WIRE for Agency

Urgency is Really Agency Infused with JOY

It is Friday afternoon, and the weekend is coming on fast. The students are moving around the classroom with some urgency for writing. What does urgency look like? Children are acting out their writing with gestures to match. Some are collecting papers and supplies for writing; while others are in deep conversation about who is going to “do” what part of their series books over the weekend. Over by the cubbies, kids are scooping up their writers notebooks, filled with a slew of writing possibilities, and shoving them inside their backpacks. What does urgency sound like? Their voices bubble up into a frenzy trying to catch their ideas onto paper, and then right back down into thoughtful murmurs rereading their words to each other. Little chairs are scraping on the linoleum tiles as kids get up and down papers crunching; sharpeners wining plastic pencil boxes opening with soft pops. All of our students are trying to get in those last minute ideas to guide their weekend writing projects.  The urgency felt by the students was because their writing mattered to them – this is learning with a sense of agency. Their energy was innate, it was of their own doing – this what a joyful agentive classroom looks like and sounds like.

Of all the initiatives, and mandates, standards, and assessments let us not forget to prioritize joyful learning.  When speaking about teachers, Dr. Mary Howard once said:

Writing is one of those beautiful learning opportunities that can deliver critical thinking, agency, and joy all in one. Right now our students are writing series books.  It would seem that all of them have decided to have their characters make cameo appearances inside each other’s stories. Oh the power to create worlds for their characters to inhabit. Writing is a social beast, and they are learning how to use their words to explore the imaginary worlds of their own making, it is really something to witness. That and kids are really loving the series books they are reading. They are eager to try on craft moves they see in their books. Even though our students are just eight-years-old, they are authors.  What motivates them? They want what all authors want. They want  to be heard, to be validated, and more than that to find an audience.   

Looking Through the Eyes of a Writer: Access, Language, and Choice

Conner has really grown into his identity as a writer. He walks around our school with a notebook and pencil in hand, even when he is going to recess.  Writing has become a way for him to express himself and work through his feelings. His love of writing has spread throughout our classroom, he has grown a community of writers that he counts on for ideas, advice, and feedback.  They check-in with each other first thing in  the morning, throughout the day and before they leave school.  This is a natural part of their day which they look forward to.

It wasn’t always this way.  At first, Conner didn’t see himself as a writer.  He knew he had great ideas but he didn’t have the resources and supplies he needed to do the work he envisioned.  Day after day, we provided him with different resources;  a notebook with stickers, colored pencils, mentor texts that sparked his interest, and most importantly time!  These small gifts, coupled with high expectations and our deep belief in him as a writer, made all the difference.  By providing Conner with access, language and choice, we created the conditions for him to grow into an agentic writer.

Access: 

  • Freedom – he has decided to write during lunch.  
  • Community – he is actively checking in with peers to give and get moral support
  • Resources – he is making the most of his time writing and becoming more efficient.

Language:

  • Texts – he is borrowing language from other mentor texts
  • Academic – he can converse with others about the writing process.
  • Crafting a writing identity – he is a writer and is cultivating a growth mindset

Choice:

  • Feedback – he is giving thoughtful feedback, and is acting on the feedback he receives
  • Mixing genres – he is deciding how to bring in other genres of writing in his work
  • Ways to publish – he is making choices about how to publish his work 

Teachers who give these young authors the time and space for writing through access, language, and choice are helping them to discover how to use their voices to make a positive impact. Having the opportunity to be heard and celebrated as writers opens up the floodgates for joy. 

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 Posted on April 2, 2022 by

 Agency, Belief, Collaboration, Dr Mary Howard, Education, Laura Robb, Literacy, Mary Howard, Writing

One Small Request

“Do you have the book, People?” she asked with a shy smile.

“No, I don’t have that book. Is it any good?” was the response to her small request.

“Yes! VERY good. My best friend has it and I want to read it too.” she bounced up and down a little with each syllable.

“Well, let me see if I can get that bo. If you’re saying you really want to read that book, and it’s a good book for our library, I will do my best to get it for you.”

