Engagement – Literacy Lenses

Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners

See the 1/11/18 chat HERE • See the 10/20/22 chat HERE

Written by Mary Howard

On 10/20/22, we had the great pleasure to welcome Regie Routman back to our #G2great chat for a renewed look at her incredible book, Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners (2018, Stenhouse). We first celebrated Regie Routman and Literacy Essentials on a #G2great chat 1/11/18.

It was a conscious choice to honor Literacy Essentials a second time. At the start of 2022, our chat team added a BLAST FROM THE PAST feature. We’ve held weekly chats since 1/18/15 with year eight coming January 2023. As of writing this post, we’ve supported 351 chats with many professional books. In an educational publishing industry in a constant flow of new books, we know that some are still desperately needed regardless of publication date. Our goal is to put important books back on the radar screen to for teachers who missed it when it was published. When we select a book for BLAST FROM THE PAST, we modify quotes and questions so that even teachers who attended the first time can see the book through fresh eyes and renewed perspective while bringing new research supported understandings they gained since it was published.

One quote we shared in both chats speaks volumes about the very heart and soul of Literacy Essentials and why nearly five years after its publication, it remains at the top of my list of MUST-READ books:

From the publication of her first book, Transitions: From Literature to Literacy in 1988 to Literacy Essentials, Regie Routman’s deep belief in teaching with a sense of urgency and her unwavering respect for how we expend precious minutes has been a central belief in all of her inspired work. Regie writes these words about teaching with a ‘sense of urgency’ in Literacy Essentials:

“Teaching with a sense of urgency means focusing relentlessly on what’s most important throughout every single day, moving at an efficient and effective steady pace, seizing problems and failure as opportunities for growth, and changing course as needed.” Page 55

Regie brings this spirit to life by highlighting three Literacy Essentials including: Engagement, Excellence, Equity. Across the pages of Literacy Essentials, she consistently honors a sense of urgency with every possible detail in repeated sections including, Take Action with ideas for moving forward; Efficiency Tips to fine tune our efforts, and a mesmerizing real-life personal Story at the end of each chapter that inspires and informs our professional lives. (Note: Be sure to check out the links at the bottom. The first two I shared offer free resources for Literacy Essentials. I also suggest perusing the Stenhouse June/July 2019 Literacy Essentials Book Study in an amazing conversation with resources, references and comments from Regie Routman.

Let’s pause for a moment to hear from Regie Routman and her heartwarming response to a question we posed about Literacy Essentials:

What is a message from the heart you would like for every teacher to keep in mind?

These are tough and traumatic times to be teaching, although that has always been true to some extent. What’s most important, I believe, is to lead with empathy and a compassionate heart, to collaborate with colleagues because this job is too complex to do by ourselves, and to be responsive to our students’ strengths, interests, and needs. Think about focusing on these 3 R’s first: relationships, relevance, and resilience–and establishing a classroom and school culture of inclusion, respect, and conversations that matter.

Through prioritizing high expectations, meaningful content, and wide choice in the texts students read and write, we can still bring joy to teaching and learning. None of this is easy, but my hope is that reading and discussing Literacy Essentials will make your teaching/learning/living life more satisfying, engaging, excellent, and equitable for you and your students. Use the detailed Table of Contents with sections to decide where to begin or dig in. I am by your side as fellow learner and teacher. Remember this: you can only do the best you can, and that has to be enough. Uplifting even one life is a huge accomplishment. For that learner, it can be lifechanging. Go easy on yourself, take deep breaths, and savor some moments in the day just for you.

When Regie was on #G2Great on January 11, 2018, I had the great honor to write our post that can be accessed here. Since my focus in that post was on the book, in the remainder of this post I’d like to highlight learning shared on our twitter chat discussion to extend and support my initial blog post and Literacy Essentials

A great place to begin is with Regie Routman’s responses to our #G2Great questions. I’ve included the question followed by her thoughtful response/s:

Q1 Before we begin, let’s reflect on Regie’s challenge to approach our teaching with a “sense of urgency and relentless pursuit of excellence.” How do you make this a daily priority, regardless of roadblocks that may stand in your path?

