Writing With Abandon

Reflections and ramblings about life as an educator, writer, reader, knitter, and over-thinker. Trying to do the writing only I can do.

Author: Amy Crehore

  • Reggio, Meet Ralph.

    This summer, at the Quoddy Institute, one of the other teachers (I think it was Cheri!) mentioned that she and her 5th graders always start the year reading Ralph Fletcher’s Flying Solo, a book about a class of 6th graders and what happens when one day, neither the teacher nor his substitute show up. She told me how one year, they even did their own experiment where she and a colleague didn’t go back to the classroom after recess, instead watching what ensued from the window across the playground. Fascinating, I thought! I immediately went to my Amazon app, added it to my cart, and hit “purchase.”

    I read the book quickly before school started, then gave it to Kim to read as well. It’s short, around 150 pages, and it was perfect for the first read aloud as it had a great theme about integrity and would give them plenty of practice making inferences about story elements. I figured we’d read it within a couple weeks, then launch into Starfish by Lisa Fipps, a favorite from last year.

    But each day that I read Flying Solo to my fifth graders, I uncover another layer of the book that I hadn’t noticed before. Like how many references there are to democracy, or all the time jumps there are (perfect for teaching about the importance of flashbacks!), or Ralph’s excellent use of figurative language.

    And my students’ reactions have been unexpectedly thoughtful as well. It’s a fun book, a real kids’ book, so they’ve been very engaged from the beginning. But they’ve also shown deep empathy for some of the meaner characters (like Bastian, who teases the other kids, but “is probably doing that because he’s sad about moving and his dog, Barkley,” one of my students said). They’ve made many predictions about Rachel and whether or not she’ll speak by the end of the story. They laugh at Christopher saying “fact” and “opinion,” roll their eyes at lame jokes (and widen them at the can’t-believe-she-just-said-that jokes), and cheer on the students who stand up to the others. They endlessly wonder how Tommy Feathers died, shocked and saddened that it could happen to someone so young.

    They’ve practiced summarizing for their classmates who have been out sick, have distinguished between primary, secondary, and tertiary characters, and have talked endlessly about the plot and how they wish there was a movie.

    This is where the Reggio spark really begins:

    Two of our girls were walking alongside me in the hallway on the way to lunch when one said, “This book should be a movie!”

    And I replied, “I want to make that movie!” (Laughing to myself because the other night, as I told P about the book, he and I both said we could imagine it so clearly as a play!)

    Our conversation continued through the lunch line as we grabbed our plates, then sat at the lunch table with Kim and three of our boys. I opened up the Otter app to record our conversation, and let their ideas bubble up and build on one another:

    “We could do it for a show!”

    “We’d need another person that’s Rachel that speaks for her, because so much is going on inside her head. Like a voiceover.”

    “We could rehearse during read aloud.”

    “We could pick out the characters and think of ideas, act it out, and maybe write our own script. Or you can pick ideas from it?”

    “We might need to cut some of the characters that don’t have that many character traits.”

    “I want to be Rachel!”

    “I want to be Jessica!”

    “I want to be Christopher!”

    “Hold on,” I said, the gears turning in my head. Could this work? Could we make this happen? “I’ll need to email Ralph for permission first.”

    He replied within the half hour: “Yes, you have my permission…that would be really great.”

    We told the students at the end of the day and they cheered! That was yesterday. Today, they’ve been talking about it nonstop throughout the day. Ralph sent us a video of him talking about the book, which we watched in closing circle. This Thursday we’ll finish it and next week we’ll start our talks about writing a script. We’re all a little bit in disbelief… and a lot a bit excited.

    And that is how a Reggio project is born.

  • Starting With What They Know

    This is my second presidential election season as a 5th grade teacher and third since I started teaching. I can still remember that morning in 2016. I took the train uptown to Washington Heights, heart hurting for the third graders I would greet in my classroom. The train was so quiet. New York felt gray and sad, in mourning for the hopes we’d had, in disbelief at what was to come. It was like a somber layer, blanketing everything.

