Some years back I was leading a literacy professional development initiative at a local school, involving novice teachers and their mentors. I was at the school almost every day, forming cordial relationships, visiting classrooms and coordinating study groups.

I thought everything was going well, and then I was brought up short by a quote I read in the book Mentor/Teacher. The essay was written as a plea from teachers to the supervisors who lead them, and this is the quote that stopped me in my tracks:

I have a right to be who I am, as a person and as a teacher. My experiences, history, career stage, and current life demands make me who I am. And although I don't always say or believe this, I like who I am. I am unique and proud of my work, but I am fragile. I work in a world where everything is changing, constantly, daily, faster every year. I want to grow and be a better teacher, to be allowed to make the mistakes that come with real change. That alone qualifies me to be a strong mentor of beginning teachers.

Any talk of "the best teachers" or "bad teachers" hurts deeply. On any one day, I'm both; I'll never be as good as Beth or Roger down the hall, but I'm trying. I need to know that you will not talk negatively about me or my methods once you get back in the car, or are at another school. Do not ask me to become destabilized in front of my students, my teacher candidate, or my peers; don't push me further than I'm ready to go. As I learn, I need to maintain face, if not always control.

(Peg Graham et al in Mentor/Teacher 1999, Teachers College Press)

I could feel my face getting red as I reread these words silently, and they began to sink in. I knew the anonymous teacher writing those words; I was the anonymous teacher earlier in my career. Though I rarely spoke of "bad" teachers, making proclamations about what "good" or "the best" teachers do was something that happened a dozen times a day in my work.

I read this quote aloud at the next mentor meeting, and talked about how I needed to change my language. The air in the room shifted after those words. Before, the staff was polite, quiet, clearly tired after a long day. But after discussing the quote, you could feel a new buzz, a whiff of possibility that we were trying for a different kind of collaboration among mentors and colleagues.

The feeling of being judged as a teacher is continual, and it probably goes all the way back to teacher preparation programs, when so many absolutes are presented as "good" or "bad" practice. It isn't easy to change the words we use routinely, because they reflect thinking patterns that are ingrained.

If you're a literacy leader in any capacity - a mentor, coach, study group coordinator, principal - you have to measure your words. As Jan Miller Burkins notes this week, if we don't measure our words, the risk is the teachers we work with will measure themselves by them, in ways that inhibit or hurt our ability to change and grow together as learners.

This week's Big Fresh has a couple features linking language, literacy, and relationships with colleagues and students. Enjoy!

Brenda Power

Editor, Choice Literacy

www.choiceliteracy.com

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From the Choice Literacy archives, "The Dark Side of Girl Talk" looks at female to female communication patterns that get in the way of school change, and how literacy leaders can work to break them:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/96.cfm

Cheryl Dozier's book, Responsive Literacy Coaching, includes a wealth of resources for understanding how to talk about literacy with students and peers. The entire book is available for review on-line. Scroll down to the table of contents and click on any chapter (Chapter 4 is especially useful if you're interested in communication):

www.stenhouse.com/0463.asp

Stenhouse is offering free shipping for Big Fresh subscribers who purchase the book through the end of February. Just use coupon code CL7A when checking out online or phoning in your order.

How do you talk with students who don't speak your language? Literacy from the Start is a two-day workshop with Andie Cunningham and Ruth Shagoury on launching reading and writing workshops with Young English language learners, offered next summer and fall in Oregon and Maine. Registration details are available here:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/264.cfm

***For Members Only***

Jan Miller Burkins writes about how literacy leaders might examine their language and weigh its effects on their relationships with colleagues in the first of a two-part series on "The Language of Coaching." If you begin many sentences with "I like" when you are mentoring colleagues, you'll want to read this article. This is another excerpt from Jan's book Coaching for Balance, which will be published by the International Reading Association later this year:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/262.cfm

You can have your iPod - for my money the greatest invention ever is the self-cleaning oven. It does all the work for you! "How Study Groups Are Like Self-Cleaning Ovens" details Jennifer Allen's study group format, with core routines that help the groups run themselves session after session:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/263.cfm

Last week we shared a video of Franki Sibberson presenting new revision tools to her students. This week, students talk about how they used the tools in the whole group discussion at the conclusion of writer's workshop. If you missed last week's video, we include a link to it within the article:

http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/265.cfm

That's all for this week!