On Thursday, February 21, 2019, Donalynn Miller and Colby Sharp, creators of the #NerdyBookClub and successful authors, were first time guest hosts on the #G2Great chat about their book, Game Changer: Book Access for All Kids.
Interest and excitement was off the charts due to our rock star authors and because of the topic: Books and Access for ALL Kids! Many themes surfaced during the chat, but this post is going to focus on three. Three big themes that apply to ALL students at ALL ages and in ALL communities: Access, Choice, and Equity as well as focus reflection questions to guide future actions.
Book Access in ALL Classrooms
In order to be readers, students need access to books in their classrooms. Access in all classrooms – not just English Language Arts classrooms. How many books? Some authors suggest up to 2,000 books. Take inventory. Consider which books students are actually reading. Then gather books from the school media center, public library or inter-library loan systems during particular curricular studies to supplement your library as a bonus for all students.
Reflection Questions: a) What if every classroom in our school had a class library, whether it was ELA, math, science, art, music or PE, provided and provisioned by the school?
b) What if students had access to a reading class at every grade level in school?
Book Access in the Media Center and to a Librarian
Classroom libraries provide immediate access for books for students, but even the best classroom libraries can be supported with rich media centers and full-time librarians. How extensive is the media center collection? How are new books chosen? Displayed? How does the media center support the curricular needs of all content areas? What policies and routines are in place to maximize student access to books? Are students restricted in the number of books they can have checked out at one time? Are students allowed to go to the media center one day per week or cycle?
Reflection Question: What policies, procedures and practices increase student access to our media center and which ones do we need to STOP because they are counterproductive?
Book Access at the Public Library
School book access can be supplemented with access to book collections at the approximately 9,000 public libraries across the U.S. Variations exist from community to community in the basic requirements for library cards. This may include forms of identification, proof of residency, or references before a card will be issued. The ability to use public transportation to physically access the library may also be a hinderance. Other access issues may include the hours that the library is open – are those outside the school/work day? Is there a limit on the number of books that can be checked out? Another consideration with public libraries may be the school staff’s normalization of the use of the public library. Do school staff routinely use the public library to extend their collections? Do teachers routinely share their use with students? Is public use of the library seamless and easy to access for all patrons?
Reflection Question: Have we had whole staff conversations about the complementary services of our public library?
Book Access at Home
Access to books cannot be limited to the six or seven hours per day that students are at school. Reading is a habit – for life – not just for school.
“Research suggests that children whose parents have lots of books are nearly 20 percent more likely to finish college. Indeed, as a predictor of college graduation, books in the home trump the education of the parents. Even a child who hails from a home with 25 books will, on average, complete two more years of school than would a child from a home without any books at all. (Evans, M. D., Kelley, J., Sikora, J., & Treiman, D. J. (2010). Family scholarly culture and educational success: Books and schooling in 27 nations. Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, 28(2), 171-197.)
Access to books in the summer through books from school or public libraries can help prevent “summer slide” and continue to develop life-time reading habits. Year-round book access is critical.
Reflection Question: Who is coordinating conversations with families so our message is coherent across all grade levels and buildings and also HELPFUL for families?
Book Access in the Community
Students need access to books everywhere and anytime in the community. Access to rich texts that they want to read, that compel them to read, and that result in conversation with peers and adults is vital. Books need to be visible everywhere in the community as well as available year-round in order to fill in summer, school breaks, and holiday access gaps from schools.
Reflection Question: How have we initiated conversations with our community stakeholders to increase access?
Students deserve to choose what they are reading. Force-feeding specific texts day after day, year after year equates reading as a chore. Not fun. Not pleasurable. Not enjoyable. And then, of course, not likely to be sustained outside the school day. Nice collections of engaging, relevant books on shelves may look good, but just admiring books is not enough! Books need to be read in order to be savored and thoughtfully digested. And the best books are the books that students choose to read themselves. You have already read about access, but another feature of choice is time . . . Time to read. Not just reading “when your work is done.” But instead, time that is regularly scheduled when students are reading a book of their own choice.
Reflection Question: How do we ensure that students have choice in their book selection as well as time to read?
Equity means several things. One meaning would be ensuring that all the access issues above are “equitable”. Not equal. Equitable. A second meaning is beyond students “getting what they need” but that students deserve to see themselves in the books that they have available as reading choices. Teachers and librarians need to know the authors and books that represent their students and families in their community. How does one collect the diverse books that are needed? #diversebooks is one source.
Reflection Question: What do we as a staff know and believe about equity, what sources do all staff use, and then how are those sources communicated?
Another reliable source is diversebooks.org
https://diversebooks.org/resources/where-to-find-diverse-books/
What was the purpose behind Game Changer?
Meaningful and consistent access to books.
Reading . . . What is it good for?
Absolutely everything!
You may remember this video from Ocoee Middle School in 2009 that has had 883,395 views: Gotta Keep Reading. How do we keep that passion for reading? How do we encourage a love of reading?
It truly takes ALL of us working together as a literacy community!
Why was this extra special for #G2Great?
This chat was extra special because you can find both Dr. Mary Howard and our newest team member, Valinda Kimmel, in Game Changer! This book needs to be physically present and discussed in every school building across the country.
Where will you begin? How will you change the system?
Teacher leadership is an integral and often under recognized role in our schools. The leverage and impact that a teacher as a leader has on their local school community (not to mention the larger community) is powerful. Still – so many people do not see the power that affects change and comes from within the teaching profession.
Often times, the informal roles that teacher leaders take on can have great impact because their colleagues listen and follow an unappointed, but natural leader. Sometimes it is the quiet action, sometimes it is the consistent action. Always being a professional and a learner, taking on challenges, showing up early, being there for others, sharing their work, opening their classroom door to share with colleagues, sharing reflective thoughts, speaking up at faculty meetings, and sharing ideas that work for the greater good – free of ego. Teachers have an incredible impact on the culture of a building as well as the greater educational community near and far. These informal roles, when nurtured have the potential to lead a culture of positivity in a school, creating a school where students are ultimately achieving more. We know from John Hattie’s research that collective teacher efficacy has the greatest effect size on student achievement. We cannot deny the impact that teacher leaders have on this idea that teachers collectively believe they impact student learning.
