The simplest strategies can give us so much. Sometimes, we use structured activities to have students share information about themselves in public forums, and we call these ice breakers and community builders. Sometimes, we use questionnaires to find each student's "jaggedness" (The End of Average by Todd Rose) to determine their unique needs and learning preferences, and we call these learner profiles. What would happen if we stripped away the structure, eliminated the scripted prompts, and allowed students an open opportunity to share what they want, in a manner that is communicated privately between the teacher and themselves? The purpose of this post is to share one teacher's perspective of a simple strategy used to really understand her students. Have your students write about themselves for 5 minutes. Sustained writing. No prompts. No structured grammar and punctuation. No limits. What they share might be the peek behind the curtain that you will need to truly understand their worldview. The 5 minutes you spend giving the kids time to write, and the time you invest in reading for understanding, will be one of the most meaningful and enlightening strategies you might possess in your teaching toolkit. Recently, a teacher I hold in high esteem asked that I visit one of her classes to observe the unique dynamic the students presented. This request came after just the first day of school. These are Seniors who are taking a dual enrollment composition class in which they will receive 6 college credits from our neighboring community college (TCC). So I visited and spent just a few minutes in the class, and it was evident this great teacher was getting out ahead of the dynamic, pulling out classroom strategies as a master teacher would, should, and could. When I saw her the next morning, she shared with me the inspiration for this post. A simple strategy that might have changed her perspective on the group dynamic to focus not on the collective "all" but on the unique "each." The simple strategy: 5 minutes sustained writing. And so, I would like to challenge this amazing educator to write about the experience in her own words. I want to thank Carrie Gantt (@CarrieGantt) for taking time out of her busy schedule to allow us an opportunity to peek behind the curtain of her practice, her reflection, her truth, and her 5-minute unstructured writing strategy to know her kids. It started with a question to my seniors during the final class last year. I asked my students in my Dual Enrollment English 12 course to give me feedback – honest, raw, constructive feedback – on how I could improve my instruction of the course. They knew that 2016-2017 held a huge learning curve for me as I was navigating a new school with new courses, and they knew that I very much wanted to get better at teaching this new prep of mine. Because Dual English 12 is a college composition course, I insisted that they record their comments in writing on a carefully-constructed instrument that I provided them, complete with directives to use black ink and their best handwriting. While they were writing, I tried to predict what their responses would be. More opportunities to revise. A less complex rubric. Shorter essays. Longer essays. Better instruction on varying sentence structure and vocabulary. I collected their responses, and my jaw dropped at what I read. Overwhelmingly their answer was this: Keep the person in teaching.
I’ve had a lot of time to process what keep the person in teaching means, and I’m realizing that unless we are real live human beings in our classrooms, our students might comply with their instruction, but they won’t necessarily trust in their own learning and growth. I should have known this. The signs had been there all last year, but I was too busy teaching a new curriculum to notice. I knew that there was an odd dissonance between the people in my classroom and the students I encountered in the spaces and margins of their Google documents. In person, I often saw my students laugh with each other and get excited about their senior year, but then I would read the essays they submitted. Dull. Lifeless. Robotic. They followed the formula I gave them and I got exactly what I asked for in sentences – words as placeholders. While I value and appreciate curriculum guides and the thoughtful design that goes into ensuring students develop sequences of skills, I believe my call as a teacher is to take that guidance into my own process and prowess in designing learning experiences that are also highly informed by the identities, interests, and curiosities my students bring to the classroom. In other words, I need to keep the person in teaching. Day One of the school year 2017-2018. Thirty 12th graders in my Dual Enrollment English class walked through my classroom door in one large jagged and jostling mass of teenager-ness. The students were obviously hyped to see their friends because all I heard were exclamations of excitement from all corners of the room. The tardy bell rang and the noise continued. It continued and it continued. My frustration grew and grew. I had important information to say and they were not interested in listening. Did I remember, at that moment, to keep the person in teaching? Absolutely not. The end of class bell rang and the mass fled. Day Two. Determined to not forget my seniors’ feedback from the previous year, I knew I needed to seek first to understand the people in this class before I sought anything else from them. Why were they so noisy? Was it really noise I was hearing, or were those stories of something else spilling out? Could I expect them to be interested in listening to me on Day One if I wasn’t interested in listening to them? My strategy was simple. I needed to get to know my students ASAP, and I needed to get to know them without boundaries, without expectations, without directions, and without the intervention of curriculum. I needed to keep the person at the forefront, according to my 2017 seniors. I distributed a stack of multi-colored, line-less blank paper to the students and told them that their first writing assignment in this composition course was to “tell me about themselves.” That’s it. No other guidance except the time limit of 5 minutes. Eyebrows went up. Laughter went up. Hands went up. What exactly do you want us to write about? How long do you want it to be? Pencil or pen? How much do you take off for spelling? Anxiety was obviously going up as well. They began. That night. I pulled out my stack of multi-colored, line-less paper that was now filled with handwriting of all styles, written in all colors and moving in all sorts of directions. I read. And then I cried. I learned not only of my students’ interests, after-school jobs, families and pets, but I learned of their fears, their vulnerabilities, their heartbreaks, and their tragedies. I wish I could write here specifics of what I learned, but I need to keep those confidences confident. I learned of their persons, not of their writing styles. Going forward into Day Three and beyond. I promise my students to keep the person in teaching. This means knowing my students and knowing that everyone has a life story and a learning story. As teachers we have to “read” both stories over and over in order to stay connected with our students. It also means that I need to allow my students to see my own life story and learning story. I plan to allow my students to peek behind the curtain of my struggles and watch as I grapple. I will talk openly about times learning has been difficult for me and let my students know these struggles somehow launched me into my life now. And finally, keeping the person in teaching means focusing on the smallest of positive moments. Learning is often quiet. It’s often the accumulation of small changes that gain momentum. On day two, that one small change of seeking first to understand the persons of the students in front of me … this is where I think my best teaching yet now begins.
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