Q2 In her book, Regie draws our attention to three areas that reflect Literacy Essentials for all learners: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity.Why are these essentials more important than ever?

Q3 Regie has long championed the reading-writing connection. How can the reciprocal role of reading and writing elevate our teaching? What is one way that you celebrate this mutual relationship in practice?

Q4 Regie reminds us that the end goal of teaching reading is to help students ‘BE READERS’ and she emphasizes free choice independent reading as our #1 priority. How do you bring this priority to life within each teaching day?

Q5 Regie writes, “Equity means we provide all students equal access to an excellent education— that is, we ensure they receive what they need and desire to reach their full potential.” How are you making this vision a reality?

Q6 Regie asks us to focus on “responsible assessment” including formative and self-assessment to ensure that instruction addresses the specific learning needs of children. What are YOUR responsible assessment essentials?

We are very fortunate to have an incredible group of educators who join our weekly chat discussions. These amazing educators added an additional level of thinking for our Literacy Essentials discussion:

ADDITIONAL CHAT TWEETS FROM OUR DISCUSSION

CLOSING THOUGHTS FROM MARY

I’d like to reach back to 2018, the year that Literacy Essentials was published and Regie joined our #G2Great chat for the first time. On August 18, 2018, Regie shared this wonderful tweet that I’ve referred to on many occasions since it speaks volumes about central messages that appear across Literacy Essentials.

One of the beautiful things about having such an important book on our #G2Great chat twice is that it allows us not only to bring Literacy Essentials back into public attention, but also gives us two conversational references that invited old friends and new into the conversation over time in a collective merging of understanding ranging from 2018 to 2022.

Books like Literacy Essentials need to be on a shelf of honored books within easy reach, referenced so often that the pages are dog-eared with highlighting and pencil jots from cover to cover. I’m a long-time advocate for re-reading one or two books each year that spoke to me in the past. That is the intent of our Blast from the Past chat and I can’t think of a better book to reach for virtually or face-to-face.

In her introduction, Regie writes a “Letter to my colleagues” and she poses a question that is pertinent to all of us, especially in such a challenging time in our history:

“How do we rise to the challenge of providing an engaging, excellent, equitable education for all learners—including those from high-poverty, underserved schools? In spite of all the obstacles we face—politically, professionally, personally—we teachers matter more than ever.” Page 1

There is no doubt in my mind that the answer to that question is to read Literacy Essentials from cover to cover, refer to it often and keep it lovingly perched on a shelf of honor for easy access.

On a very personal note, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Regie Routman; for long-time dedication to this profession, teachers everywhere who put her words into action and the children who are at the center of all she does. I will forever hold dear your message and I’m so honored to call you dear friend. With much love and deep appreciation!

Mary

LINKS

Literacy Essentials at https://www.stenhouse.com/literacyessentials (includes book excerpts from each of the 3 sections of the book, a video walk-through of the whole book, a Study Guide, and several podcasts; one “podcast” and Stories, personal and professional, that are woven throughout the book. (Highly recommended)

Literacy Essentials Stenhouse website (more free resources including hundreds of professional articles and some videos, all related to the book’s content, that are hyperlinked for reading, viewing, and downloading for study and discussion. There is also a comprehensive, extensive lesson plan and downloadable samples of class authored books.

#G2Great chat with Regie Routman on 1/11/18 for Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence and Equity

#G2Great Wakelet artifact from our 1/11/18 #g2great chat with Regie Routman

ORDER HERE: Literacy Essentials: Engagement, Excellence, and Equity for All Learners (2018, Stenhouse)

Literacy Essentials Stenhouse Literacy Essentials Book Study (June/July 2019)

A generous list of Podcasts compiled by Regie Routman

Three-part podcast with Jacob Chastain: Equity with Regie Routman

‘Roaming Around the Known’ with an Adult Learner by Regie Routman

Regie Routman on What’s Essential Right Now in Education with Matt Renwick

Engaging Literate Minds: Developing Children’s Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives

by Mary Howard

June 25, 2020 was a very special day for our #G2Great family. It felt like a double dose of professional joy to welcome guest hosts, Peter Johnston and Kathy Champeau, and celebrate their phenomenal new book, Engaging Literate Minds: Developing Children’s Social, Emotional, and Intellectual Lives (Stenhouse 2020).

