Emotional Baggage

I have a love/hate relationship with one of the key parts of my job as a coach. On the one hand, I love dropping into classrooms to talk with students about what they’re working on or to do an impromptu conference. On the other hand, it feels very much like a “power move” to me, something that only someone of authority, like an administrator, has the ability to do. I worry that it aligns me with the evaluation side of administration, and yet I also feel like I need to see the current instruction happening in the school in order to plan “best fit” professional learning for our staff.

So then imagine my inner turmoil after this recent visit to a second grade classroom. The teacher is conferring with a student at the back table while all the other students are spread out around the room. I bypass the kid closest to the door and sit next to, let’s call her Kayla, who has her feet comfortably propped up on her desk as she reads a graphic novel version of Captain Underpants. “How’s it going?” I ask. “Can you read me a little bit of your book?”

Kayla glances at the book. “Well, I can’t really read the words. I just tell what’s happening from the pictures.”

“Let’s give it a try,” I tell her enthusiastically. “Maybe I can help you with the hard words.” Kayla proceeds to labor through three frames of the text, needing help with many of the words.

“Hmmmm,” I mention after having helped her with supposed and joke. “I’m thinking this book might not be a just right book for you yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t be later, but we probably need to find some books that are a better fit for you.”

Kayla begins to cry. “But I want to read chapter books like the other kids are doing!” she says. “That’s my best friend over there,” she gestures towards a girl reading a Magic Treehouse book, “and she’s reading a chapter book and I want to read one too!” Her voice is starting to get louder.

“Not everyone reads the same kinds of books at the same time, and that’s ok,” I tell her, but she buries her head in her arms and begins to cry loudly. “Let’s try reading one of these other books you have in your bag,” I say as I pull out two books labeled as level 10 texts and then Ralph S. Mouse, which I quickly set to the side.

“Those are baby books! They’re too easy! My auntie says I have to read chapter books to get to be a better reader,” Kayla cries.

“Why don’t you show me how easy they are?” I ask, and I pull out Cookie’s Week and open to the first page. Sure enough, she reads smoothly and accurately, though she substitutes “windshield” for “windowsill” and doesn’t want to hear about that error.

“I want to read chapter books like the others! I don’t want everyone to know I can’t read!” she wails loudly enough for everyone in the class to hear. At this point a blonde girl nearby brings her another leveled reader that apparently Kayla had been reading yesterday. Not helpful. It’s not a chapter book.

“How about this?” I whisper, “What if I can find some books for you that are chapter books that you CAN read? Will you come to the media center with me to find those books?” I’m wracking my brain trying to think of a low-level chapter book – maybe Nate the Great? Ivy and Bean? Did we buy some Hi-Lo books for 3^rd and 4^th grade last year?

It doesn’t matter, because Kayla has completely fallen apart, wailing loudly, bottom lip quivering, hiccupping and gasping for air. Her teacher mouths, “I’m sorry!” to me, shaking her head. Apparently I’m fighting an old battle and have opened up old wounds.

“Why did you come in here?” Kayla wails loudly, “Everything was fine until you got here!”

I feel for Kayla. She was not at all shy about her dilemma – she’s very aware that she’s reading at a level lower than the others, and it’s breaking her heart. She has a vested interest in keeping up appearances, and that involves holding thicker books during reading time and being able to tell her friends that she reads chapter books. If I want to ensure she makes progress this year, this is a critical moment in her reading life. I need to find her books that look hard but are easy to decode.

I quickly walk down the hall and burst into the media center. Fortunately, it’s empty. “I have a reading emergency!” I announce to the media clerk. “Where are your Nate the Great or similar books?” She quickly directs me to the early chapter books and we find a few – Owl Diaries, which might be a bit on the high side, but is a graphic book with heavy picture support; Unicorn and Yeti, an even easier graphic book with three chapters; and two more books with heavy picture support, fairly simple sentence structure, and most importantly - chapters.

