The Teacher is Still Learning

I am still learning. Yes, I have been teaching for about thirty years, but I’m as far from knowing it all as I was when I began. If I didn't know that on November 20th, I would be keenly aware of it after the National Council of Teachers of English convention last weekend. 

Unlike many other groups that meet in Washington, D.C., this body of people will help me make real changes. I listened, learned, and reflected. Frankly, I spent a bit of time beating myself up. The presenters have it so together that they make me look like a newbie! 

I started the convention with a session about digital tools in the English classroom. I was floored by how these teachers, professors, and researchers engaged students with computer technology. They introduced me to the concept of social collaborative reading and annotating. I have done a big paper exercise where my students re-read some chapters and annotate together. What if they could read the book this way? How powerful and helpful! What a great use of student modeling and independence! We are going to try this in Freshman English! 

But wait! There's more! Another presenter talked about mixing genres and digital forms. He presented his book containing narrative, informational texts, video, audio, poetry, and images mixed together to give a more complete account of the war in Sierra Leon and Liberia. What a great option for senior project! And what a relevant, engaging, and important way for students to make sense of meaningful personal research! 

The next morning, I was introduced to the hackjam! The playful and energetic team from the National Writing Project introduced me to the concept of inviting kids to hack: to repurpose, reorganize, reimagine, and creatively collaborate. We had so much fun! We broke into different groups: one group ran down to the exhibit hall, picked up all the freebies they could, and make a construction with them. A second group tore apart children's books and make new ones out of them. A third group performed flash poetry readings throughout the convention. A fourth group took pipe cleaner like stickies and made poetry on glass surfaces (including a wonderful pun on the window of the lactation room: live feed). My group used HTML teaching tools from Mozilla to hack the NCTE website (well not for real - but we did make our own version of it). 

It is one thing to learn from experts like Troy Hicks and the National Writing Project people, but it is a special joy when the experts are my colleagues. My English department chair, Beth Ahlgrim, and two Deerfield teachers, Kristan Jiggetts and Dana Wahrenbrock presented the fantastic work they are doing with mixed genre research papers in Junior English.

Finally, it was a special privilege to listen to a trio of teachers whose blog I have been reading since I heard them speak at the NCTE convention in Chicago several years ago. The Paper Graders talked about the power of writing with your students and sharing your writing with your students.

Of course, there were other benefits to the convention. I got to spend time with my wonderful Deerfield English colleagues. I had two dinners with my delightful daughter, who goes to college in DC. We had a magnificent tour through the Phillips Collection Museum of Modern Art. 

Was I really only away for three days? 

The next step is to keep these ideas alive. By putting them here, I hope to remind myself (and feel free to remind me as well) to keep experimenting and learning in the classroom. Some of these experiments will fail. Some will help me figure out next steps. Hopefully, they will help my students grow and learn – and me, too!