. First writing prompt is very personal which is not where I want to start so I’m feeling like this is going to be too much for me. I power through, but don’t have a lot to share in my group. Later we are assigned to read our writing aloud for small group feedback. I feel very intimidated and like I have no business giving feedback when everyone else is clearly better than me. However, during the first person’s feedback, the author stated that he had no idea what the particular style his writing was called, but that he had seen it in a book and wanted to try it out. What??? This is amazing! One, that other people don’t know everything about writing, and two, that he was just trying out different styles. I think I could do that too!

Later in the afternoon we did a writing marathon and did some sensory based writing. I feel good about this. It is not too personal and now I have an idea for writing, I’m just going to try things out and see what it’s like rather than worrying about it being “right”. As I write I think about other ways that I could describe rather than my normal obvious ways. I also think I want to add in alliteration because we had been talking about it in our group earlier. After the marathon, I know that I don’t have anything truly amazing yet, but I’m proud that I tried something and didn’t let my anxiety win.

End of Day 1 takeaways: we are all struggling writers, so don’t let the struggle keep you from trying new things.

Day 2- Mentor Texts. I love this concept. I feel good about this because I have actually done this in my classroom exactly how Christine is showing us. Yay! After the demo though, I realize that I did not do it enough with my students with many different texts for the same purpose and that is why it did not transfer to their independent writing. Well there is another take away to start next year. 

Then we moved into our make cycle. This was a fun project to think about an object that meant a lot to us and how we could represent it. I sometimes forget that “writing” can happen in different ways. It was good to have a little fun with it and remember that our students need that too.

We ended the day with implicit and blind bias. I knew about implicit bias and have been working to combat mine. However I had no idea about blind biases. It was interesting and sad to learn that our brain makes us naturally biased by using the empathy part of our brain when people are like us, and non empathy part  when people are not like us. Now I know why it is so hard to listen empathetically when we completely disagree with someone. This makes us have to work even harder to combat our biases. 

End of Day 2 takeaways: students need much more practice and with more types of writing than I ever thought before, and I have to be not only aware, but actively work against biases to make connections with all of my students equally.

Day 3- First day of our demos. Wow they are both so relaxed and amazing! The first demo was inspiring. We have been talking so much about reading like a writer to dissect the writer’s craft, but her demo showed that students can observe life like a writer too. I love the opportunity for learning about adjectives and new academic vocabulary that having them observe affords. It makes me think back to the 2020/21 school year when we came back to school for the last month of school and only a few kids for a few hours each day. During that time we planted vegetables and journaled to observe them. Students were so into this project and writing was rich because they were so invested. This 2021/22 back to school chaos made me forget that joy of being outside and observing nature and I need to get back to that.

The second demo was about taking the anxiety and subjectivity out of grading by making a labor based system of grading rather than subjectively grading skill. I am still trying to wrap my head around this one. I completely agree that grades are subjective and inherently cause stress to students because their future is based on murkiness. However, I’m not sure that just grading them based on the number of items turned in is acceptable either because what if some students just decide to turn in totally shitty work, but hey it’s done so it counts. I realize that the teacher would still give feedback so that the student would want to revise, but if there is no requirement to revise then some students may choose not to and still receive an A without much effort or growth happening. In my own classroom, the only grades I give are on the report cards and that is only given to parents. So I guess I follow a no grading approach and I can add in more feedback throughout the process. I just need to figure out a way to make the grades I do give less subjective. To be continued….

The afternoon brought us a protocol to help us review student work with an additive lens called generous reading. We actually just started a similar process at my school, but ours has more steps which became very cumbersome and teachers basically gave up. I liked that this process was less steps but with the same outcome of thoughtful, actionable next steps. I wish this were a doable process for grade level meetings. It would be so amazing to be able to go through the work of each student with our team and work together to create plans. However, this is always an issue in education where there are great ideas but not enough time. I can commit to going over at least one student’s work as a team for each team meeting. This is not a perfect ending, but it is a real world solution that still helps me and my students.

End of Day 3 takeaways: Joy through observation and exploration is essential to learning and writing. Feedback is essential to learning and student growth, so grades should not be given until a student has had time to implement all the feedback and show their growth.Using an additive approach along with teacher collaboration helps us find the best next steps to support our students’ learning. 

Day 4- My demo day! I was so nervous to speak in front of adults, but I knew my students had worked hard and they deserved to be seen. It seemed to go over pretty well although I had a lot of internet issues. There were some things I forgot to say and I had to rush at the end due to time, but I’m thankful for all the kind hearts in the audience. I’m definitely ready to try out more academic conversations in my classroom in all subject areas.

