Author: mrbrentg

So this week was full of ups and downs. I had started the week off knowing that I had an interview for a position of Vice Principal at my Junior/Senior High School. I was not telling anyone that I had the interview because I was certain that I would not get the job. As the day arrived people started coming up to wish me luck and tell me I would be great at the position and all these really nice things. The question I had was how people knew that I had the interview in the first place. Turns out someone saw a list and decide to share with everyone.

So now that my future failure was on everyones radar I decided to focus on the task. We all should hopefully have goals. Mine was to use this moment to share my vision. I have spent the last six years really focused on literacy work and trying to transform my teaching. As I reflected on what I would love to see in a school as part of a leadership team I thought about 3 key things.

1. Pedagogy- How are we as a staff teaching? What message is it sending?
2. Instructional Leadership- What am I doing to help with part one? How am I helping my fellow teachers to stretch?
3. The PLAN- What is the big picture? 5 years-10 years where do I see the school and my role in it?

With these in mind I felt ready. I had my answers, I knew what I wanted to talk about and set out for destiny haha (fully knowing it was a one in a million shot)

The interview came and the questions reflected, for the most part the work I am doing. The interview ended with 3 questions.

What is your biggest failure?

What is your biggest success?

Why do you want to be VP?

I was not ready for these questions and as I reflected on the first one I remembered something that really hit an emotional nerve. A student I felt I had failed, a victim of bullying I could not save, despite my efforts and I broke down as I tried to talk about it. Recovery did not come in the next two questions as I continued to reflect on success being those connections with my students and the all important why…to protect them, to help them because I love my community and the school.

I left the interview, during it I quoted a piece from Gravity Goldbergs “Teach Like Yourself” in which she discusses her fears.

I was not afraid going high, I was afraid of falling.

Paraphrased as I don’t have the book sitting beside me 🙂

I realized leaving that interview that I felt the same way. I had no fear of the interview, I was ready, I love the school, community and students and I know that every day I do my best for them. I knew that I would continue to do that regardless of the position but I had been brave, I put it all out on the table and now was the time to wait.

I received a call later telling me that I was not the successful candidate. Two other teachers of whom I respect got the positions. I am happy for them, sad for me, but that is how it goes. It is tough reflecting and second guessing the why when you are not the successful candidate. Could I have answered something better, was my emotional reaction to a question that hit me “right in the feels” too much? Did I not present myself as the leader I feel I am? Did I buy into my hype too much?

These thoughts are going to be with me for a while. I don’t know if I will take this chance again. The fall is seemingly too far this week. The view from the top, all the possibilities were exciting. That vision for a plan may be on hold. But what I do know is the work continues, I have had amazing days in my classroom with my students because they are my focus.

Change happens. But constants remain true. We do the work for the kids, we climb new mountains and we learn not to be so afraid of the fall.

Total side note if you are not following the #31DaysIBPOC on Twitter do yourselves a favour and check it out. It is the lift we need right now.

Reflections bringing me back to the beginning

I was reading We Got This by Cornelius Minor today while my students were reading a little independently. I love the initial ideas presented on listening to our students to help guide our planning. It reminded me of the work of Gravity Goldberg in Teach Like Yourself and the idea of students wanting to work more for what agitates them than what irritates them. Being driven by a need to solve something versus being told what to solve.

As I reflected on these rather complimentary thoughts in two great books I wondered back to another idea from Teach Like Yourself, Core Beliefs. What drives our practice? How are we going to achieve our goals? Why are we doing the things we do? As we look at these questions the idea of authenticity starts to come through. I don’t imagine there are a lot of educators, who when ask the question, “Why do you teach?” they answer, “For summers off” Teachers are teachers because they see a higher purpose to the work. As I thought about my current Core Beliefs I landed on these three things.

1. All Students have the right to be both heard and seen.
2. Our teaching should reflect what we have learned from our students.
3. Inquiry, both ours and our students should drive our instruction.

1. All Students have the right to be both seen and heard

I have come back around on this a lot lately. Of course all of our students should be seen and heard in our schools but too often many do not feel this is their reality. I have had many students express feelings of not being a part of the community because they don’t play sports or because they are not a certain religion. I have had many students share their interests and then not see them reflected in the instruction being offered. Last year as I was new to my current school I wanted to get to know all the students. I wanted to visit with them about their interests, their joys and their struggles. I learned about the anime artists, I learned about the parkour athletes who would defy gravity on their lunch breaks, I learned about the ukulele playing song writers and the fantasy novel writers. I also learned about the desire of all of my students to have a voice their own own learning and so I began a new piece in my learning journey.