Teachers who take on an informal role can do that as a teaching partner, someone who others value and offers insight or a place for reflection. Teachers can help to support the shared vision across a school and by establishing different formal roles in addition to the informal roles can help to develop and nurture those who are inclined for leadership.
Great leaders create leaders
It is important to create an environment that grows and nurtures teachers as leaders. This starts by leaders with titles such as district leaders, building leaders, and literacy coaches modeling leadership behaviors. As the leadership behaviors are modeled it allows others to join in, perhaps in more informal and often times more impactful ways.
Great leaders identify, develop and nurture other leaders. They truly understand the message from Eleanor Roosevelt, “We do well when we all do well.” It is simply no longer enough when we work alone, in our classroom silos. We need to work together in our schools and we need to find those teachers who have the passion to take on the challenge in teacher leadership. Once we can do this we can we rise together, stronger than before and then only then – we will have a greater collective impact on our students.
Conversations? Thread? Engaged? Across the Curriculum? Where would the #G2Great chat focus on January 24th, 2019? Talk is typically either a conversation or discussion while a conversation is often defined as an expression and exchange of individual ideas through talking with other people (back and forth comments). The topic is broad, but the questions led to a laser-like focus on students and their learning. As I read through the Wakelet archive, the early ads, and the quotes, several themes emerged.
WHY?
This is an important question that we often seem to address, because without a ‘Why?’ as a focus, we would be adrift. And so an image from Liz Masi (TCRWP Staff Developer) in my Twitter Feed on Friday kept circling in my brain. Workshop, whether reading or writing, has long served as one instructional model that minimizes whole group instruction and maximizes student productivity in terms of time to work . . . talk, and thinking. How does the structure of a 10 – 12 minute mini-lesson in a 60 minute learning workshop do that? A mini-lesson is focused on one teaching point. And that teaching point has a Why? a What? and a How? as shown here.
Liz Masi @lizreadswrites
And the organizational structure for my post was found!
Tweets from the chat that support the WHY:
WHAT?
Talk and Conversation is oral communication. Time spent talking can spark new ideas, convey understanding, clarify misunderstandings, capture in-the-moment thinking, and consolidate learning. But to be both effective and efficient in classrooms today, who is doing the talking? Is it the teacher? The students? Or a combination of both?
Peter Johnston provided many examples of how language affects learning in Choice Words. Attention to both skills and relationships increases the effectiveness of talk. Teachers and students can refer to his research to consider how to deepen learning to arrive at the ultimate transfer goal.
I was fascinated by some research studies that I quickly found through Google Scholar where Teacher Talk Time (TTT) was studied both qualitatively and quantitatively. Aha! Would descriptors lead to deeper understanding? Would there be recommended times or allotments? Like many research efforts, I was left with more questions unanswered. What would define quality teacher talk? What would define quality student talk? How would teachers and students agree? How should time be allocated?
Tweets from our chat that support the WHAT:
HOW?
How will we ensure that conversational threads are established across the day in all classrooms? An initial data point could be student and teacher perceptions of classroom talk. In terms of percentages, what percentage of time is spent on Teacher Talk, Teacher-Student Talk, and Student Talk? A comparison of perception to an actual coding of classroom instruction could verify that perceptual data. Then the discussion could move to whether a change is needed (significantly higher Student Talk than Teacher Talk) or if the status quo is meeting the needs of the learners or the values (the Why?) of the organization. If a change is needed, more information, more study, proposed actions, goal setting . . . all of these could be considered.
Tweets from our chat that support the HOW:
I would be remiss if I didn’t remind readers of another powerful source, Kara Prantikoff’s Teaching Talk: A Practical Guide to Fostering Student Thinking and Conversationhighlighted in this May 18, 2017, #G2Great chat and blog post. This text is a “must have” for teachers who intend to expand student talk as it is grounded in the research, pedagogy, assessment tools, formats, and reflection methods that enhance instruction.
WHY?
Returning to the beginning. . .
The whole point of increasing the quantity and quality of student talk is not about adding in more interrogations or teacher questioning and student answering sessions. A thoughtful review of existing conditions is required. Are students provided time to have conversations, both planned and spontaneous, across the day? Are conversations only allowed after the “teacher is done talking”? Where is the balance in student work and talk? Does it make a difference if you use a “Gradual Release of Responsibility” or if you have a “collaborative classroom”?
Under the “Gradual Release of Responsibility”, teacher talk is not the major focus of time. In many classrooms, Teacher Talk may be be 30-40% of the time with some students then working in small groups or partnerships for a bigger percentage of the time. However, some students may need more support so a “one size fits all” model is never required. And yet a key for this is the fact that the support can and should come from peers. Teachers do not have to provide all the affirmations or answers. Collaborative classrooms provide space and security for students to work together and talk. Collaboration skills and practice are important across the curriculum and the entire day. Learning classrooms are buzzing with conversation. The old maxim, “Students should be seen, not heard” should be the very opposite of classrooms of today. Tables and conversational areas should be strategically placed in classrooms to invite conversations, deepen learning, and create threads of understanding and thinking that permeate the entire learning day.
So what?
My kids are learning; I know they are!
If you have made it this far, I would now challenge you to reflect on your own classroom practices. Check your data on the amount of time that you TALK in your classroom. Start with your teaching point. Do you deliver those three sentences in less than one minute? Does it take you five minutes? If so, you may be working with teaching chapters instead of teaching points. Maybe you need a more specific focus that allows you to explicitly teach one piece at a time.
If we go back to the beginning and the mini-lesson example, that whole class instruction based on Teacher Talk is tightly focused for approximately 10-12 minutes. That is 1 / 6 th of an hour; sixty minutes. So what does that really look like across the day? If you have an 8 period class day, that would mean that you would really only have about 80 minutes of Teacher Talk Time across the day. Who’s Really Doing the Work? The Teacher? Or the Students? Who needs to be doing the talking work? How do we know who is doing the work? Who needs to be creating those conversational threads across the day?
Now What?