As soon as I heard that Engaging Literate Minds would soon be gracing the world, I knew that it was destined to be the professional gift that educators desperately needed. As I soaked in their wisdom, I was struck by the idea that I was indeed the recipient of this “gift” in every sense of the word. While their writerly “WHY” remained in clear focus as I read, it seems appropriate to begin by sharing the first question we posed to Peter and Kathy so that we can understand the book “WHY” from their perspective:

What motivated you to write this book? What impact did you hope that it would have in the professional world?

Peter Johnston

I was motivated to write this book because I thought what my co-authors were doing was so important that other teachers should be made aware of it and why it is so important. For myself, I hoped that the process of writing – shuttling between classroom and research library – would expand my understanding of literacy teaching and learning. Events happen in the classroom that we might recognize as important without initially knowing why, and there is often research that can help us understand. At the same time research can help us expand the frequency of those classroom moments and maximize their value, or find new aspects of development to move our teaching forward. My hope for the book in the professional world is that it will provoke teachers to do exactly what our group has done, helping each other to examine children’s learning and our teaching, keeping in mind the big picture of children’s development and how it might be reflected in the small moments of classroom life. I hope the book expands teachers’ imagination of what’s possible, why it’s important, and how to achieve it and, in the process, expand their professional knowledge. I also hope the book might affirm and perhaps enhance teachers’ understanding of the importance of teaching, both for children and for society at large.

Kathy Champeau

I wanted teachers and students to experience the thrill of it all, the thrill of teaching and learning this way, and what’s possible when they do. Teaching is such a daily joy when students want to come to school, when they can’t wait to find out what they are capable of, and when they realize who they are becoming in the process. Teachers create the opportunities for this to happen. I interact with a lot of teachers from a variety of districts and I was concerned that so many were leaving the profession or contemplating it because the joy was gone and they weren’t able to reach students the way they had hoped. I wondered if educators found examples that described what’s possible from multiple teachers, not just one teacher, then they might say, “I want that, I can do that.” No matter their setting, teachers are in control of their intellectual lives and who they become as teachers is a result of that. Teachers need to know their expertise matters and growing that expertise collaboratively in a true intellectual community can support their learning and, in turn, their students’ learning. If teachers create intellectually stimulating classroom environments that are safe for all students, school becomes an exciting place to be each day. Hopefully, this book is a vision for what’s possible and the reasons why this vision matters.

I believe without question that every educator who reads Engaging Literate Minds will understand this ‘vision of possible’, particularly if it is used to promote schoolwide collaborative study as I hope it will. Initially, knowing that nothing short of a full committed read would be adequate to bring their vision to life caused me to struggle finding a sense of direction for this post. Ultimately, I decided to focus on three sources of wisdom by using two quotes from Engaging Literate Minds as bookends to open and close this post followed by more reflections from Peter and Kathy with twitter-fueled chat messages lovingly sandwiched in the middle.

And so, I begin on page 9 of Engaging Literate Minds with our opening bookend quote since it reflects the spirit of the thinking that follows:

This quote is a stark reminder that professional books should “change our teaching” and thus transform our practices. I view this from a lens of HOPE. Across Engaging Literate Minds, Peter Johnston and Kathy Champeau, along with classroom vignettes from generous educators Andrea Hartwig, Sarah Helmer, Merry Komar, Tara Krueger and Laurie McCarthy, SHOW us what change looks like in action. This is the very heart and soul of a book that feels like an invitation to embrace transformative change both personally and professionally. Before I share their takeaways from my tweet inspired perspective, let’s listen to Peter and Kathy explain what they hope will be some takeaways in our second question:

What are your BIG takeaways from your book that you hope teachers will embrace in their teaching practices?