Opening Minds Using Language to Change Lives

When children make book requests to their teachers it is an important moment. To ask for a book, is to be an advocate for yourself. If we act on these requests, students will experience agency. There are so many ways books create bonds between teachers and students. Think of how a child might feel when a teacher says, “This book made me think of you.” Yet another powerful message has been sent, “Yes, you are a reader” and “Yes you are important. I see you.”

A Few Days Later…

People by Peter Spier, first published in 1980

“…(Spier’s) work possesses a charming, colorful, ‘lookability’ to which children as well as adults respond. This… volume with its message of respect and tolerance will be no exception.

New York Times Book Review

The book turned out to be an extremely progressive. It’s message: we are all different in many ways but we are all one, we are all people. This book would make a welcome addition to our classroom library. With a hot cup of tea and this new glossy book in hand, it was time to read it cover to cover. That was when a dilemma arose,

Literacy opens us all up to all kinds of different perspectives. Perhaps our student sees this as a book that offers naked bottoms, and an open grave. To us, this is a book about our shared humanity adrift in an expansive universe. One book, but more than one way to look at it…

That is the most important lesson we think we can impart to students is that we think better together. We can show them how to come to learning with an expectation to negotiate meaning through discourse. There is a deeper form of learning that happens when we open ourselves up to learning from perspectives other than our own.

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 Posted on March 22, 2022 by

 Agency, Belief, Collaboration, Education, Learning

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Can you relate? Energy for Agency…

by, Jenn Hayhurst

What can I say for myself?  How can I explain my long absence to my friends and colleagues?  You are all people I admire, and respect both professionally and personally. You are the expert sources I have relied upon to keep learning and growing. I can only share my story. To be honest, telling it brings some shame and embarrassment. A true learner does not disengage and retreat.  My sense of identity is deeply connected to believing in my personal sense of power, my ability to be a part of making positive change.  How can I be that person, when I feel beaten and overwhelmed? When we passed the two year mark into the pandemic, it hit me hard that this school year has been the toughest one ever.

Looking back, in preparing for the start of school,  I planned on hitting the ground running with a primary focus to lessen or close academic gaps… If I don’t lessen or close academic gaps there are serious repercussions for children – how could this not be  my top priority?  Then the kids came back.  Although I anticipated that children would have social emotional needs; anticipation, was no substitute for first-hand experience. I thought things were getting back to “normal” but no, nothing felt normal. The severity of all their needs hit me like a tsunami. What do I do with the constant worry I have inside of me?  In my mind’s eye, I imagine the teachers I know; their kind faces shaking their heads, “Yes, we understand.” They know that the energy it takes to be a teacher right now is just  immense.  I don’t think it is really being acknowledged by society, but anyone working in a school or with children during these times is most likely living with some form of trauma.  

“It’s heartbreaking. The pressure is overwhelming,” Bouchard said. “I feel like a horrible teacher. I’ve been teaching 22 years, and this might be the lowest self-esteem I’ve had.” Hannah Bouchard, a 2nd grade teacher at Platte Valley Elementary in Kersey, Colo

EdWeek: Teachers Are Losing Hope That This Can Be a Catch-Up Year

Once November hit and the pandemic took a turn and came back in full force. I felt like my legs were swept out from under me and I was drowning again. Sometimes, you have to let yourself float to conserve your strength so you can go back to treading water and then try to swim back to shore. That is what I have been doing, conserving my energy because I had no other choice.  All that I have had has been focused on the students in front of me, the faculty I work directly with, and the community I serve. That is why, before today you have not seen me tweeting, or posting, or engaging in public spaces for learning. Please believe me when I say I have missed you, and I think I am ready to rejoin the conversation. 

A Close  Relationship Energy & Agency 

Now that the pandemic seems like it is waning, again…  I have the benefit of some perspective. It’s kind of a funny thing; before now, I had not noticed how visually similar the words energy and agency are. Maybe if I had not lived through this experience I wouldn’t have understood how deeply connected the context is for how they operate. Albert Einstein once said, “Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.”  Now I believe that energy is the  currency that fuels agency. Agency is the embodiment of all of our efforts, all of our beliefs, it is a mirror reflection of the energy we put into living our lives with a sense of purpose and self-belief.  