Where will you begin? Where will your exploration start? The quality of Teacher Talk Time? The amount of Teacher Talk Time? The quality of Student Talk Time? The amount of Student Talk Time? Student Talk time totally initiated by students to meet their needs with ZERO teacher supervision. Choose your burning question, develop a plan, and improve the dreary winter months by increasing conversational threads across the day!
I was honored for the opportunity to write our post this week so I dug into this beautiful book with great fervor to prepare. But as I read, I began to worry that I couldn’t possibly capture his brilliant cover to cover thinking. I realized that the only person who could do this post justice was the person who penned those mesmerizing words in the first place. Luckily, Cornelius graciously agreed to an interview and in typical Mary style, I excitedly crafted eleven interview questions and emailed them to him.
On a quiet early Saturday morning from my hotel room in Phoenix Arizona, I joined Cornelius in Google Hangout. I was instantly enraptured listening to his words and the sounds of his children playing in the background. As soon as I asked my first question and listened intently to heartfelt honesty, I realized that his words could take center stage and that the questions would simply follow his lead. And so here are the words verbatim that reduced me to tears within minutes on a lovely early morning interview I will forever hold dear.
As I read Kwame Alexander’s beautiful foreword for your book, I felt transported back in time to the annual International Literacy Association (ILA) Conference two years ago when you led a quiet room filled with love and hope. I can’t help but wonder if a seed for this book was planted that day. How did that experience impact you in writing this book?
CORNELIUS
I think it was the seed actually germinating. The seed has been planted forever. Like I’ve always been this guy. One could argue that I’ve inherited a lot of this work from my ancestors. So really the seed was planted when the first African was brought in chains to the United States. The seed was planted when we decided that we wouldn’t give women equal pay. The seed was planted when we decided that immigrants weren’t equal to people who were born here whatever that means. The seed was planted when colonists killed the first Native American. So the seeds have been around and I am lucky enough to have inherited lots of good mentors and a lot of people have trusted me with their work. And so that room I think was me already holding the seed that so many people have given me and me being not afraid to let it grow in public.
I don’t know if you felt it, but those of us sitting in that room were soaking in all of that from you. That was a magical experience and I recall thinking in that moment how much we needed a book from you because of what you offered that room. You may not have noticed the faces as we looked around the room but they were filled with hope and love. So where did that idea of hope and love fit into this in your mind?
CORNELIUS
One of the things that I hold onto and that I’m very clear about is that hope is not a strategy. The people who are organizing against us are not hoping. They are erecting programs and policies and fundraising. I think one of the greatest tragedies is that when the good guys get together, they just tell us to hope. And so rather for me the word hope is a characteristic. Hope and love are characteristics that I want to hold on to while I’m working. But I think it’s really important, and I say it almost everywhere I go. People ask me if I’m hopeful. I am pragmatically optimistic but I do hold on to hope and love as characteristics of my work but that it must be work. The notion that we go around society telling people to hope while bad people are allowed to organize and plan just doesn’t feel right to me. And so, I always want hope to be the defining feature. I always want love to be the defining feature. When people work with Cornelius they’re like “Wow, that work, that progress that we made together felt very hopeful.” But hope alone cannot be the entirety of our work. I think that’s how the bad guys keep winning. We’ve been duped into thinking that hope and love are the entirety of our work – and they are not.
Do you feel like we’re moving in that direction in education or in the world?
CORNELIUS
You know, Mary, that’s a really tough question for me right now. Just mainly because what this book has done is that I invite all of the hard places. So, you call Cornelius when someone spray paints a swastika on the wall. You call Cornelius when there’s been a hate crime. You call Cornelius when some kid uses the N-word and offends a whole community of people. Lately I see the hardest things. I just got called by a mayor of a town and I was there last week leading a community session. Someone had spray painted racist graffiti all over the school. There had been death threats. There had been a school shooing. I mean there was all kinds of stuff. That’s where I get called into now so I see the hardest of the hard. It’s not just the literacy work. Well, it’s interesting because to me it’s all literacy work. After a hard incident, like after a school shooting or after some big graffiti goes out, it’s really easy to say, “Oh let’s all love each other.” And then we’ll get on the news and we’ll play some nice music and then we wait two weeks and we think that it’s over. But what happens is if we don’t communicate, if we don’t talk about it, these things happen again and again. Like we just hide them behind sayings or euphemisms or whatever. I always tell people that if you sweep mold under the carpet, it just grows. So, if something happens, what we do is love each other and we don’t confront the thing that happened. Then the next time that thing happens it’s going to be three times as big. That’s been my work for the last year and a half. So I do see things changing in that people are willing to talk about them, but I’m ready now to move beyond talk and move into true community engagement. And that’s much of the work that I’m leading. That’s what I was doing last week so when you engage a community, it’s really ugly because you’ve got to say, “Well here’s our truth. Here’s what happened. Here’s how we feel.” And we’ve got to create a space for people to feel. Again, I was in town last week when there was a death threat that had been made and somebody had spray painted on the bathroom wall of the school that they were going to kill all N-words on Monday so they were specific. Parents did not want to send their kids to school on Monday because this was a very credible and articulated threat. And so we had to think about how we were going to do community outreach to those parents who were most impacted. What does outreach look like to black parents vs. outreach to white parents? What does outreach look like to our Jewish parents? And then we have to do that work. We got to get on the phones. We got to call people and let them know that you’re safe here and we care about you. And then there are people who don’t want us to do that work. There are people who are like “You shouldn’t call and everybody should just come to school because it’s okay and why are those people afraid? It’s just spray paint”. And so there’s all of that. I think what happens is that the real work is not beautiful. I’m really trying to lead people through that muck in a way that is defined by hope or in a way that is characterized by love. And so I think these last few months for me have been spent not shying away from the ugly and not afraid to talk about the ugly and that’s really hard for educators. As educators we tend to want to deal in the sunny side of things, but much of our work ain’t sunny. And so how do I lead people into that work in a way that is characterized by hope and by love? That has been the question I’ve been asking myself and to be honest, Mary, I don’t know. In every town it’s a new thing. I think it is changing, but in the way that things get worse before they get better. So, a wound has to scar before it heals and right now I think we’re in the really ugly scar and it’s going to be here for a while.
