Tag: curiosity

A rough start

Amy Clark1 Comment

(The following is the start…a very rough one as the title implies…of a piece I am working on. It’s been a long day and as midnight nears, I know I can’t do this topic justice this evening. Planning to polish and complete it tomorrow. Just didn’t want to miss a day of writing and given that I’m writing about patience, I think that being patient and working my way through this one exemplifies my point.)

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Missing:

the ability to sit still, to wait (with grace), to wonder in the waiting.

Patience has fallen out of practice and become nearly obsolete. Technology grants us immediacy. Answers to just about every conceivable question reside just a google search away, we can mobile order coffee or fast food to lessen the wait time, packages can be ordered and delivered overnight, if desired. And these options, in bringing ease to our life, make us comfortable and lull us into believing everything requires swiftness…that we should be living our lives at a faster pace…that if we aren’t moving quickly, moreso than those around us, then we are falling behind.

(Day 35–almost didn’t happen. Grateful for just a little perseverance to get even just a little writing in!)

ask

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So, I’ve spent the weekend with teachers from around the country talking about and considering the importance of inquiry and literacy for kids. Even though we have all come from different places, it just so happens that this institute is being held in my home town, New Orleans. However, despite being in my actual hometown, I have found myself confronted and surrounded by more thoughtless stereotypes about this city that I love and about what it could mean to be from here than at any other point in my life–which has also heightened my realization that the number of people who buy into these over generalizations and the number of people who label the residents of this city based on those assumptions is far larger than I might have originally thought.

I suppose I sort of insulate myself–wrap myself in the belief that surely people know there is something more to the fabric of this richly historic town, something more to its culture and to the people who cling to it fervently than just raucous drunkenness. More than just a Southern drawl (that actually doesn’t even exist here). More than the sort of grotesque caricature shown in film and on television that is fun to imagine but denies the complexity of reality.

I just assumed that people would know better. I felt like if nothing else, the resilience and spirit the people of this city displayed in the aftermath of Katrina should have helped to erase some of the broad brush strokes. People weren’t just clinging to a city in those days; they were clinging to their home. But time has passed and I suppose those images have become blurry, maybe a little forgotten.

So, as I attempt to absorb and understand the nature of these predispositions, as I attempt to inform without sounding too defensive, I recognize that as frustrating as this bias has been, I don’t have to face it everyday. On any given day, I am mostly surrounded by native Louisianians. But, there are far too many people in this world who have been walled in by stereotypical expectations and who live every single day of their lives trying to break free from that prison of sorts. I have come to realize that just as teachers at this institute  have been breaking away from their assumptions by working through an inquiry process, through a question asking process to uncover some truths about this city and its people, we need to be conducting inquiry every single day of the week in every week of every year to uncover the truth of those around us. We need to take the time to ask the questions that will scratch past the facade we have created with our simplistic assumptions.  We need to ask questions that show interest in actually understanding rather than gathering ammunition to further judgement. We need to ask questions so that we can listen and consider the information and then reconsider our original thoughts. We need to ask questions without fear of having to admit we were wrong–because that admission is where the change begins.

I’ve lived in or near this city my whole life and felt like I didn’t really need this inquiry group study. Except in asking questions on our topic, I realized there was still more to uncover. I was reminded that my story and understanding of this city is just one of many and that I haven’t paid nearly enough attention to some of the threads that make the fabric of this town so rich, so vibrant. In acting as though we know the truth of a person or community or faith or country without ever asking or seeking to know more, without ever hearing the narrative of the person or people living the reality, we will live our lives ignorant of the vibrance of the whole story. And that loss is profound. That loss is dangerous.

Ask.

(Day 15 of the king cake season writing challenge–this could have easily been about the Saints playoff game instead…figured I would channel that energy here instead…can’t win them all I suppose…)

 

inquiry

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This weekend, I’m attending a Heinemann Professional Learning Institute in New Orleans on Curiosity across the Curriculum with teachers from across the country and I’m totally geeking out over the opportunity to sit and wonder and have my thinking pushed to the far reaches. I think that is something that so many of us as teachers–wait, what am I talking about…this is universal…I will rephrase–I think that is something that so many of us as humans are afraid of these days. We cocoon ourselves in the thinking that feels comfortable and safe in order to shield and protect ourselves from ideas and questions that might challenge what we are currently doing, feeling, or believing. I think this is part of what has led to the deterioration of discourse. It is, after all, easier to hide from or to yell over new ideas rather than to listen and consider them.

