“I feel so much pressure to revamp the curriculum this summer,” one teacher leader said.
“I know. I want to throw out what we’ve always been doing and think about how to redo literacy here,” another said.
Here were teacher leaders in a building, lamenting what kids had missed—mostly social moments, conferring, and the proximity of peer-to-peer feedback. But at the same time, they were finding silver linings. Collaborative discussion on Jamboards. Fun, highly engaging ways of transferring critical thinking, by reading art and broadening text sets with co-created Padlets. Kids were even invited to play their favorite music during lunch virtually in a “DJ Hour” where they could really shine.
I wanted to redirect the conversation to a place where these teacher leaders felt comfortable disconnecting from “work” this summer, to a place where they could lead their lives with their eyes and ears wide open without feeling immense guilt over time spent revamping and redesigning curriculum. In facilitating reflection and year’s-end closure, I hoped to celebrate the flexibility and innovation of the teaching staff at one of the K–8 schools where I coach.
As a literacy coach working in dozens of schools and districts that vary in affluence, size, and makeup, I see a lot of unique ideas in action. Although I don’t know the best answers at all times, I do have a few solid tips for summer reflection that I believe serve all educators well. And that often goes back to simply living a life of observation and honest absorption of the world.
Keep Your Eyes and Ears Open
A well-lived life is a stronger teaching one, one that includes personal passions, texture, and cadence from our lives. That means tromping around with our children. That means going to parks, biking around our neighborhoods, and jamming out to music we love. It means sitting on benches and observing the world around us; it means moving about our lives with ritual and love, deep in meaningful conversation (or chitchat!) with all kinds of people.
As I operate in the world—calling my parents to see what they ate and how the weather is in Pittsburgh, picking up garbage that flew into my front yard from the nearby bus stop, changing my youngest’s diaper—I believe I learn about how and what to teach in rich and meaningful ways. These small moments could turn into little small-moment stories that expose vulnerability I know is imperative to the classroom community. These glimpses from life could become connections that generate trust with my students and colleagues next school year. Teachers and literacy leaders deserve that space to just be, with our eyes and ears open, so we can bring these very sights and sounds to our students, too.
To literacy leaders, I suggest the following:
Go about your daily life, but midday and at the end of the day, jot down a few small moments you could write long about. These may end up in workshop or as part of storytelling in the classroom.
Snap a few images from your day, mundane or otherwise, to use in reading or writing workshop—to show the power of observation, to show examples of collections, to show the step-by-step of our daily lives.
Bookmark a few awesome songs for a dance party in your school space, either as an intro to virtual lessons or in school after lunch to get the wiggles out.
Read the World
The other day I decided on a whim to venture downtown with my children, to walk around Chicago’s Michigan Avenue where we hadn’t visited in a long while. They absorbed the world in ways I hadn’t anticipated, now that they’re between two and nine years old. One asked about the statues we were passing, and another asked what kinds of flowers were planted in front of the Burnham Hotel on State Street. My five-year-old daughter asked why the train was called the El.
It occurred to me that this short outing generated a ton of classroom ideas —despite the fact that I was “off” work. At the end of the day, I scribbled down a few ideas for learning pathways that included flower study and public art that would allow students to research the artist and the messaging behind murals, too. This little excursion with my children amounted to my explaining how we read the world and the environment we live in. When we got home, the kids felt inspired to paint. That multimodal desire for learning and creation comes naturally to kids, and I believe we can pepper literacy workshop with this work too.
To literacy leaders, I suggest the following:
“Disconnect” completely from work, and take a walk in a public space.
Create a Padlet of public art from a single location, with multimodal columns that include background information about the artist and their work.
Immerse students in nonfiction learning about an artist and/or a location, and have them create their own art expression extensions.
Get out big paper and arts materials after read alouds or community experiences to paint or draw—large, unapologetically bold, messy. This kind of visceral, tangible experience is powerful.
“Tab” as You Go
During the school year, it often feels impossible to squeeze in reading for pleasure. I feel guilty when I lose myself in a novel, ignoring the dishes piled up and my kids running around the kitchen table. And yet, I think it’s important. Reading adult literature for pleasure helps me become a better teacher of reading. It helps me notice the moves I want my students to one day emulate, and it helps me figure out the challenges I face when I muddle through a difficult or disjointed narrative.
Most recently, I’ve applauded my own efforts at understanding more readily novels without quotation marks around dialogue, as with Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo and Dominicana by Angie Cruz. Had I not made time to plow through, pushing past the fuzzy, sometimes distanced feeling I initially had as a reader, I wouldn’t have been able to name these reading strategies plainly for students, either. Often, I am reading or watching something that I hadn’t previously considered part of “work,” but easily layered it into lesson or unit design.
For literacy leaders, I recommend the following:
Devouring literature, art, music, and media as we always would: happily, joyfully, without first thinking of “work.”
Tabbing the texts that truly move you, or that you think might make their way into the classroom.
Stepping outside of yourself and naming what reading, writing, or comprehension moves you naturally did that you want to teach students and bring to the classroom for their appreciation and learning consideration, too.
The truth is, strong teachers are made of richly layered human beings, with all of our nuances and unique experiences. The summer is an important time to recharge and disconnect—from technology and our constantly whirring, overthinking brains. When we move about as thoughtful, literate individuals as naturally as we always have, we can bring those passions and learnings into the classroom too.
So this is what I told that teaching team on a sticky May afternoon: “Keep your eyes and ears open. Read the world. Tab as you go. That is how we’ll lead strong literacy work next year.”
