Day 27: Let Go In Order To Grow

Prompt: How to Build a More Powerful Classroom by Letting Go

On Friday, my most difficult class of 9th graders came into class and one young woman was all fired up.  She was going to get into it with a young man.  The tension was palpable.  As they began trading barbs, I stepped in and asked the young woman to walk down to our social work office to cool down and check in with someone there.  I knew she would be pissed at me.  I had to let that go.  Kids get over things.  What I couldn't let go was what it would mean if the two kids got into a fight in my classroom and one or both got suspended... on a Friday.  So, the student grabbed her things, and headed out ready to work independently for the period.  Class went on as planned and I had a surprise informal observation, of course!  Isn't that always the way.  Letting go...

Being a good teacher is often about picking moments to dig in and moments to step aside and let something else run a  course.  Some classes are so fantastic at things like leading conversations, accountable talk, project based learning.  Others need lots of hand holding, micro managing, sentence starters, and guided notes.  No matter what the group, I eventually need to get out of their way and let them lead, learn, grow.  It's not my job to control or manage each moment of each day.  School is organic and amazing things can happen when I get out of MY own way.

This morning, I stopped by Guidance and that very student who had to step out to avoid the fight was sitting there. I didn't know if something else had happened, but either way-she was not in class.  She was sitting with two of our Social Work interns so I pulled up a chair next to her, not before catching that daggers she shot at me with her eyes when I came in the room.  I spent a few minutes talking with her, asking questions like that would eventually lead us through a dialogue about why teachers have to make choices like the one I did on Friday in order to protect our students and that I watched the boy pushing her just to get a response because he knows she has a short fuse.  I also asked her about the work she did, questions she had and asked her to come in for tutoring tomorrow after school and that was that.

I few minutes later I got an email from one of the interns who had been sitting at the table: 

You are the only teacher that comes in and talks with students like that and it's amazing. It's so hard to tell the kids they had to leave cause the teacher cares [about them] when the teacher's not there. I greatly appreciate your being.

Over the years, I have learned to let go, to get out of the way and grow with my students with each choice we make.  I could have easily not gone to talk with the student and she would have come into my class this Thursday, still mad and not understanding my decision and seeing it as a punishment.   But I didn't and we both grow as a result.

Post 11: Reading??? #AprilBlogADay Challenge

Prompt 11: What are you reading? Professionally or Personally? And if you aren't reading right now, why?

Growing up I loved reading serials- The Baby Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin, in high school I discovered Armistead Maupin's Tales of The City.  There were novels I enjoyed too: Pigs in Heaven and Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver and Their Eyes Were Watching God by ZN Hurston and A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (which I struggled through but went to the library and listened to all 18 hours on cassette tape and cried at the end).  I know that reading these books growing up had a huge impact on my thinking on narrative and telling stories.  

As I have gotten older, the more I come to terms with the fact that I am not the best reader. I know all the propaganda we teachers use: good readers make better writers.  The more you read the more exposed you will be to big ideas that guide and challenge global leaders and historical events. I don't disagree. I read, but most of the reading I do is sporadic and/or for pleasure (I love romance novels). I have been very honest with students (in AP) this year about knowing one's strengths and when one is is not as strong at something how we develop the skills to push through: the cultural collateral of the cannon. Meaning- I learned to read but didn't really enjoy it until college.  It was in graduate school where I finally came to understand, through  Maureen Barbieri (at NYU) and the works of Nancy Atwell, that when readers select what they read, and are given permission to put a book down if they don't like it, they will own their reading and have great success.  In my teaching career I have never been able to teach a course where students get to read for pleasure.  My favorite English class was in 10th grade, when my teacher, Ms. Van Zwol, designed a course where we were able to select the novels we read.  They had to fall into specific categories and had to be approved.  We also had to do culminating writing at the end of each novel.  I remember more from that year than almost any other.  The power of choice (and of fiction) is something missing from HS ELA today. 

All that said, while I have a pile of books waiting to be read (The Martian by Andy Weir is at the top followed by the first book in the Outlander series.) I do love to write and I know that is my strength.  It always has been but I push myself to read because the love the feeling of finishing a book, seeing the journey and how a book feels in my hand.