    In 2020, I was at home, teaching remotely. When Georgia turned blue, I flew out to the streets, cars honking, screaming an exasperated “YES!” Later that evening, I followed the cheers into Central Park where there was a celebratory roller disco happening.

    Election season is different this year. I live in Miami, in the heart of a not-really-swing state. I have to bite my tongue when certain topics get brought up, and dig my heels in when others do. Still, it feels like there’s some hope, especially after the change in the summer.

    But my own political views are not what I came here to write about, and they’re certainly on display in my classroom. That said, politics comes up in our classroom every day.

    As defined in Usborne’s Understanding Politics & Government, an excellent informational comic book about the topic, politics “actually covers the way people make decisions about how to work together in all kinds of groups, big or small.”

    Politics comes up when the students share that they’re starving before lunch and can’t concentrate on reading, so we decide to swap reader’s workshop and read aloud and bring an extra fruit from our early snack to munch on when we start to feel the hunger pangs. Politics comes up when the students vote on whether we should stay indoors for recess or risk going out when there’s a dark looming cloud over the playground. Politics comes up when one student tells her friend that Kamala Harris would be the first “Black woman president” and the friend replies, “the first WOMAN president at all!”

    In Reggio Emilia-inspired schools, we follow the children’s lead, listen to their theories, and give them the tools to prove or disprove those theories. As teachers, we keep in mind the skills they need to practice and the main content they need to know before they move on to the next grade. We go deep, instead of broad.

    The presidential election is happening, and our students are hearing about it. It’s important that they understand the basics of our government, their rights and responsibilities as citizens, and how an election works.

    But we start with what they know. So yesterday, we did just that.

  • A Better Reading Teacher

    My hope and dream for 24-25

    This year, my ninth year as a lead classroom teacher, is the year I want to tackle reading. My first few years in the classroom, I focused on dual language learning, math, and classroom management. Then, project based learning followed by writer’s workshop.

    Every year I’ve held off on reading. I’ve dabbled in it, I’ve led interactive read aloud and book clubs, I’ve ensured access to books and (mostly) protected independent reading time. But reading instruction? It’s always been a struggle. First, because I was teaching in dual language classrooms, later because it was just one more thing on top of all the other stuff I was doing.

    And mainly, because it just felt hard! Reading is something I love, but I don’t know how to teach, at least for upper elementary. Upper elementary is challenging, because we don’t get the training in phonics to help teach our students who have gaps. The students who are still learning TO read, and aren’t yet ready to confidently use reading to LEARN.

    But it’s time. I have to face it.

    So this year, my goal is to become a better reading teacher. This will include designing and developing reading units that are aligned with our new power standards, as well as implementing age-appropriate small group lessons for those students who need fluency and decoding support.

    We started by designing a launching unit to get the students excited about reading. The lessons included: cuing students to notice that we see reading EVERYWHERE; asking students to get curious about how they and their grownups learned to read; sharing some of the science of reading for students; sharing some fun reading history facts so students could realize how reading is a privilege; and helping students take ownership over their reading journals and the why/how of talking and writing about their books.

    Ana jokes that we should sell the unit, and I shake my head, but then I think, maybe we should! Because excited about reading? They most definitely are.

    Student jots, later categorized. My favorite has to be the Twilight Gossip!

  • On Letting Go and Watching Her Fly

    There’s something about teaching Writer’s Workshop that I feel oddly possessive about. It was something I grasped tightly to after meeting Ana, moving to Miami, and starting to work at KLA. It helped me through a tough couple of years in my personal life. It was something that I had control over, and which brought me and my students joy. It got me writing again, got me to see myself as a writer, just like I hope my students will see in themselves.

    So, letting go of it as a subject that I teach, that I plan, feels… scary, and uncomfortable, followed by guilt that I feel that way. It’s like a blanket being pulled off the bed that I’m still clutching to a corner of because I am desperate to stay snuggled up in it, even though I know the blanket is big enough for me and another.

    But that fear and discomfort gets replaced by awe and pride each time I watch Kim lean in and open up to the students, whose eyes light up with her stories. Every time I watch her implement all that she’s learned in just one year. There’s no doubt in my mind she will teach them so wonderfully. And I’ll be right beside her to support, to model conferencing, to be her mentor.

