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.

Category: Uncategorized

  • Off-Script: Creating New Paths

    I’ve always struggled to follow a curriculum. My first year of teaching, my fellow teacher newbie and I visited our new school a week before we had to report to get some materials and start planning for the first month of school. Our math coach placed the teacher’s guide for our school’s math curriculum in front of us and began narrating how a typical lesson would go, her finger tapping at the top of each page as she went. It felt sterile, void of life, indifferent to the human children that would be learning from its pages. The next week, I remember giving it a go like she’d shown us, playing the video that went along with the lesson, only to shut it off as the cartoon character’s high-pitched voice made me (and my third graders) cringe.

    “Enough of that,” I said, and the students breathed a sigh of relief. So began my journey into developing my own curriculum for my students.

    I had an assistant principal that year who, though not entirely helpful for much else, did say something wise about curriculum guides during one grade-team meeting: “The teachers guides are like a script, but you are the actors. You make it come alive.”

    Corny metaphor aside, I saw what she meant. We weren’t meant to teach from the guide. We weren’t meant to have them in our laps as we spoke to the children, glancing down to make sure we were saying everything “correctly.”

    Fast forward six years later, and teachers guides for me are just that: guides. Supports. A jumping off point when you’re not sure where to begin. The real planning? That comes from my heart, from what I am passionate about, and from that year’s students’ strengths and interests and passions.

    I’m a creator, and creating is part of why I love teaching so much. Even in the grades that I’ve taught more than once, I’ve rarely taught the same lesson or unit in the same way twice. With each year repeating a grade, what I actually gain is more confidence and expertise in the content, the landmark skills that I know my students need to learn in order to be successful in their future academic careers. Additionally, I’ve witnessed my growth as a teacher by seeing the shifts in which “subject area” I focus on developing professionally. My first three years, it was math. My fourth and fifth, integrated studies and themed, project-based learning units, with a hint of writing revolution (Judith Hochman). All intertwined heavily with multilingual language-learning, as I was teaching in dual language classrooms at the time.

    This year, I’m finally focusing on writing, thanks to a colleague, mentor, and friend who is pushing me professionally and personally (ahem… this blog). I find myself once again looking at curriculum guides for Teacher’s College Writer’s Workshop units and setting them aside in favor of creating my own units based on what I see my students needing and wanting.

    This winter’s informational writing unit was a big success, for me and for my fifth graders. I grew in helping students to set and achieve goals through one-on-one and small group conferencing. A final mini-bend allowed students to transfer their new knowledge to quick-writes about our science content: writing informational brochures on the new Chromebooks, which ended up incredible. And last week’s informational on-demand provided confirmation in the data: almost all of them jumped up half a year to a full year’s growth.

    A ready-made curriculum is a map that promises to deliver your students to a certain destination. This year, I tried to follow one of those maps when I taught the realistic fiction unit, only to realize that the path wasn’t the right one for my students. So I continue to take the risk of scanning the map, situating myself in the terrain, and creating new paths, knowing that I have a pretty good sense of direction. And my fifth graders? They’ve reached the destination each time.

  • Small Victories

    “Oh! You would be so proud of me,” I started saying to Ana at dismissal. She herded a child out the front door, wishing them well, and then turned back to me. I took a breath. “I—”

    “Stop.” She grabbed my shoulder, cutting me off. “Why do you keep saying I ‘would’ be so proud of you? I am proud of you!”

    I struggle sometimes to turn inward and tell myself, Look at you! You rocked it. I’m proud of you. But I’m trying to get better at it, so here we go: I made leaps and bounds in my conferring skills this past unit.

    My big goal during this unit on journalism was to know what my students were writing so I could best support them through conferring and small groups. I had dabbled in conferring during the first two units, but felt ill-equipped to actually support my students apart from giving a compliment and moving on, which often felt like I was going, “You’re doing great! Keep it up, byeeee!”

    Ana told me that in order to truly plan for conferring and small groups, I needed to know what the heck my students were able to do and what they were still working towards. And I could only do this if I actually read their writing.

    So, the day after Thanksgiving break, I requested all students turn in their writer’s notebooks so I could see what was up. Skimming through the stack of notebooks was eye-opening, to say the least. I noticed which students weren’t generating ideas, which students had already written multiple news reports, and which students were still stuck writing what appeared to be narratives (which can happen during a genre switch like this). I did it again a week later, once students had started drafting.

    In order to keep track of where students were at, I used a conferring notes document created by Amy Ellerman and outlined in depth in her blog post on Two Writing Teachers. I revised the teaching points at the top to work for my unit, and downsized it so it would fit on one page. Here’s what I ended up with:

    Second set of conferring notes, taken after students started drafting out of the notebook.

    This document is GOLD. Ellerman’s pattern-seeking strategy helped me so much, not just to figure out which teaching points I could revisit with which students in a small group, but also with my one-on-one conferring sessions.

    With a quick visual of data, aligned to the major teaching points of my unit, I could come to a conference ready to go with both a compliment and a teaching point. This was a game-changer for me, and for my students as well. I believe many of them wrote better articles because I knew where they were at, knew where they still needed to go, and was prepared with supports for them when we met.

