AVReading

  I am sometimes profoundly moved by the wisdom of my students.  I recall one student who once told me she was taught growing up that, “We can run faster alone, but we can run farther together.”  With that simple exchange, my thinking around community and collaboration totally changed.               Under the idea of constructivism, this all makes sense.  Students can try to learn the concepts and skills we give them on their own.  A teacher can assign readings and papers and projects, and expect students to process these lessons and learn in their own little silos of thinking, and they can move pretty quickly. They do not have to wait up for slower moving, less motivated or distracted peers.  They just get the work and move on to the next lesson.              Yet, there are so many limitations to this way of lea...

As a young teacher, I remember visiting the classrooms of my mentors and being awed by their ability to lead the group rather effortlessly through a learning experience.  On a superficial level, I was impressed by the attentiveness and orderliness of the group.  Students did not talk out of turn, they had their materials ready, they had thoughtful things to say. It felt just like a scene from Dead Poets Society or even Harry Potter where nearly all of the classroom scenes reflected a very eager or (at the very least) a very compliant collection of students.              Unfortunately, my observations were entirely misguided.  For starters, my data set was limited to fictional classrooms or-- in the event of my mentors-- Honors and AP classes where the level of participation  is different from the average on-level or intervention class, which I was much more likely to teach.  Furthe...

  As a society, collaboration and community does not come very easily for us.  So much of our cultural narrative is built upon the idea that people just have to tough it out on their own.  If you want to make it in this world, you have got to take matters into your own hands and power through.  You can’t depend on others, and anyone who does not do their share is simply a freeloader.  Additionally, we are not very trusting.  We are more likely to be suspicious of our peers than we are to engage them in conversation, or get to know them.  In fact in the classroom, “creating community” which too often is lumped in with “collaboration” is more often than not dreaded by students.  Inevitably, students complain about the ugly side of group work where one or two participants end up doing a disproportionate amount of the work.              Students also come to class with his...

  On occasion, I have had one of those classes where there is just one personality in the room who seems to bring the group together.  It is a rare and beautiful phenomenon to behold.  For those students who are especially good at it, they can somehow create a mood or atmosphere within the room just by being a willing and interested participant in the activities and then by some wonderful sense of energy can bring along most of the class with them.               Those students are exceptional and they truly do make the learning experience seem much more effortless.  Aside from the personality of that individual, the truly significant factor is the willingness of the group to buy-in to the class or to participate and engage.  A particularly skilled teacher can also have this effect.               The truth is that...

  It is important to recognize that there is a difference between being a reflective practitioner and someone who becomes overwhelmed by their thoughts, fears, and anxieties.  While there is a time when we need to let ourselves “be in our feelings” and to experience those emotions of pain and fear, productive reflection requires that we also bring a little more structure and intentionality to our thinking and meditations.   The psychological term for excessive contemplation of oneself is called rumination.  It is the mental process whereby someone ponders a past or future event until their emotional response has grown disproportionately to the impact of the original thought. Some people refer to it as a mental “rabbit hole.”  Rumination is not abnormal, especially for teachers.  Consider the many times you have driven home as you mentally replayed an event from the day.  You likely spent a good amount of time revisiting the mom...

  I am often caught off guard by what I do not know.  For as much as I try to humbly enter each day with the understanding that I am still learning, there is that part of me that just assumes I already know what there is to know about the world around me.  And yet, I regularly learn that I simply do not have a clue -- in some cases it probably is a willful cluelessness.             About a year ago, I was in a meeting with a group of educators when I used the phrase, “Well, let’s just  call a spade a spade and tell them what we truly think.”  It was a phrase I had grown up with and had read and used through the years.  And as soon as I said it, my colleague who is a person of color called me out on it.  “Actually, Scott.  You need to check that phrase.  It has a pretty oppressive history.”  It was a humbling moment.  It took me by absolute surprise, but after...

  As part of our   yearlong study on being reflective practitioners, our emphasis this month is on honesty.   A regular downside to self reflection is that we tend to be less than honest with our assessments.  It is just really hard to acknowledge some truths or realities that might exist in our worlds because they can totally shake the foundations of what we might believe or think.               This is especially true when we begin to consider constructs like race and how schools have maintained systems of power that disproportionately target students of color.  Being honest, in this sense, means that white teachers (like myself) have to perpetually acknowledge the way our whiteness has not only benefited us, but the way it has influenced the way we see race.  And the same can be said for our understanding of class, gender, and ableness as well.  It is not as though ...

 Here is the presentation where you can find our four "take away" activities:  Paired Readings, Effect / Cause Graphic Organizer, Claim / Evidence Inference, and Word Play.

  I make so many mistakes throughout the course of any given day that I often wonder if I am doing more harm than good.               Each morning as I walk to school, I ask to be an instrument of love, mercy, and compassion, not an instrument of pain and hurt.    I am continually working to forgive and in some cases “ask for forgiveness.”  A while back, I took the rather rare step of removing one young man from my 5th hour class for the day.  My finesse skills are usually much better, and I like to employ other tools than removal.  But on this particular day, I told the young man, “You need to leave.”  He clearly was not pleased, but I insisted that he must go and that we would talk about this later.  The incident sat in my head for the rest of the day and even as I fell asleep that night.  The next morning, I was walking the halls on another task, and I bum...

  Beyond just the value of writing ourselves into understanding, written reflection can also serve as important information for our future selves.    Remember, we tend to recall the things we like and bury the things we don’t.  So a written record of our lives in the classroom keeps us more honest about our shortcomings and mistakes. I recall a reflection I had written at the end of one year that stated, “Your failure rates were much higher this year.  I think that you could have been more proactive and consistent with your calls home.  Those have historically been an effective tool in addressing students who are not handing in work.”  In this case, I am much less likely to make that mistake again.  Additionally, had I not returned to that reminder six months later, I’m not sure I would have caught it.    Sometimes it is painful to re-read those past reflections.  Honestly, re-living some of those memories c...