2. Our teaching should reflect what we have learned from out students.

I have utilized project based learning for the last 6 years in some form or another in my classroom. I loved the idea of a driving question to promote curiosity. I loved the idea of different products and options to display learning, I loved the idea of a class approach around a unifying idea. When I was first introduced to PBL it came with the advertisement that it would engage ALL students and I feel like many still try to sell it that way. Talk to your students and you will get a different story. What really drives students is their interests, their lives and how their learning ties into it. This year I took to the time to really listen, to ask my students how I could best address them as learners with the content I had to cover based on the curriculum. Through those conversations Project Speak was born. It hasn’t been all smooth sailing and some times the waves of frustrations over this “new” way of doing things take some time to ride out but I do see students more engage, more willing to work through the choppy waters and less likely to give up when the rowing gets tough. My instruction is changing more as I listen to my students, as I tailor what I do to better meet them where they are. As we explore how the learning really impacts their life.

3. Inquiry, both ours and our students should drive instruction.

I circle back often to the power of unanswered questions. It has always pushed me to learn more. I can be described as impatient but when it comes to looking for answers we should all be impatient because impatience leads to action. Agitation, the need to solve a problem, leads to action. Students being provided with authentic real life learning tasks, that matter to them, leads to that agitation. When we allow the voices of our students, their questions, their wonderings to guide our instruction our students see we value their words, their feelings. When we allow ourselves as teachers to follow ours questions and wonderings, our practice improves. We search for the answers to better serve our students.

Closing

Teaching is not easy. There is no “one size fits all” Through listening to our students and providing them with authentic opportunities to explore what matters to them, framed with what we are responsible to teach we have the opportunity to tailor our instruction to the individual like never before. The question is are we willing to do the work?

So I am sitting at the gym this morning between sets and I check my twitter feed to see the daily post under the #31daysIBPOC hashtag. You can learn more about it here https://31daysibpoc.wordpress.com/about/ Each morning this week there have been amazing posts that have helped me learn and grow as an educator. I do not live in a diverse area, it is hard to know how to best serve the students of colour in our school without being that “white teacher”. I think to the story A Very Large Expanse of Sea and the scene where the lead character is upset because her teacher tries to include her by making her a the spokesperson for all Muslin people. I have worried that I have done that myself, unintentionally, but done it all the same. I wonder often what I can do to help my students, to be more aware of the privileges I have, that my students unknowingly wield and how I can prepare them for the diverse world that awaits them. This is all just background for where I found an amazing post and a quote that led to so many thoughts.

Chad Everett, an educator and blogger who posted todays #31daysIBPOC post which is here http://www.imaginelit.com/news/2019/5/3/dearmsrayford writes a letter to his first black teacher. As he reflected on this experience a quote quite literally made me gasp in the gym and has been playing on repeat all day.

How often do we try to make a student fit our unrealistic expectations and then blame them when they do not meet those expectations? How often do we set our students up for failure? All day I have looked at the work I am doing in the class, the work I want my students to be able to complete and I have wondered if I am overloading them.

I continue to build my capacity as a teacher to see all my students as the individuals they are. To provide them with as many different opportunities for success as I can. I am grateful for the educators that continue to share their stories and struggles. So that, while not my experience, I can still try to learn, to be an advocate for those who do not enjoy the same privileges I do. I am grateful for my 100 Watt bulbs in the classroom who have had patience with me as I work to find them the lamps that fit.

Learning is one of the best parts of teaching and I am grateful today for the lessons I am learning. Thank you Chad Everett and the teachers of #31daysIBPOC for sharing your stories.

“When you are writing your stories, write for yourself”

-Katherine Applegate.

I have had a bit of a writers block this week. A lot going on and trying to narrow my focus into a single topic seemed impossible. Then two night ago we went to listen to Katherine Applegate speak. She spoke about hope, she spoke about the need to have empathy for others and to leave the world a better place than we are in right now. She also spoke about the importance of writing. Not writing for an audience like we hear about so much, but to write for ourselves, to write about what we like. To write OUR stories.

This has stuck with me. I have worked so hard the last few years to learn, to better my practice. I try to spread that enthusiasm among my students and colleagues. To me discovering something new (maybe only to me) is a thrill. The possibilities of new learning for my students, new ways to engage them and new ways to help support my coworkers is exciting.