The next demo was about register. It was really good to explicitly think about the particular registers we use throughout the day and why. My students have no idea what register is, but it is up to us to help them not limit themselves in this world, and using the wrong register is something that would hinder them. I will not be the one who stops them from conquering the world, so I will be more aware of teaching correct register for their audience.

In the afternoon we talked about privilege in its many forms. We did a privilege walk and I realized that the sheer fact that I didn’t know where I would land at the end of the walk showed my privilege. Brain exploding followed by guilt. I can’t change who I am, but it is about opening up my world to make sure I understand and support others and not just bask in my privilege. 

End of day 4 takeaways: Academic conversations are important for students speaking, listening, and writing. We need to teach correct register for specific audiences so we are not the ones hindering our students. It is our responsibility to open up our world to learn about and understand all of the people in it, not just those like us.

Day 5- 2 more demos today. First demo is art. It was great to be intentional about starting a unit with provocative art related to your topic and then use student inquiry to allow them to figure out what is going on and what they want to know. This is such a great way to engage students. He also had us do a watercolor painting and then write a haiku about it. It was amazing to me to watch and listen as we all worked on our painting. Some were excited, some were just being compliant, some were actually scared to paint, some were calm and thoughtful. I guess this is representative of our students too. I always say that my students get really excited for art, but maybe I’ve just been focusing on the students who are excited so I need to spend some more time focusing on all my students and making art accessible for all.

The 2nd demo was on using graphic novels to help writing. Why had I never thought of this before? I have a lot of graphic novels and they are always super popular with my students, so it makes perfect sense to use them to inspire writing. It is perfect for getting kids interested in writing. I also love the idea of having students do inquiry on the books to notice writing structures. I feel like I have a few new ideas to make writing more fun and interesting.

In the afternoon we talked more about privilege and I get depressed about it because I feel like there is no way to change a lot of peoples’ minds and hearts to see their privilege. However, Christine said to start asking them questions to see what they mean by privilege or poor for example because it gives them the opportunity to think about what they are saying, and can help me to understand more about the person. Also she said that if we just keep speaking up then we might be the voice that a person needs to hear, so I guess I won’t give up on society yet. 

We also talked about how narratives are actually the basis for all story genres and that gave me some new ideas for how to start writing projects. 

Day 5 takeaways: Art and writing are fun and complementary, but I need to be aware of all students’ level of comfort with art. Graphic novels provide access to all for reading and for writing. Society will change one day if we all keep speaking up. 

Day 6- The demo today is about creating an identity as a writer. I never really thought about this before and realized that is probably why it is so hard for me to write and teach writing. I never thought of myself as a writer, but this demo showed that we are all writers and this was like, duh, why had I not realized this before? Also the concept of writing is failure. Our presenter said that most of writing is failure because the final piece is just one part and the rest of the writing was many failures to get to that point. This made me realize that while I do teach growth mindset, I don’t do it specifically about writing and I need to do that more so that students feel good about the writing process rather than thinking they have to have the perfect story right away.

Then we did some more with mentor texts. This was really helpful for me as a teacher because we got actionable ideas. I have used mentor texts before and done copy change sentences, but in isolation. I loved that we wrote something on our own first and then the mentor sentences were for a specific purpose to help our own writing. Also the idea of showing at least 3 different texts so that students can use the one that works best for their writing. This was so helpful for my own writing, so I can just imagine my students being excited to see the change in their writing for the better. 

The last thing we talked about was that our country is actually a caste system. This was something that I had never thought about before but made so much sense. We are all taught about “The American Dream”- work hard and you can accomplish anything. This is just a bullshit cover up to distract us from what is actually a caste system set up specifically for failure for some. It was very heavy reading to really think about the dark history of our country and its effects. It is so horrible to realize the depth of this system and it is overwhelming to think about how we would ever solve this problem. The first thing I guess is just being educated and educating others to expose this system rather than allowing it to continue to be covered up.

Day 6 takeaways- Use other authors’ experiences to teach my students that writing is failure and that it is the process that gives us the final result we want. Mentor text is key, but using multiple texts with the same text purpose so my students can connect it to their own writing rather than using concepts in isolation. Expose the system by making my students critical thinkers.

Day 7- our demo today is about teachers as writers. As I said before, I have never seen myself as a writer. It was always just an assignment that had to be done. So this idea of purposely writing each day and with my students is new and daunting. However I definitely see the benefits. I want to bring joy to writing for me and for my students so I will make an effort to do daily “fun” writing with them. 