Peter Johnston

• Social-emotional development is firmly in the bailiwick of the language arts and is important not only for children’s literate and intellectual development, but also for its own sake. Teaching is apprenticing humanity.

• The ways we structure classroom talk matter enormously for children’s literate and social-emotional development.

• A lifelong learner is someone who finds it normal to initiate and actively pursue learning, overcoming obstacles as necessary by generating strategic solutions. That’s what children (and teachers) do when they’re engaged.

• Giving children more autonomy does not mean giving up authority, respect, or power—quite the reverse.

• For teachers and students, optimal conditions are the same: meaningfully engaged, caring, dialogical learning communities—also the foundation for a democratic society.

Kathy Champeau

What teachers believe, say, and do, matter greatly. When teachers and perhaps administrators are finished reading this book, I hope they will have an overwhelming sense that teachers and students flourish in caring and intellectually stimulating learning environments and have a better sense of how it might be done. Teachers are incredibly busy and days are packed. Maybe teachers will see that developing their students’ social/emotional lives alongside the academics is not only necessary but easier than they may have thought.

Embracing and facilitating students’ ability to think together is central to their classroom and the resulting intellectual fire will reap benefits for everyone. Our students have profound insights that are often left unnoticed. Uncover them. This understanding leads to students learning in classrooms where they have a sense of competence, belonging, and meaningfulness. There are many places in a fixed curriculum to allow students’ (and teachers’) thinking to permeate and by not allowing it actually can restrict learning. Simply setting students and themselves up as noticers, teachers, and researchers builds an identity and a sense of agency for ongoing learning that becomes part of who they are. This can be done day one.

Another important piece is for teachers to view their classrooms through the eyes of their students. What does it feel like to be a student in my classroom today? Now? Trying to imagine it from a student’s perspective makes it easier to see places and spaces for students’ voices to be heard, not only to make room for that, but to facilitate a dialogic exchange.

The last piece is to embrace the why of what we are doing so as expert teachers who are on the cutting of our craft, we embrace the research world and the ongoing contributions that research makes in our practice. Without Peter’s wealth of research knowledge, integrally incorporated into the book to expand our thinking and understand the important why of what we do in our unique contexts, our decision-making would have been feeble at best. Making these important mindset shifts changes everything and it’s worth it!

I am so inspired by the transformative shifts they ask us to embrace that I’m going to frame my thinking around their inspired #G2Great chat tweets. As I perused their words of wisdom, key ideas began to emerge in the form of Steps to Embrace Change as a visible transformative reference. Since their tweets were so expansive in thinking, I could have used different examples to support each step or even used them interchangeably. My examples are those that first gently nudged my thinking with additional tweets at the end of this post I hope will gently nudge new thinking for you as well.

Seven Steps to Embrace Change

#1: Embrace your own ‘letting go’

In our opening quote, letting go of “old habits and beliefs” is a precursor to the transformative change process we are invited to embark upon. Peter highlights that letting go of managing and control frees us to create rather than limit the engaging opportunities that will keep students at the center of the learning process. Kathy asks us to reconsider a day filled with teacher talk so that we can trust the impact when student voices fill the learning air and inform our thinking as they engage in opportunities to learn together.

#2: Embrace Professional Learning

While Peter’s tweet was actually focused on letting go, it’s also a reminder that taking responsibility for our professional learning is essential to the change process. The teacher vignettes in this book are a perfect example since they were the result of long-time professional learning and support. Kathy reminds us to find professional co-conspirators who value their own learning and will read, study, initiate, learn and grow side by side with us as we multiply and enrich our shared growth process.

#3: Embrace Intentional Decision Making

Peter is asking us to examine our habits by paying attention to children who beckon us to make student centered instructional choices on their behalf. This requires us to be curious kidwatchers who use what we notice as a reflective mirror to change. Kathy adds to this kidwatching mindset by asking us to turn our thinking inward as we use this to envision day-to-day decision-making from the eyes of our learners.

