I enjoy learning. Like many people in education, I like classes that support my instruction as well as my own personal growth. Often times though, class assignments feel too hoop like. Here is a paper I really enjoyed writing while I had to really think about what is expected and what I wanted to say.
Dear Shel Silverstein,
Your books keep disappearing from my classroom shelves! And they were hardbacks ($$) too! Some of those copies were my own children’s books. My own kids are a little peeved with me but understand why your funny words disappear from my classroom shelves. I used a poem of yours yesterday to teach inference. You know, the one that goes like this:
"Teddy said it was a hat,
So I put it on.
Now dad is saying,
"where the heck's the toilet plunger gone?" -Shel Silberstein (Hat, Where the Sidewalk Ends,1974).
I loved the little picture accompanying the poem but didn’t have the book (it was borrowed) so kids heard me recite. I think you would be proud, except when I laugh during my recitation, which I didn’t this last time. The kids did though. Some knew the poem and the picture! Everyone got the poem, thought not at the same time. I could see awareness spread across their faces … the awareness, the disgust (surprisingly, not from boys), and the potty humor. Oh Shel, why when I write to you do I want to put exclamation points at the end of every sentence!? Even though you are no longer with us, I imagine you are smiling at the thought of a teacher writing a dead person a … letter, diatribe, a note. I am a rambler, but with you, it is all okay.
Miss you,
Kristie
(At my school, the kids call all adults by their first name)
The books really do disappear. Because Shel Silverstein was so comfortable with writing, his writing, children all over the world can learn, enjoy, laugh, and maybe even reflect on who they are. What did he do exactly? He wrote with children in mind. He wrote what he wanted.
Though I would share with Mr. Silverstein my use of his poem for teaching inference I would not share what went down the second week of school. The three advisors (what we call teachers at the Open School) from IA (intermediate team) wanted to do the formulaic “I Am” poem. It was reasoned that it was going to be displayed with each students’ poster to express who they are, a sort of “get to know you.” Yes, I agreed and acknowledged I had done the “I Am” for a number of years as a third grade teacher. It was always for a Christmas present, fixed neatly next to a silhouette of the student. Laminated, of course.
I struggled with this assignment but then saw through the can of worms. I am …the newbie on the team. I have my opinions and I would have to roll them out slowly to be heard. Well, the slow boat attitude sailed as I encounter conferencing with students. It felt so wrong. I thought about the purpose of this assignment and asked the team if I could put a line from a poem by Tennyson that states, “I am a part of all that I have met” in the middle of the stapled works, and they thought that was cool. It helped me justify this most inauthentic poem for some reason.
My conscience was not only struck by learned textbook readings, but from conferences with students. Not only were they uninterested in slapping down the prescribed descriptors with the nauseating repeater line, I am, this was the third time for the sixth graders! Yikes! I encouraged them that they were different people then they were a year ago. Some kids fell for that. A few asked if they could just copy their poem from last year. I swear.
We watch authentic writing fly off the bookshelves then ask kids to write formulaic writing and expect... what? Results? Good writing? Great insight?
Ah ha, but insight must come from within. From research collected by the National Writing Project and Carl Nagin (2006, p.22), they found, “The very difficulty of writing is its virtue: it requires that students move beyond rote learning and simply reproducing information, facts, dates, and formulae.”
With personal narratives now on the menu, this advisor promotes “recent writing research, they [teachers] begin to direct children to write to real audiences, such as classmates, and teachers, for feedback and evaluation regarding successive drafts”(Nagin, 2006, p.31). The conferences have been exhilarating, frustrating, demanding, and influential. Not one question of, “Can I copy?” or “Can I be done?” Students are asked to tell their story. Their story. They are asked why did they pick this particular story to tell or any variety of questions to explore their source of insight. Students are asked to inquire of their own minds and some one is interested. Some one is listening. Student and teacher, work out the kinks of writing, the difficulties, in thoughtful but necessary ways (p.37). Still, always for this advisor, Shel Silverstein is whispering down from writer’s paradise, “Oh let them say it the way they want to.”
Reference
National Writing Project & Nagin, C. (2006). Because writing matters: improving student writing in our schools. San Francisco, CA. Jossey-Bass.
Silverstein, S. (1974). Where the sidewalk ends. NY, New York.Harper and Row.
