This week I had my first opportunity to meet all the middle
and high school principals in our district.
As the primary point of contact for a major literacy grant, it was
important for these administrators to know who I am, and more importantly, to
know about the ongoing professional learning experiences we are facilitating for
their teachers. Since we believe in
modeling best practice, my colleagues and I decided to stage an argument about
the content the principals would learn (In this situation, the content happened
to be writing instruction and impact of writing programs in schools). The argument was designed to set the context
and engage the learners/readers in two articles with opposing view-points.
These are the same conditions teachers are creating as they
introduce a Literacy
Design Collaborative (LDC) task to students in science, social studies and
English Language Arts. Before we went
into the rest of our presentation on LDC, we told the principals the argument had
been staged, and they got it. They understood
we had set the context for learning more about the content. Teachers in our district, across many
districts in Kentucky, and in several other states in the United States are
utilizing the LDC tools to implement the Common Core State Standards for
Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical subjects.
I’m
really happy to be back in the district working closely with teachers and
schools, and for the most part it’s going well.
However, I do have one little issue.
My colleague and I don’t agree on the appropriate approach for writing
instruction, so we need your help. We
are going to give you two different articles and ask you to help us decide an
answer to this question—is it necessary to omit personal connection to produce
good writing? I don’t think it’s
necessary to do so, but my colleague does.
Will you help us settle this argument by gleaning evidence from two
texts?
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My science colleague distributed The
Writing Revolution, and I distributed In
Defense of Freedom Writers but only after I talked about the power Manuel
Scott’s presentation had on me a couple of weeks ago. Then we gave each administrator a few text
dependent questions to accompany both articles, set a timer for 20 minutes and
then paced, re-read and watched as a room full of principals and associate
principals read the two articles with their pens in hand. Following the reading of the two articles, our
social studies colleague continued the staged argument by telling the principals
she didn’t agree with either of us—she was in the middle. She then facilitated a fish bowl discussion
to engage the principals in conversation around the two points of view conveyed
in the two articles. She charted ideas
and the principals on the outside of the fishbowl recorded additional thoughts
on sticky notes when it wasn’t their turn to talk. A few struggled to keep quiet when they were
on the outside of the fish bowl because they felt so strongly about what they
had read.
We are using LDC because we see the importance of engaging
students in meaningful and authentic reading and writing opportunities in every
discipline. Think about the response
above--A few struggled to keep quiet when they were on the outside of the fish
bowl because they felt so strongly about what they had read. Exactly.
Imagine this happening in classrooms full of excited and engaged
adolescents!
If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of
time, you will know this is exactly why I left the state department to be
closer to schools, closer to the teaching and learning that will make a difference
in the lives of students.