Elevating and Celebrating Effective Teachers and Teaching in Kentucky

Just under a year ago, a few educator colleagues and I had a dream, and it all started with my friend, Sherri, telling us about what we were about to experience as we prepared to attend the national ECET2 conference in California. At this national conference, I met a fellow Kentucky educator whom I had never before met because he was from another part of the state.  When we returned home to Kentucky, many of the Kentucky ECET attendees began a twitter campaign and tweeted our hearts out because of Sherri's inspiration before we even attended the conference.  Sherri had a dream that we would put on a similar conference here in Kentucky for our teacher friends.  Today, that dream became a reality.  Even in the midst of a Kentucky snowstorm, teachers braved the elements to come together in Lexington to elevate and celebrate our profession.

Classroom teachers led our day, from our Master of Ceremonies (a high school social studies teacher) to our opening keynote (Sherri) to our breakout sessions (teachers from all subjects and grade levels), to our colleague circle groups (teachers from all grades and subjects) to our lunch keynote speaker (Florida 2010 Teacher of the Year, Megan Allen) to our closing speaker, a 6-12 science teacher from Robertson County, Kentucky.

Sherri encouraged us to get up, team up, and speak up because our profession depends upon it.  As

educators in all capacities, we do what we do for the sake of students, and it's important that we not do it in isolation.  By collaborating and using our voices, we can make a difference.

Sherri Presenting.  Photo by Amanda Riley

Irvin Scott led us in song, and together we began the togetherness Sherri mentioned in her speech.  Imagine a room full of teachers singing (to the tune of the Black Eyed Peas song--I've got a feeling) "I've got a feeling that I'm making a difference in kids' lives."

Venturing into colleague circle groups, teachers from around the state gathered in small groups of eight to discuss important issues around education in our state right now.

• What obstacles have you as teachers faced in becoming a leader in your school or district?
• What successes have you achieved in teacher leadership recently?
• What can be accomplished in your school, district, and/or state to encourage teacher leadership?
• What steps can you take in order to help more teachers become leaders?
• What and how will you share materials from this conference with those in your school/district?
• What does teacher leadership mean to you?
• What does teacher engagement look like in your classroom/district?
• What are the best mechanisms/social media outlets to continue the discussions/interactions/work of the Colleague Circles?

Not all of these questions were discussed at once, obviously.  In between break out sessions, teachers returned to their colleague circle groups to talk, network, and collaborate on building one another up as a teacher.


Break out sessions (led by teachers) included

1. Learning and Improving Practice Through Collaboration
2. Leveraging your Voice
3. Teacher Leadership that Transforms
4. Fireside Chat:  Personal Journeys in Teacher Leadership
5. Your Voice Matters:  Reimagining Teacher Preparation
6. Google Apps in Education (cancelled due to a new baby being born by the presenter's wife)

At each breakout session we attended we met new colleagues and actively participated in the conversations around each of the presented topics.  These were led by teachers; they were not "sit and get" PD sessions.

We sang, we laughed, we grew teary eyed from stories, we shared and collaborated, and we left feeling inspired with our teaching souls nourished.

Literary vs. Informational Text: it's not either/or

An eruption of face to face and online conversations over the past year have centered on the demand for more informational texts to be taught in classrooms across the United States as part of the Common Core State Standards initiative.   As I’ve blogged about previously, I don’t believe this directive requires us to stop teaching literature.  A carefully balanced approach to instruction provides students with opportunities to read a variety of complex and appropriately challenging texts.  We do not have an either (literature) /or (non-fiction) scenario. 

 

Yesterday I was with educators from elementary backgrounds who claimed English teachers need to learn from them because they have been “pairing texts forever since that’s the way basal readers are designed.” (Pretty sure the Dick and Jane series wasn’t designed like this, but surely these educators are referencing the more contemporary design of American textbooks today) No doubt, we all have something to learn from one another, regardless of our teaching level. Nevertheless, creating text parings is not a novel idea; it is something teachers at any grade level have been doing or can start doing with ease.  Text pairings have been part of my teaching approach since I entered the teaching profession in 1998; it just makes sense to design lessons drawing on multiple perspectives, genres, or disciplines. 

Following my day with the educators referenced above, I returned home to find my husband, unexpectedly, cleaning out our garage (where my 8 tubs of teaching materials are stored), so I decided to peruse a few of those tubs and to ponder (again) text pairings I used in my classroom. 

Unifying focus:  Freedom from convention

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

Greyed Rainbow by Jackson Pollock

Scholastic Art borrowed class set from art teacher to for class to read article about Pollock.

Colors by Ken Nordine

Unifying focus:  Complexity in life and nature

Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

The Starry Night by Anne Sexton

Starry Night by Tupac Shakur

Van Gogh in Auvers from Smithsonian magazine January 2008

Unifying focus:  Identity

The Way to Rainy Mountain by N. Scott Mommaday

Identity card by Mahmoud Darwish

Poems written by students

Various non-fiction writings by students

The skill of pairing texts rests in selecting texts to meet the needs of learners in an individual classroom, so let the text pairings referenced here serve as inspiration for selecting texts that will suit the needs of your students’ demographics and learning needs. 

As you look for more inspiration, consider following the work of Sarah Brown Wessling.  Last spring I participated in NCTE’s virtual conference Supporting Teachers in a Time of Core Standards.  It was here where I met (virtually) 2010 National Teacher of the Year, Sarah Brown Wessling, who talks about fulcrum texts, context, texts, and texture texts.  What an inspiring way to think about text selection!