Mining For Hidden Gems

Looking back at the books I read at the end of a year is just a way to reflect on how I have grown as a person. I have loved reading since I learned how to at the age of five and have never been without a book since. The books I read show me how my tastes and thoughts have changed, evolved or been confirmed. Here are the ones that will stay with me and you will hear me quote or recommend: 1. Books that synthezied and articulated my beliefs in humanity and how we can do better and be better:   Humankind: A Hopeful History  by Ruger Bregman -  I have always said that humanity needs a better PR person, someone that will point out that most of us, most of the time, are good. But it's the exceptions that get the coverage. Bregman cites evidence to show that yes, we are capable of commiting atrocities but it takes a lot to get us there.      Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant: a manifesto for living a life where we are c...

Photo by Alex Guillaume on Unsplash At first it was just a game to have a brain break and use up the last few minutes of class before going to lunch. But as I observed my fourth graders playing, I saw an opportunity to learn about what makes for a productive conversation, in class or outside; now as ten year olds or later as adults. The object of the game is to count from one to ten in order, as a group, without knowing who goes next. One person will say "one",  another will follow with "two", and on we go untill we reach "ten". If two people talk at the same time, we start over. It is almost impossible but it is fun and when we finally get to ten, there is loud cheering. The first few rounds we couldn't get past one because the same two or three kids wanted to be the first to start. These were the same students that always raised their hands to participate in class discussions, the same ones who initiated the group work. They are proactive and their ...

By: Susan Hansen and Andrea Greene In 2016 Andrea and I and Carolyn Pierce presented a session on the Power of Expectations at our school district's professional learning conference. As part of that presentation, Andrea tried to synthesize her own experiences as a teacher who sees greatness in every child, with the acronym RELATIONSHIPS. For years we have been wanting to expand on these thoughts as a way to demystify what it means to truly have high expectations and believe students into becoming their true selves. Here is a beginning. Joing us at our monthly Recharge Your Teacher Soul event to contribute to this conversation. ****************** What we fundamentally believe about human nature determines how we treat each other. All the world’s spiritual teachings tell us that humans are created in God’s image, that they are “mines, rich in gems of inestimable values”, that there is gold buried in all of us. When a teacher steps into a classroom with this belief firmly held, it is ...

This has been a hard year for teaching and learning. In the Fall, every week seemed like the first week of school and every teacher felt like a first year teacher. To the normal anxieties of teaching (Am I reaching all of my students? Is there enough time to plan for everything? Have I done all the proper paperwork to get the right kind of help for each kid?) were added some new ones: What if I get sick? What if I bring the virus home to my own family? What do I do with my own kids who are learning remotely when I am asked to teach in person? What about all the kids I cannot reach, physically or emotionally because they are muted behind a black Zoom square on my computer screen?  In the midst of all this, I had a new job. I had gone back to instructional coaching after three years in the classroom. I was excited to be part of offering the dual language program in two of our middle schools for the first time. I had an awesome team of four teachers to work with. But this was not the ...

This was a good year for reading. There was the pandemic of course and the heightened awareness that we don’t really know a whole lot about each other and about our country’s history, which prompted even more reading. Then about a month ago I tore my Achilles tendon which resulted in surgery and forced confinement on a couch. I’ve read 96 books so far (my goal is 100 before the year),  from a 622 page tome on the Great Migration to 32 page picture books. I’ve travelled back to Venezuela,  Iran and Texas -  places intimately connected to who I am. I read to understand and be understood. I also read to escape the news, even if for just a few hours. Here is a list of my top ten: Caste by Isabel Wilkerson - Over the past twenty years, I’ve read as many books as I could about the Black experience in America. As an immigrant, I realized a long time ago that I know very little about this part of America and even less about how it has impacted the rest of American history. If I ...

