Fervent Understanding

I like to visit classrooms, and try to get into a few classrooms each day, so the No Office Day did not seem like it would be a major event.  Wrong—it was major in how I viewed the system I work in daily.   The day unfolded before my eyes, and it was amazing

The awareness and observation of an entire day was quite different than observing one period or walking through four classrooms in a period.  Observing the entire day, living in the day—different.  I wish I had shot video, so I could run it fast forward.  Mind-blowing what goes on in a day in a middle school.   I  definitely see benefits of just spending a day in a department—cause data would begin to emerge.

Understandings from my No Office Day:

When a teacher’s task requires deeper levels of thinking, and their planning has included layering the learning for acquisition, then kids produce deeper thinking.

Deeper Reflection in Reader's Notebook

When the teacher has enthusiasm for teaching and learning, it comes through them.  It is evident in the room—there is a sense of happiness, of excitement, of community.

Passion for Music

When kids are noticed and genuinely asked about their learning, powerful relationships occur.  Students want to share their learning.  They want someone to notice them.   They need an audience.

Students loved showing me their work.

When classrooms have cooperative structures in place, kids know how to work collaboratively, how to communicate with peers about learning, and more learning occurs.

Stand Up, Hands Up, Pair Up

When a student is confused in math—you can tell by their face.  When you can catch that confusion, facilitate enough thinking to help them be unconfused, and move their thinking forward, there is learning.

When math teachers understand the power of sitting beside students and being a facilitator, the students are empowered.

When you think you have witnessed the absolute richest heart possible, an adolescent will say and do things that will leave you in awe of their ability to have empathy, and to see the world, as it should be.

Will Richardson has opened my thinking and helped me understand that administrators must be using, and becoming comfortable with technology.  After attending the district PD session in January with Will, I decided to revisit blogging.

I had created a blog in October, but only one post.

I reread my post and pondered the title I had chosen—Fervent Understanding.  Both my post and my title had grown from my thoughts about middle school literacy specifically comprehension strategies.  I started thinking that my blog would be more than just reflections on literacy.  The title wasn’t like most of the principal blogs I had recently been reading.  Maybe a new title was needed.

I started to rename the blog, making it more universal to leadership, but stopped and pondered what was I was trying to understand???

I am fervently trying to understand:

• how to read digitally with the same active interaction that I do with books.

• the role Twitter, Blogs, Google Reader, technology play and will play in education.

• how students who have been dealt a tough life,  succeed in spite of their circumstances.

• how to balance accountability with meeting the needs of the whole child.

• how to help my mom fight lung cancer.

• the situation in Egypt.

• why some teachers easily master classroom management and others struggle.

Humans have a need to understand.  It is what drives our learning, our thinking, and our searching.  Daniel Pink was driven to understand motivation.  Ellen Keene was driven to understand what great readers do, and to discover what it means for a kid to understand.

When I use digital tools I start searching to understand.   I move from a tweet, to a blog post, to an article–to understand.

A huge role for education is to harness the passion that kids innately have to understand.  And in that role…..comes the need to discover how technology can facilitate the need to understand.

Fervent Understanding—for now the title will stay.

A recent conversation with a colleague required that I dig into some comfortable texts and recall the words of literacy mentors who shaped my thinking as an educator.  This dig then led to late night reading of the first three chapters in Ellin Keene’s latest book, To Understand New Horizons in Reading Comprehension.   My exercise in reading and thinking along with my latest desire to blog, led me to creating Fervent Understanding—a blog title I didn’t invent but rather took from Ellin Keene.

Keene’s Mosaic of Thought was an anchor text when I first studied the comprehension strategies.  I saw her teach fourth graders in Liberty, Missouri.  Watching her explicitly teach questioning to students.  I have listened to Harvey and Daniels, a presentation by Debbie Miller, spent time in workshops by Sharon Taberski, and recently was blessed to spend two days with Susan Zimmerman.

Keene’s latest book has reignited my passion for understanding–a passion that was born from teaching students, observing teachers, and tutoring students struggling with reading.

Ellin’s quest to discover what is means to understand is fascinating.  Her idea to study artists and writers whose lives have been a testament to the urge to understand to move our thinking forward is like Katie Wood Rae’s work to study the craft of great writers to move writing forward; brilliant.

Ellin’s probe to understand why some days kids had deep insights and fervent learning only “once in awhile” has connected with some readings on relationships and relevance.  The learning has to be worthy of deep understanding.  The classroom must support relationships that allow for deep thinking and probing conversations.  The classroom must support students “experiencing their intellect”.  We must talk about what happens when we understand and what that experience feels like.

I am fascinated by Ellin’s Literacy Studio model and her discussion of what matters most in K-12 literacy.

I’m thinking:

Thinking strategies should be modeled.

The think aloud is an effective instructional strategy.

We cannot box the thinking strategies into neat little units.

Questioning and inferring are keys to understanding.

Relevance is important to adolescent learning.

Ellin and her daughter’s visit to the Van Gogh exhibit created fervent learning—relevant and relationships involved in this learning activity.

The workshop must have structures and routines for understanding to develop.

Lucy Calkins writes, “ It is significant to realize that the most creative environments in our society are not the ever-changing ones.  The artist’s studio, the researchers’ laboratory, the scholar’s library are each deliberately kept simple so as to support the complexities of the work-in-progress.  They are deliberately kept predictable so the unpredictable can happen.”

Wow—the classroom environment puzzle on page 66 in Ellin’s book!

Would love to hear what others are thinking that are reading or have read Ellin’s latest book.