I started #ProjectSpeak 4 weeks ago now. Most students are finishing up their opinion essays, one decided they would rather write from an informative stance. Some have started curating research links, videos and documents on their Padlets to serve as a form of text sets to help inform others on their topics, this week we will be looking at creating our own visuals to help present our topics. Some will create infographics, others might make collages or other multimedia pieces and then in a few short weeks we create Ted Talks or Podcasts to spread their message and share their voice. I am happy about how things are going and the kids seem to be engaged more than the traditional lessons in writing that we were doing. Again we are writing for ourselves, about what we care about.

My grade 7 class is working on personal narratives and so we are working on “My story” different elements in a first attempt at a multi genre project. We are reflecting in different ways, working with poetry and creating visual elements. Again our writing is focusing on us and the success continues to grow. Less time trying to convince kids to write and more time conferencing, more time laughing about their stories, their reflections. The real words of their life. Writing their stories.

Authenticity is the key to success in literacy. If we want students to enjoy reading we need to treat them like authentic readers. Give them time to read, give them choice in their reading and give them authentic opportunities to share. Spoiler alert that isn’t a book report including a title page and author biography (yup I can still remember my days in Junior High). If we want them to be writers we should respect them the same way. Less convoluted narratives based on some picture prompt and more choice. Less structure. There are times, of course, that required writing is necessary . But authenticity can still be the goal. Writing with authentic purpose is the key to working in the writing forms that students will encounter in their life outside the creative writing unit. Project proposals, grant applications, business letters, instructional essays, How-to guides. All of these options can be utilized in projects that are based on student interests and meet the objectives and outcomes presented in curriculum.

Choice should not be a buzz word. I imagine a school when choice is exactly that. A place where students can decide what their educational experience looks like. A student who loves reading and creative writing can choose that LA class, one that is more interested in technical writing to go along with their interests in PBL and related topics have that option to attend. Logistically I am not sure where we go. However, as I have continued to explore voice and choice this year, as I have shared ideas with coworkers on how we can tie literacy work into their Social Studies, and Science classes I have realized at times we are just exchanging one model for another and slapping a choice label on it.

I wonder what would happen if we really let our students write their own stories in our school. If choice really meant choice and it wasn’t a practice in simply providing a second option. As I begin breaking in to “We Got This” by Cornelius Minor the idea of truly listening to our students is already coming through.

Are we listening to their stories or are we writing them?

I started out my teaching career at a run. I wanted to change the world, I wanted my students to change the world. I had just spent a few years learning about “best practice” (more on that later) and I was ready to roll. I grew frustrated with coworkers and school leaders who kept telling me to slow down, kept voicing concern that I was trying to push others too fast, that people “need to crawl before they walk and walk before they run” and that I should just accept that. I did not want to accept that so I powered on alone and felt like my students where doing fine at my pace with my teaching style. I still look back on my early conversations and feedback that I scoffed at that I was just going “too fast”. In retrospect I see the advice and when applied to the world of education I can’t help but agree. I was going too fast. I think about the gym, too fast causes injury, unexpected change causes injury. We do things slowly, new lifts, new weights, gradual change and yet at times we expect education to change over night.

This year I have approached things differently. Scaffolded more, taken time for the feedback that matters, from my students. We have made gradual changes that require small adjustments along the way. Change is measured not immediate.

In Education we see a lot of calls for change. It is either “we need to focus on inquiry and voice and choice because kids hate the current system” or “we need to go back to the basics because kids are not learning anything”. Over the years I have learned that the single most damaging thing to a classroom, to instruction or to a school culture is extremes. Very few people in the grand scheme lie in the extremes. I think the same can be said for our students. A small portion need the full freedom of inquiry or project based learning to fully realize their potential. Others do need that traditional structure. The bulk lie somewhere in-between. When we only teach to the edges, when we allow our own preferences to guide our practice, instead of looking at the individual needs of our students, we might be missing out on success for the majority of them.

Choice is a term thrown around a lot. As I reflect on projects I have done in the past, with all these different options I have given myself a pat on the back because “WOW look at all the choice I have offered” or in book clubs and the piles of titles I have available. So much choice. But what I am leaving out it seems at times is the traditional and the transition from set parameters to open exploration. I think about those videos of the Beagles that have been in a lab and never touched grass. When freed the handlers open up their kennels but at first the dogs won’t step out, they tentatively measure the risk. They slowly step out and still slowly explore these new surroundings.

I think teaching needs to be a bit more focused on that piece of the journey. Less on the dramatic change and more on the progress. I was talking to Julie (my awesome New Principal of her elementary wife) today who said to focus on positive steps forward rather than the time it is taking. It was a moment to reflect, going too fast, trying to run before we walk.

