Community Curriculum Building #SOLC26 29/31

My mind keeps going back to Sherri’s post from earlier this month. In it, she quotes abolitionist organizer Mariame Kaba who says, “Knowing who to be mad at truly is praxis.” Sherri follows this quote with a number of questions we might consider when we think about our anger. In my comment I suggested that I should put them on a poster and have them next to my desk.

After venting my spleen yesterday about the frustrations of teaching with no textbooks and little content guidance, I started thinking about Kaba’s statement again: who should I be mad at truly? Whether or not I should be mad at them, I realized that I’ve been targeting my anger at “the system” or, more to the point, “the government” and then joining in the chorus of cries about intentionally underfunding education.

And look, probably “the government” should be providing more money and guidance here, but Jessica’s comment on my post reminded me that the opposite of no guidance can be far too much guidance. Very few teachers appreciate mandated programs – and sometimes these programs can be harmful (think of the mandated programs that did not use research-based ideas for teaching reading; think of the mandated programs now that only use part of the research). Glenda reminded me that even lists of suggested titles can function to place some ideologies over others. While I know these things, it was good to be reminded again that the solution to these problems is not easy. Lisa reminded me that this isn’t just happening in one place or at one school level.

I thought about these things on the way to the gym and, later, while I planned this week’s classes. My brain circled back to this as I texted my student teacher and then walked the dog. Eventually, I went back to Sherri’s post to re-read the questions she had posed as she thought about Kaba.

What is this about?
What’s at stake?
Who is involved and impacted? In which ways?
How am I contributing to this issue?
What is my role?
Who is harmed? By whom?

My brain noodled away over dinner. My ah-ha moment came when I realized that every time I’ve written about school this month, people have commented on the strength of our school community. They’re right: we have a great community. I also deeply value community, and one of my goals as a teacher is helping students feel confident about participating in society to the extent that they choose. These questions ask me to use my anger and frustration not to pull away from others, but to be in relationship with them.

Community, at its best, builds. I am contributing to the issue right now by pretending that I have no agency. And, while I cannot allocate more funds to education or create a curriculum coordinator position at the school board, I can still change my contribution to the issue. So… once March is over, my next challenge will be to reach out to English Dept Heads at high schools in my board and begin a spreadsheet that shows what we are currently teaching at various grade levels. I will ask if others want to coordinate to create a sort of internal what/ when/ why of texts we teach. I can share my criteria for choosing texts and see what others use. We can pool our knowledge to create flexible lists of texts that respond to students from all of our schools. I can use my frustration to make change. And if we, the teachers, create this content, we might be able to create something that is both useful and flexible.

The worst that happens is that it doesn’t work. The best that happens is that community – this writing community, the community of friends and colleagues who commented on my post, the community of teachers around me – creates something that serves students more effectively and helps teachers feel empowered and less alone. There is potential power in this; I’m pretty excited.

Is the textbook dead? #SOLC26 28/31

The first I hear of his plan is when he pops in to pick up something he has printed for a class, and I ask how his classes are going. I haven’t seen him in a few days, but that’s not surprising: he’s a new teacher with a full load of courses, and I know that’s tough. Still, he cheerily tells me all is well, then, in passing says, “So, about Hamlet: I think I’m just going to sort of, you know, touch on the main points and cover it in two weeks. You ok with that?”

I am not.

I have many layered reactions to his casual statement, but I also need to help another teacher set up for our provincial Literacy Test and then set up my own classroom, so I defer the conversation, suggesting that we meet soon. For the next few days, I consider what I want to say.

Nothing in our curriculum tells us to teach Hamlet. In fact, we have no required texts at any grade level. Our school board has not endorsed or purchased any French textbook series – or any textbooks at all. Instead, we are given the freedom to choose what to teach as long as we assess students based on the provincial curriculum.

For some teachers, this is a dream. Complete freedom? Entirely up to the teacher? Wow! What respect! What trust! Imagine being able to meet your students where they are, being able to respond to the needs and interests of the students in the classroom. We could address bias head-on! We could re-shape what we teach! It sounds amazing, and I truly agreed with this perspective for a long time, but recently, I’ve been reconsidering this supposed freedom.

A few weeks ago, the Toronto Star ran this article (with a clearly AI generated image that already betrays their bias).

