Literacy Now

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Lately, a common refrain I hear even amongst my most favorite and most fabulous teacher friends is that teaching isn’t fun anymore. They are feeling beat down and overwhelmed by the need to teach central message, to track character, to analyze language and do close readings and be all Common Core-y.

I feel you. Teaching is hard and feels like it’s getting harder. There is so much public finger pointing and tedious paperwork. There are scary and unsupportive evaluation systems and a general sense that no one is listening to us. There are assessments and assessments of assessments and then meetings to talk about those assessments.

I have also heard from many trusted friends and admired colleagues that, as a result, their reading instruction feels tedious, overly challenging for students, and less fun. They have become bogged down with graphic organizers and lengthy lessons that rob students of the chance to fall into their own independent reading. When I hear this, I want to drop everything, shake my fist at the sky and scream, “Nooooooo!” (I have a flair for the dramatic.)

The Common Core State Standards in and of themselves are not “fun.” They are dense and, frankly, a bit of a dry read. But what set of standards aren’t?  The joy and fun don’t come from the Standards themselves, they come from us, from YOU. Joy and fun come in the form of engaging book choices and dynamic conversations about reading. It’s all in the presentation and sticking to those things we value most about the teaching of reading: finding great texts, talking about that those texts, and luxuriating in the act of reading.

The teaching of reading is about introducing our students to engaging stories, authors and topics they might not have considered before. Stay up to date by following resources on Twitter such as The Horn Book, Classroom Bookshelf or by using the hashtag #kidlit. International Reading Association’s Choices puts together an annual list of the best children’s and young adult literature. Get on Pinterest and scour other teachers’ boards for lists of titles aggregated by author, subject, grade level or theme. Look for lists of award winners, read book reviews on HuffPo Books or The New York Times, or just ask your students what is hot right now. You might be surprised by what you discover.

Teaching reading is engaging in thoughtful conversations about texts make you lose track of time. Once you provide your students with strategies for determining the central idea, for finding information, for following the character, for uncovering the meaning of new vocabulary. Take that new learning and talk about it! We need to let our students use what they know as readers to talk about what they are reading in authentic ways that get them excited about reading more.

The teaching of reading is about allowing students to fall in love with what they are reading. We need to provide them with the time to feel what it is like to sit and read. That time is a gift in the midst of their school day and should be treated that way. In order to keep this time sacred and fun, student choice must reign supreme. If students are exclusively “assigned” various readings, reading becomes a chore or another “to do” on the list.  

I guarantee you if you dedicate yourself to re-discovering the fun of digging into juicy ideas like debating the central idea of a great story, or tracing the development of a thrilling character, or uncovering the answers to questions about topics you are passionate about, teaching will become fun once again. Our students are following our lead and we owe it to them to protect them from all the shenanigans outside our classroom walls that threaten to bring us all down.

Jennifer Scoggin (a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi) is the director of the Connecticut branch of LitLife and a consultant in schools. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has been an IRA member since 2011. She's the author of Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name.

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Like many of you, I try desperately to balance a variety of roles. I am a mommy and a teacher (in addition to wife, daughter, sister, friend, house keeper, cook, personal shopper, general contractor, small business owner, blogger, writer, photography dabbler, gardener, librarian, and organizer extraordinaire. Oh, and I also occasionally enjoy sleeping.)

So with that reality in mind, I have an announcement to make. Ahem.

I recently started reading for pleasure again. I will pause as you grasp the enormity of this personal triumph. I have read (almost) an entire book over the course of the last week without falling asleep after every paragraph! Huzzah! And I am loving it!

Maybe it sounds silly, but I just about forgot what it feels like to think about a book during the quiet moments of my day, to look forward to jumping back into my book as I brush my teeth or to think about quick minutes where I can sneak in another page or two. I have missed this part of myself—the reader.

Regardless of my current time-crunched reality, I consider myself an avid reader. As a child, I made weekly visits to the library with my mother and read every night before bed. I curled up with a book without being told I had to and discovered all sorts of authors and series on my own. I read with my mother, my friends, and my teachers. I read alone. Bottom line? I read a lot. Like a lot, a lot. And, if I may toot my own horn, I am a good reader. While I may not balance doing the dishes, getting to the gym, sending emails, and planning lessons all that well every day, I do manage to read emails, professional articles and books, blogs, and books to my kids all on a daily basis. Are you picking up what I'm putting down? I read a lot. I love to read. I consider myself a reader. I fight for time to read.

What about those students in our class who are not reading a lot? Those who don't go to the library, read at home, have examples of avid readers in their lives and possibly only read during the time allotted to them at school? Sure, some of them will jump through the necessary hoops to be considered "proficient" and some of them will not. But fast forward a few years, when all the tests are behind them, are those same kids still reading? They might be proficient but are they really reading? Do they fight for reading time, wonder about topics they care about, imagine the characters from their books or balance a variety of texts each day? Are they readers?