I run back to Kayla’s class, where she is still crumpled on her desk, crying quietly while everyone else sits on the rug for writing time. After some coaxing, I convince her to come to a back corner of the room to look at the books I’ve brought. “Are they chapter books?” is the first thing she asks, so we flip through each, looking at the tables of contents and chapter headings. Instantly, her tears dry up.

“Let’s read a few pages of one of these – which one would you like to try?” I ask. Quietly, she chooses Unicorn and Yeti and then she literally crawls into my lap, dries her tears, and begins to read. She still needs some help, and we study the pictures a good deal to understand the context, but after reading four pages, she is beaming. “Thank you!” she whispers.

Later that day as I see her class on their way to lunch she breaks out of line and runs up to me. “I read more of those books you got me! I’m taking them home to my auntie to show her I can read chapter books!”

At the time, I didn’t realize quite what had happened for Kayla. Honestly, for a while there, I thought I’d broken her. There’s nothing quite like a wailing, blubbering reader to make you feel like a conference failure.

But all Kayla wanted is what we all want – to be loved by our friends, which to her meant fitting in by reading the same types of books they had. As a teacher, our jobs are to meet kids where they are while simultaneously helping them with the emotional baggage that comes with being a struggling reader. Thankfully, there are texts that can help with this. But it’s also important to realize that without Kayla’s buy-in and emotional confidence, nothing I said to her about reading strategies would stick. She needs first to feel like she belongs, that she’s in a safe zone with her peers. Once she has that comfort, we’ll be able to work on cracking the nut of finding the skills and strategies she needs as a reader.

Storytelling - The Secret Sauce of Instruction?

“Once there was a little girl…” Much has been written about how the human mind is primed for stories (Newkirk, 2014; Perry, 2012). Our brains perk up when we detect a story in the making – reading “once there was” above probably cued that response in your own mind. Scientists suspect this innate response is due to the eons we’ve spent in huts and caves passing knowledge along to others through the stories we tell. Narratives are how we learn what works and what not to do – which animals were dangerous, how to escape scary situations, and how to respond in social settings. Nowadays, we don’t encounter as many physically dangerous situations as humans did in the past, but stories still matter immensely for how they help us process learning. The most engaging informational books have micro-stories sprinkled throughout to illustrate the most important points. Writers know the brain responds best to stories.

In their book, “A Mindset for Learning”, authors Kristine Mraz and Christine Hertz describe how storytelling can be a powerful method for sharing the habits of mind that encourage a growth mindset. True to form, they sprinkle stories from classrooms throughout their book that perfectly illustrate the habits in action through whole-class conversations and teacher-student conferences.

Kristi and Christine’s key points for teaching storytelling are deceptively simple. They are worth thinking about when we teachers tell our own stories and when we teach our students to storytell:

1.     Set the scene (the who and the where)

2.     Name the challenge or problem

3.     Raise the tension through multiple attempts or worsening events

4.     Reach a resolution (Mraz & Hertz, 2015, p. 91)

I know my own downfall is rushing step 3, the tension and events that make up the bulk of the story. When I tell jokes or repeat a story, I tend to rush headlong towards the punchline or resolution, without spending enough time marinating in the problem for the listener. Not surprisingly, this is also the problem most students have when writing their stories – summarizing major events in the rush to be “done” instead of elaborating on the tension of the major events.

The solution? Simple – add dialogue and dramatization to the story. Don’t just summarize, but act out parts, and include the dialogue or internal thinking of the characters. Practicing this in oral storytelling will likely impact students’ written stories in positive ways as well.

Building on Kristi and Christine’s suggestion to tell stories about growth mindset learning, if I were to tell a story of one student’s growth to a class, it might sound like this:

It’s the end of reading workshop in second grade and students are spread around the room in clumps or singles, their books spread around them, quietly murmuring. I stand from my conference with Khloe and call out, “Class, clean up your book baskets and join me on the rug – I have a wonderful story to tell you about one of your friends!” After the group is gathered in a circle on the rug, I lower my voice to a whisper: “Everyone has been working so hard on tackling their trouble words in books, just like we’ve been practicing. Today, I want to tell you a story about one of your friends who’s done just that. Once upon a time, there was a determined little girl named Khloe…” I glance over at Khloe beside me, who ducks her head and grins. The other students’ ears perk up at the familiar beginning of a tale.