The article – which is behind a paywall, so I can no longer access it or share it here – begins by weighing the pros and cons of paper textbooks (hint: they’re expensive and hard to update), but a) it seems to assume that we are possibly using electronic textbooks (we are not) and b) then quickly shifts to noting that, without textbooks, no one really knows what any one class is learning. There’s no continuity from classroom to classroom much less from year to year. In my experience, this is true – and it’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Let’s start with French instruction as an example. I do not currently teach French, but I did for many years, and it’s a required course through grade 9 in Ontario. In grade 9, most high schools have a mix of students from several different middle schools. What did they learn last year? No one knows. With no textbooks and no clear year-to-year expectations, teachers are left to figure out what their students already know and what to teach them next. If we’re lucky, each school has a scope-and-sequence – but the only requirement to follow that is collegiality. If a middle school has more than one French teacher, the students from one school may arrive with different knowledge. Some years, I taught students who had studied animals, family members, colours and daily routine every year for four or five years. What should I teach next? Whatever I felt like.

Imagine, however, that a miracle occurs and the students all begin with a similar level of knowledge. Now, the teacher needs to a) decide what to teach next and b) create all the practice activities to help that learning occur. Every single one. No textbooks help guide this choice. A new teacher might find a mentor and get some guidance; AI might make worksheet creation a little easier – but really, the teacher is responsible for determining what comes next and how to teach it.

I don’t want to shock anyone, but there’s good research available about effective language teaching. In fact, (some) textbooks even use that research. And there are reasonable resources available for teachers to use to support their students – but when the school boards stop buying these resources, individual teachers are left to create them over and over on their own – or to purchase them from other teachers online. School boards save money; teachers pay. And that’s just French.

Where I teach, the science, math and geography textbooks are old, and there is no money for updated sets. I suppose we could offer students online textbooks, as the article suggested, but our board generally doesn’t approve subscription services (often required for these textbooks), and even if it did, not all of our students have access to Chromebooks or computers.

Luckily, English departments can just, you know, teach books. Right now, what limits our instruction is a) the books in our book rooms and b) what we, as teachers, have read. Unfortunately, because no books are required or recommended by our province or our school board, every bookroom has different books available. A teacher in their first few years of teaching who is still bouncing from school to school (standard in our board), may have to teach different books every semester, even if they are teaching the same grade level. What if they’ve never read that book before? Well, they’d better get reading. This explains why the young teacher I was speaking with just taught grade 12 students three short stories that my own children read in grade 8. There are *millions* of short stories out there, but to teach them you have to know about them. Instead teachers are left adrift, thinking not about how to teach certain texts or themes but rather what to teach. And, of course, the richer the school community, the more comprehensive the book room – which leads to an entirely different set of inequities.

Still, I don’t want to pretend we have no money: many years my school gets some money to purchase books that “reflect the students’ lived experiences.” This sounds great but is actually quite complicated. For example, I’m a department head, age 54 and an avid reader. For as long as I’ve been keeping track (and yes, that predates the internet), I’ve read an average of about a book a week. For the past ten or so years, I’ve read about 100 books a year – age along puts me literally thousands of books over a teacher who is twenty years younger than I am, if they read the same amount. Not to mention that I have my own reading preferences (no horror, thank you very much) and no one buys my books (well, except the public library – hooray for public libraries!) or pays me for my reading time. Every time our school has money, I am left to sift through titles to find books that are the right reading level, age range, length, topic and “lived experience.” Plus, of course, I need to find books that other teachers will actually teach. There’s no list of suggested books or set of criteria to help me with these decisions. I’m on my own, trying to determine what books students at our school should have available to study in their classes. What is students’ “lived experience” in a school where 60% of students speak a language other than English at home? where nearly 30% are new to Canada? How about in a school that both has the highest housing insecurity in the board AND encompasses several wealthy neighbourhoods? Whose lived experiences do I prioritize? What stories should we offer? (Fear not: I’ve developed my own criteria.) And, when I do make the decisions I am asked to make, I am left open to the attacks the article discusses: I can be vilified as a teacher activist who is deciding what students should learn based on my own priorities.

Let’s go back to the young teacher who has just told me that he plans to teach Hamlet in two weeks. He has been teaching for nearly seven months. This semester he has his first grade 12 English class – along with two other new classes to teach. The curriculum doesn’t require Hamlet, but, then again, it doesn’t require anything. We have some beat up old copies of Hamlet (donated to us from the richer school down the street), and he’s read Hamlet so he’s at least a little familiar with it. Has he read the other texts we have available? Probably not. Brother, The Book of Negroes, and Washington Black are all good books, but even though he’s deeply committed to equity, they’re not books he’s prepared to teach. And the school year doesn’t slow down.