Not all of our students are ready for dramatic changes to how things are taught. If we power through and drag them along the way we are doing the opposite of our intentions.

Some are not ready to run. It is ok to walk. Best practices are always developed from learning and building on previous “best practices” Innovation takes time to accomplish but also time to get use to. Balance is key and respecting the journey of all learners should be our focus.

I have asked myself this question a lot lately. As I sit and listen to my students talk about the struggles they have in school be it with tests, homework or even assignments that they can’t understand. As they question what it is we are learning or the rules and expectations they are meant to follow It brings me to the question, “What are we doing?”

Currently in education we have people arguing for less inquiry and exploration, and more rigid lessons. Against independent reading and for drills and workbooks. People arguing the merits of standardized testing and ignoring the benefits of a classroom full of rich discussion around text and again I ask, “What are we doing?”

My students told me in January they were not having a great year, they were excited to have me as their teacher at the start of the year but circumstances led to me not teaching them as much as I would have liked. We had a chance to reboot and so we started with asking them what I could do to fix it. What did I need to do to help them be more enthusiastic readers and writers. We watched the Prince EA video “What is school for?” After we finished a student said, “I agree with this, I am in 4H and I learn so much more there about what is important to me than I ever learn in school.” That comment struck me hard. I have always thought the things we do are engaging and fun and they learn, the students agreed I tried but it was nothing they really cared about. Some books were great, some writing was engaging but in the end it was just another task to work through. That didn’t fit what I wanted their experience to be. So we talked about how to fix it. Project Speak came from it. Students talking about, writing about and researching things that agitate them, things that drive them to want to know more and share it with the world.

The interesting thing as we are starting this journey is the number of topics that students are talking about that have to do with things school related they are unhappy with. Homework, Testing and Teaching have come up a few different times. I have written about this before but the idea that our students have to keep saying, “My time should be mine outside school.” Or “Tests are hard for me, I have a hard time focusing on them” and then today “Teachers need to let us speak, show our creativity and celebrate our accomplishments” If our students think these are things we are not doing I need to ask again, “What are we doing?”

If we are too proud to admit our students know themselves and how they learn better than we know them we need to take some time to reflect. Our job as a student reminded me today is to teach, support and guide. If our students are confident enough to tell us, brave enough to correct us then we need to honour them with work that is worthy of them. We need to keep asking the question “What are we doing?” and be ready to follow up with why.

Purposeful work, worthy of our students, building them as learners. That should be the goal.

So today I started the day a little frazzled but had decided already that I wanted to talk to the kids about how stories reflect real life. I am listening to Where the Crawdads Sing while I work out in the morning and Internment in the evenings at home and we have been talking about them and how they can serve as commentary on different topics in society. For my students I turned to a handful of picture books to explore this topic further.

We started with the discussion around Mirrors, Windows and Sliding Glass doors from Rudine Sims Bishop. It was interesting to see my students work through the analogy. I thought it would be harder to understand but they got the Mirrors and Doors part immediately. For the windows they just couldn’t see it because, “if you had a sliding glass door why do you need a window?” haha

We moved on from there and discussed topics of the world that picture books might address and looked at titles like Those Shoes, Last Stop on Market Street, Love, The Promise, Adrian Simcox does not have a horse, The Invisible Boy and a few others. Students read them in small groups and discussed what they were thinking. Today the connections were pretty surface level but the conversations were happening. The scene in Love with the boy under the table always sparks a conversation about why that scene is needed. The representation of multiple elements and struggles that we see in The Invisible Boy were expanded as a student pointed out an issue I had not considered.

Later in the day this same class had a few options, continue working on the picture book reflections or work on some poetry exploration. The class split half and half and it was enjoyable being able to read amazing poetry (I am totally getting them all to love the work of Rudy Francisco) and discuss elements of picture books. Throughout our rather chill period the kids and I discussed how the year is flying by and the topic of a final exam popped up. It was crazy how quickly the chill joyful attitude was sucked from the room as the kids started focusing on the tests that were still months away. The anxiety that spiked and the questions that broke away from the creative side and became more grade obsessed.

A day of joyful literacy work where conversations create more conversations came to a screeching halt because of one word. Test.

As we reimagine what education looks like, especially in the face of those who say the traditional ways are best, we need to make sure the most important voice is that of our students. Are our intentional and unintentional actions promoting learning and growing? Or are we shutting the door on that process for the mechanical process of testing?

I will choose a million conversation about learning over a test on it.

Today we were watching a TED talk with a young girl that proclaimed that students will work to our expectations as teachers. If we set the bar low they will meet us there, and if we set it high they will strive to clear it. We need to have faith in our students and believe it.