So my answer to my question, “What do I do with the constant worry I have inside of me?” When it comes to meeting students’ academic and social emotional needs, I plan on turning to the children themselves to find the answers. When putting academic interventions in place I am going to honor their voices. I am going to use their feedback, not as an aside, but as a critical tool to create the intervention. I am going to believe in them and let them lead the way to monitoring success and to design for what comes next:

I am looking for joy, and this brings me joy – including student voices during the RTI process. When we make the choice to honor student voice we learn so much more. Here is an example of the kinds of interviews I conduct with students throughout the process. Look closely at the midpoint interview and how that impacted the outcome of the intervention.

Building Professional Relationships Built on Agency

Here is a tool Jill and I shared during our presentation, 103A – On-Demand+: Coaching for Agency: Small Moves for a Big Impact. These are some tips to build a professional culture around agency for teachers. Please reach out and let us know if this, or any tools we offer, are useful in your work.

online-teaching-tips-for-teachers-infographicsDownload

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 Posted on February 24, 2022 by

 Agency, Ed Week, Education, Identity, Learning, Literacy, Teacher Burnout

Finding the Light

by Jill DeRosa

How do you work with a sense of agency, when you have lost control over so many parts of school?  This is the question that has been at the heart of our thoughts and conversations over the past 2 years of the pandemic. We know that student agency grows out of teacher agency but what happens when teachers don’t feel agentic or in full control over their profession?

So many teachers have felt helpless as they maneuver through the pandemic and all the changes it has made in schools. You would not be alone if you were feeling that so many things were out of your control when it came to educating your students and this feeling can be disheartening.  We are there with you, and have felt it too. We know what our students need but how do we give them that in a time of social distancing,  mask mandates and fear of so many unknown possibilities? Instead of looking at all of the things that we couldn’t control, we decided to  look at what we could reenvision to give more agency to our students. Compliance is the opposite of agency, so we had to look closely to find places for agency inside all this compliance. This is what we found.

1.Social-Emotional Conferences to know our students better

Getting to know our students is imperative to adjusting our curriculum to meet their needs. This is one foundation for agency. The current reality of desks in rows to socially distance can be isolative for students and make it hard for social connections. Our solution: We made sure to schedule in time for talking and getting to know our students. We treated this like a reading or writing conference and ensured we got to each of our students a couple of times a week. The more we checked in with our students, the better prepared we were to be responsive to their social and emotional needs.

2. Book Choice to put choice and control into student hands

Books open up opportunities for children.  They can take them on an adventure, serve as an escape from the real world, teach them new information, help them learn about other perspectives, and so many other valuable life lessons. The current reality of children being unable to share books made book shopping hard. Our solution: We made a schedule for students to book shop independently and then had a book quarantine area.  This gave students agency over their choices of what they read and for what purpose. It might seem like a small adjustment but it was life-changing for many kids. They were able to pick their own books and felt some control over their time at school. 

3. Purposeful Writing as a Tool for Agency

Writing can be a great way to get our feelings out and into the world. The current reality might limit children’s social interactions with others outside their homes. Our solution: We used writing to strengthen social connections and to spark agency for our students. There were strong feelings about the pandemic from our students and we provided an avenue for them to express this. Some students wrote poems, opinion pieces and informational text. Other students wanted an escape and wrote comics, fantasy adventures and graphic novels. We made an opening for their voices and they naturally filled it with writing that had an impact on themselves and others. 

4. Creating and reenvisioning opportunities for collaborative work with partners or small groups

Collaboration is a 21st Century skill that educators are teaching our students so they have the skills to work together in effective ways. The reality in many classrooms are desks 3 or 6 feet apart, some with physical barriers making collaboration feel impossible. Our solution: We had partners meet in a variety of spaces where they could be socially distanced but still work together such as hallways, open spaces in the classroom or other larger rooms in the school such as the cafeteria. We also used technology to help. Google slides or documents, Nearpod, FlipGrid and other platforms all provided opportunities for our students to collaborate virtually. 

