One of my biggest accomplishments as a teacher has been to learn how to read and respond to my students' writing in a timely manner.
From my first days in the classroom, I've been bursting with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, that is, for dreaming up ways to get kids to read and write and think and produce. My enthusiasm for actually sitting down to evaluate their outpouring has lurked somewhere between low and subterranean.
A confession: During my first year of teaching I inspired my ninth-graders to write like they'd never written before. They drafted pages upon pages of journaling--that I couldn't bear to read. I can still visualize the box I used to haul the spiral notebooks home over Christmas break, promising myself I'd get them read.
I couldn't do it. After break I stalled the kids off. Each weekend I was determined to sit down and push through the journals. But as a first-year teacher in a small school, I had five or six different classes to prep for. My energy went toward dreaming up more writing activities, as the basket of journals stared at me judgmentally from its corner in the dining room.
I never read the journals. The kids eventually stopped asking about them. I eventually piled newspapers on the box of journals, camouflaging my accuser. I don't remember when I finally took them to the burn pile.
And this brings me to my biggest accomplishment as a teacher. I have learned to read and respond to my students' writing and give them feedback and praise in a timely manner. My success in this reminds me of an image that will be familiar to many of you:
From my first days in the classroom, I've been bursting with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm, that is, for dreaming up ways to get kids to read and write and think and produce. My enthusiasm for actually sitting down to evaluate their outpouring has lurked somewhere between low and subterranean.
A confession: During my first year of teaching I inspired my ninth-graders to write like they'd never written before. They drafted pages upon pages of journaling--that I couldn't bear to read. I can still visualize the box I used to haul the spiral notebooks home over Christmas break, promising myself I'd get them read.
I couldn't do it. After break I stalled the kids off. Each weekend I was determined to sit down and push through the journals. But as a first-year teacher in a small school, I had five or six different classes to prep for. My energy went toward dreaming up more writing activities, as the basket of journals stared at me judgmentally from its corner in the dining room.
I never read the journals. The kids eventually stopped asking about them. I eventually piled newspapers on the box of journals, camouflaging my accuser. I don't remember when I finally took them to the burn pile.
And this brings me to my biggest accomplishment as a teacher. I have learned to read and respond to my students' writing and give them feedback and praise in a timely manner. My success in this reminds me of an image that will be familiar to many of you:
That is, my progress toward taming the paper tiger has been circuitous at best. There are still times I feel the dread creep in, and just today I had to tell two students that I had not yet read their papers.
But for the most part, I've developed ways to motivate and discipline myself to do right by my students' writing. I'll save the specifics of how for another blog, another day.
Day 9: Write about one of your biggest accomplishments in your teaching that no one knows about (or may not care).
Reflection: As I wrote this, I thought about how far I've come in learning to manage the mountains of writing my students do--and they do write a lot! I'm sure most teachers have not thrown out boxes of their students' unread journals, but I'm betting many English teachers suffer from the guilt and overwhelm that stacks of un-read student writing produce. Would anyone like to co-present a session on this with me at ICTE fall conference? Maybe we could make it a panel discussion. Let me know!
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