  Before there was art criticism, there was art. Before there was literary analysis, there was literature. Before there were rules, there was the game. Standards come into being long after there is a large body of accumulated knowledge and experience about a field. And they are always subjective! They are as limited as the vision, expertise and knowledge of those who write them. They are as universally applicable as the degree of participation of those who are subjected to them. So basically, standards, benchmarks, and milestones are all man-made. They change and evolve as our collective knowledge about a field grows and deepens. Standards are also written by people and as such reflect the values and biases of those people. Sometimes standards are guided by political ideologies rather than scientific research.  The more I teach, the more I question the unquestioned use of standards. To insist that every learner master the same concepts at the same time and to the same degree i...

Photo by  Marc-Olivier Jodoin  on  Unsplash When I was a child, my dentist would give me a tablet to chew on that would turn the plaque a bright purple color. These “disclosing tablets” were helpful in showing kids how to brush their teeth better. The pills tasted horrible, the sight of purple teeth was ugly and the truth about how badly or infrequently I was brushing my teeth was embarrassing. The pandemic has been a disclosing tablet, revealing all the areas that we have left neglected. This realization is not pleasant, the truths we are discovering are ugly and admitting our ignorance and neglect is embarrassing. But much in the same way, this experience can be used to make changes, changes that can go beyond the current moment and help restructure our communities for the better. When our one week Spring Break turned into two and then gradually led to online learning, many of the imperfections and inequities in teaching, learning and the role schools play were exposed....

Photo by Steven Wright on Unsplash To be a more reflective, responsive teacher is to cultivate curiosity by questioning everything we do, know, read, think or hear. By questioning I don’t mean second guess, interrogate, doubt or indict. Curiosity is simply asking questions to understand better. Here are are some of my curiosities for today: What do we mean when we say:  Meeting the needs of ALL of our students - How do we know what their needs are?  Preparing students for success - What do we mean by ‘success’? Empowering students or adults - What are we empowering them to do? What is our definition of ‘power’? Authentic learning - Authentic for whom?  Problem Based Learning - Whose problems are we solving? Who decided that was a problem? What do we mean when we say ‘problem’? What these questions have in common is the assumption that we all have the same definition of need, success, power, authenticity and problem. But a bigger assumption is the one about our true natu...

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in her 2009 TED talk titled The Danger of a Single Story explains what happens when what we know of a place or a people (or even a historical event) is shaped by one perspective. What we have is an incomplete story and often an inaccurate one. If we believe that first story on face value and are not diligent in our own truth-seeking, it will settle in our brain and consciousness and claim prime real estate - squatters' rights. Any other story will have to now compete with it. Any new information is filtered through that initial imprinting. And it may take decades to supplant that initial story or add to it. Here is my personal experience with swallowing  incomplete truths: I was fifteen years old when I came to the United States from Iran. My knowledge of Black people and their culture was limited to what I had seen on dubbed TV shows and athletes at Olympic games, i.e very incomplete, twisted and inaccurate. I had very little knowledge of the Civil Right...

I have learned so much about teaching and learning by observing nature (Read Goose Liver Pedagogy , Butterfly Facts for a Teacher and Untitled  for other musings on nature and teaching) Last year I hired someone to trim my trees. I was so desperate to get the job done that I just went with the random person who had left their card on my door and wasn't asking for a lot of money.  When I came home I was shocked to see how they had pretty much hacked all of my trees down without any attention to aesthetics or shape. I was sure I had lost all of my crepe myrtles. But a couple of weeks later I began to see signs of branches and leaves coming back! The trees bloomed all summer and I was relieved that I hadn't lost them. When winter came, the crepe myrtles naturally lost their leaves and became bare again. But as Spring approached, I began to worry that most of them would not bud or bloom again. There was no sign of new growth. In mid-March, I went on a closer inspection and notice...

As teachers we want to believe we love all of our students equally and treat each and every one of them the same. We know that equality and equity are not quite the same things. This graphic has been helpful to me and my students in understanding that each of us may need different resources to gain equal access to learning. If equality is the end, equity is the means to get to that end. What we hope to achieve is a society where each and every member has an equal voice, their needs are considered with equal urgency and concern, their lives are valued equally and they have the same rights and privileges for participation. Equity is how we get there. Equity is recognizing that we do not live in a world that has always believed in equality, that some of us are not starting at the same place as others because of hundreds of years of inequality. Equity means that we recognize the beautiful diversity of our communities and appreciate the various ways we learn and express ourselves, even w...