The great Donalynn Miller writes to us about reading volume, citing the sheer amount children read on a regular basis will not only improve their ability to read, but has the potential to instill a true love of reading. Isn't this the goal? Think about your day, are you providing your students with enough time to feel what it is like to truly sink into their reading and linger in a book? Are our classrooms centered around developing a love of reading and the habits of a true reader? Do we sneak in extra reading minutes, extra read-alouds, extra time to chat about books because we just can't help ourselves? Or are we dutifully and mechanically checking a box, taking care to ensure our students have read the prescribed number of minutes a day?

I know most of you value the importance of developing true readers who have an active reading life. But, if you take a hard look at your day, is that core value reflected in your daily schedule and the way you use time in your classroom?

Despite being asked to, we can't do it all. We really can't do it all in a single school day. However, across the weeks and months, we can be sure that our time in the classroom reflects what we care about most as teachers. How are you ensuring that your current lovelies will grow to be future nerdlies who continue to triumph as readers?

Jennifer Scoggin (a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi) is the director of the Connecticut branch of LitLife and a consultant in schools. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has been an IRA member since 2011. She's the author of the upcoming Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name.

To mark the release of her new book, Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher’s Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom, Jennifer Scoggin, a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi of the education blog It’s Not All Flowers and Sausages, shares her advice for how to take a step back and remember what’s important.

So we’re back at it again. Summer flew by and back-to-school season will soon be a thing of the past. Is there a new trend-du-jour at your school? Does it have a fun acronym? Does it necessitate many meetings? Does it make you feel crazy and as if you are being asked to toss aside everything you know and love to make time for “The Hot New Thing” that you, personally, aren’t too sure about? Or maybe you are sure of it, but are being asked to do it all, like, yesterday, and you already feel as if your restful summer never happened.

Inspiration meets overload

Can I take you back a bit? Back to the summer when the days were long and time was your own? To be nerdily honest with you, I actually relish summer as a time to read a professional book, catch up on back issues of The Reading Teacher, or browse through online articles that make me reconsider my own practice. It is my form of self-selected professional development … but with cocktails or a cup of hot coffee … or bathroom breaks. All of the above seem luxurious to a teacher.

My learning journey this summer focused on close reading, particularly what it can look like in the lower grades, with an emphasis on making cross-curricular connections. I managed to read two amazing books (complete with vigorous head nodding and rampant highlighting), and a handful of both print and online articles that felt really practical and classroom-oriented. Toward the end of the summer, my nerdy reading carried me off into the world of educational apps and how to add a technological spin to my thinking about close reading. As I share this with you, it all sounds very inspiring, professional, and productive—you know, very what’s-hot-in-education-right-now.

But in reality, these moments of professional growth and reflection have been punctuated by moments of sheer panic. I worry about how to fit it all in. I feel frustrated by my actual resources and their potential to thwart my best-laid plans. I am curious if these new strategies will actually make a positive difference in my students’ ability to read. I consider what I can take out of my day to make room for these new ideas. Before I know it, these questions can quickly lead me down a shame-spiral of self-doubt in myself as an educator. How did I not integrate more technology this year? Why didn’t I think of this before? Ugh! I should have used this new amazing app during my social studies unit in March … what was I thinking? Cut to me dissolving into a puddle of self-doubt. And this is me all by myself on my porch in the summer. Not me at work under pressure and knee-deep in beginning-of-the-year paperwork and administrivia.

It’s all about confidence

Friends, this line of thinking and rampant self-doubt are not what is hot in education right now. As a result of my own panic, I would like to propose the following: Let’s make confidence in our own ability as educators what is hot this year. We already know a great deal about best practices and what is right for our students. We have read many professional books and come a long way in our own methods. We have taken tidbits away from various professional development workshops or conversations with colleagues.

We know things. This is step one in having a bit more confidence in ourselves as educators—recognizing that we have come a long way from where we started (whether you started last year or 20 years ago) and, therefore, possess a great deal of professional knowledge already. It is time to own what we know!
Of course, because we are professional and amazing, we also want to further ourselves and improve upon our practice. Teachers are notorious for having a continuous need to add new ideas to their instructional toolboxes; it is one of my favorite things about us. We just have to find a way to do this that doesn’t make us want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

So step two in having a bit more professional confidence is taking the time to consider our own priorities and beliefs as educators. Which new ideas are in line with your goals for your students? Which new strategies work well with or pump up the volume on practices you already have in place? Which new reading helped you further shape your beliefs about the teaching of reading and, therefore, needs to find a place in your instructional day? There is no need to throw out all you have done in the past to make room for the new hot trend in education. However, there is a need to consider the new hot trend in education to determine how and in what way it might find a place in your classroom. How can these new ideas help you on your journey to becoming the teacher you have always wanted to be? It is time to own your beliefs about what it means to be a teacher!