Two days after that moment at the copier, we sit down to chat. I ask what his goals are for the two week unit (he sees it as a bridge, a moment when the students encounter hard text and realize they can make sense of it with some effort); I ask why he chose Hamlet (he wants to give them something hard AND something that will provide them with a toehold into a cultural dialogue they might not have encountered yet; he wants them to be proud of their understanding); I ask why two weeks (he has big plans because he is young and enthusiastic – I envy the students in his class who have a teacher with this energy) and who his students are and what he wants them to get out of the class and the text and… we talk for nearly 30 precious minutes. In the end, he realizes that Hamlet probably isn’t a two-week text for 12th graders. We make a different plan. It’s imperfect, and I will have to ask other (richer) schools for copies of the (still *extremely* traditional) book he’s chosen, but it’s more doable.

Meanwhile, every other grade 12 English class in the school will study Hamlet. Some of our students will read three of Shakespeare’s plays before they graduate; others will read none. Some of them will read books that, apparently, reflect their “lived experiences”; some will read all classics. Despite our departments’ best efforts, in French, some students will learn colours and animals again, and in English, some will read the same short story they read in middle school. Throughout the school, teachers will try to piece together what their students know, should know, need to know… then we will stay up late creating worksheets and handouts and slide shows that we used to get from a (deeply imperfect) textbook. Some of us will do the calculations and spend our own money on information other (tired) teachers have created.

Sometime in May, the board will tell the principals then the principals will tell the teachers that our biggest expenditure is on photocopying. We will be chided and told to be more aware and to print only what we need and to offer more things online. But no one will buy any textbooks. Apparently it’s saving the province money.

Truth-telling #SOLC26 26/31

The older I get, the more I enjoy meeting caregivers at conference night. (We used to call them parent-teacher conferences, but “caregiver” makes more sense – tonight I met a host parent/ guardian, several parents and an uncle – and also a very cute younger brother, but he was not a caregiver.) I especially enjoy when students come with their caregivers and we can chat together about how things are going. I love opening with compliments and watching people’s faces light up. I love asking the students to talk about what they’ve learned. I love learning more about each student and seeing how they interact with those who love them. Sure, it’s exhausting to do all of this after a full day of teaching – and with a full day of teaching ahead – but it’s usually worth it.

As you can see, however, my enjoyment is predicated upon compliments and discussions of learning – but not every student is making the kind of progress that will move them towards their goals. If things aren’t going particularly well, I am usually a fan of the compliment sandwich: good thing, slip in the complicated bit, good thing. This plays to my predilections: I have a penchant for looking for the good in people, especially if those people happen to be in my classroom. Still, I knew that my last conference tonight was going to be different: I needed to tell the parents the truth that their hard-working, loveable child needs extra support.

When I was younger, I probably would have danced around this issue a bit more, but I’ve been doing this for too long to fool myself. I’ve read this child’s school records and seen their progress through old report cards. This year, I’ve been working with them since September, tracking their reading fluency and comprehension: they started well below grade level and they’re not catching up in the way that I had hoped. I’ve sat with the student’s work for a long time, wondering what I can offer to support them. I can’t figure it out. The student is hard-working and enthusiastic, well liked by teachers and resilient enough to have overcome some of the bullying they endured in middle school. They play sports and have friends…but the truth is that I don’t see how a regular classroom with a regular number of students can support the growth they need. I’ve made suggestions along the way, of course, but tonight I had to tell the truth.

I could have spent the whole conference telling their caregiver how wonderful they are, and as the conference continued I kept coming back to that idea, but I reminded myself both before and during the meeting that the best thing I could offer was the truth. So, while I softened the data with phrases like “just a snapshot” and “may need more time” I still shared the data. When the student proudly pulled out their notebook to show their growth in writing – and they have grown! – I complimented the increase in volume, then took a deep breath and pointed out the spelling and grammar that made it almost incomprehensible. I did the same as I shared the books the student has been reading – far far below grade level.

Looking in the eyes of the people who have raised this child and telling them that they need more help than I can give them was hard. I felt sadness and a little shame – why can’t I fix this? Have I worked hard enough, tried enough strategies, offered enough support? I know that I have truly given this child everything I can in the confines of the classroom, but my heart only barely believed that when I sat in the conference.

