#SOL23: Writing Habit
It’s January. I check my email. Some days I read a specific email message before morning coffee. On other days I wait until the brown go juice has squeezed the sleep out of my brain. Then I copy the quote for the day and check for the mentor text. It’s #ASDWWrites. It’s a 30-day writing challenge. It’s response writing. (@shelfietalk and wakelets from chats at https://wakelet.com/@shelfietalk )
I don’t have the topic in advance.
I can’t store a couple of blog posts as drafts if the writing doesn’t come easy.
I’ve missed some days.
I’ve gone back and filled in the gaps because I’ve left blank pages in the notebook in my Kindle Scribe. The empty page with a day and date reminds me that I’ve missed something. Something that I committed to doing.
Daily reading and/or writing is a habit. Since the pandemic, I’ve made it a habit to start my day with reading, writing, or both. The writing may be blogs, tweets, DMs, or notes to myself. The reading also varies from saved documents, blogs, research, books, directions, and quilting tips.
Dictionary.com offered this definition of HABIT.
As I reflected on the first 20 days of this daily writing, I wondered if writing was truly a habit. In other words, if I missed a day was it still a habit? How many days could I miss and still have it be a habit?
What if I missed a day or two because I was involved in other writing work?
So it wasn’t that I didn’t write . . . but just that I didn’t write to the daily prompts because I was writing a lot “to take action” for another project?
And I did go back and write LATER.
Reading and writing are customary practices. Daily habits. Some days don’t allow for an early morning response and my schedule is discombobulated and the habit does not demand completion before I sleep. Postponing to another day helps keep some people/tech/device balance in my days. It’s not about “having to write right now” but about completing the task.
Hmmm. . .
Am I hedging my “Habit”? Does a habit have to be 30 consecutive and distinctly different days? Who decides? What does this say about agency and choice for our readers and writers in school?
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Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for this weekly forum. Check out the writers and readers here.
#SOLSC22: 1
Eager to learn.
Voracious.
We read Joyful Learning in Kindergarten, Transitions, Invitations, The Whole Story to name a few as we learned from Bobbi Fisher, Regie Routman, and Brian Cambourne. Our professional learning as we grew our understanding.
My first introduction to book studies before anyone called them book studies. My first introduction to a student-centered classroom.
It began with a first grade teacher. A teacher who read, reflected, and then made decisions about student learning and her own teaching. A teacher who was a literacy workshop teacher. A teacher who trusted students to learn and grow.
We read. We collected data. We discussed the data. We made changes. We tried again. Action research before we heard that label.
We celebrated ALL students as readers and writers. We celebrated high expectations. We celebrated student growth. We celebrated choice. We celebrated community,
Thank you, Diane Ruyle, for all the lives you touched including mine! You encouraged me to read, write, and think deeply about learning, students, and choice!
Who has helped you grow professionally?
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Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for this daily forum during the month of March.
Check out the writers and readers here.
#SOL17: Teacher Student Promises
I can’t get these two pictures out of my mind. They came from a MS presentation at #TCRWP Saturday Reunion.
How do these expectations offer VOICE and CHOICE to students?
How do these expectations help promote student independence?
Who is doing the work?
Thank you, Betsy, Beth, Deb, Kathleen, Lanny, Lisa, Melanie, and Stacey for this weekly forum and the #SOLSC that runs from March 1 to the 31st. Check out the writers, readers and teachers here.
#DigiLitSunday: Relationships
Check out Margaret Simon’s blog “Reflection on the Teche” for additional #DigiLitSunday posts here!
A favorite quote of mine is this:
Relationships are critical for teachers and students. Relationships are critical for increased learning. Relationships are critical for grounding students in a community of learners working together.
But are relationships enough? Are they the end goal?
Learning classrooms with teachers and students working in tandem to curate, innovate, and create require a great deal of trust and autonomy. That trust and autonomy is not created in a vacuum. It is also not created without a great deal of hard work. The relationships are important, yes; but they are not the end point.
Learning that beats the odds and exceeds the possibilities requires a community of committed learners, choice, and trust. A teacher will be the director or facilitator of the learners and the community, but should not always be “at the helm” directing every single minute.
How important is community?
Communities are important because they allow people to bond together through common interactions, experiences, and work to meet a common goal. A community can be physically together in a classroom or even together on a Twitter or Voxer chat. The goal of a community is to bring people together to achieve that common goal. Valued relationships keep communities together. Perhaps some communities outlive their usefulness but the value of shared experiences helps them deeply understand each other. That community can also come from books. Books that show “me”. Books that show “people like me”. Books that show people “who are NOT like me”. Books that help me understand people “who are NOT like me”.
How important is choice?
Name the last three things that were JOYOUS for you? Were they required? Did they include elements of choice? You can read about the benefits of “Choice” from many of the #BowTieBoys blog posts referenced in Jason Augustowski’s blog. Jason writes about the fact that education is one of the few fields of work where the customers are NOT routinely consulted about and given input into their work. Why not? Why are students assigned mindless task after task instead of being given respectful choices about how to share their learning? Where can choice be included? Providing choices to the students where only two “pieces” are read by everyone in the class. The rest of the books, stories, articles, songs, or videos are student-selected from a list curated TOGETHER in the classroom community.
How important is trust?
Trust is a two way street that is so dependent on relationships. It may well be that I will trust you solely on the basis of our relationship. However, in times of stress or confusion that relationship may falter if respect for the individual or his/her beliefs becomes an issue. Will the trust hold? In the presence of community and choice, trust will be maintained. In the absence of trust the community will slowly wither away. Without choice the trust vine will begin to shrivel up as well. How is trust maintained? Within a community the possibilities of positive interactions and sincere communication allow trust to flourish and doubt to die off. Trust that students will do the work that they need to in order to provide evidence of their learning. Trust that students will build upon choice learning within their community to extend trust to others outside their own circles.
Relationships between teachers and students are critical for learning environments but relationships alone cannot be expected to maintain sole responsibility for the benefits that will come from a well-developed culture of community, choice, and trust. Teachers benefit. Students benefit. The research shows that relationships are critical. Please provide time to nourish learning by building strong communities with choice and trust!
Do we REALLY want students to be critical thinkers?
Then how are we encouraging “critical thinking” every day in our classrooms?
How are we REALLY encouraging independent thinkers and workers?
Writing About Reading
What do your students “write” after reading? Do they only complete assigned tasks or do they write because of an inner compulsion to record a very specific thought? Do you need some new thinking?
Check out this entire week’s worth of posts from “Two Writing Teachers” and then plan to attend next Monday’s twitter chat!
Monday, January 27 Writing About Reading Blog Series: 3 Ways to Write about Reading
Tuesday, January 28 Writing About Reading Blog Series: A Quick Guide to Quick Essays
Wednesday, January 29 Writing about Reading in the Writer’s Notebook
Thursday, January 30 Writing about Reading Blog Series: Offering Students Choice in Reading Responses
Friday, January 31 Writing about Reading Blog Series: Opinion Writing in a K-1 Collaboration
After reading these, get ready to jump start your February “Writing about Reading!”
Storify from 02.03.14 Twitter Chat sfy.co/hb9N
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