THE LIFELONG LEARNER

There’s been lots of talk about finding the Silver Linings in the midst of our current COVID storm. At publishing time, we’ve been quarantined here in New England for ten weeks, and schools are closed indefinitely. However, despite all of the anxiety and unrest, our students are still learning (because we teachers are still teaching), we haven’t run out of toilet paper, and we haven’t sold our kids on eBay driven each other mad.

But it’s a lot.

And if we’re not careful, the What Ifs can absolutely capsize us.

To help reset my own perspective (which I find myself doing on the daily), I‘ve been doing what many of you are doing: looking for the Good that has come out of all of this.

Of course, this is nothing new. Mr. Rogers urged us to see the Good, C. S. Lewis encouraged it, Mother Teresa—and probably just about all of our parents as they endured our adolescence. If you haven’t seen British YouTuber Probably Tomfoolery’s The Great Realisation [sic], it’s a must-watch that explores all of the Good that has come from our time in captivity quarantine.

So, without further adieu, here’s my own list—in no particular order—of the Good I’ve seen come from what my students are affectionately calling “Coronacation.” (#worstcationever)

Photo Credit: Siouxsie Wiles and Toby Morris

This is our students’ 9/11. Their JFK Assassination. Their Uphill-Both-Ways-in-the-Snow walks to school. This is their “I-Remember-When…,” the story they’ll be telling and retelling the next generation.

This is also a breeding ground for anxiety. And the instant access to the news–complete with its statistics, daily briefings, and predictions–probably doesn’t help.

So, as we all do our best to flatten the curve, educators are doing their best to flatten student anxiety as well.

While keeping their own anxiety in check.

And connecting with their students in real-time.

And creating meaningful, non-busywork assignments.

And providing feedback on what students have submitted.

And reaching out to those who haven’t engaged with their class.

And helping their own children with their school work.

And keeping their cupboards stocked when the supermarket shelves might not be.

And… And… And…

Teaching 100+ students–while trying to just survive the current “unprecedented time”–is a lot.

So, to add some levity to this otherwise heavy time (especially now that many of us have loved ones who are sick), my students answer a Quarantine Question of the Week. (I answer it, too.) And their willingness to play along–and their sense of humor–has I think helped us both. Below are some of the Greatest Hits from these last few weeks.

Enjoy! 🙂

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WEEK 1: MY QUARANTINE IN SIX WORDS

Describe your Quarantine in exactly 6 words. No more. No less. No explaining.

(inspired by Jimmy Fallon’s Hashtag Challenge)

• My 600 Pound Life–Quarantine Edition.
• Sleep, Learn Anywhere, workout, and repeat.
• Have to check my email again.
• Never thought I would miss school.
• Every day is Saturday, minus the fun.
• Walking from couch to fridge = challenge.
• Overused television, underused legs, inescapable family.
• Schedule? Funny. I’m slowly becoming nocturnal.
• Homework stress greater than Covid stress.

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WEEK 2: LOTTERY LOOT

What’s the first thing you’d buy if you won the lottery?

• I’d pay off my parent’s house–and buy myself a nice car.
• I’d purchase a ball python and its tank requirements.
• I would pay for my college tuition and put enough in the bank for both of my siblings.
• I’d install a full wall of bookshelves.
• I’d purchase two plane tickets to Sacramento, California.
• I’d buy a giant bean bag chair the size of a bed.
• The first thing I’d invest in (besides college) is a studio where I can create stories.

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WEEK 3: LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION.

If you could quarantine anywhere else, where would it be?

• At Winona Ryder’s house (minus Winona Ryder)
• Anywhere warm! It would have to have A/C, as I melt very easily. Definitely need a private pool and a personal chef. If I’m in quarantine, might as well be stuck living lavish.
• In Maui, sitting on the beach with a tropical (non-alcoholic) drink in my hand
• In a Barnes ‘n Noble all by myself with maybe a couple of Starbucks employees. That way I could have tons of books, music, Starbucks, and other sources of entertainment.
• Any large city. I don’t care if it’s a cramped apartment building. It would be nice to have people living close by I could just talk to through a window or balcony.
• In a rock climbing facility, as long as I could get some decent food
• In a modest mansion in the Sud de France countryside. My friends and I are there so that we can play D&D and ride horses and read and talk all day. The entire collection of all the words of Ray Bradbury, George Orwell, Anthony Burgess, and Franz Kafka is in the house. With some comedy in there for when we’re done reading about death.
• In all honesty, I wouldn’t want to be quarantined anywhere else. I love my home, and I have all my family and pets with me to keep my company.