Still, I told the truth – and then the real miracle occurred: their caregiver nodded and said “thank you.” And then, with the student as part of the discussion, we started talking about specific strategies that they could use at home. The caregiver took notes. The student seemed genuinely excited about strategies that might work. I was able to talk about ways to measure growth and outcomes. We agreed to try something, then speak again in a few weeks to see if things are progressing. I felt the same thing I often feel in the conferences I love: a sense of community. Here we were, teacher, caregiver, student, working together to set a goal and work towards it. And look, none of us are expecting miracles, but a little truth-telling might at least have set us all on a path towards improvement rather than stagnation.

After that conference ended, I chatted for a while with a colleague and let my brain and my heart settle. I hope that in the end the family went home feeling the same sense of community that I did. I hope that we can work together to help this child become a stronger reader because that is something they desire. And I know that with each conference like this, I become a little better at telling truths.

Read aloud

I’ve already handed out the papers – forty words neatly divided into two columns with checkboxes next to each word; forty words we read aloud earlier this week as a group; forty words that should be easily accessible to high school students, although I am well aware that they will not be easy for the students in this room – and the students are calmly looking them over. Calmly, that is, until I say, “So, today’s challenge is to read these words out loud in your small groups.” As the words “out loud” leave my mouth, a hand shoots up.

“Um, I can’t read out loud because I’m dyslexic.”

I pause. In retrospect, I will be able to articulate some of the myriad thoughts that run through my mind before I speak, even though in the moment I respond immediately. Later, I will feel my hesitation, the laughter that wants to bubble up behind my shock, even the bit of the sadness that eventually seeps into my consciousness. Right then, however, I say casually, “Everyone in here is dyslexic. That’s why we’re here.”

Suddenly all eyes are on me. I stumble. “I mean, I guess you’re not all technically dyslexic, but every person in the room – including me, actually – has a reading disability. Literally. All of us. You’re here to get better at reading. If you were already good at it, you wouldn’t be here.”

As I finish speaking, I am briefly worried: am I being mean? But I know I’m not. I’m being honest. And I’m surprised. We’ve been together for almost a month. The class is called “Reading”. We’ve spent weeks working on basic phonics, practicing short vowel sounds, encoding phonemic word chains, and decoding three- and four-letter words. I can’t imagine even a casual observer who wouldn’t understand what we’re doing: Everyone is here to get better at reading.

In the classroom, students look around. I can’t catch all the various emotions, but I start to realize that they were not, in fact, all aware of the truth of the class. I remind them (again, I swear!) that we are here to support each other, that mistakes are normal and part of learning, that this is practice, that this is how we get better. I reassure them that they will not die from reading aloud. I promise that, as far as I know, there is no recorded history of students dying purely from reading – even reading aloud. They start to laugh. Soon enough, everyone is reading out loud, round-robin style, in their circle, and they are, as predicted, helping each other. Mistakes are made. Everyone survives. There are smiles and laughter and we are learning rather than worrying. By the end of class, people are willingly writing on the white board to practice encoding. When someone says, “I can’t really spell” someone else replies, “neither can most of us” and there are plenty of giggles.

But after the students leave, I can’t shake the feeling that this moment needs my attention. What was happening when the student announced that they could not read out loud? Why were they still self-conscious in a room full of striving readers? At first, I think of how my co-teacher and I have worked to make this class respectful of the learners: students who are still striving to learn to read in high school are typically students who have not been well served by our system; they are not dumb, they simply haven’t received the instruction they need. The reasons behind that are as unique as our students, but it’s still true. We designed this class to honour them and treat them as the intelligent beings they are, so maybe we should take some comfort in the fact that they did not realize that they were all here for reading instruction. Still, as much as I like a good pat on the back, the moment continues to gnaw at me.

Long after school ends, I’m walking the dog when I suddenly realize what I witnessed: despite having a learning community of support and care, our students have been working so hard for so long to hide their reading struggles that they haven’t had time to notice that others are struggling, too. They spend much of their social and cognitive energy protecting their identity and sense of self, and as a result they cannot easily focus on others. I imagine spending my work day trying to cover up something that I see as a major deficit – as if all I did all day long was try to hide a giant stain on my clothing. I imagine being so busy covering that stain in creative ways that I don’t have time to see that others have stains, too. No, worse: I am so concentrated on hiding the stain that I don’t really look at others; I just assume they are wearing much better clothes than I am. I keep one hand on that spot and sometimes miss things going on around me because I’m worried. If I relax and my hand creeps away from the stain, I have to quickly put it back down, maybe glance around and make sure no one else saw it. By the end of the day, I am exhausted and not able to remember everything that happened.

