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A Different Place Standing in Paddington station several Saturdays ago, scanning the crowd for Kevan and despite the overnight flight over "the pond," I was wild with excitement. It had been 18 years since I'd been to London and I couldn't wait to immerse myself in a place where everything is fundamentally different. Yes, I saw the Starbucks and McDonalds and, like all of you, looked away, insulted at some level. I was longing to live for a short while in a place utterly unlike my surroundings in the US. Allowing oneself to plunge into a world other than one's own, as we all did last week, must be one of the greatest of human learning experiences. It is immersion in learning in the purest sense. Lucky are we! The challenge, I've heard from several of you, is to put the learning from the schools (as opposed to the learning on public transport!) in some kind of useable order. How do we focus on that which is most important, most essential to our world, now that we've returned to the comforting routines? How do we consciously decide what to remember, what to let slip into distant and indistinct images. And, how do we share our insights and excitement with colleagues without sounding like we want them to sit with us while we show old movies and regale them with a moment-by-moment chronology of our recent vacation? As I chased the sunset on my return, I tried to answer those questions on my laptop computer. See, there was a good reason to bring it. I will share them in this column, knowing that you will read what follows in the spirit in which it was intended - just one person's observations.
What images remain and what implications do those images have for our work? There is a palpable calm in English schools. Voices are gentle, touch is common, full attention is given to the person speaking, child, colleague or parent. Parents greet visitors as they escort children up the path. Office staff has time. Priorities are clear. "I will meet with you after I greet the children." Order is present and care taken, even in the simplest routines - the pencils are collected neatly in cans, tablecloths adorn the tables, upholstered furniture is child sized, art is hung at eye level - the children's eye level. There is joy in English classrooms. Teachers laugh with children and truly enjoy the wit and spontaneity in every moment. Adults share experiences and insights from their own lives and know much about the children's lives. No one yells. Silence and a steady gaze address most behavior problems and there are few repressive rules. Children help each other and solve many of their own problems. Teachers laugh over tea in staff rooms while children play outside. Play. There is ritual in English classrooms and schools. Children gather to explore issues of character development in assemblies. Faculties begin every morning together, in the same room, sharing news and wishing each other well on the journey of the day. Teachers greet each child, "Good morning, Damien, good morning Bonnie," and wait for Bonnie and Damien to say, "Good morning, Elaine". A fond gaze touches each child. The head teacher peeks in to greet the children. The message? I am here as I was yesterday and as I will be tomorrow. We are safe. There is purpose and serious intent in our work together in this small place today. There will also be fun. Calm. Ritual. Joy. So simple. So elegant. My mother used to deride me about making everything in life so complicated. She would say, "Ellin, don't you know in simplicity is found the greatest elegance?" Calm. Ritual. Joy. Elegant
What will I decide to remember? I recall our conversation Wednesday afternoon at Bangabandu school during which you shared hundreds of observations from English classrooms. I wondered then, how will you decide what to remember? How will you sort through the insights, hold a few close and make a commitment to let your visit influence your practice - permanently? For me, I simply won't remember all I saw. I am all too painfully aware that I can't let everything I saw change my work. I have to decide -- what will I decide to remember?
The National Literacy Strategy I won't soon forget the extraordinary scope and resources made available to English teachers through the National Literacy Strategy. I was overwhelmed at the organization and availability of information on best teaching practices and the degree to which teachers capitalized on those resources. They understood the Literacy Strategy and seemed to be taking full advantage of the vast array of rich resources it provides. It is tempting to feel very envious. It's important, I believe, to recall the political and pedagogical forces that led to the development of the National Literacy Strategy. There was little agreement about what constituted best practice in literacy instruction across England coupled with disappointing test scores in many schools - sound familiar? The National Literacy Strategy was developed when senior officials in the federal government level agreed that there was a need for more explicit and uniform literacy instruction across England's schools - instruction that was focused and based on the latest research in teaching and learning. Can we imagine such an effort in the United States? Would we want one? As it happens, the National Literacy Strategy was penned by Kevan Collins and others who are well informed and thoughtful, as well as apolitical. Even if I put aside, for a moment, my skepticism that such a team could be assembled to create a Literacy Strategy in the United States, I am forced to question the utility of a national curriculum in a country this size and whose local education agencies are accustomed to such autonomy. Would teachers use it? How would we provide training for hundreds of thousands of teachers? How would we ensure that the strategy is flexible and subject to speedy amendment when research changes? Does the political will exist to ensure professional development for all teachers if such a strategy was adopted? So, what can we take from our observations of the National Literacy Strategy at work? Cornerstone schools can take a closer look at our own Literacy Framework that was designed to respond to similar needs in Cornerstone schools. It is meant to reflect the latest and most relevant understandings from literacy research and is intended to provoke meaningful and permanent changes in teaching and learning. The Cornerstone Literacy Framework was created to help teachers focus with great depth on that content which is most essential for children's literacy learning and is meant to provide a wide array of useful resources for their teachers. Importantly, however, those resources aren't only being developed by the authors of the strategy - they are meant to come from the classrooms of those using the framework. As well, the Cornerstone Literacy Framework doesn't dictate instructional practice. It provides a compendium of content and leaves to the ingenuity of teachers the design and implementation of instruction. Is there a need for more explicit, research-based literacy teaching and learning? No doubt. Do teachers benefit from a clear, concise document that captures, in a useable way, that which is most essential for children's literacy learning? We couldn't disagree. Think again about the Cornerstone Literacy Framework in light of what you observed in England. Our visit made me want to redouble our efforts to use it well.