Kylene Beers talked at NCTE about the “soft bigotry of low expectations” and “you don’t need to be a reader to be a thinker.” I feel too often teachers set expectations based on a skill or a measured ability instead of getting to know their students, instead of challenging them despite what the test said.

I think this is one of the reasons I love doing a whole class novel as primarily a read aloud. I love the opportunity to take on a bit of the lifting (the reading) to allow my students a chance to really think about the text, how it makes the feel, what it makes them think and how it might change them.

Reading Refugee I knew some of my students might have been hung up on names, the why of the events and so much more if I had left them to read in isolation. Through reading I opened up so many opportunities for those same students who would have struggled to thrive. The expectation that they could provide meaningful conversation never faltered. I knew all my students could participate at the level I expected, sometimes they needed a little boost a scaffolding of how we approach a deeper dive but once they jumped in they could swim. I trust them and they trust me and they know I expect their best. That won’t look the same for everyone but the expectation for them to bring their “A” game is there and I think my students knowing my faith in their awesome brings it out more.

We can look at students that struggle and just let them sink deeper into that quicksand or we can pay attention, walk around the quicksand and find another route to success. Providing our students a chance to show they are amazing in areas that we might miss if we look at learning as a single track is one of the most important parts of our job. Confidence builds success and when kids get a chance to participate in conversations, that in the past they have been only an audience member, the exponential growth is incredible.

It is all about expectations. Our students deserve to be held to the highest and then helped to get there.

This last week as we started #projectspeak in my 8th grade LA class I have spent a lot of time thinking about student voice and choice, who is being represented in the books we choose, the discussions we have and work we do. We currently face in Alberta an election where one party suggests we need a more rigid curriculum focused on skills and “the basics” and moving away from guided inquiry work. To say I disagree with this thinking would be an understatement but it is not because I don’t think the basics are valuable or because I think kids for the most part have mastered these skills, they haven’t. I disagree because if we really want to help students learn we need to look at each INDIVIDUAL student. We need to understand how they learn, moving to a rigid curriculum that makes no room for that inquiry, that exploration, is bound to isolate students that don’t learn the “regular way”, this path will only lead to greater extremes in student success. Those who are more traditional learners will thrive and those who are not will be forced to conform or left behind. Conforming is the opposite of education.

As I was at the gym today I started thinking beyond this, instruction is not the only way we isolate our students. We also do it in what we place our focus on, who we choose to give the spotlight and who we leave out in the cold. Last year my eyes were opened to this thinking when a student, who is not an athlete, wrote in his journal about how much he hates being in a school that doesn’t see him. At the time I was reading a short story about a Basketball player and thought, “Yup this is going to engaged the kids because…Basketball” The false narrative in my small community that I had bought into is that because we are so sports centred that it must be engaging for all. Man was I wrong. When you think about school sports there is only a small percentage of the student body that excels at a certain sport. In a student body of 200 kids only 20 make the basketball teams, 10 percent, and yet if we were to ask around the kids not in sports would say, “[athletes]” get 90% of the attention. We can just look to a sports event, say a Volleyball game or Basketball game, the people that come to attend those events outnumber the Band Concerts and Play by a relatively large margin. At least in the eyes of the students in those activities.

After this conversation around my student’s written response last year I committed to getting to know as many of my students by their interests as much as their academic abilities. I learned about Manga and Anime, I went to judge 4-H speeches, students talked to me about their novels they are writing with their friends and their parkour adventures (those scared me). But the difference that my students felt, as my interest in them as awesome unique people, was measurable. This year as I ate some lunch with past students one said, “Mr.Gilson we loved your class the most but it was more because we know you care about us, like actually care, and try to get to know us more.”

Small simple things make the biggest difference. Our decisions as a school, the intentional creation of a culture that sees ALL students needs to be just that INTENTIONAL. We need to celebrate the kids who have started a garage band as much as the kids that make the basketball team, we need to know about the artist that has created their own comic book universe as much as starting point guard.

A schools success depends on the success of all students and as I sit and reflect on the future I wonder about how I can dedicate more time to getting to know those students I still don’t. The number shrinks every day as I pause between classes to visit with a sibling of a student that I have yet to meet or stopping by the foods lab to sneak some goods (my favourite). These simple actions have introduced me to more of the student body and built those connection, shining a spotlight on the corners of the school that don’t always get it.

It is easy to say ALL KIDS MATTER but if our focus doesn’t show it they are only words typed in all caps.