“Khloe had been reading and reading and reading the books in her book basket, all except for one book. She had tried to read it once before, and it was just too hard. Just reading the first page was frustrating because there were too many tricky words. So what did she do?” I looked around the circle and shrugged. “Did she give up?”

“No!” the other children called out, smiling. I grinned back. “Of course not! She could have given up, but she decided to be persistent and so she showed the book to her reading partner. ‘I’ve got a tricky book!’ she told her partner. ‘Can you help me figure out these words?’ Her reading partner, being the understanding and helpful partner that she is, agreed to help. They decided to read the book at the same time – chorally reading. When they got to a tricky word, they used their superpowers together: they looked at the picture, they made sure they had the right beginning sounds, and they backed up and read from the beginning of the sentence.” I touch my fingers and exaggeratedly glance at our anchor chart of decoding strategies as I describe the steps the readers took. “And guess what?!”

“They read the book!” yelled the students, some up on their knees, others clapping their hands.

“You’re exactly right! Did they get all the words exactly right? No, but that’s ok. They knew that they had worked together to solve many of the tricky words, and most important of all, the story was making sense. Together, they decided to keep working on the book the next day and the day after that, so they could get better and better at tackling the trouble words.” I lean in and whisper to the students as I wind up my tale. “They persevered, which means they kept on trying, even when it was tough. I bet there are other readers just like that in our classroom.”

Storytelling brings issues to life. It can make an abstract concept real and relevant to students. Try incorporating storytelling into the daily fabric of your classroom. And once you do, tell the story of how it went in the comments below. We all love a great story!

Book Review: Onward – by Elena Aguilar

This jewel of a book is one you’ll want to read very slowly so that you can stretch out the experience. It has taken me months to read it, and even now I’m sad it’s over. Elena knew it would likely have this effect, because she’s organized each chapter around a month of the year, beginning with June.

The book is about cultivating resilience in educators. Each chapter examines aspects of resilience such as emotional intelligence, storytelling, taking care of yourself, compassion, and dealing with change. Along the way she takes deeper dives into specific emotions such as optimism, empathy, and perfectionism. Each page gave me so much to think about and reflect upon that I felt the need to slow down to digest, but also share with others.

For instance, she begins the short section on perfectionism saying, “At the heart of perfectionism is the belief that, in order to be loved and accepted, we must strive to act and be the best all the time” (p. 166). This isn’t possible, of course, and so along with perfectionism comes frustration and even anger when things don’t work out perfectly. Understanding this helps me understand some people I know who at first glance appear to be angry much of the time, but underneath it all may be frustrated perfectionists. Education is certainly a difficult field if you’re constantly striving for perfection.

Her chapter on change made a big impression on me as well. Appropriately, she fit this into the April chapter, which in education is the month of testing and finding out the big changes for next year – the principal’s not coming back, or you’re asked to teach a new grade level. Change is incredibly stressful. The secret to leading change, Elena says, is to understand that most people are fearful of change, and as leaders we must acknowledge this and lend encouragement. There’s no fast way through this. “Leading change most often includes learning; in order for people to do something different, whatever it is that you want them to do, you need to address skill, knowledge, capacity, will, cultural competency, and emotional intelligence” (p. 280). She suggests setting up opportunities for teachers to reflect on their purpose and their ongoing growth. And above all, to listen.

As teachers, we all feel a complete range of emotions throughout the year. If you have lately been feeling less bounce in your step, less resilience in the face of challenge, I urge you to pick up this book. Each time I set it down after reading, I felt better, more encouraged, and filled with food for thought. Treat yourself to this book – you deserve it.

8 Professional Books You Should Read

Everyone’s coming out with their favorite books from the past year, and though I’m a little late I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon. To keep it simple, I’m restricting my list to professional books only, though I read SO many good novels this year too.

Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading by Vicki Vinton

This book tops my list mainly because I just finished it a few days ago and it’s still on my mind daily and will continue to be. Through so much of it I found myself nodding, and wondering how she put into words what I’ve intuitively felt and known about how we make decisions around comprehension instruction. Her writing style is filled with references to her work with students, so it automatically feels trustworthy, and while her ideas are complex, they make complete sense. It’s a book I’ll want to revisit a few times. Overall, her premise is that we should take a problem-based approach to our work with kids. Vinton suggests that we’ve been doing too much of the work for kids – that we’ve over-scaffolded their thinking, and thereby prevented them from practicing the work they’ll soon be doing on their own, when we’re not by their sides. Step-by-step she shows us how to create deeper thinking readers through mini-lessons, small group work, and conferences. This is a great book for anyone familiar with workshop who wants to take their instruction to the next level.

Understanding Texts and Readers by Jennifer Serravallo

I blogged about this book earlier  and feel that it’s a phenomenal book for a school book study (as are any of these books, honestly). We’re beginning a book study on Understanding Texts and Readers at my school and my only complaint is that Jennifer hasn’t come out with a study guide yet, that I can find. This is an amazing tool for teachers that has the potential to radically change how we confer with readers as we learn what to look for in texts and readers.

Embarrassment by Thomas Newkirk

This jewel of a book is a conversational jaunt through an emotion most of us hope to avoid at all costs. Newkirk gives us a great deal to think about, not just about the “emotional underlife of teaching and learning”, but about how we present ourselves to the world, how we learn, and above all, how to write well. The book feels like a comfortable conversation with a fascinating friend – a bit meandering, chock-full of stories, and with a liberal sprinkling of surprising ideas and connections.

Student-Centered Coaching: The Moves by Diane Sweeney and Leanna Harris

This is an excellent follow-up to Diane’s original book. Very clear, specific writing that describes more of a partnership approach than the gradual release model that she was a proponent of in her earlier books. The moves include: micro-modeling instead of long-term modeling; noticing and naming, when teacher and coach use a sheet to describe how students respond to the lesson; sorting student work; thinking aloud, which refers to both coach and teacher and also helps with limiting the amount of time both plan outside of lessons; setting goals for coaching cycles; using learning targets to break down those goals; providing strengths-based feedback; and measuring the impact of coaching by looking at student work. The coaches in our district are doing a book study on this and it is great fodder for discussions.

The Impact Cycle by Jim Knight

I always love Jim Knight’s books, and this one was no exception. It seemed to pull together a lot of what he’s been saying over the years into a very clear structure. Jim pulls together Hattie’s research on effective instruction along with a wonderful book by Atul Gawande called The Checklist Manifesto about the power of checklists as a way to support knowledge workers with complex tasks. Finally, of course, he layers in his own and others’ research on coaching as a partnership as opposed to an administrative or advice-giving approach. 

A Mindset for Learning by Kristine Mraz and Christine Hertz

If you’re fascinated by the growth/fixed mindset phenomena and want to know practical strategies for including growth mindset work in your own classroom, get this wonderful book. It’s written in a very fun style (I laughed out loud at their opening story about a fire drill on the first day of Kindergarten) with very practical suggestions and tools for folding growth mindset work into the work you already do.

Real Revision by Kate Messner

I stretched this book out because I didn’t want it to end. Kate has a very readable style in which she addresses the reader both as a middle school teacher and as an author of middle grade books. Her book is a compilation of revision strategies from herself and her author friends, interspersed with examples from her own writing. It brought to life the revision and writing process, and really helped me understand the processes published authors go through in re-envisioning their writing. Lots of excellent quotes throughout, and very practical ideas, even for adult writers to follow.

Infusing Grammar Into the Writer’s Workshop by Amy Benjamin and Barbara Golub

If you’re looking for a clearly-written, not-too-threatening book about teaching grammar in authentic ways, then check out this book. Amy writes the sections providing the background knowledge on grammar that most of us never received when we studied to be teachers, and she does so with a non-threatening, practical voice. Barbara, a coach and staff developer with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project, provides the applicability piece by showing us what it looks like to teach these concepts within the classroom.

I hope you enjoyed this short list – here’s to more wonderful professional reading in 2019!