A is for Attending (not Assuming): #reflectiveteacher Resumes!

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I know I'm a better teacher when I'm blogging my reflections. Luckily, @teachthought has provided me with a challenge I think I can work with: The Basics of Reflective Teaching Slo-Blog. As suggested, I have adopted an ABC framework, twenty-six entries relating to reflective teaching to be posted at any time this year rather than a 30-day challenge. Let's see what happens!

One of the things I struggle with the most as an instructor is paying attention in the moment. I get so caught up in teaching, and finding the handouts, and figuring out what we're doing next, and remembering which class did what yesterday, and WHY IS THE TECH NOT WORKING???!! I get so mired down in the classroom minutiae that I’m not always attentive to what students are trying to tell me, in words or in actions, much less reflective about what it means.

In my intervention notebook about a week ago, I noted that one of my students was spending a great deal of time staring into space instead of reading. I will call her Ana. Every day I have to personally invite her to start reading while nearly everyone else in the class is already into the routine. This particular day, she had a great deal of difficulty continuing to keep her eyes on the page. When her eyes weren’t wandering around the room, she was talking to her neighbors. I was getting pretty irritated she wouldn't buckle down and focus. I felt like we were developing a negative relationship because of it.

These anecdotal records are very helpful snippets of thought and often lead to further reflection, when I can carve out the time (which is not often enough).  I made an important follow-up error though. On the first day I noticed her lack of focus, instead of just writing it down in my record, I should’ve sat down next to her and listened her thoughts on why this was happening.  But I didn’t.

In all the hustle bustle of the of the forty-five minute class, I struggle to implement conferences in a systematic way. However, I had an Aha Moment when Kylene Beers suggested in this Facebook post that perhaps instead of just recording book logs, we should have kids answer some check-in questions about their independent reading. So I took those questions and made them into a reflective document to get some much-needed feedback from my 132 students. While it doesn't substitute for a conference, this feedback can clarify immediately who is most in need of one at this moment.

What I read on Miss Ana’s reflection humbled me. When asked, “How can I help you read more?” she responded with, “Help me find a book that will help me stay focused.” When asked if she enjoyed her reading, she said she had trouble finding books that would keep her focused and interested. She’d been reading a complicated fantasy book, one she picked up during a "speed-dating" with books activity, for about a week and a half. She was two-thirds of the way through it, but she was clearly not engaged.

This is my fault.  

I was not attentive to the clear signals she’d been giving me.  I was treating her like a discipline problem rather than a kid who needed a better book match.  She didn’t know she had permission to quit an independent reading book. If I had taken a moment or two to attentively reflect on what might be driving her behavior, I could’ve helped her solve this problem a week ago. Instead, I assumed 1) she was not an avid reader, and 2) she knew my “rules” for book abandonment.

When I sat down and talked to her during our intervention period of the day, I said, “You know, I just read your response on the reading check-in, and I was wondering, what was the last book you read that helped you stay focused?”

Ana’s shoulders relaxed immediately. Whew! She wasn't in trouble! She was anxious to tell me about the Canterwood Crest books and her interest in horses. “Can you help me find another series?” she asks.  This “reluctant” reader wasn’t resisting at all! Why, why, why had I not simply visited with her about her reading earlier?!

Immediately, I thought of Miranda Kenneally’s book Racing Savannah, a volume in her terrific series featuring strong, female teen narrators in the fictional Tennessee community of Thousand Oaks. This particular book is about complicated family and class relationships, as well as a teen romance, on a Southern horse farm. I don't have a lot of books about horses, though we raise horses on our Iowa family farm, but I can certainly find them for Ana! I told her to abandon her current book, unless she really wanted to finish it. And most importantly, I told her she didn’t need my permission to do so.  

She is in charge of her independent reading choices.

I asked her to spend ten minutes with this new book to see if it was right for her. Then I walked away and watched. She did not look up once in those ten minutes as the book sucked her into the lives of spunky Savannah, the horse trainer's daughter who wants to become a racing jockey, and Jack, the bright and privileged son of her dad's boss. It was the first time all year Ana read for ten straight minutes.

After a five-minute break at the bell, she spent ten more minutes reading without interruption.

In fact, all week, she has not looked up from her book during reading time, nor has she talked to her neighbors. Yesterday, when I announced it was time to transition to our lesson, she actually groaned, “But this book is SO GOOD!”  Such is the power of the right book, in the hands of the right kid, at the right time. (Thank you, Ms. Kenneally!)

Ana asked if I could help her find a series because most kids, like adult readers, want to hear more about the characters they love, want stories that continue, and they want to know they have a plan for what to read next. A series is one of the best ways to accomplish that. Ana already knew this! If I’d been paying closer attention, I would’ve remembered it, too.

I turned an engagement problem into a discipline problem. But Ana is self-disciplined when she's focused and engaged. All I had to do was pay attention, listen, and act accordingly.

Today I told Ana, I had picked up her next book at Barnes and Noble over the weekend, a new Thousand Oaks book called Jessie’s Girl, about a country music singer. The surprised smile on her face was worth so much more than the cost out of my pocket. A little attention goes a long, long way.