Bye-Bye Wi-fi

This morning we got an email from the Board Office telling us that yesterday’s wifi issues had been resolved. Yesterday’s wifi issues were, in fact, minimal. Today’s issues, on the other hand, were dramatic: the internet was out all afternoon. We did not get an email about this. Many teachers threw up their hands; some lessons are impossible to teach without the materials you prepared. I had made it to the photocopier in the morning, so my classes proceeded more or less as planned.

If you work in a school for long enough, or even for not very long at all, at some point the wifi will go out. If you are not a teacher, you might imagine that the worst timing for this would be in the middle of a lesson, but in fact the worst timing is any moment before you have photocopied the day’s handouts. And these days, the photocopier will inevitably require an internet connection to function, so if the wifi is down, no photocopies for you. Luckily, even in the age of Chromebooks and Google Classrooms, if you have handouts, friends, you have a lesson.

I am old enough that I started teaching – wait for this – BEFORE the internet was part of school. Heck, I am pretty sure the first school I worked at was still using dot matrix printers. I used to stand in front of a classroom with *chalk* and pre-planned examples. Students had to write down what I wrote on the board. If they were absent, they had to ask friends for notes. Even contemplating this now is vaguely mind-boggling.

All of this made me think of my interview for a job at the Lycee International just outside of Paris. I was traveling in France with a school group when I got the call offering me an interview. I was brimming with excitement. They wanted me to come for a day, meet with people and teach a few lessons. They were willing to fly me to Paris for this. I told them I was currently in the country and offered to come for a half day and do the interview while I was there – saving them some money and me the complicated travel during the school year. They said yes.

When I agreed to teach a few classes, I hadn’t really considered that I had no resources with me – just the novels I was reading for pleasure. This was the mid-90s, so the internet existed, but it was nothing like what we have today; it was slow and housed significantly fewer resources. Plus, the school group I was with were doing homestays, so I was staying in the home of an older couple whose dial-up connection barely gave me access to my email. What to do? What to do?

What I did was taught what I knew. It was mid-February, so I dreamed up a lesson on Shakespearean sonnets and love poetry for the 11th grade class. I knew the sonnet form and knew enough of a few sonnets to be certain I could manage it. Read, think, write, share. Got it. Then, for the 8th grade class, I decided to go with James Thurber. You can’t miss with Thurber; if nothing else you can always spend time making noises – ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa – or laughing about unicorns. I knew I could turn these ideas into lessons – even for students I’d never met, even in France – without too much trouble.

Once I arrived at the school, I asked if I could use their internet to download and print the poems and the story. The Director looked at me, incredulous. “You planned your lessons in your head?” I shrugged. It was all I had available.

Luckily, the internet was working that day, so the staff gamely printed and photocopied the texts. My lessons went well – love and funny noises really never fail – and I got the job.

Today, I handed out This I Believe essays I had copied before the wifi died and dug through my teacher’s closet until I found books that I had long ago annotated in the way that I wanted the students to understand. If anything, pulling my own books with my own handwriting out of a closet in the classroom showed the students that I actually believe in annotating things. They sat with highlighters and pencils, reading texts on paper and noticing how they were constructed. It was kind of great.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll pull out some Thurber, just to see if it stands the test of time. Only, of course, if the wifi is working.

First impressions

Ten instructional days down, 179 to go. Here are some images so far:

The child who came into our Reading class after doing a phonics screen, put their head down and cried. They can “read” but only words they already know. When I went to comfort them, saying, “This is not your fault; this is the fault of the school system,” they whispered back, “Please don’t kick me out. This is the only class where I can breathe.”

A grade 12 class with 32 students, so full that I don’t have actual desk space for everyone. They just pile in and draw chairs up to the edges of tables. So far, it’s mostly working, though the room gets hot (and a little stinky).

The astonished look on a student’s face when I insisted, “really, you can read whatever you want for the first 15 minutes of class. The goal is to enjoy reading.” He chose a Russian novel!

When I told the Reading Class yesterday that I thought maybe they weren’t interested in watching the news (CNN10) at the beginning of class each day. (Our goal is to provide them with background information and a place to talk about big ideas.) Several of them looked up, shocked. “But we LIKE the news.” I said that I was worried they were a little bored by it this year. “No, Miss, that’s just how we look regularly. We still want to watch.” So we are.

The first student who finished a book – last week!! She handed back A Good Girls’ Guide to Murder and showed me that she had already checked out the second one from the library since she didn’t think I had it. Later, when her friend teased that she read all the time because she “doesn’t have a life,” she just smiled and said, “Miss, do you know where that book is? X needs to read it.” And… we already have a book making the rounds based on recommendations.

A student from my first year at this school – now in his final year of university – who has come back to volunteer in the classroom one day a week because he thinks he might want to be a teacher. On his first day in the classroom, he sat down next to a student and listened to them read aloud – just like I did with him five years ago. He even found a book he read that semester, still on my shelf.

When I looked up today and realized that 22 grade 9 students were paired up and having a focused conversation as they prepared to conduct interviews later this week. The class was abuzz with the sound of their voices talking about books they like and objects that hold meaning for them.