    However, I did struggle with a couple of students (as we always do!). One of them is Enrique, who basically listened to my suggestions for revisions without implementing any. We had one small group session the day after I took stock of students’ notebooks that ultimately got hijacked by us butting heads (him: “Why do I have to _____” and me: “Because I said so!” Ohhh, shame).

    Ana even had a short one-on-one conference with him where she suggested he keep his reader in mind as he drafted and revised, which he replied to with a, “Hm, yeah I’ll think about it.” She looked at me and shrugged. 

    But then something glorious happened. I had a small group conference with Enrique and his writing partner, Marcelo, who also happens to be his best friend.

    As I could see from my conferring notes, neither of them had a lead that included the 5 W’s and H. Enrique was writing about new Disney Plus shows and had really just listed a bunch of items and saved his most important information for last, which was almost the opposite of the structure the students were supposed to be aiming for. Marcelo had written a catchy lead, but it was lacking some details that the reader really needed in order to understand what his article was about.

    I started the small group conference with a compliment. I said: “You both generated a great newsworthy idea and are using an officious tone, just like a journalist! I think you are ready to look at the structure of your news reports to see if they follow the inverted pyramid. Let’s start at the top with the lead.”

    They both flipped to the mini-anchor charts pasted in their notebooks and reminded themselves of what should go in a strong lead.

    At Ana’s suggestion, I started including mini print-outs of anchor charts the class and I had co-created in my conferring toolkit. Both Enrique and Marcelo already had one of these already in their notebooks from a previous conference.

    I had them take a highlighter to their drafts and highlight where they saw the 5 W’s and H. I did the same to my mentor article. Both boys realized quickly that their leads were falling short.

    So we went back to our strategy from a mini-lesson a couple weeks prior: jot down each of the 5W’s and H and fill them out, then make a sentence or two with all that information. (Note: This strategy is inspired by Judith Hochman’s strategies to help students write complex sentences.) They started filling it out, and that’s when the lightbulb moment happened.

    “How do I choose the ‘what’ in my article? There are so many shows!” Enrique asked. 

    “Maybe it’s the one you’re recommending at the end,” I ventured. 

    “So, Loki?” Enrique confirmed. He started jotting it down.

    “I don’t think the most newsworthy one is Loki,” Marcelo interjected. “I think it’s Hawkeye, since that just came out.”

    Enrique paused, thought about it, and then nodded. He erased what he’d written down and wrote: “Hawkeye.”

    He filled out the rest of his page with ease. 

    The two of them then moved on to the body, figuring out they could interview each other to provide alternate perspectives in their articles, and finally onto the tail, both deciding to conclude with a follow-up course of action. 

    When Enrique showed me his revised article at the end of the independent writing period, it looked nothing like his first few drafts. It was a complete overhaul—a “major surgery” as we often say in our workshop. I gave him a huge hug.

    Later that week, when he’d finished his published piece, I sent Ana a scan of his writing, from generating ideas to final product.

    “I am SO PROUD OF HIMMMM!” I texted Ana.

    I smiled at her reply: “I am SOOO PROUD OF YOUUUUUUUU!”

    I guess I am proud of me, too.

    Generating seed ideas
    First draft in the notebook
    Third draft out of the notebook
    Notes during small group
    Final draft with edits
    Final published news report before adding pictures
    Click through the images above to see Enrique’s writing process

  • Shitty First Drafts

    à la Anne Lamott.

    Hello, internet!

    Ana suggested I start blogging about my experiences teaching, so here I am.

    I’m Amy, a born and raised New Yorker-turned-Miamian. After 5 years teaching Spanish dual language in NYC public schools in both Washington Heights and The Boogie Down Bronx, I find myself now at an independent, Reggio-inspired school in Brickell. Quite the jump, bringing with it a ton of change.

    That said, in a strange way, I’m in somewhat familiar territory: founding a new grade for the third time in my short teaching career. Founding a grade brings with it the expected fear and anxiety, but also unforeseen joy and excitement. Through this blog, I hope to document this rollercoaster ride and reflect on what’s gone well and what could go better.

    For, after all, founding a grade is in its way a shitty first draft, as the title states. There will be much to add and cut and revise for next year. I hope to give myself grace, quiet the perfectionist within me. You’ve got to write the whole thing before you can fix her up!

    So here’s to it, and to connecting with other educators along the way.

  • My 5th Graders have Senioritis

    Originally written in late May 2021.

    I wake up and sit in front of the laptop, start the Zoom meeting at 8:30am, and watch them trickle in slowly. I say good morning to many who say nothing back. Cameras off. Microphones muted. Perhaps one will write “good morning” in the chat. I appreciate that. And of course there are a few who are up and at ‘em, ready to go, or don’t care that they’ve just rolled out of bed and their hair is a mess. The black squares don’t bother me anymore. I don’t think it’s right for a teacher to demand cameras be on, even if it hurts my soul to teach to what looks like nothingness. What I can’t take, though, is when there’s no response, no “reactions,” no chatting, no unmuting and speaking up. And as we creep ever closer to June 25th, the days are getting a lot quieter.