This institute is not only putting adults of varying backgrounds and viewpoints in a room together and asking them to question, consider and wonder, but the presenters are asking the teachers in attendance to help our students do the same thing. To allow students entry into their own education. To grant students permission to hear not just the teacher’s opinions on what is most important to know and how to learn it, but also permission to voice their own opinions and wonderings about the world…to invite students to be heard and to be seen in this moment as they are for who they are. If we preach acceptance of others to our kids, then we have to start living into that and that means accepting the kids in front of us too.

Instead of denying their thinking (and its validity/quality) and their curiosity because it doesn’t fit the curriculum, let’s start listening with ears that build bridges between their thinking and that mandated curriculum instead of with ears that only hear the disconnect. The concern that the curriculum offers no place, no time for wonder and for student driven inquiry is a valid one because often times it does not. So, we have to be creative and push ourselves to think beyond what has been handed to us in order to see further possibilities. We need to consider how much deeper the learning will be when the kids have taken ownership of it and are invested in a very real way. Make that concern your next wonder, your next curiosity and let it drive your next personal inquiry. If we are the lead learners in the room, we also have to be the lead wonderers. So, dig in, ask the questions, tell your kids about them and then figure out a means to experiment and play around with how to enact this in your classroom. And by all means don’t be afraid to push the boundaries of what you have always done. That is, after all, what we ask kids to do every single day that they enter our space to learn!

At some point today, I realized that I hear all of this as a mom as well. It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day actions and jobs of taking the boys to school, carting them to activities, ensuring homework and studying are completed, feeding everyone, and so on that I lose sight sometimes of asking them what is on their minds…and then also really listening when they share that with me. It is easy to get caught up in the need to clean rooms and to be on time and to ask the questions that I want to know the answers to that I forget to find out what questions are brewing in their brains. And I am certain there must be a zillion of them. It is so easy for me to pontificate on what to do in the classroom with other people’s kids when it comes to wonder and curiosity but when I consider if I have actually enacted that in my own home, well, I’m pretty guilty of not always being able to find the time. So, there’s that…

As I sit and listen this weekend…as I sit and enact an inquiry project, I am not only thinking about how this applies in my classroom but also in the world at large and in my home with my own family. Always important to remember that out of the cocoon, the caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Hoping to break out of my cocoon of comfort this weekend and spread my newfound wings as I reach for new understanding and begin to live it out.

(Day 14…this might be more of a rant than anything, but it just kind of flowed naturally so I let it happen instead of stopping to craft and edit along the way…a fun change. Many thanks to Sara Ahmed, Smokey Daniels, Steph Harvey, Nancy Steineke, and Kristin Ziemke for pushing my thinking this weekend! You guys are amazing!!)

#readinggoals

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Since we returned from winter break, my AP Lit seniors have been working to set individual reading goals and then to select a book that will challenge them as they work toward achieving the goals they have set. Some are tackling longer books than they have read before in order to build stamina (and maybe to prove something to themselves); others are selecting texts that reside in a genre they wouldn’t normally visit, an attempt to extend their reach as readers; and still others are hoping to slow themselves down and really think their way through their reading rather than simply speeding through a story for the fun of it. There are no restrictions on the books selected as long as the student can justify how their choice helps them meet their goals in a meaningful way. They do write reflections weekly, but these aren’t your typical readers response. In these reflections, students do respond and react to the text they’re reading, but they also respond and react to how they are growing and changing as readers as they are working to meet their goals. In this way, they aren’t just unwittingly becoming better readers. They are fully aware of what the challenges are and how they are actively working to meet them.

Because my kids are setting their own challenges, their enthusiasm for their selected books and for their growth as readers has become contagious. One student in particular selected And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts because at over 600 pages, finishing the book felt like an insurmountable task–and she wanted the push to do it. However, she also picked it because it is nonfiction and she is not typically drawn to nonfiction. Today in class, she was beaming as she explained that not only was she around 200 pages into the text, but she was thoroughly enjoying it. She didn’t realize she would be able to read a book like this so fast. She didn’t realize she would enjoy it as much as she has been. She didn’t realize that this challenge could offer so much to her as an individual.