#4: Embrace Shared Responsibility

Peter reminds us of the impact of engagement when we are willing to begin to transfer responsibility to students. Giving students increasing control allows us to support their efforts and become a “resource for engagement.” Kathy highlights this sharing of responsibility so that children experience greater autonomy. This is not a one-time lesson but a constant process of sharing that role while also ensuring that students are taking responsibility for their growth as learners.

#5: Embrace Noticing and Extending

A central feature of Engaging Literate Minds is teachers as ‘noticers’ of student learning. Peter asks us to in turn help students become noticers of their own learning and use those noticings as a rich source of collaborative conversations that help students to become more learner aware. Kathy reminds us that noticing must also be followed by naming so that students will be privy to what we notice and can thus replicate and extend this in the future. It is this extending that is most likely to lead to transfer.

#6: Embrace Collective Engagement

I use ‘collective engagement’ intentionally as we embrace the essential collaborations that can maximize learning. Peter draws our attention to opportunities to value each member of the collective experience and avoid questions and tasks that limit their learning. Kathy’s use of “transformative” describes collective engagement within meaningful and authentic active literacy experiences. This transformational process focuses our sights on creating a culture of collective engagement rather than merely what we add into the schedule.

#7: Embrace Celebrating Literate Minds

And so we come full circle to the Literate Minds we are Engaging across the year on a daily basis. Peter reminds us that viewing children in this spirit can lead us to translating engaging literate minds into action when we make engagement and equity a priority. Kathy emphasizes engagement through experiences that will nurture student curiosity. Curiosity is the spark for engaging literate minds and it is our curiosity about children as learners and humans that keeps curiosity alive across the entire year.

As we come to the end of this post, I’d like to leave you with a “from the heart” message in the words of Peter Johnston and Kathy Champeau with our third question:

What is a message from the heart you would like for every teacher to keep in mind?

Peter Johnston

The value and complexities of teaching are generally underestimated by the public at large. It is hard work with big responsibilities and constant problems to solve. But it can be joyful, exciting work, with ample opportunities for learning and surprise. Although we show some wonderful classroom interactions in the book, and how to work towards them, they did not start that way and are not always that way. We did not include many examples that fell short of our hopes, but not because they didn’t happen. You will have them too. They are approximations and opportunities to learn. In our experience, accumulating professional knowledge takes time, colleagues, collaborative persistence and problem-solving, a tolerance for approximation, and a long-term commitment.

Kathy Champeau

We teachers matter. Teacher’s work is critical to who our students become, who we become, and what our world becomes. Teach with a sense of urgency. By constantly contemplating this question, “Who will my students become at the end of a year with me?” creates a sense of urgency for the work we do and the daily decisions we make. Realizing the power that we have in the lives of our students we serve can be daunting, if we think about it; however, we need to embrace that head-on. So, seek out professional mentors and experts who think with you and not for you. I believe that thinking teachers and thinking students, and teachers thinking with students, can change our classrooms, schools, communities and the world, for the better. Embrace the joyful. We have the power, let’s use it wisely.

MY CLOSING THOUGHTS

In their final question as well as across their book and in their tweets, Peter and Kathy remind us that teaching is joyful, exciting work and that each of us have the power to ensure that joy accompanies change for teachers and for children. Since I believe deeply that joyful learning can be infused into each moment of our day when we believe in engaging literate minds, I offer a final step in honor of this critical feature.

BONUS STEP: Embrace Joy

Peter’s words bring joyful learning and teaching into full view as we value student curiosity and the thinking their curiosity can awaken. Joy happens when we step back and become admirers of literate minds as children actively engage in peer supported learning and thinking. Kathy describes this joyful learning and thinking as a process that heightens engagement in ways that will “rock their world.” What could be more joyful than that?

If you are taking time to read this post, then you value your own learning. Knowing the challenge and delight of transformative change, then you also know that you do not have to do this work alone. Our colleagues and the clear descriptions of the teaching/learning process in Engaging Literate Minds offer a change roadmap in technicolor view. It is my hope that their words of wisdom and these seven steps inspired by Peter Johnston and Kathy Champeau will support those changes that have the greatest potential to transform the day to day decisions you make tin the name of children. In the end, this important work must take place when we make a commitment to engage literate minds where these changes will matter most – in the company of the children we honor with renewed perspective.

