Home Stretch

Random reporting from Teach Like a Champion headquarters.  I'm just opening the book at random to finish out the year. In the meantime, I've got myself a writing coach (my 35th birthday present) and am working on young adult fiction, food reviews, the world of womanhood and finding a disciplined writing practice and a more rested mind. The blogging world has ignited a deeper desire to write, write, write. A happy Emily= teacher + writer.  I've decided to stick it out another year in the wacky wake of education. So, in honor of finally embracing my writing life and continued employment, here is #26: EVERYBODY WRITES.

Sometimes we think we are so clever as teachers. We dream up higher level, critical, complex questions and present them to our students. They stare back, eyes glazed over, dumbfounded. Are we speaking Greek? See if you can recognize yourself in this response–slight panicky feeling settles in, glancing around the room you find nothing, no one to help. Not even the top student gets it. Wanting to avoid that not-so-fresh feeling, you proceed to answer the question yourself, and move along. Happy that at least they were quiet. This is cognitively beneficial for only one person in the room, as you may have already guessed.

The antidote to the awkwardness: EVERYBODY WRITES. For me, the Do Now segment that is on the board to start class is an everyone writes activity. Today we were journaling from the point of view of a German solider (reading Night, a nice light end to the year, ha)–an internal monologue, present tense, first person narrative. I knew if I just asked students to verbalize how it would feel to be in the shoes of the oppressors that the responses would not be as rich. This technique is a gold mine for getting discussion to open at a deep level in the room. It also calms down 10th graders who are riled up in the process of getting to class. Other benefits are that you can call on any student to answer (COLD CALL, the maestro of this book coming soon), you can check work over their shoulders, processing happens on a deeper level, you can guide the lesson in the way you want, and they learn more when writing things down (especially their own thoughts and analysis). I know that getting a whole class to write before sharing sounds like a no-brainer, but there are educators out there who do not have their students doing much in the way of writing on a daily basis or any basis.

Many kids hate to write, or say they do. My challenge to myself is to keep finding ways to encourage them that writing is an important, learnable process. When you want to quit or give up, that one or two sentences/paragraphs/pages more is where you will find your best thoughts. When we write, we discover another voice. The writer's voice is often more intellectually astute, engaged and cognizant in the world. I know students, like all people, are moved by the power of words. Trick is to get them to be moved by the power of their own words. Baby steps. Or, when in doubt, reference Tupac. Roses growing from concrete echoes around the globe.