Mining For Hidden Gems

Often at the end of the writing workshop I invite my students to reflect on how they got themselves started writing that day. What was hard? What came easy? This year when I said: Writers, will you join me on the carpet for a little bit of reflection, one student asked: “Why? Are we in trouble?” I was taken aback but I realized that for many kids, reflection is something they do when they’ve messed up. When I was an instructional coach, sometimes I would invite teachers to reflect on student performance data. I would ask: “What do you think contributed to your students’ mastery of this particular skill?”, “Why do you think they are still striving to learn that concept?” More often than not, the answer would be something outside of the teacher’s control. “They came knowing that,” or “They came in pretty ‘high’”, “Well, those are my ‘low’ babies, so I wasn’t surprised by their performance.” I think as teachers we also become defensive when asked to reflect, especially when it’s around ...