All of this explains why, at the end of September, the students in our Reading class haven’t fully understood that they are in a class where everyone is learning to read better, a class where, ideally, they can relax a little. It may be a while before they believe that everybody else in the room is making mistakes, too. It may be even longer before they trust each other enough to get things wildly wrong, to make outrageous guesses, and to allow themselves to do the hard work of learning to read. I realize, too, that I have more work to do to make this a space of hope and freedom, to let reading class help students be more fully themselves.

I reflect for a while and consider ways to tweak the class for increased student agency and more time for relationship-building. Clearly, I decide, we need more laughter. Clearly, we need more talk. And yes, clearly we need more read alouds. I’m on it.

Twelve Days

In 12 days, he will be done with high school. Today, however, he is sitting in my classroom during his “spare” period, trying to catch up on what he’s missed. He has his earbuds in, his phone out. He’s using one of my Sharpies to write a thesis on a scrap piece of paper.

He will not catch up.

I’ve known him since his first day of grade 9, and I’ve taught him English three times. Usually, when I say that out loud, I put air quotes around “taught”. When he was in grade 9, I hid the Sharpies and push pins from him so that he wouldn’t casually harass his peers. In grade 10, I insisted that he read aloud to newcomers (which he loved) and tried to cajole an essay out of him (which he hated). Now he’s in grade 12, and during independent reading time he is (still) reading the book he started in grade 9. He claims he’s close to the end. These days, I can only occasionally convince him to come to class – and even then he doesn’t pay much attention.

Today, after a futile hour of explaining that a thesis statement is supposed to be about more than the plot of a story, and insisting that to create an effective thesis statement a person must actually read the story under consideration, I head to my office to grab lunch before my hall duty. In the stairwell, a colleague comments on my obvious exasperation and reminds me that, because of me, this child will (possibly) read one more story than he would have otherwise. He will, at the very least, write a series of (bad) paragraphs that are loosely related to one another. He will know that someone thinks he can do more.

I try to believe this is enough.

I manage a few bites of sandwich before the bell rings, then grab my apple and head into the halls. In the science wing, someone has pulled the handle of the emergency shower, so the floors are flooded. A VP stands amidst the resultant disaster, directing students away from the shimmering water while custodians run the shop vac. Around the corner, a large group of students talks loudly in the new bathroom; I tease that they must be having a bathroom party, and they laugh as they slowly move away. Nearby, a student sits against the lockers, their head tilted back, their eyes closed, creating a moment of peace in the chaos of the school day. A colleague pauses to ask me a question. Behind us, two girls chase each other, screeching, down the hall.

Outside, the sun beckons. The lawn is dotted with dandelions and dawdling kids. Students fill the basketball courts and the athletic field. The year is so close to an ending that I can almost feel the hallways holding their breath. “Soon,” they whisper, “soon.”

As I walk, I remember the day my mother dropped me off at university. When it was time for her to go, she cried. “I’ll be fine, Mom,” I said, not sure if I was comforting her or reassuring myself.

“I know,” she sniffed, “it’s just that I have so much more to teach you.”

She was right, of course, though so was I. My student will manage something, and it will be both enough and not nearly enough. I will put away the Sharpies. The year will end. He will graduate. I will have more to teach him.

Being the Parent #SOLC25 25/31

I parked in the tiny parking lot and sat in my car for a few minutes, hoping that the rain would let up. While I waited, I texted a friend to let her know I had arrived; we made plans to meet in a bit. That taken care of, I darted out of the car and towards the well-lit building. A young man – one of Mr. 16’s friends – said hello to me as I made my way up the stairs. There, a couple I’ve known for years were standing near an open door, so I paused to chat for a few minutes – kids, work, life. Luckily, no one was in no rush.

Eventually, a door down the hallway opened, and an old colleague gestured to me. I made my excuses to my friends and headed over to him. We embraced briefly and then caught up. He shared photos of his son – already two and a half! – and we laughed a bit about my youngest, now 14, and some of his antics in English class. Time flew; soon it was time to go.

This is how parent-teacher interviews go for me now that both of my children are in high school.

The next interview was across the courtyard, and I ran into several people I knew as I made my way to the classroom. There, a semi-familiar young teacher greeted me and reminded me that we had worked together a few years ago. “I’ve gained weight,” he said ruefully, “Imagine me, thinner.” Again, we used some of our ten minutes to catch up and some to talk about Mr. 14. When time was up, the next parent was a friend, so we all talked for a minute before I left them to their discussion.

