Getting It Right

As a secondary English methods professor, I wish I could get it right every time.  The truth is, I wish I could claim just one perfect year as a middle or high school teacher instead of a few near-perfect class periods or too many near-perfect disasters.  As many educators of any level might agree, it is the striving for perfection that keeps us moving forward: researching best practices, finding better resources, attending professional conferences, and meeting new colleagues as we continually shape and reshape our philosophical stance on teaching and learning.

Every week, my English methods students pose tough questions about numerous topics in education that experienced teachers struggle with daily.  Last week they asked, "How do we get students to actually read (or care about reading) during silent reading?  What does accountability for independent reading look like?  How do I manage student choice and grading?"  Channeling some of my best professors' strategies, I asked them to discuss their own classroom observations and what they have learned from their mentor teachers.  Most recently, however, during our discussion of Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and Deborah Appleman's Critical Encounters in Secondary English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, one student stumped me with questions about grading: How do we assess scaffolding if one student needs more resources and assistance than another student?  How does the scaffolding enter into grading?  


Time limited our discussion that evening, which made it immediately clear that we needed more resources to help us grapple with these issues around grading practices.  Having experienced the depth of the Twitter professional network, I turned to #sbgchat and discovered #sblchat (Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST).  In just moments, I found a video by Rick Wormeli, proficiency grading guides, a website on all things standards based by Matt Townsley, and conversations archived by Garnet Hillman around grading theory and practice.  


Yes, my students' questions give me pause, more now that I realize how much there is to learn.  But knowing how to navigate these education resources moves me closer to being the professor my secondary teacher candidates need me to be.  I have an advantage over my first-year teacher self of twelve years ago: supportive professional networks that constantly teach me (how else would I have discovered teachers on Twitter?).  These networks include the National Council of Teachers of English (@NCTE), National Writing Project (@writingproject) beginning with the Louisville Writing Project (@LouisvilleWP) and continuing with the Illinois Writing Project (@IllinoisWP), the International Literacy Association (@ILAtoday), the Illinois Reading Council (@ILReadCouncil, and the Literacy Research Association.  Through these professional networks, I have learned the value of mentors, lifelong research, and constant investigation.  I have also learned the importance of wobbling on the edge of new challenges.  Without these experiences and the support of these associations--of mentors and friends--I wouldn't be able to show my future teachers how to get it right, even if it's only some of the time.

Story as a Fossil and the NCTE Proposal Title

As I struggle with the right conference proposal title, I think about the aha moment I had just an hour ago while reading Stephen King's On Writing.  I bought this book some years ago and enjoyed reading it then as I am enjoying a reread of it now.  But the section about fossils and symbolism made me pause:  "If you can go along with the concept of the story as a pre-existing thing, a fossil in the ground, then symbolism must also be pre-existing, right? Just another bone (or set of them) in your new discovery" (p. 198).  Stories, he said, are fully formed and need the proper excavation tools.  And maybe symbols and deeper meanings are much the same.

What this comes to is my narrative stance in research.  I want to study, to write about, inquire into the idea of transformation experiences in teacher development.  Why do certain professional development experiences transform some teachers and not others?  How might narrative inquiry help us know the entire story that answers that question?  It seems that there is a fossil that must be discovered, unearthed, and polished for us to understand why some teachers respond with renewed vigor for the profession and others decide that one more hoop just won't do it for them.  I suspect transformation has to do with the validation teachers finally feel as professionals when they attend learning opportunities that honor their capacity as leaders.

Recently, I learned about another kind of transformation.  By listening to interviews, reading transcripts, and focusing on the story being told, I found a thread running through many conversations between one teacher and myself.  I created a narrative research/literature review that uncovered an interesting element that could lead to the teacher's exploration of new classroom strategies.  Seeing the story of our work, the teacher realized our conversations, more than class reflections, were intelligent talk that moved learning and discovery forward. That story is still developing.  But it may be key to figuring out the transformation piece.  Perhaps the transformed teachers discovered a fossil--their mission, teaching story, or leadership ability, perhaps--and were able to polish it with renewed strength and insight with the right excavation [PD] tools.  That, too, remains to be seen.

There may be no easy formula to determine the best professional learning opportunity.  It most likely is dependent on the disposition of the attendee and his or her context.  If that is true, even the well-designed PD may fall short of delivering (or deliverance).  This inquiry goes deeper than examining professional development feedback databases or administering surveys.  The story begins at the fossil, in the classroom before the professional development experience.  Either polishing happens or it doesn't, but we have to know the fossil from the beginning.

So I am still stuck with no title for my NCTE proposal and am only a  little clearer on my narrative stance in research.