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WEEK 4: “QUIET ON THE SET!”

Congratulations! Your life is going to be made into a movie. Who would you want to play you?

• I’d want Saoirse Ronan to play me, and be my best friend.
• Blake Lively
• The Rock
• Millie Bobby Brown
• Sophie Grace Brownlee
• Mila Kunis
• Tom Holland
• Reese Witherspoon
• Dylan O’Brien
• Amy Poehler

And quite possibly the best response…

• Based off of Buzzfeed’s “We Know Who Your Celebrity Doppelganger is Based on These 7 Questions” Quiz, I look like Timothée Chalamet. So, I guess he would play me. Buzzfeed doesn’t lie. Am I right? (Note: This is a female who looks nothing like Timothée Chalamet.)

I always tell my students that Life trumps School. I don’t want them worrying about a reading assignment or writing deadline when they should be caring for a post-op mom or sitting with a sick grandparent. Life is precious, our time together is limited, and our relationships with each other will always eclipse English class. Life trumps School.

Then Dad died, and all bets were off.

That wisdom I’d doled out to my students? Completely lost on me. (It was also lost on me when, at Week 37, my water broke and I was writing lesson plans.)

Unfortunately, there’s no grad class for how to grieve in a job that requires you to be “on” every minute of every day. With other jobs, you can hold your father’s hand in hospice, plan his funeral, and take the necessary time to grieve. In education, you can’t move Tuesday’s meetings to Wednesday and call it a day. Tuesday’s clients still need to learn. As proof, I remember squeezing myself into the corner of Dad’s hospice room, writing lesson plans. And his eulogy.

Today is the one year anniversary of Dad’s passing–and the first time I could write about it.

These last 12 months have brought with them many emotions and even more realizations. Here’s a list of some of what I’ve learned about death and teaching.

There are a slew of other things I’ve learned in the last year, but I’ll save that for my book. I’ll simply close with this: I miss Dad something awful. But Elizabeth Kübler-Ross had it right.

“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”

Our family’s Faith assures us that the night Dad left us, he fell–on two strong knees–before His God. No cane. No hearing aids. No pain. No cancer. Just completely Whole. And he heard his Heavenly Father say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” 

We’re one year down with a lifetime to go. And I trust there will be many more lessons to learn—and to teach—along the way.

A few years ago, during Thanksgiving week, I began what I affectionately call “The Gratitude Project.” (You can read read more about it HERE and HERE.) Essentially, I forced my students–and myself–to carve out some time to reflect on the Good in our lives in the midst of all of the bad. We were inspired by Kid President, we looked at an experiment that the Science of Happiness conducted, writing similar letters to the influential people in our own lives, and we saw how gratitude is being expressed in ongoing global projects such as the 365 Grateful Project and Thnx4. I shared my own musings–in the midst of aging parents–both of whom have battled cancer and defeated the ICU in the last year alone. (My father was actually in the hospital while we were working on last year’s Gratitude Project and lost his battle to the cancer that had unknowingly returned fewer than than two months later.)

In addition to wanting my students to have a positive digital footprint (hence our Passion Blog Project and our use of Goodreads–among other 21st century learning opportunities), I wanted my students’ parents–and the world!–to see the fabulousness these students show me on a regular basis.

The result was a community slide deck where students expressed reasons for which they are thankful this year. Some contributions were light, others were heartfelt, but all reflected the diverse mix of grateful thinkers in Room 1227. Take a look below to see what these fabulous adolescents shared. (Click on the slide deck itself to advance to the next one.)

High schoolers aren’t reading like they used to.