Being the parent in these meetings is odd. I’ve taught in this school district for seventeen years now, and I’ve worked in four different high schools. Since I take pleasure in both collaboration and mentoring, and since new teachers often move around a bit before they get a contract, I’ve gotten to know a lot of teachers at a lot of schools. More than that, a few of my former students are now teachers (!!). These days, much to my children’s dismay, parent-teacher conferences are a semisocial event for me.

The third teacher on my appointment sheet was not able to make interviews – too bad, really, because she was the only person I didn’t already know. After I figured out that she was absent, I made my way back to the front hall of the school to wait for Mr. 16. He was serving as a guide for the evening, and it was still cold and rainy, so I had offered him a ride home. This meant I was free to stand in the lobby and chat with an old friend/colleague and talk about books, the upcoming PD Day, and changes in the school board. Soon, one of Mr. 16’s teachers joined us, and we began an animated discussion of AI and how it’s affecting learning. By the time Mr. 16 was released from his duties, we were gesturing with enough enthusiasm to be completely mortifying.

Eventually, parent-teacher conferences wound down. Before we left, I found the friend/ neighbour/ colleague who I had texted when I arrived, and we all walked out to the car together – of course we were also giving her a ride home. After we dropped off my friend, my child said, “It’s kind of cool that you know so many of my teachers.”

I’m glad he’s ok with it because apparently this is what it means for me to be a parent who teaches.

A good day #SOLC25 19/31

Today was a good teaching day, the kind that makes me keep grinning off and on right through the evening. At first, I was going to write something else, but then I wanted to capture this.

First period:
In grade 12, we’ve just started Hamlet. I am always torn about teaching Shakespeare, but I really love teaching this play. And today was amazing. We finished up yesterday’s rhetorical analysis of Claudius’s first speech and students cited lines from the play without being prompted. In my head, I was jumping for joy, but on the outside I played it cool, like, “yeah, my classes always just naturally use lines from Shakespeare to back up their points. Nothing to see here.” My super-cool teacher persona just took notes on the board and nodded her head.

Then we moved on to Hamlet’s first soliloquy. I’d planned a soliloquy buster (which I clearly got from somewhere at some time, but I no longer remember where or when), and even though we’ve only been together for six weeks, and even though it wasn’t quite 10am, and even though it’s Shakespearean language, the students happily moved their desks and sat in a circle and read aloud. Then, the real miracle occurred: no one protested (I mean, I heard a groan or two, but that’s just normal) when I dragged the class into the school lobby to “walk” the soliloquy. I stood on the risers and read the lines loudly while students held their copy of it and walked, turning 180 degrees every time there was a punctuation mark. By the end, we were breathless. When I asked how they thought Hamlet was feeling as he gave this soliloquy, students knew immediately: agitated, frantic, upset.

The energy in the room was high when the bell rang; I could almost *feel* the learning. They were jazzed.

Second period: Planning. And I actually got things done. I even sent a suggestion to the principal: what if we invite the public library to set up a table during parent-teacher conferences and help people get library cards? (He said yes!)

Third period:
Literacy support. Another teacher actually invited me into their classroom to support students. I used AI to almost instantly convert the assignment (which is a *great* assignment but which has a LOT of words) into a checklist. I photocopied that and handed it out within minutes AND managed to sneakily support two students who really needed support. HOORAY!

Fourth period:
My, ahem, energetic grade 9 class started Long Way Down today. Their reactions to seeing the books piled on desks were decidedly mixed: “Are we going to read that?” can be said in many ways. But Jason Reynold’s novel has a magic that has never failed me – not since the first moment students unboxed brand-new copies of the book a few years ago d, and started to read. Today, Reynolds’ voice filled the room, our hearts beat as we heard that Will’s brother Shawn was shot, and we waited the horrible millisecond while we turned the page and read the words “and killed”. Someone gasped.

The kids let me pause to ask a few questions here and there, but mostly they begged to keep reading, so we read right to the bell. As they piled the books back on the desk (we have to share books with other classes), several of them said, “That’s a really good book, Miss.” I just nodded and said, “I know. I know.”

Then one darling child stayed after and whispered the story of the book she finished over March Break, the one she really wanted to tell me about, even if it might spoil it if I decide to read it. (Reader, I will not; it is “romantasy” – virtually all she reads – and sounds extremely silly, though just right for her.) I nodded and oohed and aahed until she realized her bus was coming and ran out the door.

For just a minute, I sat in the quiet classroom, completely satisfied with a day when learning felt almost tangible, when almost everyone was engaged almost all the time. I don’t always write about these days, but they happen – they really do – and I wanted to capture today. It was wonderful.

