Inspired by "Growing Readers" by Debbie Miller of TC and yet totally our own. This was the strongest first week of school I've ever experienced as a teacher of reading.
On Monday, Ronnie, the janitor, and after hours dj of everything from Mingus to Sting and back, handed me a Caribbean Life newspaper excerpt about a new singer from New Orleans. I made a big teacher deal of it in front of my kids, "See how smart people know what their friends are interested in and give information to each other?"
On Tuesday, Joanna asked, "Mr. Shirk, remember when you're friend gave you a newspaper about music can you read it to us?" Happily I complied; it went over their heads. But the act of a seven-year old girl remembering a day later an interaction involving text between two adults and expressing her interest in hearing about it; wow. She is aware that a community of ideas exists between people who are alert and soulful. Also, a good friend pointed out to me that Joanna felt welcomed into this community.
On Wednesday, Julian brought in a book about earthquakes in response to the rare East Coast quake we felt on Tuesday. See the last bullet point on our chart of things good readers do. We added this in response to Julian's contribution. That day (I had also brought in 4 books on earthquakes from the library) we practiced partner reading - book in between two bodies, one pair of hands on book so we don't rip it, quiet voices but lots of reading and talking, reading and talking, and so on.
What do these experiences say about lesson planning?
The things of highest value could not have been written in to my lesson plans because they were responses that my kids and I had to our learning environment. On the other hand, I prepared by sitting in a coffee shop reading Debbie Miller on building a community of readers and I prepared by developing a bond with Ronnie with music blaring in the empty school corridors - "I know that's McCoy Tyner, but that just doesn't sound like Coltrane..."
What's lost when a school, or a graduate school, doesn't call forth this kind of preparedness, or worse, starves responsiveness by over-emphasizing detail in lesson plans.
What do these experiences say about assessment?
It's impossible to put what Joanna and Julian did in a multiple choice test. Yet those are the measures our school wants to use to say we will be as good an elementary school three years from now as City and Country, The School at Columbia or PS 321. This makes me want to be a teacher and learner always, never a policy maker or a leader. Ojala, que haya otro modo de ser lider.