However, most students remember a time when they enjoyed reading, going to the library, having a book read to them. But something happened, and reading was placed on the back burner. (For my readers, that Something tends to be middle school–when choice often goes down and requirements go up.) Addressing the part schools play in this decline, Kelly Gallagher (in his book Readicide: How Schools Are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It), asks:

“Shouldn’t schools be the place where students interact with interesting books? Shouldn’t the faculty have an ongoing laser-like commitment to put good books in our students’ hands? Shouldn’t this be a front-burner issue at all times?”

My answer, of course, is yes, a thousand times yes!

Thankfully, my students are readers. The students I had ten years ago? Not so much. But now–with far more distractions in the midst (e.g., Netflix, cell phones, gaming), my students are actually reading again.

And when I’m asked what has changed, the answer is simple: me.

A mid-career crisis–fueled, in part, by the non-readers sitting in my classroom–forced me to upend everything I had done in my English classroom. And I saw firsthand what the research had been saying for decades: Choice for the win.  The video below (which I share with my students and parents in September) articulates The Why behind the For the Love of Reading (#ftlor) Program.

And yes, there’s data. Last year’s (three classes of high school) sophomores read a collective 1,281 books cover to cover after openly admitting to only having read 356 books the year before!

While choice reading looks different in every classroom, here’s what has worked in Room 1227–after over five years of research, professional development, trial-and-error, and student and parent feedback. My For the Love of Reading program includes four steps: 1) Start with a plan; 2) Devote part of every class to reading; 3) Hold students accountable; and 4) Help them grow.

1) START WITH A PLAN.

Our department requires students to read one full-length text per quarter. However, in order to build the stamina necessary for college (where they’ll be assigned up to 600 pages of reading per week!), I require my students to read one book per month. Many students end up far exceeding this, but most confess to thinking in September that Teacher-Lady was certifiable (which is probably the case) and that they’d simply Fake Read again all year.

Since many of my students wouldn’t be able to name ten books they’d like to read without consulting Google, they first complete a reading planner. (I’ve allowed students complete choice and controlled choice within monthly genres. Both work well, but I’ve found that the latter exposes my students to a variety of readings. We spend a few days in September exploring genres in groups–again genres that the students select, and each month starts with a group sharing their research in a slide deck like this one on the genre we’ll be exploring.) My learners are given class time to play in the Literary Sandbox, perusing sites like Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, our school and town library database, and our classroom library database (of 2,600+ books!) through Booksource to find titles that interest them. Students who don’t know where to start are pointed toward sites like this 2019 Reading Challenge or this timeless Bingo-style one.

Having a plan in place means students always know what they’ll be reading next–which keeps the momentum going. And that’s half the battle. However, the beauty of the reading planner is its fluidity, as students’ tastes and skills change as the year progresses.

Since many of my students are still recovering from painful break-ups with reading, they often don’t know where to start. I encourage them to have an open mind and get themselves back out there.

I stress the importance of “dating” a book before fully committing to one, exploring titles within their potential careers, sampling the first book in a series, or trying a new-to-them genre.

But they are the captain of the ship, and this is what keeps them from getting stranded in the Sea of Fake Reading.

2) DEVOTE PART OF EVERY CLASS TO READING.

My students and I read for 10 minutes at the beginning of every 54-minute block and for 15 minutes at the beginning of every 74-minute long block. Every. Class.

All of the literacy experts agree: If we want students to read, we need to create time for it in class. How else do we demonstrate that reading is critical? In addition, students In her post “I’ve Got Research. Yes, I Do. I’ve Got Research. How About You?,” Donalyn Miller asks (immediately before unloading a slew of research on her readers), “Why must English teachers constantly defend the need for students to practice reading and writing in a class dedicated to reading and writing?” As tempting as it is to use those 10-15 minutes to take attendance or return papers, it’s important for our students to see us reading, too. And even more important? If we’re telling our students that lifelong reading is important, we need to model it. This is especially critical to help close the achievement gap between male and female learners.

So that I know students are making progress, the students and I update our reading every week on Goodreads. (See how I infuse Goodreads into my classroom here.)

And at the end of every month, students publish a book review (not  summary) following these guidelines for a real-world audience of 90 million readers. That’s a whole lot more authentic than writing for Teacher-Lady.

4) HELP THEM GROW.

