The Big Fresh from Choice Literacy
May 2, 2009
Learning from Failure
It's not enough to
fail. You have to come to feel your failure, to
live it through, to turn
it over in your hand, like a stone with
strange markings.
James
Fenton
How do you get beyond failures in your teaching, and yet still make
sure you take the time to learn from them? This is one of the
greatest challenges we face. A disastrous study group or
difficult
teaching year can make you want to retreat to the comfort of what
has worked in the past. But doing the same thing over and over
again is going to lead to failure in the future, too - just of a
different variety.
Most educators have a built-in pause button for reflecting on
failure - the summer months. Even if you are on a full-year
contract or working a second job during off months to make ends
meet, the change in the season brings a new perspective. It's
easier to think about that gap between what you expected and what
happened, without wallowing in it, when you have some distance of
time and space.
What's gone wrong this year? What relationships will you have
to
work to rebuild next fall, or try yet again to establish in the
first place? What's the silver lining of learning, so that
you can
move forward next fall stronger than ever? It's a funny thing -
making a conscious decision to set aside some time this summer to
think through troublesome moments from the year can actually free
you up from spending lots of unconscious mental energy sorting it
all out now.
This week we're featuring some lessons from teaching failures, as
well as the start of a new series on summer reading suggestions.
Enjoy!
Brenda Power
Editor, Choice Literacy
Free for All
Heather Rader dissects two literacy coaching experiences that
didn't go well, and uses her reflections as a springboard for
discussions with her colleagues about how to improve her mentoring.
Whether you're a coach or teacher, Heather's experience will
help
you get the most out of collaborative teaching experiences:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/884.cfm
Are you putting together a stack of fun reads for the
summer? If
so, you'll enjoy our new month-long series with suggestions from
some of your favorite literacy educators. This week, we begin
the
series with picks from Kelly Gallagher, Shelley Harwayne,
Carol
Jago, Sharon Taberski, and Bud Hunt (of "Bud the Teacher" blog
fame):
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/885.cfm
Adlit.org's "Meet the Authors" section has some wonderful
author
videos up for viewing with students, or on your own as you catch up
on young adult literature this summer:
http://www.adlit.org/media/author
"Stories from the Teaching Life" is a classic essay from Tim
Gillespie about the value of mulling over failures, and revisiting
them in teaching logs and conversations. It is published at
the
National Writing Project site:
http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/234
Rebecca Leigh's "Unlucky Arithmetic" lists on how to produce
"non-writers" and "non-artists" were so popular with readers a few
weeks back that she's updated them with forms you can download that
mimic the style of the Horn Book original:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/863.cfm
The Choice Literacy Summer Workshops are filling rapidly, with some
individual sessions already sold out. Openings remain for our new
offerings on middle school reading instruction, word work,
nonfiction in the intermediate grades, and dealing with assessment
data. These new topics are in addition to our popular offerings
from last year on CAFE assessment, struggling readers, literacy
coaching, and the literacy principal in action. You can read
individual descriptions and download registration forms at this link:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/public/department22.cfm
For Members
Only
How can teachers use assessment data in conferences with
parents,
without overwhelming them with information? Clare Landrigan
and
Tammy Mulligan recommend a "data snippets" approach. They
offer
six different strategies for using data in parent conferences:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/886.cfm
Franki Sibberson finds preparing students for summer reading is a
little different this year, now that she has moved from classroom
teaching to work in the school library. You can download her
new
template to send home with children at this link:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/883.cfm
This week's video from the Choice Literacy Archives continues our
series of room tours to help you think about cleaning up and
re-organizing classrooms for next year. Katie Doherty gives a
tour
of her 4th grade classroom, highlighting walls displays and ways to
organize materials for large classes of students:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/660.cfm
Finally, one of our favorite stories of letting go of failure
from
Jan Miller Burkins in the Choice Literacy Archives. She also
provides an evaluation form for getting end-of-the-year feedback on
your coaching:
http://www.choiceliteracy.com/members/369.cfm
That's all for this week!
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Jennifer Allen