Did you realize that your work was going to lead you in this direction? It sounds like this is all of the things that you’ve spent your life becoming. But did you know that you would someday start doing this important work beyond the school arena?
CORNELIUS
Well it’s kind of funny again, Mary, because it’s always been my work. One of the things I did for Heinemann is I sent them news clippings of my teenage years. This has been me for twenty-five years, You know, I’ve been doing this stuff since I was fifteen. I have a larger platform now which is like great. It’s really really exciting. But when I think about the work that I’ve always done in my hometown or when I think about the stuff that has mattered to me, it’s always been my work in a very small way. When I was fifteen, I protested my student government and I took it over and became the new president. It was like a minor coup. Then when I was eighteen I was protesting the governor and by eighteen I had spent the evening in Governor Bush’s office in Florida because I was against his policies for schools. It’s kind of been an interesting year for me. I don’t know if I told you a college roommate of mine was running for governor of Florida so it’s been an interesting year for both of us. These are people I’ve been growing up with my entire life and now that we’re forty or forty-one, the work that we’ve been doing forever is now catching the attention of people outside our communities. I didn’t know that this book would do this thing because what’s fascinating is that when you’re in the literacy world, it’s really hard to find out where you fit in. I’ve spent my last eight years with Lucy doing very disciplinary literacy and then on the side being Cornelius but in a very interesting way of doing this disciplinary work. What the book has done is effectively merge the two. That people are starting to see, and I think that people are ready to see, that disciplinary literacy has to be inclusive. That disciplinary literacy has to address nationality and race and class and gender and ability. And that’s really exciting to me. There was a time, and I even remember there were people who I love in this field, who would tell me that my work had no place in teaching. And these are people that I love. And I think it was because we didn’t have the language for it. In many ways when you’re not from a marginalized group you don’t see these things. And so I have always felt the impact of my immigrant-ness on school. I have always felt the impact of my blackness on school. I have always felt those things. But then you work in these overwhelmingly white spaces and people say race doesn’t matter here or gender doesn’t matter here and you’re like, “No it does because I’m here and I’m feeling it.” And it’s unfortunate because we think about things like our current president and I think what our current president has done has made visible all the things that marginalized people have been talking about for two generations. And it’s made it visible to everybody else. And to me that’s a crisis of literacy because people have been communicating these messages for generations but largely people haven’t been listening. Then we think about the language arts; reading writing speaking and listening. So what does it mean that we have a Shirley Chisolm that says, “This was a problem two a generations ago but nobody believes it until Trump shows up.” What does it mean that we have a Carter G Woodson who wrote the book The Mis-Education of the Negro who named this four generations ago but then nobody believes it until Betsy DeVos shows up. And to me that’s a crisis of literacy that people have been speaking – women, people of color, immigrants – but nobody has been listening. That’s a language arts problem.
Note: At this point Cornelius moved me to tears
“I’m imagining you standing in front of that classroom just like in that room at NCTE and I think that the real power is not just what you say but the way that you say it and the way that you move people. Thank you for moving me this morning.”
CORNELIUS
But it’s all of us and I think that everybody feels this way. One of the things I’m learning as a father is that you have permission to be sad and that you have permission to be excited or disappointed. We try to police kids’ emotions all the time. When my daughter gets sad I have to remember that she’s a human and that the thing that made her sad exists and she has permission to be sad. I think that as adults we’ve inherited this mindset that I don’t have permission to feel how I feel. I have a good job. I’m a teacher. I’m a leader in my community. I should not feel sad or I should not feel frustrated because I’m an adult. I think one of the things is that I hope to achieve with my work – and it goes back to that defining quality of hope and love – is that as adults I want to extend the same grace to you as an adult that I extend to my children. That when I listen to my children speak they have permission to be sad and when I listen to Mary speak, she has permission to be frustrated or sad or angry or not know the answer. And we don’t extend that grace to each other and I think that’s what I want my work to do. That I have permission to be imperfect and so do you.
I think you modeled that on the chat Cornelius. I went through and captured all of your tweets and what was amazing is that people would say something and you would respond to them with the message that it’s okay to feel that way. I think that people don’t feel like it’s okay to feel things like self-doubt or all the other things that we all struggle with. That was really amazing.
From the opening words to the closing, I got a sense that this book is YOUR heart on paper and I’m feeling like that’s true listening to you now. What “heart message’ did you hope this book would spread across the universe?
CORNELIUS
It’s complicated and I think that there’s several. One is that it’s bigger than education. Two is that even though it’s so big, we can do it. I know this sounds silly but I was like “Book?” I want them to be able to read the title that we can do it. We Got This. It’s a big message that I wanted for people. Like how can a person browsing the book store or surfing the internet who doesn’t read a single word of the book but just reads the cover leave being a better practitioner? So that’s the message, that we got this, that you are enough and I think that there’s so much in teaching that makes us feel like we’re not enough. And we are. We are. I don’t know how people have gotten to the heart of teachers and made them feel like they can’t do things. And it’s in every setting. Yesterday I was in a school. Many of the kids who were separated at the border from their parents were relocated to New York City. They have incredible trauma, incredible journeys. These people are leaving Central America and Mexico and attempting to find opportunity here and our government sends them away. These teachers are doing such important work in these schools and they are amazing. I’m just the guy who shows up and says nice things but 100% of that work is those teachers showing up every day and doing the work. But even the people who are doing the best work in the world have been made to feel like they’re not enough. So yeah, you asked me about the heart message of the book and it’s really that “You are enough.”
You mentioned the title and I’ve been wondering if there is a reason for the period at the end of We Got This. That really connected with me so is there a meaning to that?
CORNELIUS
Oh yes. That was actually one of the biggest debates in all of the writing of this book. Was it going to be a period? Was it going to be an exclamation point? Was it going to be nothing at all? My designer, Monica, actually became in very many ways a co-writer. The book is so visual that I really wanted the design to kind of make a point and I needed somebody who really understood what I was trying to do. Monica actually invented that period because it’s a definitive “IT IS.” To say We Got This [exclamation] suggests that we don’t always have it. To say We Got This [period] says that even in our imperfection we’ve got it indefinitely. And so I think that period is really important there.