I’m often asked, “What if students only read, say, John Green and Sarah Dessen?” I used to respond–as non-flippantly as possible, “So what?” They are reading.  Study after study shows that I could distribute Macbeth in September, which is unarguably more challenging than, say, The Fault in Our Stars, but the same five students that read everything assigned will read Macbeth. The rest will fake-read. Whereas, 100% of the students that choose to read Green’s text will actually read it.

And rigorous or not, “a book isn’t rigorous if students aren’t reading it” (Penny Kittle in Book Love). 

Like a toddler who, after being given full-range of the snack drawer, eventually begins to crave healthier food, my students–especially the ones I’ve had for two years–eventually move on from Green and Dessen to more rigorous texts. As Teri Lesesne champions in her book Reading Ladders: Leading Students from Where They Are to Where We’d Like Them To Be, I facilitate the process from the beginning to the end.

But most of my students couldn’t start with Macbeth. Which is how I used to kick off the year.

In addition to all of this choice, we still read whole-class novels, too; however, it’s all about the timing. My sophomores who might have abandoned The Great Gatsby in September are able to embrace it in May. Because they’ve increased their reading stamina. Because they are ready.

Students can’t be reduced to a number. They can’t be defined by their results on common assessment, reduced to where they fall on a state test, nor limited by their SAT/ACT scores.

However, sometimes numbers don’t lie.

With a towering goal of helping students fall back (or, for a select few, remain) in love with reading–while building their stamina to endure the 600-pages-per-week of reading they’ll be asked to do in college, I need numbers. They help validate what I do in the classroom (e.g., allowing students to choose the majority of their texts, beginning every class with 10 minutes of reading, using Goodreads for goal-setting, tracking, and review-publishing, maintaining a classroom library).

So, at the end of every year, I ask students to tally how many books they read–cover-to-cover during our time together and compare it to what they read the year before.

The. Results. Are. Glorious.

In a world of SparkNotes, Fake Reading, and Beating the System, check out the growth of these amazing, authentic (and hopefully lifelong) readers! It’ll warm your soul.

And just imagine the effect this much reading has had on their writing skills!

DISCLAIMER: These are all honors sophomores. However, I have done my reading experiment-turned-way-of-life for the last 6 years, and the results with my college preparatory students have always been equally astounding.

As freshmen, A block read a collective 169 books cover-to-cover from September to June. (See top pic.) As sophomores? 491 books! (See bottom pic.) That’s a 191% increase, folks! 

As freshmen, C block read a collective 83 books cover-to-cover from September to June. (See top pic.) As sophomores? 430 books! (See bottom pic.) That’s a 418% increase, folks! 

As freshmen, E block read a collective 104 books cover-to-cover from September to June. (See top pic.) As sophomores? 360 books! (See bottom pic.) That’s a 246% increase, folks!

It’s that time of year again…The snow is beginning to melt (ish). The days are feeling a bit longer. Daylight is sticking around for dinner.

And statewide exams are lurking around the corner.

In Massachusetts, sophomores must pass the MCAS exam (in ELA, math, & science) in order to graduate. So, naturally, I’ve shared strategies and sample test questions with them, and we’ve taken practice tests. Or test. Singular. (Since this year’s MCAS is the first overhaul since 1993, there’s only one practice test available. For the entire state.)

I’ve also shared with my sophomores and a bit more loudly that, while the MCAS is important, it in no way defines them. It’s one test. Assessing where these 15- and 16-year-olds are on those two particular days. And after seven months together, I can attest that they are so much more than whatever they end up scoring on the MCAS.

In their heads, I think they know that. However, I’m not sure knowing that necessarily assuages their anxiety.

So, to put the MCAS (or SAT or ACT or Midyear Exam or Final Exam or…) back into perspective,  I share the video below by teacher-author Kumar Sathy. (It’s also a great way to expose them to spoken word poetry.)

I also share with my students the letter-read-’round-the-world, penned by an Indiana teacher before their state exams (pictured below). This letter practically broke the internet after a student’s parent shared it on Instagram. And you can see why.

For the record, my students are just as fabulous as hers. And if you work with students, I’m willing to bet that yours are, too.

Are our students anxious about these state-wide assessments? Uh, yeah.

Will they try their best on these tests? Most definitely.

But will their scores define them? Not a chance.