I ran into a former student at the office supply store the other day. She greeted me with her sweet smile and let me know that she remembers her fourth grade year and me fondly. She also let me know that she is graduating as a dental hygienist soon and will be looking for a job in her field. I was not surprised. I remember her as a serious student, diligent, hard working and conscientious  - all the qualities that I knew would allow her to succeed in school and in life. On top of that she was kind, well-mannered and always wore a smile on her face. "Jesse" was my student ten years ago while we still offered transitional bilingual services to our students that came from Spanish speaking homes. The goal of a transitional program was to strengthen a student's English proficiency enough so that they could transition to a monolingual classroom. It was a remedial model that looked at students' multiple languages as a handicap and not an asset. That year "Jesse" ...

I've been reading and thinking a lot about reflection this year and wondering how to create an environment that fosters the kind of thinking that leads to learning from experiences. On Tuesday, when my students came back from two weeks on Winter break and we sat on the carpet to catch up and reconnect, I asked them to take a minute and think about what they had learned? I admit I was trying to avoid the situation where some of my students had a lot to say about where they went and what they got and others felt left out. I wasn't sure how it would go. I was prepared for a lot of silence and repeated answers. But I was pleasantly surprised.  Here are some of their responses: "I learned that you have to be really patient when you go on a long road trip." "I learned that dogs need a lot of care and attention, otherwise you have to give them away." "I learned what it means when people say Christmas is about family. I knew it was true but this year I real...

I use poetry and songs every day as a way to build reading fluency in my students. It takes no more than 5 minutes to read a poem or sing a song two or three times.Through poems and songs I also fill their heads with beautiful language; beautiful language that later shows up in their talk and in their writing. Because words also get stuck in their heads, I try to use selections that carry a positive messages, affirmations that can hide in some corner of their brain and raise their voices when most needed. Last Spring, I came across a performance by Andy Grammer and the PS22 choir of his song: "Don't Give Up On Me". I showed the video to my class as an example of feeling the words you sing or recite. I also told them that if a song was going to get stuck in their head, I'd rather it be one that said: I will fight I will fight for you I always do until my heart Is black and blue . . . I'm not givin' up I'm not givin' up, givin' up No, not me...

There are ten minutes in my teaching day that I will not give up or exchange for some other activity no matter what. When fire drills, assemblies and assessments interrupt my regular schedule, I still try to find ten minutes to read aloud to my students. These are the most joyful moments of my day but I also know that there is a high rate of return on this little investment. Last year, we read nine books together. When I ask my students to write book recommendations, they often choose one of the ones I have read aloud to them. When I run into them years after they have left my classroom, what they remember are the books I read to them. Here are some of the reasons I safeguard my read aloud time: The voice of the fluent reader becomes imprinted on the text - I have been listening to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast Revisionist History. When I picked up his new book Talking to Strangers  I realized I was hearing his voice as I read the text and it flowed easily and rapidly. Right after f...

Yair arrived on the first day of school from rural México and left to go back to his village on Friday. He was my student for 54 days. He had the sweetest smile and an enthusiastic spirit. He was eager to participate in whatever conversations we were having, always raising his hand to say something. What did he learn in our classroom that he can take with him into his future? It happens from time to time,  more in some schools than others. Children enter our classrooms, are with us for a few weeks, few months and then life takes them away to the next school, next town or even the next country. The realization that there are kids who may not come back to class tomorrow gives me the urgency to focus on teaching skills that will serve them for life. What do I hope Yair learned in the eleven weeks he was here? I hope he learned that reading is the most powerful tool he can possess, that his stories, his thoughts and opinions matter, that it is important to learn to express those though...

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 ...