There are so many challenges in education these days and so many things teachers are facing through no fault of their own. Where do we even begin? How do we refuse to allow the challenges to thwart us and still be inspired to lift ourselves up to do what we need to do?
CORNELIUS
There are several parts to that question. I think first of all that the kind of people who become teachers are the kind of people who were good in school. For the most part that means that you’re a rule follower. That means that you’re compliant. That means you listen when the person in charge says listen. And that mindset is not the mindset that usually gets us to a revolution. So it’s really meant for me looking at who I am fundamentally. I want to do the right thing. If there’s a rubric I want to get highly efficient at using it. And so that’s really what I wanted to do and what I lay out in the book: Here’s how to be a nonconformist in public. The question that I’ve been asking myself more recently is “How do I remain radical and also job secure?” And where does the revolutionary live when you’ve got to pay bills and your kids have to be at dance class at 10:30 a.m.? Where are the spaces for the revolution when you’ve got to pick your kids up by 4:00. I think that really it comes down to our action research. I present action research as the answer. We can look at the practices that are not working for us. We can look at the things that people ask us to do and we can say “No” to those things if we are well researched. One of the things that I am not shy about at all and even the reason I went to Teachers College in the first place and why I left my classroom is that I wanted to get smart enough to protect myself. I am really interested, and this is no accidental use of the term, but I am really interested in weaponizing my research to keep whole communities safe. And I think that as teacher, I can engage in a small inquiry project to give as a practitioner my agency back. Or I can engage in a small inquiry project that allows me to do the kind of work study that I need to do even though my kids are ninth graders and everybody is saying that they don’t need word study.
You ask us to do our homework and then make change happen. You may have just answered this, but are you referring to doing this kind of research in order to arm ourselves with knowledge first?
CORNELIUS
Yes, absolutely. You know, one of the things that I joke about a lot but I really really mean it, is that I enter most fights with my pen. And even on my twitter profile it says “Bring your pens to swordfights.” You know that old saying that the pen is mightier than the sword? I really do believe that applies here. If I’ve got a problem with the policy or if I’ve got a problem with the mandate, I don’t sit in the staff meeting and pout about it and I don’t sit in the staff meeting and shout. I get to work. I’m like, here’s the mandate. Here’s what they want me to do. Is this thing actually going to work in my classroom? Let me go try it. Let me collect my data. Let me think about my results. Let me look at the student work. Let me get student testimonials. And then if the thing doesn’t work I show up with all my data and I’m like “Look this mandate that you gave to us is flawed and here’s how I know. Here’s my student testimonials. Here’s my student work. Here are the things that the parents have said. Here’s the change in affect that I’ve noticed in the school over the two weeks that we’ve been implementing this.” So for me it feels really clear. People always want to say that “Wow Cornelius, you’re so brave. You stood up to that principal. You stood up to that superintendent.” I don’t think that it’s brave. I just know that I trust my data. That when I collect the work. When somebody says, “Hey this thing is proven to work” but then I try it with thirty-five students over a course of two or three weeks and it doesn’t work, then there it is. I think that’s been a big thing.
And have your administrators been open to trusting you?
CORNELIUS
Yeah. It’s been really fun and I’m cautious at the same time too. The book is still pretty young so I’m still seeing what it does in the world. A principal bought copies for her entire staff after reading it. She said, “I realize that this book ultimately teaches people to challenge leadership and that’s exactly what I want for my team.” And lots of principals are buying it. The idea that people are choosing to buy a tool to put in the hands of their teachers that allows them to challenge leadership.
That’s impressive for a leader to do that.
CORNELIUS
It’s actually not when you think about it because it’s who we want. I think that you would want that same thing. There are thirty-two children and there’s nobody better equipped on the planet than me to be in this classroom right now. It’s the idea that when you walk into a room you own the room. With all your imperfections. With all of your insecurities. Yes, every imperfection in me right now is perfectly tuned to this room. And every doubt in me right now is perfectly tuned to this task. That wherever I am, there is some reason why I’m there and I do have something to offer. I hope that teachers feel that way.
With Cornelius’ last words we allowed the interview to come to a natural close since it felt as if this beautifully summed up the We Got This. spirit. Cornelius’ thoughtfully honest responses were so inspiring that I could have talked to him all day but I left our conversation with far more than I ever thought possible. Through his words, Cornelius gives us all a glimpse in the world that he has always envisions. His book, our #G2Great chat and this interview felt to me like the trifecta of POSSIBLE. As I close this post, I am reminded how much care Cornelius put into the idea of listening in his book by devoting an entire chapter to that critical topic.
Well, Cornelius, we are listening and yes, my friend…
On November 8, 2018, the #G2Great community had a powerful conversation about sketchnoting with Tanny McGregor. In her latest book, Ink & Ideas Sketchnotes for Engagement, Comprehension, and Thinking she makes a convincing case to add sketchnoting to instructional practice. Sketchnotes are a visual form of notetaking, They offer another option for learners to make thinking visible in ways that make sense to them.
For more ideas go to Tanny’s : #inkandidea
There is so much to love when it comes to the conversations we have on #G2Great, but one aspect of the chat that I love the most is the openness to new ideas. For many of us, sketchnoting is a new idea. We have been trained to write notes in a specific way or to use predesigned graphic organizers. Why? My theory is that it keeps learning controlled and neat. However, is it the best way to learn? Who knows best? The learner does! We can assess their success by students’ ability to comprehend what is being taught not how to record the learning.
There are so many ways to learn.
Connecting the practice of sketchnoting with our prior knowledge about traditional note-taking, marginalia, and non-linguistic representation, what we believe, and have taught students about this practice during the chat. Here the collective wisdom about sketchnoting from the #G2Great PLN:
Fuel collaboration!
Create opportunities for differentiation!
Support deeper comprehension!
Generate engagement!
Support language learners!
Sharing rationals and practices is one way the #G2Great community helps one another to grow. Another way to commit to a new professional goals – like starting sketchnoting. We were asked to consider these words…
“Is there a place in this lesson where students can opt to use nonlinguistic representation along with or in lieu of conventional writing, should they so choose?”