Surface and Deep Structure Instruction In our conversations at Bangabandu School, I heard many of you comment on the brilliance of English teachers' surface structure instruction. You described the engaging games like the Full Circle Game outlined in the National Literacy Strategy, in which children physically as well as cognitively participated in the creation of words. To watch a teacher challenge the children to change the word mice to mine and then to line as they stood on a little platform before the class is an image that will not soon leave my mind. What an ingenious way to ensure that children develop phonemic awareness, a sense of "wordness", the workings of vowels and the mysteries of word families! I heard other coaches and Critical Friends rave (justifiably) about the students' early writing. They noticed that the children's notebooks were readily at hand for daily practice in recording their thoughts, experimenting with different genres, and developing images into meaningful pieces of writing to be shared with a variety of audiences. We were impressed with the degree to which children orally "rehearsed" their ideas with a partner before committing them to writing and how they were able, by year two, to name distinguishing characteristics for a variety of genres. I also heard many of you echo a thought I had throughout our week in London. Where is the deep structure instruction in reading? I did see a bit of work on characterization in books in a year two classroom, but little else that focused on teaching children how to understand what they read and how to comprehend a given piece more deeply. If there was comprehension strategy instruction, I did not observe it. I did have the opportunity to watch Rahshene Davis conduct a brilliant strategy lesson. I wish you could have seen the children jumping out of their skin to deepen their comprehension! How English children could benefit from what you all know in this area. . . I tried to scrutinize the classroom libraries in each of the four schools I visited. Most of the texts were well suited for small group and independent work on surface structures, but I didn't see many books that were written to provoke complex thinking in young children. I so wish that the English teachers could see the classroom libraries in schools like Scranton in Cleveland - all in good time, I suppose.
How shall we share what we've learned? As I write my last comments for this newsletter, nearly a month has passed since our visit. I reread what I had written and wondered what you have done to share your own recollections of being in A Different Place. It's an enormous challenge, I think, to share what we've learned. No one wants to see the equivalent of "home movies" from our recent trip, that's for sure! What can we do to ensure that our insights reach beyond our own classrooms? Do we host an after-school inservice and tell our colleagues about our observations? Do we show them the materials we brought back? Do we plan an extended meeting with the principal to discuss common experiences from the visits to England? Conventional wisdom would suggest that, upon learning new teaching strategies, we extract the little pieces that might work well in our own setting and gradually begin to implement it. Conventional wisdom suggests taking small steps that eventually might add up to substantive change. Conventional wisdom says don't go overboard this year, wait until the fall. Cornerstone is not about conventional wisdom - Cornerstone is about the courage of our convictions! If, while in England, you saw practices that make sense for children, use them! Consider the implications for your colleagues' learning if. . . What if, each of us in the time remaining this year, went quietly about making radical changes in our own practice based on what we observed in England? What if, in our own classrooms, we adopted some of the practices we saw in England in their entirety? What if, instead of attending an after-school inservice, our colleagues walked by your classroom or that of a colleague and wondered what in the world had gotten into you? What if we tried everything we told ourselves we couldn't do? What if we banished from our minds every fleeting thought about why we couldn't accomplish something we saw in England? What might our colleagues learn then? At a time in the very foreseeable future, we will be wishing each other well in our professional lives. Cornerstone's official "run" in each school will be over. What will we have to show for our observations in England, our regional meetings and summer institutes, our framework, our video conferences and our demonstration lessons, our study groups and professional discussions? To be sure, wonderful changes have taken place in each Cornerstone school but each of us must ask ourselves now, is it enough? Are the changes we've made far reaching, dramatic and permanent? Do they ensure a calm, joyful, ritual-enriched environment like those we saw in England? Do the changes we've made guarantee that in every classroom teachers are focusing on that which matters most for children's literacy learning? Have the changes led to the elimination of materials and instructional methodology based on rote drill and isolated skill learning? If our answers to those questions are no, we must ask ourselves this question - what is the most radical, visible, high-risk strategy I can employ to change the answers to yes? We have so little time and the children's need is great. Chasing the sun across Ireland and the Atlantic, my heart was so heavy. As much as I had dreaded being away from David and Elizabeth for a week, I found that when the time came, I didn't want to leave. I wasn't ready to return to the same old ways of doing things, the sameness of our schools and the familiar ways of teaching. Living for a while in A Different Place gives one chutzpah! Talking to colleagues in A Different Place makes one question all the "givens". Being immersed in A Different Place makes one believe anything is possible. Can we sustain that feeling? Have we the strength? Have we the courage of our convictions? It remains to be seen, I suppose, but knowing all of you as I do, I have the greatest confidence that the ideas born in A Different Place will thrive at home. Be of courage. |