On behalf of my #G2Great co-moderators and our incredible chat family, we would like to extend deep gratitude to Peter Johnston, Kathy Champeau and the generous teachers who invited us into their classrooms. As I close, I can envision their professional gift in the hands of educators’ everywhere.

And that brings me great joy!

And so I give Peter Johnston and Kathy Champeau the final words.

To continue your Engaging Literate Minds change journey, join principal Matt Renwick’s book study. Use this link to see the posting schedule and sign up or you can join the conversation using the hashtag #engaginglitminds on Twitter.

More inspired tweets from Peter Johnston and Kathy Champeau

Weeding Misguided and Harmful Practices: Student Engagement (Third in the Series)

by Mary Howard

On 2/13/20, #G2Great continued our five-part series: Weeding Harmful and Misguided Practices. Two previous posts in our series included Access to Books on 1/30/20 and Behavior Management on 2/6/20. I am so grateful for this series topic as I am convinced that engagement is a hefty contributor to make-or-break learning. The attention we place on ensuring cognitive and emotional engagement can either elevate the learning process or leave it wandering aimlessly along a dead-end street to nowhere. In order to alter this dead-end trajectory, we must first consider the harmful and misguided practices that warrant weeding in order to focus our attention on essential engagement success features.

In her incredible book, Engaging Children: Igniting a Drive for Deep Learning, Ellin Keene illustrates this mismatch in priorities by posing two questions:

Have we become so overwhelmed by what we teach—checking off one standard after another—that we have forgotten that engaged students are much more likely to retain and reapply that content? Do we believe that students can learn to fall into the state of awareness, focus, intensity, and joy that we value so much for ourselves?

We celebrated Ellin’s book on #G2great 5/31/18 and her wise words below illustrate the heightened level of engagement we desire for ourselves and our children:

But this blissful state of wide-awakeness will never happen by chance. We cannot merely wish upon an engaged learning star and expect blind faith to take over. Student engagement happens if we apply thoughtful conditions Ellin describes so eloquently in her book. But in honor of our series theme, we are also committed to contemplating harmful and misguided practices that warrant “weeding” so that we can invest the time and energy we need on the practices that are most likely to fuel that blissful state and thus bring engagement to life in practice rather than simply in theory.

In this post, I will briefly suggest of the few weed worthy harmful and misguided practices and then explore those practices that can maximize our efforts so that we can reclaim our responsibility for engagement. While no practice comes with an engagement guarantee, thoughtful choices can dramatically increase the potential that student engagement is the reality from both sides – that of the teacher and the learner.

Let’s begin by looking at some harmful and misguided practices worth weeding followed by some #G2great tweets in honor of this goal:

Seven Harmful and Misguided Practices that Warrant Weeding

Below I have selected some #G2great tweets that are framed under Fran McVeigh’s question slide tweet. These offer a chat centered view of what may need weeding:

Now that we have considered some of the practices that are worth weeding, let’s turn our attention to those that are designed to support and enhance engagement. It’s relevant to this discussion to emphasize that both ways of seeing engagement are needed since alleviating won’t necessarily translate to elevating. Without exploring what we don’t want to do as well as what we do, we may inadvertently set up an immoveable roadblock to engagement. While there are many things to consider, I’d like to add seven practices that can enrich student engagement.

Seven Practices that Can Enrich and Elevate Student Engagement

Once again, I’ll share some #G2Great tweets that extend these practices:

I decided to highlight two tweets in this section that feel like the bookends of student engagement with key features that we need to consider.

Mandy reminds us that we cannot hope to make these important shifts to balance the scales in favor of engagement unless we take the time to assess our students at all stages of the learning process across the day. This helps us to identify factors most likely to impact engagement as supported by our assessment evidence. In this way, assessment connected to in-the-moment observations and analysis becomes action research that allows us to make the best possible decisions toward this end. Mandy’s lovely reminder that assessment can “shine a light on student thinking like a flashlight” seems so relevant to this discussion.