    “Writers, today I want to teach you,” she says, using that predictable language. And teach them she does.

    I can’t wait to watch her fly.

    Kim reading one of our student’s stories out loud, just like Georgia Heard did for us at the Quoddy writing retreat.

  • The First Writer’s Workshop

    It’s 5:30am and I’ve already been up for an hour. I’ve been struggling with morning insomnia for a few months now — waking up around 4 or 5 to pee, and unable to quiet my brain enough to fall back asleep. I have a notebook beside my bed to help me dump these thoughts, the goal being to train my brain to deal with them later, but tomorrow is moving day and so I’m too excited to settle back down.

    Besides, it’s the perfect time to get my slice of life out of the way. And I do have a goal for my Tuesday slices, now that the school year has started — I’d like to document a year in the life of a 5th grade teacher and her class and the learning we all do. So I thought I’d begin with the first Writer’s Workshop.

    ***

    This year is a little different. It’s the first year at KLA that I don’t have Ana in the classroom across from mine or down the long hallway, and it’s not because she’s on maternity leave or has moved away. Ana has gotten the job we’ve all been hoping for (and more!): instructional coordinator. This means she is more available to do coaching work with teachers, coordinate curriculum for the school, help streamline and align all-school practices, and so much more. This spring and summer, she also wrote a whole new WW launching unit for us: The First 20 Days of Writer’s Workshop, a beautiful unit that emphasizes talk, encourages teachers to join in the writing, and keeps writers in their notebooks to help them develop a strong repertoire of strategies for generating ideas of what to write about.

    To be honest, my head hasn’t been in the right place since starting school, what with everything that’s been going on (see my last post), but I knew I needed to start this year off right with a first Writer’s Workshop lesson that would hook my writers. That need became even more apparent when, during our morning meeting share, students expressed their feelings (good or bad) about writing — some saw it as something to enjoy, when they got to write made up stories or jot down their feelings to destress, while others cited it as being boring, hard, or tedious, unless they were passionate about the topic.

    I knew this first lesson would be important in convincing my reluctant writers that maybe, just maybe, there could be something to enjoy about writing this year. (And I have verbal — and written — proof from previous years that I’ve been able to do this. Many students who previously didn’t like writing either fell in love with it or found the utility in it.)

    So, as they gathered on the rug in rows for the first mini-lesson, I took a breath, told them I needed a moment to put on my writing teacher’s hat, and then leaned in close, as if letting them in on a secret: “Good morning, writers.”

    Envisioning language, a suspenseful story, big eyes and smiles, audible surprise — I wish I could have filmed the lesson from my perspective. It was a beautiful example of engagement, when every single kid is there with you, one of the utmost highs of teaching.

    And then, the planned conversations for oral rehearsal — one partner talking, the other asking follow-up questions. By the time I sent them off to write, there was no question that the notebooks would be filled. When the timer beeped, you could feel that they would have kept going.

    But it’s the first six weeks of school. The first 20 days of writing. And so we go slow to go fast.

    I’m ready for day 2.

  • For Ana

    Because writing partners show up for one another!

    My brain is FRIED.

    What a week! Back to school, finding an apartment, applying for said apartment, booking movers, booking the elevator for move-out, awaiting final approval from the association, finishing my sweater, filing for divorce, organizing the classroom, thinking about first day and first six weeks plans, meetings meetings meetings, interviewing new teachers with no time to spare, interviews with families of incoming students over Zoom, rescheduling interviews, gathering boxes from school supplies to bring home to fill with things that I need to move, new math workbooks and textbooks, a fire drill not for a fire but for a burst pipe from a plant truck whose driver f-ed up, rescuing the paper!, and that oppressive heat on the walk home every day. It’s a whirlwind.

    I am grateful, as ever, for my people.

    I am also sorry, to said people, for the brain farts that I continue to have.

    “Kim, we should, um… wait… I just had it! ARGH! It’s gone.”