5.Deep Conversation to promote language around resilience and giving students’ a voice

The language we use is important and sends a message about what we believe and value. The reality is the language around school and the pandemic speaks a lot to learning loss and portrays gloom and doom. Our students hear this and may feel a sense of despair. Our solution: Be thoughtful about the language we are using within our classroom, model positive self talk, and teach students how to express themselves while truly listening to others. We can leverage our language to help students persevere, be resilient and flexible when dealing with the challenges that the pandemic has brought.  Language can also be a uniting force that lets them know that they have support and are not alone.  Most importantly, we give students a voice in their learning and listen to their voices as we continue to create a learning environment that is built on them.

6. Providing access to the things they need

It is hard to work with agency if you don’t have access to the things you need. The reality is many families are struggling economically due to the pandemic and are focused on getting basic needs. Often, this doesn’t include school supplies. Our solution: Give supplies to our students.  Better yet, leave little gifts for them that build their identity.  I left you that decorated notebook because I see you are a writer.  Here is a book that reminded me of you.  These colored pencils will be great as you work on being an illustrator.  These gifts all send a message that I notice and believe in you. 

Working with agency and feeling that your work matters and can have an impact is at the heart of true learning.  It has been a challenge, but we have found ways to build agency into our school day.  We invite you to try out some of the things that have worked for us or try out something you have thought up. Together, we can keep the light of agency burning in our classrooms. 

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 Posted on February 24, 2022 by

 Agency, Literacy, Teacher Burnout

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You’re Safe

Think about a time when you had to do something complex. You have a plan, you know what it is you want to do, and you are ready to go. Now think about how that scenario would go if someone else was watching you. It’s a little different, right? Fear is real. Professional teachers learn quickly that their teaching will be on display from time to time. It is meant to help us reflect and grow. However, it is also tied to an evaluative end. We have skin in the game, so how do we get comfortable with discomfort? It ‘s one thing to feel uncomfortable, but we can power through it if we can set-up some conditions for a safe learning environment. 

A condition for safety is coming to mutual respect. When we focus on our strengths and use positive language overcoming those nervous feelings becomes a natural part of the process. Complex work, like teaching, requires so much risk because there are so many facets that go into planning.  Being uncertain about what another person believes about you, your values, or your performance undermines potential. However, we can take some control to feel safe. This is how it can be done:

  1. Know how to make your curriculum relevant to the real work of students.
  2. Have a deep understanding of how to support students’ developmental needs.
  3. Go into each lesson with a clear intention, with an array of potential outcomes. 

What’s true for us, is true for kids. Consider how you are creating a safe environment for your students to take risks. What would that look like in your classroom? We show students we believe in them by the way we speak to them, the way we show them respect and the kinds of expectations we set for them.  If we just look at what they can do we cannot go wrong. We are teaching them that they are safe, respected, valued, and only then will they take the really big risks

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 Posted on January 15, 2020 by

 Agency, Belief, Education, Identity

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Our Students Amaze Us

We wanted to start this week by sharing how our students amaze us. We make it our practice to celebrate kids each and every day.  These are some things we observed our students doing today.

  • Yaakov finished his math problems and saw that another classmate was struggling. He quickly scooted over and asked if he could lend a hand.  Sitting side by side, he modeled and prompted ways to try it out. He took on the role of teacher as he taught his classmate how to do the subtraction work and even gave him a tool (number line) to help him out.
  • Olivia was engrossed in writing a letter about her favorite book Ivy and Bean. She wasn’t sure how she wanted to end her letter to get the biggest impact. 

Amalia eagerly offered to listen to her letter and gave her feedback on whether she should end with a question or a sound effect. Together the girls decided that a question at the end was just the thing the letter needed.

  • The children entered the classroom and gathered around the hermit crab. After the crowd dispersed Jake stayed back to talk to Alex who had many questions about what a hermit crab needs to grow bigger and stronger.  Jake has several hermit crabs as pets and spent some time answering Alex’s questions and helping him grow his knowledge about our classroom pet.
  • Kira came skipping down the hallway holding hands with a teary eyed kindergartener. I said, “Good morning” and she told me how she saw this girl crying on her way to class and she told her she would walk her down.  The girl smiled and said, “Kira is my new friend.”