The three students who have been coming in almost every day during my prep period to tidy up my room. It is, in fact, a mess. They bubble with energy as they put up the bulletin boards I can only dream of and organize books so that the shelving system makes sense. They chat and straighten and tell me that I need to get rid of books no one is reading. “So many books, Miss!” and they shake their heads at me.

The student from last year who came in today at lunch and asked to borrow a book so that she could read it in her class this year. She had some general ideas about books she might like, but she wondered if maybe I could recommend something. No surprise to anyone, I could.

The repeated refrain, “You had my sister… do you remember my brother… you taught my cousin” followed by “she says hello”. The images of former students swim into my head – where they sat, what they read – and I smile when I say, “Tell her I say hello, too.”

Kindness #SOLC26 31/31

I’ve written about my “chaos class” several times this month. First, when faced with my exasperated declaration, “fine, you choose what we study!” they shocked me by choosing Romeo & Juliet. Then, there were several incidents of bullying which led to me giving them a very serious dressing down. Then we had March Break (and let me tell you, we needed it).

When we returned from break, I knew I had to have my “strict teacher” persona firmly at the fore for a little while so that the students didn’t think their appalling pre-break behaviour was acceptable. I hate the strict teacher persona and find it exhausting, but I did it: I made sure every cell phone was in a backpack, every notebook on a notebook, every tardy explained or excused. The strictness was necessary, but it wasn’t going to be enough. “Strict teacher” gets compliance, but a truly effective class has more; we needed engagement. (I mean, if I am 100% honest, then yes, with this class at least a little compliance would be nice because the class needs to function, but I also hope that they will be engaged.) Engagement, however, requires some vulnerability, which means being able to trust that we won’t be mocked, which in turn means it’s hard to learn in a room with even one bully – and we have more than one.

My being strict might stop the bullying I could see, but it wasn’t going to change anything once my back was turned. I needed more. I needed kindness – not mine: theirs.

****

When we were little, no matter how often we fought, the punishment that united my sisters and me against our parents was “ten nice things.” All three of us hated it. It was the worst. It went like this: if we were really really awful to one another – especially in the car – then our mother would stop everything and make us say ten nice things to one another. Ten! TEN! Worse, after three or four rounds of “I like your hair. I like your shoes” she would tell us it couldn’t be anything physical, which left us having to say at least six things we actually liked about the other person. It was awful. And it worked every time: by the end, we would be super mad at our mother and kind of ok with our sister. My mother was not dumb.

****

When I was teaching at a very small school in Washington DC, the Dean of Faculty once split us into groups of four or five teachers and gave each group an enormous stack of sticky notes. One teacher sat in the centre while others wrote compliments on the sticky notes for a few minutes. Then, we read the sticky notes out loud and stuck them onto the teacher in the centre of the group. It was awkward and a little cheesy, and listening to our colleagues compliment us made each one of us a little emotional. I saved my sticky notes for years; I know others did the same.

****

Punishment? Compliments? I wanted my students to dig deep and find something nice to say about each of their peers – and I wanted each person in the classroom to feel valued. I needed them to practice kindness until they felt it.

I got out the sticky notes. On Day 1, I put five names on the board. Everyone had to write nice things on the stickies. I wrote, too. The notes could be anonymous, but I reviewed every note as it was handed to me. One student wrote “You have a nice smile” five times. I told them to start over. One student wrote “You are nice.” I asked for specificity. One student wrote “You are perfect in class” – an obvious lie – I told them that lying was as unkind as writing something mean because “it shows you can’t be bothered to think of something true.” Eventually, everyone finished. I gave the stacks of kind words to the five students as the rest of us began to work. Each student read through their notes. One girl, well liked and clever, whispered to me “this feels really good” and then slipped the post-its quietly into her purse. One boy read only a few of his, then immediately tucked them away. After class, I saw him in the hallway, alone, reading through the notes.

On Day 2, both the bullied and the bully’s names were on the board. I did not require the bullied student to write to the bully, but I did require the bully to write to everyone. I read every note, paying particular attention to those going to the bullied student. I returned a few for improvements, but I was impressed by how many students wrote truly kind and thoughtful notes to their ostracized peer; he wasn’t as alone as I had feared. Again I handed out the stack of post-its as we started an activity. Once most students were working, I glanced around at the students who had received the notes. The student on the receiving end of the bullying was furtively wiping tears from his eyes. I made my way over to him to ask if he was ok. “No one has ever said anything this nice to me before,” he whispered. He spent much of the rest of class arranging and rearranging the notes in his notebook.

We’ll be done with this activity tomorrow. By then, everyone will have received a stack of kindness from their peers. I was feeling so good about this that I let down my guard a little today, and immediately phones came out and people talked so much during the balcony scene that I had to pause the video. They’re still the same kids. Still, I hope that some of them are just a little kinder than they were two weeks ago.

And hey, if they start picking on each other again, I might just channel my mother: after all, my sisters and I had to say ten nice things to each other far more than once before it really stuck – and now we’re good friends.

PS – I saved this one for the last day of March not only because it’s ongoing but also because every year this month of writing challenges me to look closely and seek good things to share; and every year the kindness of others’ posts and comments buoys me. Community and kindness are hallmarks of this March challenge – now in my classroom, too.

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.