    I think I have started more sentences than I have completed today.

    But now, just after 9pm, I am finally on the couch after packing up most of the kitchen, and I feel accomplished.

    My classroom is ready for parents and students to see it tomorrow.

    The first day plans are set.

    I’ll sign off with my past few days in pictures.

    Completed Bronwyn sweater with a Sophie scarf
    The happy face of a girl who just filed for divorce
    These ladies and their love
    Our amazing classroom
    Books and views
    The writing center!
    Phoebe is unfazed
    Accomplished.

  • A Robot in the Rain

    In Miami, especially in my neighborhood, you can see autonomous delivery robots everywhere. I’ve almost been run off the sidewalk by one before! On my block in particular, we often see the robots stopped on the corner, blinking their red heart eyes as they tentatively make to cross the street. Once, we saw one at each of the four corners, waiting patiently for their turn to cross and continue on their journey to their destination.

    Sunday afternoon, on our way back from the grocery store, the sky opened up and it started to rain. We hid under a building for a while, but then decided to just go for it. As we ran-walked the two blocks home, squealing (“it’s worse under the trees!”), I saw a lone delivery robot hiding under the overhang by the garage entrance.

    In that moment, I saw it not as a robot, but as a small puppy, shivering as it tried desperately to keep dry.

  • My Day

    Tea with Eleanor, Campobello Island

    What is it about inspiring stories that make one tear up? I think all of us in the tea room were welling up as we listened to the stories the docents told of Eleanor Roosevelt’s childhood, dedication to human rights, and fierce independence and bravery.

    This afternoon, on our second day at the Quoddy Writing Retreat for Teacher Renewal with Ralph Fletcher and Georgia Heard, most of us headed out on a little field trip to Campobello Island across the bay to have “Tea with Eleanor” and tour the cottage where the Roosevelts spent most of their summers.

    As I rode in the back seat of Ralph and Jo Ann’s car, our phones switched to Atlantic Daylight Time. We drove out to Herring Cove Beach, collected pebbles and sea glass, then it was over to tea, where I learned so much more than I ever had about Eleanor. (Fun side note: one of my favorite books as a kid was A Letter to Mrs. Roosevelt by C. Coco De Young.)

    One of those new facts was My Day, her 500-word daily news column that she wrote 6 days a week for 27 years, only missing a few days after her husband’s passing. The original Slice of Life, I think (and the inspiration for today’s post)!

    I left the session with the delicious aftertaste of gingersnaps and tea lingering in my mouth, and a desire to learn more. Next we went to tour their cottage, where we saw the desk at which she wrote all of her thousands, maybe millions, of letters.

    At 72, Eleanor renewed her gun license
    The Roosevelt Cottage
    Eleanor’s writing desk
    Dining room with the kid’s table behind
    In the nursery
    A dream view

    Now it’s off to the one supermarket on Lubec to get a bottle of wine to share, and dinner with Ana by the water to watch the sunset!

  • Following the Thread

    Last Wednesday, I visited Julie upstate. We’re hoping to make it an annual thing. Her house is one of the most beautiful homes I know — filled with colorful, eclectic artwork, yet simple, modern, open, and bright. Their deck looks out onto their huge field, where the two German Shepherds enjoy running. It’s the perfect knitting/reading/tea-sipping spot in the mornings and early evenings, and their pool invites you in for the hotter hours of the day.

    The morning view.

    Of course I brought a knitting project, and Julie had hers. I finished the baby bear bonnet for Elena, something I’d been meaning to knit for months (sorry, Ana!). I love baby knits because they knit up so quickly! And this one is just so cute.

    As I was knitting, though, I stumbled a few times — there were a couple of abbreviations that weren’t in the pattern’s glossary, a few instructions that were unclear. I was very attuned to it because my first night there, Julie and I had watched a podcast where the designers of this pattern explain how, when they began translating their patterns from Danish to English, a knitter gave them some feedback about how their American customers would need far more information than their Danish customers ever would! So it was funny that, even as an experienced knitter, I found the pattern wanting.