These are just a few highlights of the generous and beautiful things that are happening every day in our classroom.  It would be easy to miss these moments, to get caught up in everything else that is going on around us. We choose to notice and to celebrate.

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 Posted on January 14, 2020 by

 Agency, Collaboration, Education

Just What They Needed

Sometimes someone else can see things that we take for granted. Having the benefit of a fresh perspective at something that has become an ordinary practice, reminds us of the ongoing importance of making agency a reality. Jill works as an Adjunct Professor at a college on Long Island. As part of this work, she opens up her second grade classroom to both student observers and  student teachers. Today was one of those days, Jill welcomed a bright engaged student observer to come spend the day with her class.  

The reading lesson was to use a reader’s notebook as a tool to help support the work of  keeping track of longer books. The students are experimenting with different ways to take notes to keep track of the setting, characters and their feelings, thoughts, actions, and to follow a story’s problems and solutions. The class was engaged, and Jill and her student observer were circulating the room. First they noticed a boy who was making a list of the setting, a question followed, “Is it important to know the sequence of when each setting was introduced?” The boy decided on numbering the settings and it turned out they were not in sequence. Now we know something important about this student. There were many students who were keeping track of their reading in many ways. 

At the end of every lesson, there is a time to share and reflect on the learning that happened.. Jill asked her students if they would like to come up and show their classmates how they are using their notebooks and other tools to do this work.  Volunteers eagerly raised their hands and excitement grew. Now was their chance to share their strategies with others. One by one, they came up and shared all the many ways they recorded their thinking using post its, sketches of the changes in the setting and character diagrams showing all they have learned.  Each way so unique to the child and their way of learning.

While children are sharing their work, strategies, thinking or tips, Jill dipped in and out prompting and questioning to help children make connections to real life learning.  Questions like, “How did they help you as a reader today?” or “How does this strategy help you to better understand the book?” or “So you did… and then you understood…” This language was generous and inclusive, she did not tell students what to say. Instead she asked them questions or mirrored their words back to them. 

 After the lesson was done, the student observer shared her surprise at the levels of student ownership, and how interesting it was to see each child’s approach. This less directive approach proved to be just what the students needed and this was a great surprise to her. These practices of giving students: a tool, a suggestion, or even just a positive nod was enough. Better than enough – just what they needed to take on the work themselves.

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 Posted on January 11, 2020 by

 Belief, Collaboration, Education

A Means to An End

Teachers are being inundated with a need to collect data. Data is important because it is meant to inform day-to-day teaching. That looks like an examination of student writing, rubrics, checklists, and anecdotal notes that are driven by close “kidwatching”  inside the instructional day. Yet teachers are often faced with the need to collect data in a sequential way, to plot growth on a graph. When plotting numeric scores on a graph becomes the “thing of importance” many times that score is relating to oversimplified disconnected academic tasks that can be completed quickly and that do not require deep thinking. The problem is there is no quick fixes when it comes to transferable learning. 

To understand what students can do we need to gauge growth within authentic learning situations. That looks like:

  • There is a student in my classroom who is reading below grade level expectations. 
  • I decide to provide an intervention in my classroom: Guided Reading 3 times a week for six to eight weeks. . 
  • My progress monitoring is the RR that triggered the need for intervention and subsequent Running Records throughout the process. Those along with my anecdotal notes are the progress monitoring data. 
  • At the end of the cycle reflect and refine my practice to see if it worked, or if something needs to change, or if I need some help to come up with a different approach. 

When teachers are collecting formative data like running records and anecdotal notes they are capturing the intricial features of what the reading process is and what it is to  transfer learning. In the end the whole purpose is to actually read in the real world. To learning something it has to connect real life experience. Responsive teaching is driven by real interactions with students. It is not a form, a chart, a graph. We need to be careful not to oversimplify the process in service of a number, a level, a cut-points. Everything we do as teachers is in service to our students’ developmental needs. 