Tanny McGregor
Here are some ways that teachers pledged to take on this exciting new work:
Challenge students to give sketchnoting go!
Ask students to experiment with new ways of note taking!
Encourage students to start with a doodle!
Offer varied paper choice!
Try out modeling the practice first!
There are so many ways to begin, the most important thing to remember is to actually… begin! Our students deserve as many options as we can give them to learn their best. Learning begins with an open mind. So what do you say? Think on these words of wisdom from Tanny…
Thank you, Tanny. We appreciate your taking the time to share your wisdom with our community. Thank you to Heinemann Publishers for sharing the love with a FREE copy of your fabulous book, Ink & Ideas Sketchnotes for Engagement, Comprehension, and Thinking! But mostly, thank you, for pushing us to think beyond conventional practices to more student-centered ones like sketchnoting. Not only is your work founded on best practice but it is driven by choice and that can make all the difference.
If you are interested in learning more… please explore Tanny’s links:
Her session with Smokey/Nancy Steineke: NCTE Houston, TX on November 15. Title: “Looking to Learn”.
On 9/20/18, we were excited to continue our five-part #G2Great series: Maximizing Our Potential. In part 2 of the series we turned our attention to Classroom Design. Knowing that our design choices are instrumental in “maximizing” the quality of our efforts, a passionate two-pronged discourse ensued. We quickly began contemplating the design factors that could enrich the teaching-learning process while acknowledging inevitable roadblocks that can deter our efforts.
The topic of classroom design often goes to a default view focused on the visual appeal of classrooms such as furniture or room arrangement. There have been many books on this topic and there are even Twitter hashtags that celebrate Pinterest-worthy photographic displays. While these images are intriguing, we were committed to broaden our dialogue beyond mere physical design. Early twitter trending demonstrated that our #G2Great family was just as eager to explore a loftier design view.
One of my favorite quotes reflecting this deeper view of classroom design comes from Loris Malaguzzi, founder and director of renowned preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. She said:
“The environment should act as an aquarium which reflects the ideas, ethics, attitudes and culture of the people who live in it.”
I love the image this brings to mind of classroom design as a protective field where our innermost beliefs about teaching and learning reside. Furniture and room arrangement are a slippery slope since they can either reflect or contradict this process. It’s less about what we bring into and arrange in our learning spaces than how those things honor our “ideas, ethics, attitudes and culture” with the thoughtful day-to-day experiences we offer children. This deeper perspective brings the beliefs we hold dear to life in the context of teaching and learning as illustrated in Genevieve Arcovio’s tweet below:
With this depth of thinking in mind, I’ll share Four Design Essentials with selected tweets at the end of the post. Each design essential works in concert to help us to embrace understandings that will ensure our design choices moves beyond a narrow visual appeal. Ultimately, our goal is to highlight those design features that work together to transform the emotional and academic learning lives of the children within our learning spaces:
Design Essential #1: What They SEE
This first design essential is easily captured in still photographs as we look at the physical features of room design. This visible design is important since it’s the first thing students see when they enter a room and it surrounds their visual field all day. Just as we create our own living spaces that beckon us to enter, our classroom design should entice children into a safe and welcome space. Since we have a wide range of unique learners, we offer a wide range of unique seating options that afford opportunities to work alone or with others, most often by choice. This is not about the wiggle seats, colorful pillows, or tables with legs cut off but how those things match the learning needs of the children who inhabit these spaces and the engaged literacy that will take place in the name of students learning. We know that the traditional image of neat desks in a row leaves little room for children to stretch out or collaborate comfortably and so we create a space that is appealing to the eyes but also to the mind and body. We create gathering areas where teachers and children can work together in a more intimate setting during whole class, small group and side-by-side learning. We put a great deal of time and thought into the heart and soul of this design: our classroom library. We view our text collections as the driving force of our design, making it visually appealing as we highlight quality resources with easy access. We co-create learning walls where children assume a starring role through celebratory displays reflective of their engagement in learning, devoid of the red marks, stickers or happy faces that simply label children and reflect approval over appreciation. We make sure that what visibly surrounds them also cognitively and emotionally energizes them and we create precious opportunities to make them active participants in that learning. These goals acknowledge visual appeal while putting students’ thumbprint in that design. This means that we make our students active participants in a space that works for them as they take ownership of these spaces.
Design Essential #2: What They HEAR
Once we create an inviting visual space that nurtures and supports our work with children, we begin to move from sights to sounds that emanate from those spaces. Student-centered classroom design means that we are willing to relinquish responsibility to our children over time. The central feature of this shift from teacher to students revolves around the voluminous talk that we willingly lift into the learning air so their voices rise above our own. This meaningful, productive, authentic talk reflects the quality of talk that is central to our own lives. We want talk to flow from our gathering spaces where the teacher offers real life instructional talk opportunities and then invites students into a shared dialogue. We use read aloud and shared reading to build a bridge from student to teacher talk with teacher modeling and think aloud. Within these opportunities we intentionally plant talk seeds as we invite children to the talk table to nurture that role. In a student-centered design, we welcome them to the conversation as we avoid scripted question interrogation and opt for a spirit of open ended wonderings that celebrate their thinking. We welcome their ideas as we begin moving along our talk bridge from teacher supported to student engaged talk. We strengthen that bridge as we offer varied small group and side-by-side experiences where two-way dialogue continues to honor student thinking until it becomes business as usual. Finally we gradually relinquish this role to students as we make room for them to form partnerships and collaborative experiences where they can engage in reading, writing, talking and creating without the teacher. At just right moments, we are then wise enough to assume a secondary role as we soak in the soft buzz of conversations that occur without us and encourage them to apply the authentic dialogue we set into motion using wonderings that rise from interests and passions. We recognize that this is an opportunity to offer support as needed but we also give them the room to grow. We become curious kidwatchers by noticing and gathering our in-the-moment assessments that may lead to whole class, small group or side by side support but continuously promote independence. We immerse children in talk until we are no longer needed and willingly step aside as our learners become our teachers.