27 #SOLC25 16/31

Twenty-seven. I have twenty-seven “This I Believe” essays to comment on, ideally before tomorrow morning. And that’s just for one class. It is 6:17. Wait, let me be clear: it is 6:17pm.

Y’all. This is not going to happen.

I would like to write “How did I end up here?” but I’ve been teaching too long to pretend I don’t know. These were due before March Break and I should have been done before I even left. But some people wanted extensions and some students were late, and I put things off, and here we are.

I would like to pretend that this is because our flight home was delayed yesterday, but I’ve been teaching too long to believe it. I was never going to get through these in one day. Getting home earlier would have made no difference.

I would like to think that the students know how they did or that it won’t matter to them or that this isn’t a big deal, but I’ve been teaching too long to fool myself about this, either. They want their essays back, with a grade.

The good thing about “teaching too long” is that I have learned to forgive myself for this. Am I a fast grader? Sometimes. Thorough? Pretty much always. Right now that has to be enough because there is little I would change about the past ten days, even knowing where I am right now. I loved my March Break – I loved travelling, seeing family, learning to scuba dive. I loved swimming, walking on the beach, and hanging out with my kids. I loved writing and reading in ways that were not completely focused on work (although anyone who knows me knows that I am pretty well always half-thinking about teaching). All of those bits – plus a few hours of lesson planning – mean that when the bell rings tomorrow morning I will be ready to teach again, focused and interested and excited for what each student brings.

After all this time, I’ve finally realized that teaching is an impossible job. There are not enough hours in the day or days in the week for me to learn and plan and teach and care and mark. I could work all day every day and still there would be more. In fact, sometimes the better I get, the more work I have to do. This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel guilty about work I haven’t finished, but it does mean that I handle it better, and I have a much stronger understanding that I am responsible for taking care of myself.

So here I am, reminding myself – and all the other teachers heading back to work – that it’s ok not to have everything done. Tomorrow, we will show up in all our imperfect ways, and the essays will (sadly) still be there on Tuesday.

P.S. And this is why I don’t assign homework over breaks. Everyone needs time off.

Learning to be Underwater #SOLC25 11/31

The instructor gives the ok sign to each of us, one after the next, and waits for our mimed response. Next, he points two fingers at us and then at his eyes. Once he has everyone’s attention, he removes the second stage from his mouth and slowly blows out bubbles as he searches for his “missing” air supply. He finds it, puts it back in his mouth, and starts breathing normally again. Then, he points directly at my youngest child and signals for him to repeat the same actions. Nearby, I watch patiently, waiting for my turn, confident that, far from putting us in danger, this activity will make us all safer in the long run.

This week, my family is taking a scuba diving course. We’re learning a lot and I, of course, am busily observing both how we are instructed and how we are learning. I am always curious about how skills are taught outside of classrooms. Scuba is particularly fascinating because the consequences of not being able to perform the skills effectively can be deadly, but plenty of regular people scuba dive, so, while there can be no compromise, skills acquisition has to be manageable for all sorts of people.

Before we arrived on the island, all of us completed a five-section, multi-part online course with a final exam that we had to pass with a minimum of 75%. Each section built on previous sections for at least some of the learning (i.e., “How to be a Diver, part 3). As a family, we took four very different paths to success: one of us started early and learned methodically, using the “You will learn” introduction to each section to guide their reading, taking notes to learn “how not to die underwater”; one of us read the information in chunks, making sure they were able to pass the short required quiz at the end of each section before moving on; one of us skipped most of the reading but watched the videos for each section before “acing” the quizzes (not my word); and one of us went straight to the quizzes and tried them, then, once they knew what they didn’t know, went back to review only that section before completing the quizzes correctly and moving on. These choices were not obviously age-based, and no, I was not the one who took notes. We all passed the final exam, though one of us had to take it twice (72% then 80%). The last person finished the day we left on vacation. (Ok, that was a kid.)

If you’re keeping track… PADI (the group that administers the course)

used a focus checklist (“by the end of this section, you will be able to…”)
presented the information in both written and video format
offered low-stakes immediate retrieval assessment questions (we could redo them as often as necessary)
encouraged spaced practice by expecting us to review things we had learned in previous sections
at the end of each of the five sections, offered more retrieval with a section quiz which we had to pass but could retake and THEN
provided an evaluation which mimicked the section quizzes and which we had to pass with a 75%. If we needed to, we could review material and take it again.

That is decent pedagogy.