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 Posted on January 10, 2020 by

 Agency, Belief, Collaboration, Education

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Jill’s class is currently celebrating a reading unit of study where they learned how to grow personal knowledge about a topic.  One intention Jill had going into the unit was to share control of the learning with her students. Another intention was to create experiences where her students could work with more independence.There were a few little tweaks to traditional practices that made this possible:

  • Instead of assigning, or limiting choices for topics, allow students free choice. Let them decide what they will study. 
  • Instead of controlling every aspect of the unit, allow students  to take ownership of their work throughout the unit.  
  • Instead of being fixed with potential products for the unit, allow creativity to bloom and take full advantage of the high levels of students’ motivation.  

Jill decided to embrace the plethora of opportunities that choice, ownership, and flexibility affords. All of which, made students’ learning more meaningful, relevant, and fun.  Here is a description of how we did it.

Getting Setup to Learn: We let students tour the library and gather books on a topic they’re interested in. They made their own text set. The work focused on finding  support for the books they chose that are outside their instructional band. If you try this, you may make recommendations of books to include in the text sets afterwards, “Look what I found, would this go with your topic? I was thinking about you when I saw this book.” 

Intentional Reading: Then it was time to read and explore the books. Students were able to make decisions as to what books remained in their text sets or what books were removed.  

Collaborative Work: Children invited other students to share their text sets. Some text sets started to be merged, or expanded to include each others. So for example Aine was reading books about pandas, and her friend Olivia was reading books about mammals. They decided to work together on a piece about animal babies. Chris was reading about sharks, and La’Nyah was reading about sea creatures and then they decided to work collaboratively. 

Creating an Action Plan: Culminated into museum pieces. They are getting ready to teach visitors about their topics. There is an option to work independently or collaboratively with a partner. They firm up their text sets combining and discarding texts to make their text sets reflect their topics they’re going to teach about. 

Planning for Transfer: Now they mark up their text sets to pull the information that they plan on teaching. Then they have a choice as to how they will share: a speech, a poster, book, sign, did they want to act it out, do a dance, create a physical model or structure, or if they thought of something different that’s ok too. This is the time of year when teachers will tell you, “Students’ energy is off the charts!” We certainly agree!  Many students are very excited to spend this special time with their families and friends.The result is that many children are often restless and unfocused. However, this is not the case this week in Jill’s class. Children are engaged, and intentional because they are happy in their work.  Meaningful work, is a very gratifying thing for us all. 

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 Posted on December 19, 2019 by

 Agency, Belief, Education, Learning

Being That Teacher You Decide

This post is dedicated to our friend and mentor, Dr. Mary Howard. She inspires us everyday to move our practices from “Good to Great”.  Mary, who believes in the potential for all children and works tirelessly to encourage us to be worthy of them.

Jenn, Mary, Jill

After years of working with very young children one thing we can say for sure is that childhood is full of complexity. Children are learning about everything. They are not just learning how to read (which is really hard to do), or how to be problem solvers in math (have you seen how math has changed?). They are also learning how to be more emotionally secure, how to be independent. Yes, in their world that may be how to ride safely on the bus, how to manage a backpack, or even how to get along with others in the lunchroom. Think about everything children learn in comparison to us adults. It’s astounding. 

So when teachers use words like our “low students” they are not honoring all who their students are and hope to be. When any student is denied access to more sophisticated work, they are being robbed of opportunities and may be missing out on important entry points into their learning process. When this happens, teachers are making assumptions and in doing so are most likely creating significant gaps that will be extremely difficult to fill. Why do some educators do this to kids?  Teachers care deeply about students so it just doesn’t make sense. Maybe they do it because students don’t meet their expectations for where they “ought” to be. Maybe they do it because they feel so much pressure to get high scores. We understand that pressure, all kinds of people analyze our data. Maybe they call kids “low” or refer to them as letters, or numbers from a misguided understanding of data and its role in school. We don’t know. One thing we do know for sure, it’s a problem, if we are discussing a child and we are not using the child’s name. 

Good to Great

In the end, does the answer to the question, why, really matter? What matters most is that we put a stop to it. Make a vow with us here today, I will not refer to my students as “low”. I will respect them and acknowledge all of their accomplishments and I will not let my own fear of failure get in their way.  We all have to believe in them if we are going to teach to make a positive impact. Yes, acknowledge the hard work that has to be done, but do that work by leveraging their strengths. There is always something to hold onto and celebrate. Be that teacher, the one who trusts in students’ abilities and hopes for the future.