I feel strongly that without choice in this situation, engagement would almost certainly drop out, if it existed at all…and without engagement, true growth of the reader is stunted. If I assumed a singular challenge for the class as a whole and then assigned the same book to each kid to be studied in the same way with the same questions and the same assignments, I really don’t believe their investment would have become so rich and so rewarding. Sure, every now and then in this class we work with a shared text and the kids learn and they grow in intentional and measured ways as readers, but opportunities like this challenge book assignment are more present than they used to be in my space because after witnessing the impact I would be negligent to act in any other way.

The energy charging this student’s voice as she shared her excitement about the challenge and about the book was palpable and entirely beyond the simple satisfaction of having completed an assignment. She had chosen goals that she felt were impossible or at the very least, improbable, to meet, she pushed herself to meet them in a way and with a text that she determined best and as a result, every achievement over the course of this assignment is hers and hers alone.

As a teacher, it just doesn’t get better than that!

(Day 11…done…this one had the potential to be much longer but this has been a rather chaotic night and organizing it would have been too much. The challenge book work will go on for some time in my classroom, so I will simply write on this again another time.)

exhaustion

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So, it’s been a complicated day-one I am anxious to crawl into bed and escape as soon as humanly possible. I mean, if I’ve learned anything in this first year of being a principal, I’ve learned that Monday equates to insanity at school, but today has felt tougher than most. It was as though the day approached as I awoke, said, “She will do” and then proceeded to hang its weight on my shoulders, a weight that would grow heavier with each passing hour with no relief in sight.

I’m not so naive or inwardly focused to assume that I am alone in this feeling today. Mondays have developed a reputation for a reason, I suppose (though I still await the day Mondays prove us all wrong…). I only note it as a disclaimer of sorts before I really begin this piece, a piece that will have to develop itself out of my rambling because I’m simply not sure of my direction. My eyes are heavy and the words are coming slowly as nudges toward sleep grow stronger, but there is no choice except to persevere and keep clicking keys.

I’ve been keeping my students filled in on this writing challenge of mine, letting them know how the writing is going, the ways in which they’ve inspired me to write, the things I’m considering as I write. My intent is to show them that their teacher is there with them, doing the hard work and not just assigning it. My intent is to honestly portray how hard it is from time to time for me to publish work that I don’t 100% love, even to an unknown audience, simply because I know that with a few more days or hours the piece would have been better. My intent is to reveal to them that when you have a passion, when you have a curiosity, you owe it to yourself to chase it wildly and freely without care or concern for the thoughts of others or for how little time you really have. I think they will appreciate my honesty with them tomorrow about how today’s writing happened. I imagine they feel tired like this quite often when they finally get home to begin their homework and sit down to write. I imagine they will appreciate my new found understanding of that dilemma–that it isn’t so easy just to push through and do your best work once the fog of exhaustion settles in. Sure my other “homework” might look different than theirs: mine includes cooking dinner, doing dishes and putting kids to bed before I can sit down to write; theirs includes math, social studies and science. Regardless, finding focus and actually writing in the midst of other obligations, as the dust of a fray with Monday still swirls, is hard work. I have a feeling they will appreciate knowing that I respect that side of their story far more fully than before.

I’ve said this so many times, but it is worth saying again. As a writing teacher, actually doing the real work of the craft has changed the way I guide my students. I’ve had to consider that my personal stylistic preferences should not negate theirs, so I respect their craft more instead of trying to morph their work into a version of my own. Something, I’m sort of appalled to say, I did far too often–stripping their voice for what I thought sounded better. I’ve had to feel the flush of publication when I’ve put work forth into the world and await the criticism that follows, so when I read their work I try to consider my words so that they guide my students toward revision and understanding rather than simply pointing out error. But, as a writer, I’ve also spent a lot of time simply wondering about what is happening around me and in the world at large and I see how that curiosity about the world has colored and deepened my writing. I try to live that out loud for my kids as well.

I’m sure there are some that would say that I should just teach the material when I’m in the class and leave this sort of personal endeavor separate and apart. Obviously, I would have to disagree. And I like to think my students would as well.

(Day 9…tomorrow will be better…good to work through the fog though!)