I close with Barb’s tweet because children and their level of engagement in daily learning is our most critical consideration. As Barb reminds us, this does not mean that engagement is what we offer some children, often those who are already connected to the learning or who have had past positive experiences that increase the likelihood of engagement. Rather, we ensure that ALL children are engaged in learning including those who bring their own challenges and past negative experiences to the learning process that can make engagement more complex and require our focused attention.

Since I opened my blog post reflection with words of wisdom from Ellin Keene, it seems appropriate to close with her words:

Opportunities for our students to “become more and more responsible for their own engagement” is the intent of our #G2Great Weeding Harmful and Misguided Practices series. To fully recognize the potential positive impact of each of our topics, we must alleviate practices that set us up for potential negative impact of those topics. This duo purpose allows teachers to focus on practices such as modeling, discussing and those I shared above that will transfer responsibility to students. It is impossible to elevate engagement until we get rid of what stands in our way. If we focus on shallow fill-in-the blank or one-size-fits-all approaches that ignore choice, need and interest, we cannot hope to achieve the kind of engagement that leads to a blissful state of wide-awakeness or begin to turn the reins of engagement over to children. In other words, we must say “NO” before we can say “YES.” It’s both as simple and as complex as that.

We are so grateful to each of you who bring your professional passion and commitment to our #G2great chat week after week. Your enthusiasm for exploring the practices that will enrich your teaching through celebratory conversational queries continues to inspire us all.

I’d say that’s what engagement feels like, wouldn’t you?

We hope you’ll join our last two #G2Great chats in our series

Teaching With Heart: Unlocking Growth Through Mindsets and Moves

by Jenn Hayhurst

Springtime makes promises: Yes more light will fill your days. Yes new life will color your landscapes. Yes your world has begun a shift to something new. Teachers are always on the lookout for signs of change. Our work is to learn how to cultivate growth, to understand its process, and to help it thrive no matter the context. We rest our hopes on a small but powerful word – yet. When teachers use a mindset that embraces the power of yet, they make promises: Yes I believe in you. Yes I will help you. Yes together, we will find the next step in the journey.

So it seems like perfect timing that Gravity Goldberg hosted #G2Great Thursday, March 24, 2016. In her book, Mindsets and Moves, Gravity challenges teachers to honor growth in all its forms. Her work reminds us to make choices that value individual learners and the unique process that each will experience. Learning something new is seldom easy so if we are going to live and breathe a growth mindset our instruction needs to deal with struggle in strategic ways:

Admiration: Gravity’s work celebrates an admiring lens. All students are worthy of study, and we should regard them with a sense of wonder and curiosity. This beautiful stance embraces where they are and place trust in their potential for growth:

The Gradual Release: We offer the support students need and then work to move them toward independence. Students shape the path for learning so that our teaching has relevance. The message was clear that the more we bring students into the process the more meaningful learning becomes:

Student Centered: Gravity’s work inspired reflection for the intellectual worlds we create for students. Let’s co-construct spaces for wonderment, choice, and demonstration. When teachers are expert learners rather than holders of knowledge, we reach a higher standard of rigor:

Ownership: The chat began to converge on this topic and our message is ownership is the antidote to learned complacency. Thoughtful planning that supports collaborative work and independence is a sign that teachers are being responsive to students’ needs:

Being Strategic: This is different than teaching strategies. Being strategic demands an authentic context. Whether it is: selecting a text, discovering new reading territories, or building libraries that promote connectedness. The strategy has to fill a genuine need:

Problem Solving: Students are meant to be active participants who can articulate what they need next. We name the challenge and put the learning in their hands. When we give them time to work it out we are amplifying their learning process:

Feedback: is essential! Chatters agreed that when we take risks and push ourselves to learn more our students get the benefit of an authentic model. When we provide clear and concise feedback, we help students to think through the process so that they can outgrow themselves:

We invite you take the #G2Great Challenge

Just as springtime makes promises, we also make promises to our students. Yes, we will help our students find the next step in their growth journey. We are in this together, take Gravity’s advice back to the classroom.