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 Posted on December 17, 2019 by

 Agency, Collaboration, Education, Identity, Students

Just Keep Swimming

Fix a problem, fix a problem, fix a problem. There are so many needs and we care so much about our students. The attachment is real, and we want the best possible learning environment for them. There is a lot we can control to make a positive impact but there really are things that make negative impacts. Maybe some children don’t have what they need, maybe we don’t share beliefs with some of our colleagues, maybe there isn’t enough time to do everything we think needs to get done. When we feel this way, it almost feels like we are drowning. The work ahead is so big that we don’t always see the progress because we’re up to our elbows in the work. This is us losing perspective.

We are human, and when people are stressed, focus narrows. If we only see the needs  in front of us we can’t appreciate the growth. That is compounded when sometimes it seems as though the people all around us have it all under control everything is light and airy and they just don’t seem to share the same sense of urgency. We have to ask ourselves, what’s wrong? There is so much pressure when instruction is rooted in authentic learning experiences and we are teaching for transfer for higher level thinking, and then we are held to these assessments that don’t match up to the methods of instruction. It doesn’t feel good to worry about not  having the results you want when you work so hard.

We know it’s not our job to “fix” our students they don’t need fixing. The goal of our instruction is to help students become more confident, and to build up their identity as learners.  There is nothing wrong with us – we just care a lot. Step away from the stress and open up to listening to another’s perspective! Sometimes we need people who aren’t in the day-to-day work inside the classroom, because they can more easily see evidence of the growth students are making.This is how we maintain a more balanced view of things. Finding people who share our values. People who are expert listeners and who help us with the reflection process makes a huge difference.  We are not so different than our students we have needs too and the same thing that helps our students will help us. Find people who believe in you.

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 Posted on December 13, 2019 by

 Agency, Belief, Collaboration, Education

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Celebrate the Product Honor the Process

We are teachers and we want to make our students’ work shine. Whenever we come to the end of a unit we celebrate, so it’s natural to want to put students’ work in the best possible light. In an effort to make their work look polished and finished, it can be easy to get hyper focused on the end product, or to follow only one line of focus. When this happens we could potentially lose opportunities for some important learning along the way.  Learning for transfer is steeped in feedback and reflection, so if we just made a beautiful product like an oral presentation, or piece of writing, we want to be careful not to separate it from its process.  

We are all for a finished product, we want students to be proud of their efforts – that is very important. However, we get into trouble if we decide to interfere with the level of their work in an effort to make it “look good”. Once we start down that road the product begins to reflect us not the students. We are asserting our power and by doing so diminishing theirs. Instead, we see an end product as the beginning for what comes next. A finished product is like a blip on a line graph. It’s a representation of a  moment in time in this child’s school year, and should be celebrated for its own merit. Really, an evaluation of the end product gives us lots of information to carry forward to help students understand that learning is a process.  

Students are sharing their real life solutions for everyday problems followed by a good conversation as to how these solutions worked, what they liked, how they came up with solutions, or other possible solutions.

The way to make these products more powerful is to seed them with feedback and reflective practice. In doing so we are hitting three important elements:

  1. We are putting the “audience” in an active stance during a celebratory share of their classmate’s work. When we ask students to evaluate, to connect, or question what was shared we are teaching them how to be responsive learners.    
  2. We are honoring the process of those students who created the product. Teaching children how to offer and receive feedback is essential. Students quickly learn their work matters and is not just a “one and done” scenario. Instead, this pushes learners to consider what else they can do, or gain insight for new goals. 
  3. We are growing reflective practices that will extend learning for each child so they may see things through another’s perspective. What was the impact of my work? How do I know? What worked? What could be changed?

If we decide to celebrate finished work by honoring the process we open our students up to a  beautiful experience. Instead of just waiting for their turn to share they are giving feedback and are actually learning from their peers! When we encourage children to be reflective we are deepening their learning so that they may grow more insightful and self-assured. 

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 Posted on December 11, 2019 by

 Agency, Education

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