A Tale of Two Writing Times

We had an incredible morning with the kids!!

I forgot to mention yesterday that the biggest stress of the day was our writing period.  The kids have been working on "Hopes and Dreams" for the school year since the second day.  They've been brainstorming, writing, revising, and detailing.  They have worked hard so far but many of our students need affirmation that they're doing the right thing or that their work is correct.  To me, this is a result of former teachers who instill a sort of "fear" in them that if they don't do it just like the teacher tells them to that their work is no good.  As I've mentioned before, the philosophy of this teaching team is very much to give kids the power.  While there is often form and structure to the things that we do, the teacher is not an all-knowing goddess (or god) of the classroom.  We, as a community, work things out so that everyone feels good.  I don't mean to say that the students aren't challenged, but it's much more challenge by choice than in other classrooms I've been in.

That said, yesterday I had my first "holy buckets, kids, I need my space!!" moment.  I was helping a few kids at a kidney table when a student had a question that brought me to her seat.  As I moved to that space, I had three little ducklings following behind me.  When I sat down to work with the fourth student, the first three were literally within 8 inches of my face.  I stopped and said, "Whoa.  How do you think I'm feeling right now?"  Their responses were right on and indicated to me that they are much better at reading people than they lead on.  "You're stressed!"  "We are in your space!"  "You can't talk to all of us at once!"  So smart.  The writing period was over and I felt like I had only scratched the surface of their needs. Frustrating!

I was really apprehensive coming into writing time today.  I sat at the same kidney table with the a few of the same kids as yesterday.  Most of them needed help taking their "want" statements and "how they will do it" statements and forming them into an "I will" statement.  For example, they might say, "I want to be a better reader" and then we would ask how they would do that.  They might say, "read every day" or "read the right books for me."  Then, they would make a strong sentence that sounds like this, "I will read every day and read the right books for me to be a better reader."  I had three of my students write their strong sentences on whiteboards and then transfer those sentences to their paper.  What a difference it made!  Something about getting to use different materials propelled them to be serious writers!  They didn't quite catch up to their peers, but they will get there.  There's always tomorrow :) 

-Ms. T