Today, we started the “practical” portion of the course with… wait for it… a written quiz based on the material we learned online. It was not for points. We simply took the quiz and then the instructor reviewed the answers and chatted with us about mistakes that anyone had made. For much of the information, this was at least the FOURTH time we had been asked to retrieve it. I don’t want to shock anyone, but we all passed this low-stakes review.

I’ll probably write more about the practical part of the course later, but I want to pause here and notice what I can take into the classroom from the written portion. For me, the lesson focus wasn’t particularly useful – I tended to skip that part – but one of my children loved using it to guide his attention. Interesting. We all spent different amounts of time with the information and took it in differently (I didn’t watch a single video; everyone else watched some or all of them). The low-stakes retrieval questions worked for all of us, as did the “do it until you pass” mastery quizzes at the end of each section and of the written course. The spaced practice was effective, too: if you’d forgotten something from a previous unit, you got a quick review in order to pass the current one.

I was most impressed, however, with the “extra” retrieval we did today. Let me tell you, everyone who took the course is very clear on the biggest ideas – and PADI has used both spaced practice and retrieval practice to ensure that we actually remember it.

Of course, a classroom is a different place. Most obviously, students’ motivation for learning in a classroom is not quite as compelling: rarely does anyone die because they forgot where to put a comma or mispronounced “epitome.” But I’m also thinking about how our family moved at different paces and took information in differently. That could happen in a classroom, to some extent. I think a lot about the Modern Classrooms Project, for example, which seems to account for some of that. My particular school is desperately low on technology, so I’m not quite ready to adopt the approach, but it seems right. I wonder what I could do to make learning in the classroom just a little more like getting ready to scuba dive?

Maybe I could just bring some really cool fish.

This tarpon – and her friends! – were at least three feet long & swimming casually next to our lunch spot.

Literacy on vacation #SOLC25 10/31

Last night, after a long day of travel that culminated in beach and pool time, I crawled into bed, exhausted, and read a few pages of my new book (The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store). This morning, I woke to a long meandering chat with my aunt over tea and coffee. At some point, as I caught her up on my life, I talked about literacy. If you talk to me long enough, I pretty much always do.

She has recently gone through her books and had set aside some for me to look through, in case I want any. Would I contemplate taking books from an island back to Ottawa? Yes, yes I would. I am constantly looking for ways to get books into my students’ hands, and books cost a lot, so I am well-known for my – ahem – willingness to accept books. As a matter of fact, I brought books as gifts for my cousin-nephews, so I’ll have space to take more back if any of these look enticing. Now, out on the veranda, as I sit down to write, books and reading are on my mind, as they often are.

I know the 2024 NAEP Reading Scores have just been released, and I know they’re not great. I teach in Canada, but I have little evidence to suggest we’re doing a lot better. Oh, I know our PISA scores are better than most, but only if you consider having 50% of Canadian students reading at level 2 or below “fine”. I do not.

I’ve just spent a frankly silly amount of time looking at the statistics I linked to in the previous paragraph. I was reading because I wanted to be sure that what I wrote was true, and now I’m stuck for what to say. Thinking about literacy is a huge part of my life, but is this little blog, mostly anecdotes, really the place to write about this? Is today, sitting by the ocean, really the day? And what will I say that others haven’t said? My family is waiting for me (only half true: the teens are still asleep), and hey, I’m on vacation: I should be relaxing. But I am almost never not thinking about literacy.

Even here, on vacation, reading and writing are firmly part of my life, and I find myself wondering if what I want for students is realistic. Do I want everyone to travel with books? Do I think we all need to be “readers” (whatever that means)? I don’t think that’s what I’m after. I do want all students to have reading as a back pocket possibility. I want them to develop the empathy and the knowledge and the critical thinking that come from reading. Literacy is a pathway to many kinds of success, and I know that very few people who have achieved only functional literacy are able to follow that pathway with any ease.

Now I’ve gotten lost in the weeds of this post: I’ve been typing and erasing for too long and I feel silly for starting my vacation thinking about this, but I can’t stop. Do I write about what I’m doing in my classroom? Do I link to more information? Do I share my hopes and dreams for my students? Maybe not today. For now, I’ll go back inside and go through that bag of books to find ones that students might read, then I’ll snuggle in with my cousin-nephew and see if I can tempt him into the world of Dragon Masters, one of my own children’s favourite book series when they were his age. I’ll have to pull him away from the iPad, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.

And I’ll write more about literacy later – because heaven knows I’ll be thinking about it.