Design Essential #3: What They EXPERIENCE
As we look at our third design essential, I want to emphasize that each one works in tandem and is both individually and collectively a crucial feature of powerful classroom design. What children experience is active engagement in the process of learning, both with and without the teacher. Students quickly become active participants as we place the reins of learning in their hands. While we continuously design instructional experiences for children, we also leave ample space for them to take over. We make instructional decisions but we also acknowledge that choice as a critical part of these experiences and is present in all aspects of this design. Students choose the texts that they want to read and where they will read them. Students choose what they want to write and whether they will work alone or with others. Students choose the kind of collaboration they will do with partners and within small groups of peers as we encourage them to initiate their own book clubs, writing partnerships, or student selected explorations that draw from those interests and passions. We continue to offer models and instructional supports that elevate and escalate these opportunities using supportive rather than dictatorial experiences and we gradually hand over primary responsibility from teacher to child. We demonstrate by these opportunities that we trust students to work without us given the foundation we have put into place as we support and observe children in action by meeting them where they are. We can only truly create student-centered classroom design when we have the courage and wisdom to wait in the wings watching the sparks of learning fly. We acknowledge and celebrate the learning experiences that occur when we are no longer needed.
Design Essential #4: What They FEEL
I intentionally saved this fourth design essential for last. While it also works in tandem, our ability to achieve this final point may well reflect our overall success. Our ultimate goal is to create joy-driven engagement, knowing that children stand to learn most when they are happy, feel successful and are central to this success process. We use our assessment of this essential feature to determine our own success, recognizing that what we hope to accomplish from our side of the learning process and the impact this has on our children from their side of the learning process may be at cross purposes. We begin by building relationships, both teacher to students and students to students, knowing that this is the foundation on which all else stands firm. We do this by creating a classroom design that nurtures a safe environment, again not just from our eyes but from theirs. We see this in their faces as well as how they actively engage in the learning process. We know that fill-in-the-blank forms and controlling activities diminish this emotional aspect of learning and even minimize the potential for that learning so we choose not to use them. When we see evidence that we have achieved this final design essential, we know that we have made students active and respected members of a learning community where teaching is not what we do TO children but what we create WITH them. And only then do we have a classroom design with our children in mind. This is the design that children will still remember long after they have forgotten what color your walls were, what kind of chairs you bought or where you put the collaboration bench. We have now added the human factor where learning is a joyful, engaging, collaborative, respectful experience. And this is the defining moment when we know we have a classroom design children deserve.
When we combine these four design essentials, we recognize that everything we do has a specific purpose and always for the sake of our learners. And what makes this realization of student-centered design even more powerful is that we now acknowledge that the precise design that worked for these children this year may not work for those children next year or the year after. Design that is student-centered rather than teacher-driven matches the children we have at that moment in time so it is a never-ending design process.
As I come to the end of my post, I want to draw your attention to the way I named each design essential by using the word THEY vs. WE. Regardless of how well-intentioned our design may be, intent and reality may be at odds when our measure of design success is from our eyes rather than theirs.
And so I close with the wise words of Sir Ken Robinson:
“Look at your learning space with 21st century eyes: Does it work for what we know about learning today, or just for what we know about learning in the past?”
In 1963, John Carroll first wrote about the correlation between learning and time. His paper, “A Model of School Learning”, advanced that authentic learning relies heavily on the amount of time an individual is allowed to devote to active engagement in a specific learning process. Thirty-five years later, Wong and Wong (1998) described four types of time built into a school day:
Allocated time. The total time for teacher instruction and student learning
Instructional time. The time teachers are actively teaching
Engaged time. The time students are involved in a task
Academic learning time. The time teachers can prove that students learned the content or mastered the skill
Furthermore, Wong and Wong (1998), found that 90 percent of allocated time was occupied by teacher talk. This is in opposition to the way that students learn best—by engaging in the authentic work of the content area.
Teachers mean well in wanting to give students valuable information, but extended teacher “mini- lessons” which then result in brief student work time, (independent or group structures) doesn’t allow kids adequate time to internalize or sufficiently transfer the learning.
Other practices in classrooms also steal valuable minutes from academic learning time. One of the biggest time-wasting activities is using lesson time to collect resources, materials, supplies for the lesson. This unintentionally allows students to be in a sort of “limbo” and often results in off-task behaviors or undesirable social interactions.
In addition, terse or non-existent closure for the lesson leaves students without a critical element of learning that “sticks”. Little or no intentional lesson closure also cheats the teacher of valuable formative assessment data when there is a lack of time for students to reflect, discuss or write about their learning.
It’s true that academic learning is reliant on quantity of time, but it also involves quality of time spent on content standards and learner dispositions. How much of the allotted time is dedicated to students working on the authentic tasks of readers and writers? Respectful tasks that lead readers and writers to greater understanding of the processes required for the work is critical for academic success. Instruction and practice of new concepts must be intentionally, strategically planned in a way that allows students to experience success at a minimum of 75% of the learning time.
Artful teachers facilitate transfer of learning by:
designing compelling, relevant lessons that engage and captivate
differentiating for the unique learning needs of all students by adjusting elements of instruction, practice and formative assessment tasks
including skillful pedagogy moves by modeling, providing guided practice, and curative feedback
As professionals we know we are often plagued by the tyranny of the urgent, so we’re clear on the importance of intentional, systematic instructional planning that starts with the student at the core of the curriculum. When we take the time to know our students, design instruction and application of new learning with adequate supports in place, use ongoing assessments that inform and influence subsequent learning we are aligning our practice with our belief that every student can and will learn.
Curated Tweets:
About Our Guest Blogger:
Valinda Kimmel began teaching three decades ago. She most recently worked as a K-6 instructional coach on an elementary campus in Texas and now has an educational consulting service collaborating with teachers, coaches and campus administrators. You can find her on Twitter @vrkimmel and on her site at www.valindakimmel.com
On August 30, 2018 #G2Great was delighted to welcome, Dr. Timothy Rasinski and Melissa Cheeseman Smith. Tim and Melissa are fluency gurus who have so much to teach us all. Why is fluency so important? Fluency is one way that children begin to believe in their reading prowess. I use the word prowess because it implies skill or expertise and it also implies courage and bravery. When children enjoy reading and become more skilled; reading becomes a source of joyful learning that builds them up and helps them to take future reading risks. Risks that will push them outside of their comfort zone into overdrive to their growth zone!