Then we did another make cycle, but this one was about our textual lineage. When I was a kid and even as a younger adult,  I was a voracious reader. I loved all mysteries, historical fiction, suspense, and just good stories. I definitely had a textual lineage, but as an adult with kids, my reading is just whatever time I can scrape together for the most necessary of professional needs, so this project was difficult for me because I don’t have a lot to pull from. The summer institute made me realize that I have more time than I think for reading because we have been reading every night. So I just need to continue that habit.

At the end of the day we talked about how to replace formulaic writing by using mentor texts to show students multiple examples of successful writing. We discussed this by using a protocol called Affinity Mapping. This was a great way to get through a lot of text. Each person writes down 6 main takeaways and then you put your takeaways with a group and then sort them into basic categories. This would be helpful for students because it gives them quiet time with their own thoughts, then time to see others’ thoughts, and then finally synthesize the learning.

Day 7 takeaways- Teachers need to write with their students, teachers need to make time for reading, and mentor text is key to teaching students writing structure. 

Day 8- Protocol Day- We started with the protocol Block Party. This is a really cool protocol to do at the beginning of the year with low stakes topics to build community. You write down some number of comments to a prompt and then share first with 3 people, then 2, then 1 and try to find all different people. This forces kids to talk to new people so I love it. I can also see how with a more rigorous topic it would also be helpful to have many different viewpoints and being able to explain yourself helps deepen your own understanding.

Next we talked about building a writer community. I had never thought specifically about that before. I am always very intentional about creating a safe, kind, and empathetic community in how we talk and interact, but I hadn’t thought specifically about what writer’s need. I love the idea of creating community “we” writing. I love how thoughtful Jamie, Kim, and Christine are because they even gave us lesson plan ideas for the beginning of the year to create our community. Their dedication and care is unmatched!

Last protocol is strip club- not as exciting as it sounds! This one I’m still trying to wrap my head around. It was very difficult for me because we had 2 articles to go between and we had to add to another person’s answer specifically citing a page from an article. I like that we had to use text evidence, but a lot of the time I already knew what the text said and could have given a comment, but I was spending so much time going between the articles because I couldn’t remember which article it was or where in the article so I wasted my chance because by the time I found it then someone else had already commented. I did like the way it forced everyone to share because you had to use all your papers, but I feel like I would only do it with simple articles.

Day 8 take aways- Building in writing every day in a community way is essential.  I’m definitely using block party in my classroom. Jamie, Christine, and Kim love us, awww!

Day 9- We started with the 4 S protocol. Kim said it could really be any letter that you can think of 4 meaningful words, so that makes it so versatile. It was really helpful to talk to each other about what we struggle with and what we are striving to do. I got great ideas and Bill and I are even going to be classroom penpals! 

Next was Mentor Text practice. Today was practicing again with copy and change sentences, but this time with a focus on grammar. It was good to see the Jeff Anderson reading in action. I’ve used mentor text before for copy and change, but I definitely didn’t practice enough with different texts or even with the same one enough. Today showed me how much practice they need in different ways and then especially trying it out on a piece of their own writing. That is the part I never connected with and then wondered why they weren’t automatically transferring these skills to their writing. It seems so obvious now. 

We ended the day with our equity piece. Today was learning about our own cultural values and how they create our implicit biases. Our cultural values such as how we were taught about time, work habits, dealing with emotions, eye contact, views of authority, etc are the triggers for us. That is so true. I get in a panic if I’m late and thinking about how other people view me because my dad was insane about time. This whole institute I’ve been late on the UCSD days because of my daughter’s daycare time. I felt so horrible about it and felt like I’m totally irresponsible and disrespectful of the other people in the group because of how I was raised. Someone else might just be late because time is not a big deal to them. It’s so crazy to think how screwed up our families made us! 

Day 9 take aways- Mentor text, Mentor text, Mentor text. It is necessary to practice over and over with many different texts for many different purposes. Be aware of our triggers and don’t let our screwed up childhood cause us to judge too harshly. 

I can’t believe this journey is over. It has been so amazing and so exhausting at the same time. I definitely feel like a more confident writer myself and a more passionate teacher of writing. Of course I’m still me which means I will always be about to spiral out of control with equal amounts of self-doubt and passion, but for now the passion is winning. Maybe one day I’ll have it all together. In the meantime, I really look forward to continuing my SDAWP journey and the relationships I’m building.