The Literate Teacher's Manifesto

I spent this summer completely redoing my classroom. I figured in the past two years I have completely revamped my curriculum and my grading process, so the only thing left to redo is the physical environment. Go big or go home, right? On my final course surveys, several students commented that I needed to work on changing the physical environment to match the "feel" my classroom had. I knew if several students mentioned it, it was important enough to change. But this post isn't really about that. TL; DR: I redecorated my classroom, and now it looks like this: It is so important to me to establish a classroom culture that will be supportive, nurturing, affirming, and safe for all of my students, so I left school on Friday afternoon in a quandary about how to best establish expectations on the first day. For many years, I was a "go over rules and procedures on the first day" teacher (sometimes on the second and third days too). Two years ago, it was all a...

This is the third post in a series about The Gradeless Classroom. You can read the first post here  and the second post here .  It seems like most of the teachers in the gradeless community (myself included) are filled with an almost evangelical zeal when we start talking about these changes in our classrooms. Going gradeless energized my career at its midpoint in a way few other changes have. And sometimes, evangelists forget to tell all sides of the story. So this post is meant to address that other side; the side we don't talk about as much. The parts that are hard, and the problems that might beset you if you decide this path is for you. Pitfalls My decision to go gradeless was rooted in procrastination. Yes, that's right, procrastination. I hated grading papers with such a passion. I would do absolutely anything to avoid it. And it was in the wake of grading 110+ essays about theme in  To Kill a Mockingbird  that my gradeless classroom began to materializ...

This is the 2nd post in a series about The Gradeless Classroom. Read the first one here . The months following that fateful conversation in my principal's office found me disillusioned with numbers, data, and all of the limitations that come with attempting to neatly place clear boundary lines ("standards") around learning that is messy, noisy, frustrating, and entirely human. The more I pondered, the less I believed that anything at all about the way we do school makes sense. Grouping students by age, norms-based referencing, bell curves, and standardized testing are all leftovers from the factory-reflective system of learning that has been in place since the inception of public schooling. Unfortunately, I have little control over these issues. The one area over which I do have control is my classroom, and I am lucky to be in a school where I am still (mostly) allowed to make my own instructional decisions. I decided it was time to begin making changes. After coming ...

This morning I went to my usual hiking spot. It was the first time I’d been since May. The end of the school year is always crazy busy, and most days I am just too tired to go hike at the end of the day. Then the school year ended, and I got this lingering allergy/ sinus/ upper respiratory thing that just decimated my stamina. In short, when I arrived this morning I felt much like I was starting from scratch. I went my usual route, headed for my usual trail, the Vertical Mile (you can read about it here ). When I got there, I looked up at it, and I just gave up. I turned around and headed back. I knew I couldn’t do it today. Probably not what you were expecting, huh? After all, this is a post about goals, and I pretty much just gave up on mine. So why even write about it? As teachers, we tend to focus on goal-setting for moving forward. We want to celebrate when we meet goals, or our students meet goals, and we tend to get really down when we don’t meet them. But here’s the th...

In 2015, I had been teaching for 14 years. I was pretty comfortable with most aspects of my job. Good classroom management, engaging lessons, happy students for the most part, few parent complaints... in short, I thought everything was great. I was reading professional literature and implementing a few tweaks to my classroom practice here and there, but I was mostly set in my ways. I was experimenting with standards-based grading, but I hadn't really made any radical departure from traditional grading. I changed the name of my assessment process and changed "assignments" in my gradebook to "standards," but the procedures I had always followed in grading remained unchanged. I was comfortable. Flash forward to 3:05, Friday afternoon, 2nd week of school, 2016. I checked my email and saw a message from my principal with the subject line Nothing bad...  and the body text but see me before you leave today.  It's been my experience that the line nothing bad ...

Days 6-7 of this 30 day poetry challenge have run together for me. I started writing this piece yesterday, inspired by the moment in the morning when I arrive at school and enter the classroom, but it wasn't until today's prompt of writing about a superpower lit the spark of inspiration that this piece really came together. It's not really about a superhero, or even a superpower, just a woefully underfunded teacher facing a powerful foe. Once More Into the Breach So it begins, daily. Early morning light slanting across the ground illuminates yesterday's shrapnel, the detritus of our daily struggle. Across camp, weary officers stand on line at the canteen, armed with copies, checklists, and coffee. Back on the field, I inspect my armory and munitions. My weapons aren't the newest. Most of them, I bought myself. The Department insists we should "eliminate waste," fight more conservatively, ration our meager supplies. I don't think t...

Today's prompt was to write a poem inspired by something you've learned. It is 9:25 pm, and I am just now sitting down for the first moment of free time I've found today, if you don't count the 5 minutes during 2nd period that I sat down to read over a few poems in search of a theme collection. It's been a busy day, and my brain isn't wanting to settle to write. I've learned that foggy brain becomes a more frequent occurrence during the spring. I spent quite a bit of time today reflecting on the experience my kids have had with inquiry circles. It was clear from their responses on the K-W-L chart we completed in class today that they are frustrated with my vague instructions. Learning for learning's sake doesn't have a stopping point. It's not something you can do the minimum on, and spend the rest of the time fiddling around on Youtube or playing a game. I've learned that students don't understand the point of learning if it...