Yet, as part of our shared literacy history, fluency instruction got a speeding ticket. We began to focus our assessments and instruction on speed alone – and as anyone who has ever gotten a speeding ticket will tell you, we pay dearly for that mistake.
Our conversation Thursday night mapped out a route for the complexities of fluency instruction. Our destination? To strike a balance on the elements of fluency so our instructional practices not only meet children where they are, but gets them where they need to go.
Understanding the Rules of the Road…
Think of the essential instructional building blocks of reading fluency as the “rules of the road” that help readers lay a strong reading foundation. Just like new drivers, readers need to time to practice a lot with an expert. Here is what the #G2Great PLN had to say…
Read the Road Signs…
Road signs are a quick and efficient way to communicate important information. Tim & Melissa gave us this powerful instructional device, “EARS” to underscore the elements of fluency: Expression, Automatic Word Recognition, Rhythm & Phrasing & Smoothness. This tells our students the essential information they need to think about when working on fluency while reminding them to be all EARS!
Objects May Appear Closer Than They Appear…
Speed has loomed large in the rearview mirror because for so long we been advised to keep fluency success dependent on words per minute. Ironically (just like driving a car) keeping a free and open perspective is what we really need. We need the whole picture. So while fluency has been seen through that quantitative lens of speed, Tim & Melissa have given us a revised Multidimensional Fluency Scale. One that rewards good drivers (a nod to Allstate) and that reflects a qualitative lens.
Thank you so much for joining us, Tim and Melissa! It was a fantastic night and an excellent journey. If you want to learn more from Tim and Melissa please follow these links. You will be glad you did!
June 7, 2018, marked an extraordinary day in #G2Great history. We celebrated the collaboration between two friends who met in this very community, Kari Yates and Christina Nosek. Their collaboration has resulted in an important new book from Stenhouse: To Know And To Nurture a Reader: Conferring With Confidence and Joy I know that Amy, Mary, Fran, and I are all looking forward to having this book (just in time for summer learning) in our hands!
Conferring is synonymous with growth – growth for students and growth for us. It gives us opportunities to grow language, community, and potential.
The Language of Learning.
When we open up our language we open up our minds. Conferring’s magic begins when we pose a good question or when we remark on a keen observation. Every time we give students our undivided attention, we are showing them that we hold their words, thoughts, and feelings in great esteem. What we say and how we listen to students underscores the foundation for a meaningful conference. As you read through these tweets think about what you notice:
The words are warm and inviting – there are no wrong answers. This language is not “high stakes” it is “high impact”. These words denote wonder and caring. This language places a value on the learner and the process; not the task and the product. This is why we became teachers.
Building Relationships and Trust
Everyone wants to belong. When we build up community founded on trust conferring can be transformative. We are teaching our students something essential, everyone has a voice and we need each other to learn and grow.
We need emotional safety in order to take intellectual risks. Whenever we make the decision to be fully present and to listen we are helping our students to know their value. Through this exchange that conferring offers, students are also learning to value what we have to teach them.
Uncovering Potential
Conferring reveals who we aspire to become. This is as true for us as it is for our students. Conferring helps us to clarify what we understand about students so that we can bring that awareness back to them. Our conversations are the foundation for critical thinking. Together we are all learning to be objective and analytical. This is how we can make complex judgments in the day-to-day work of being a teacher or a student.
My last words to you are that our conversations are important. Words matter. The work we do learning with each other is a gauge for how far we can stretch ourselves to know and to be more than we are today. The work of conferring rests on subtle choices we make in an instant. That can be quite daunting! Kari and Christina wrote this book as an invitation for us to lean into this work. Conferring can be comfortable and powerful. Doesn’t that sound great? It truly is and it really can be when we start from a position of joy. When there is joy, confidence follows. Thank you, Kari and Christina, for sharing your wisdom and leading the way.
Hope is the thing that I hold onto. As long as I can remember, I remember hoping. I was a child and I remember hoping my dad’s car would start. I remember when my mom was dying of cancer, hoping she would be cured despite the fact she had an incurable form of cancer. Hope is what helped me through those 2 years as my mom struggled for life. Hope is what carries me now, 24 years later with other trials I face in life. Hope carries me. Serendipitously, the book, Making Hope Happen entered my life. It is a book I read over and over, because I have come to realize the power of hope and when I look at people around me, at home, in school, I notice there are people who are hopeful and there are people who are not. I think the reason I go back to this book so often is because of Dr. Shane Lopez’s message that hope can be shared with others.
Hope matters.
Hope is a choice.
Hope can be learned.
Hope can be shared with others.
-Dr. Shane Lopez
Hope does not mean that the thing you hope for has to happen, it just gets you through to where you need to go. I struggle when I am with someone who does not have hope. In intrigues me as I wonder why I can be hopeful, even in the darkest times and others have no hope even in not so dark times. When I see children in school and I recognize that they do not have hope I struggle to figure out a way to give them hope. In the world they are growing up in, they need hope more than ever before. As an educator, I have to ask myself, “How can I teach hope to these children?” Inspired by Dr. Shane Lopez’s Ted Talk, and book, “Making Hope Happen: Create the Future you Want for Yourself and Others” the #G2Great team decided to take Dr. Shane Lopez’s advice and create ripples of hope for students everywhere through our #G2Great chat on Thursday, May 10, 2018. Until I wrote that I date I did not realize it was also my mother’s birthday, Happy Birthday Mommy, this is perhaps the best gift you could ever receive. I know when #G2Great trended that night and when this blog post is published (late because I drafted and revised too many times) I know the ripples of hope are alive and in motion spreading those who need hope to continue their journey. Hope carries us through life.
The power in hope spreading across our schools can be seen through the tweets from our #G2Great PLN.
Hope is…
Hope can be learned and shared…
Hope needs ambassadors… be one
This post is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Shane Lopez and my mother, Jane M. Kruger – both who always inspired hope.
Special thanks to Dan Sinnott who shared Shane’s work with me through one email on 7/28/2016 and spread more ripples of hope. Forever grateful.