    Any teacher will tell you that students and teachers alike experience burnout by the end of the school year. Of course, this year has been unlike any other. COVID closures robbed my school’s first graduating class of a trip to D.C., organized by our Parents’ Association, a real graduation, and the ability to say goodbye to their friends and teachers before heading off on summer vacation and potentially never seeing one another again.

    Last year, we attributed the kids’ burnout mostly to the pandemic. We were all experiencing collective trauma unlike anything we ever had before. I had a panic attack the weekend before Mayor De Blasio closed the schools back in March of 2020, and most of those first few weeks online, I was simply trying to hold it together, taking deep, shaky breaths in front of my laptop, which was propped up on my tiny kitchen table, my chair backed into a corner against the spices, before starting the Zoom meeting. April was a frenzy of getting in touch with families who hadn’t connected yet to Google Classroom or Zoom, but in those early days, online learning was fun in the way that all new things are. The students were excited about being able to “do school” from home. The expectation was that we’d be closed until spring break, and then return afterward, so they saw it as a sort of 6-week vacation. We all know how that turned out. 

    As the spring wore on, we saw our students’ withdrawal as a symptom of the trauma the pandemic was inflicting on us all. Slowly, more and more cameras turned off and we were left staring at black squares and teaching into the ether. Eventually we took any student contact with school as a win, counting them present, urging them to return to the next class, and to come back tomorrow too. My school set up weekly events to encourage participation and boost morale, and it worked for the most part. We were pleasantly surprised at our Zoom graduation ceremony to have 100% attendance, even from those who had never shown their faces on a Zoom call. 

    The group I’m teaching now has been fully remote since September, not counting the three months of last school year. They started the year with cameras on, smiling, joking, eager to learn and connect again with one another. In September, if I put on a dance video, they’d all stand up and get silly with me.

    Now, I never know what to expect. Will they arrive with energy and laughter, willing to take on the day, leaving me ever impressed by their resilience and maturity? Or will they arrive late, stay muted and unresponsive as I call their names, their Classkick and Google Slides pages empty? 

    It’s still burnout, but different than last year’s case; my co-teachers and I are calling it senioritis. That’s really the only way we’ve been able to describe the atmosphere in our classes to our colleagues. In staff meetings, we wait our turn to share out and find ourselves leading with disclaimers: “So in fifth we’re dealing with a lot of resistance to work. Just keep that in mind as we share this…” Asynchronous work? Maybe 12 out of 39 students will do it. We scrapped that long ago. Everything we do is synchronous. Are you here now? Okay, let’s get to work then. Class is over? Go enjoy your free time. 

    Miriam Webster defines senioritis as a noun meaning “an ebbing of motivation and effort by school seniors as evidenced by tardiness, absences, and lower grades.” If you type the word into Google’s search engine, their English dictionary will specify that senioritis is a “supposed affliction of students in their final year of high school or college.” Fifth graders shouldn’t be affected by it, but I can assure you that ours are.

    Perhaps it’s the knowledge that in a few months, they’ll be on summer break, going to a new school in the fall. Maybe it’s the hormones, some of them starting to have real crushes, and wanting to spend as much time socializing as possible. It could also be a defense mechanism: tamping down the hope they’d had for a “normal year.” Whatever the cause, fifth grade senioritis starts like a true virus, first infecting just a few, even the most prepared, and then spreading rapidly until you’re all consumed and trying to remedy it by any means necessary.

    The coupling of senioritis with this second year of remote learning is extreme, and difficult. The parents feel it too. Just last week I received messages from a couple of them, echoing one another: “I just can’t anymore. I don’t know what to do with them.” 

    Fifth grade is supposed to be the magic year—in children’s literature, it’s the eleven-year-old protagonist who makes that leap from childhood to adulthood. I urge my students to turn on their cameras so I can feel their presence, imagining that for them, remote learning would be much more enjoyable if they were able to feel that sense of community too. But what about socializing in this 2-D world is normal? How are they supposed to test their voices, react spontaneously, show off their newfound autonomy, when only one microphone can be unmuted at a time? 

    Right now, our students are writing letters to their representative about water issues in their community, like the presence of lead in school plumbing systems, and the pollution of the Bronx River, which runs behind our school. They’re as engaged as they can be. But they’ll be done with the letters in a couple of weeks, and what then? We’ll still have four more weeks. Four more weeks of black squares, talking to myself, and hoping they engage.

    Maybe we need to fully flip the script. We’ve already switched around our schedule, starting with an extended morning meeting to ease into the day, and it’s shown a lot of promise. Perhaps we can cure this bout of senioritis by putting the power into their hands for the end of the year: what do you want to learn about? And how do you want to learn it? Our year-long essential question is “How can you use your voice to create change in your world?” We’ll let students lead the way. We’ll step back, give them and ourselves some grace, and see what happens. Come the morning, when I start the 8:30am meeting, I hope they’ll be waiting, ready to share with excitement what they’ve come up with.