    “Just do what the pattern says,” Julie told me, repeating the words her knitting teacher says whenever she gets stuck at a particular part.

    So that’s what I did, asking her advice whenever I stumbled across another part. By Friday morning, the bonnet was complete!

    The finished baby bear bonnet! Pattern and yarn by Knitting For Olive.

    On Sunday morning, back in my bed at my parents’ apartment, I was struck again with some mid-morning insomnia, and started scrolling through knitting patterns on PetiteKnit’s website to distract myself, thinking about what I will knit for my niece this fall, and my best friend’s baby due in early September.

    As I fell into a “scroll hole” on her website, I came across her About Me page. There, she explains how studying medicine for 10 years impacted her work as a knitwear designer: “The scientific method of writing an article is in many ways the same as that of writing a pattern. My supervisor at university told me that a methodology section should be written so that anyone else would be able to do the same. The level of information should neither be too high so as to interfere with the meaning, or too low so as not to be adequate. In many ways writing a pattern is exactly the same. I write down each step in a way that anyone with a knowledge of the techniques should be able to arrive at the same result.”

    I couldn’t help connecting her philosophy of pattern-writing to teaching, a career in which we are constantly writing patterns (our lesson plans/projections) and giving instructions.

    I started to ask myself: How clear are we making the instructions that we give students? As a former dual language teacher, I often think about instructions, both verbal and written — it’s important to use simple language, give clear and concise steps, provide visuals. I am often hyper-aware of when I and other teachers falter here. It’s necessary to pre-plan so you can really think about the task and any materials students may need. But it doesn’t always pan out that way!

    My insomnia brain started ruminating further.

    Okay, clear instructions, yes, but what should we be giving these clear instructions about? What tasks should we leave up to the students? I started thinking about interactive modeling with Responsive Classroom and the start of the school year. The routines that we teachers decide on and the ones we co-create with the students.

    And what should students themselves be able to write instructions for? Routines? After completing a project or solving a complicated math problem, shouldn’t students be able to explain what they did in a clear way? And if they can’t, why not? Is it something related to them not exactly understanding what it is they did, or is it more about the act of writing instructions (recipes, patterns) that they need more work on? We all have those students who, when explaining what they did, give you a simple, vague sentence, and then those students who explain what they did with far too much detail!

    I don’t exactly have the answers to my many questions, but I found it interesting following the thread from knitting patterns to classroom instructions.

    Where I left off on the Bronwyn sweater before my trip — blocking, seaming, and the collar are left. The Bronwyn sweater’s pattern is the opposite of PetiteKnit’s philosophy: 20-odd pages due to multiple sizes, making just the act of opening the PDF overwhelming!

  • Uninspired

    It’s Tuesday, slice of life day, but I’m feeling uninspired.

    I’ve just gotten back after an afternoon at Sojo Spa Club with a close friend, where we hopped from hot tub to hot tub and sauna to sauna, stepping into the cold plunge waterfall whenever we got too hot.

    And New York is hot right now. 95 feels like 97, the air thick, though at least there’s a slight breeze.

    I’m here for a couple weeks, staying in my childhood bedroom-turned-guest room, until I head to Lubec, Maine for the Quoddy Writing Retreat with Ana and Ralph Fletcher and Georgia Heard (so soon!).

    On a day like today, where I’m feeling uninspired to write, I start to wonder if I’ll feel like that on this writing retreat. I have a kernel of an idea for what I’ll work on while I’m there, but I’m not sure if I’ll feel inspired to write about that once I get there. The imposter syndrome sets in. I’m not good enough for this retreat! And, what if I have writer’s block the whole time?! (My writing partner, Ana, would tell me to flip it: “What if you don’t? What if the whole time, you can’t stop writing?”)

    My body feels extra relaxed after the spa. Phoebe is lying down at the foot of the bed. I wonder if she’s too hot with all that fur. My mom is on a work call in the next room. The fan spins overhead, the white noise I grew up sleeping to. The shutters are mostly drawn but the light comes in through the window. It’s dark to keep it cool.

    I’ll wait a bit longer and then take Phoebe out for a slow walk.