I Tried Something New in My Classroom, and Everyone Survived by Laura Dobbs Terry

It has been three whole months since the 2017 Summer Institute.

Three.

In some ways, it feels like a lifetime ago. In others, it feels like I just left. It is still hard to believe that the entire institute only lasted four weeks, and yet it has made such a big impact on my teaching, even in only the first month and a half of school.

But I guess that’s kind of what the SI is about.

This summer, we wrote. A lot. We did personal writing. We did writing we’d ask our students to do. We brainstormed and researched how to mold our kids into writing machines, how to improve grammar (and, to be honest, how to make teaching grammar less soul-draining), how to perfect our own practices...I could go on. But I want to hold your attention.

My original blog post was going to tell you all about what my inquiry focused on in June and how I set goals for the school year and how I was implementing those and whether it was working or not...but it felt so...well...

It was boring.

I had every intention to revisit it and make it better, and I never did. This blog is supposed to be about how the SI is impacting my teaching, and while that boring ol’ post fit the bill, today, for the first time, I actually saw the SI impacting my teaching in a meaningful way. What’s better, I saw it affecting my students in a meaningful way.

For the first time this year (and also my life), I did two things. And they made this chaotic and stressful job so much better:

1. I collected my students’ writer’s notebooks. The kids write in these daily, but I don’t read them because I don’t want my students to stress out about “sounding good.” I just want to get them in the habit of writing. I warned them, however, that I would periodically collect them and just flip through to make sure all of their entries are there. Additionally, once a quarter they have to choose one piece of writing to edit, revise, and turn in for a grade, which is why, today:

2. I facilitated a writer’s workshop. I set up six stations in my classroom. Each station had a specific task for students to complete, from subject-verb agreement to capitalization to sentence structure to peer-editing. The kids rotated every ten minutes with their Chromebooks to edit their writing.

I think all teachers at some point (or at many points...for me it’s definitely a regular thing) feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness at how insanely impossible our jobs can be. We’ve bent under the pressure of the ten million galaxies that make up education: test scores, classroom management, IEPs, parents, lesson plans, grading, faculty meetings, administration woes, and on and on an on….and the payoff is often miniscule if any. (Just like the paychecks, am I right?)

But I also find that the highs are incredible and sustain me through the lows.

Folks, I anticipated that a lot of these writer’s notebooks would have blank or missing pages, or that kids would write one sentence and be done. Maybe that’s a pessimistic perspective to have...maybe it’s a realistic one. Either way, let me tell you: of course that was the case with a portion of them...but not all of them, and not even consistently for any particular student. I had some kids who wrote pages each day, and some kids who wrote at length some days and only three words for others, but the number of kids who just didn’t do the work? Zero. As I flipped through those notebooks, I could see that this seemingly insignificant activity was fulfilling some of my students (the ones who already love to write) and challenging others (the ones who don’t think they can write). It’s encouraging their voices. It’s motivating them to express themselves, even just on paper, even if no one is reading it.

That was my first victory.

I was also not thrilled about this writer’s workshop. (At this point, you’re wondering why I’m even a teacher since I obviously anticipate disaster in everything I do…. This is a fair judgment.) Realistically, though, I don’t do well with chaos, and stations can be chaotic. Also, my students struggle with grammar, and I did not know if they could self-edit, even with instructions and examples.

It went...okay.

I won’t know if it helped their writing until next week when they submit their final drafts...but my classroom is still in one piece, most of the kids stayed on-task, and when I asked for some quick verbal feedback, a good portion of them said it was helpful. They didn’t freak out, they weren’t running around in confusion...they just did it. Also...it was my first time (and my students’ first time) doing this. Okay is good for these circumstances, I think.

I count it as a victory. At the very least, it didn’t make them any worse writers, and it didn’t make me a worse teacher.

My point in all of this is that the SI pushed me to try these activities. I never would have done writer’s notebooks or stepped out of my comfort zone to do a writer’s workshop if it weren’t for the experience I had last June. This school year has been particularly challenging already, but every day I have a little voice in my head reminding me about the SI: the support I have from my colleagues, the fully-loaded arsenal of strategies and tools I have in my back pocket, and the overall sense of possibility I walked away with and still carry with me.

The uniquely infuriating thing about teaching is that once you start to have your units and lessons and strategies figured out, it’s time to change something either because it’s mandated, or because you’ll lose your mind if you have to teach “The Cask of Amontialldo” one more time. Besides, if we don’t change, we become outdated more quickly than the previous version of the iPhone.  Shaking up classroom routines (or teaching routines) has the potential to dissolve classrooms into chaos...and it probably will, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t working.

So, take a risk. Try something different in the classroom. Try the Summer Institute in June and come up with more ideas than you’ll ever use.

Besides, when else will you have a month of time just to focus on improving your teaching? It sure isn’t happening during the school year.