Time management is key

Finally, no matter how confident we are in what we know and where we are going as educators, time is always a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes I want three more hours with my little friends and, other times, I cannot get out of the door fast enough. It is what it is. There is a temptation to let our new ideas run wild; and as our professional goals run wild, so does the proverbial To-Do List. I have created To-Do Lists of such staggering proportions that they have actually sent me into a catatonic state of un-productivity, meaning there are so many items on the list that I don’t know where to start and already feel as if I have failed.
So, rather than letting our plans for self-improvement become too big too fast and blow our confidence out of the water, let us consider step three: Set small goals for yourself. What piece of this fabulous new idea of yours can you accomplish next week? What piece can you accomplish next month? What piece should you put off for next semester or next year? Write these goals down. Don’t overpromise or do more than you can realistically handle. It is OK to move slowly and to celebrate small successes. It is what we want our students to do and so it should be good enough for us, too. It is time to own that we are human.

So to sum it all up, remember this: Own what you know. Own what you believe. Own that you are human. What is hot in education this year? You.

Jennifer Scoggin (a.k.a. Mrs. Mimi) is the director of the Connecticut branch of LitLife and a consultant in schools. She holds a doctorate in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has been an IRA member since 2011. This column originally appeared in Reading Today magazine. Members can read the rest of the magazine in digital form and non-members can join IRA here.

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Being a teacher means embracing constant change. Yet all too often, teachers are told when, how, and why to change. In this monthly column, Mrs. Mimi takes on creating change for herself by rethinking old practices and redefining teaching on her own terms. 

One of the best parts of our job is getting to hang out with a lot of really cool kids all day.  I know sometimes they might forget their homework, or start a fight or, hey, even poop in their pants, but aside from all that most of them they are pretty fabulous.  The key to looking past the lost homework, unkind words, and poop is to get to know them deeply, particularly as readers.  And for many of our students, this may mean helping them see themselves as readers or supporting them as the build their reading identities.

Does all this sound too fluffy and touchy-feely while you are in the midst of data collection?!  Assessing?!  Beginning-of-the-year paperwork?!  Running records?!  Organizing your classroom library?!  I guess it does.  But I can tell you from years of practicing what I preach that when I savored the time to get to know my students as readers I felt happier, more in line with what I think makes a good teacher, and more effective throughout the school year. (And that’s on top of feeling fluffy and touchy-feely!  Boom.)

When we get to know our students as readers, it means more than asking them to draw a picture of where they like to read at home or name a favorite book.  It means reading alongside students to discover what types of authors, genres and text types they enjoy reading most.  (And I mean really reading with them.  No surface-y stuff, friends.  Get into the book, find something to love and talk about it.  Honor their choices as readers and take the time to read what they like to read.  You might even discover some new faves.)  It means sharing your own favorites with them and engaging them in an authentic conversation about the book itself.  Let them see your passion for reading, your nerdiness and excitement for reading.

It also means learning about their interests outside of school and using that information to help match them to an exciting new read or push them to try something different.  Think about your nightstand (or where ever you stack up your On Deck Reading).  Mr. Mimi likes to joke that my nightstand is one book away from collapsing, my pile is that serious.  And while to him it may appear to be a haphazard leaning tower of books and magazines, I know it is a well-curated collection of who I am as a reader.  I take time to re-organize those piles, moving current issues of magazines to the top, a piece of nonfiction to the bottom, a book recommended by a friend to the up-next spot.  Our students should have the same self-awareness as well as the freedom in our classrooms to curate a pile of their own.

So enjoy these weeks of getting to know your students, warts and all.  I know there are tests and test prep and graphic organizers and schedules to get together—those are all important pieces of our teacher puzzle.  But I think the most important piece of the puzzle and the piece that ties all of these other things together—something that has true meaning and a lifelong impact—is our work growing and inspiring true readers.

Mrs. Mimi,a.k.a. Jennifer Scoggin, is a teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of the upcoming “Be Fabulous: The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom” and“It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade”, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Being a teacher means embracing constant change. Yet all too often, teachers are told when, how, and why to change. In this monthly column, Mrs. Mimi takes on creating change for herself by rethinking old practices and redefining teaching on her own terms.

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Back-to-school is upon us. Our return to the classroom is imminent and perhaps you have already spent time in your classrooms dutifully readying it for a new crop of little friends. As you know, this time of preparation is precious. For many of us we prepare voluntarily on our own schedule and therefore we use our hours as we see fit. Choosing a new color scheme for the bulletin boards, reorganizing the classroom library, revolutionizing how we deal with those &%$!! pesky unsharpened pencils. There are no forms to be filled out (yet!), assessments to be given (yet!), bathroom requests to deal with (yet!) or endless meetings filling our schedules (YET!).

 

It is a wonderful time to reflect on what works for you as a teacher as well as what you would like to do differently this year. Of course, there are decisions you can't possibly make until your small fries walk in the door, but during these precious quiet pre-craziness moments, we can give some thought to what type of teacher we want to be this year. Might I make a suggestion?

Expand your definition of what counts as "real reading." Just to lay my cards on the table, I believe real reading means children are actively engaged with text of their choice. Don't get me wrong, there are many children who become authentically engaged with texts assigned to them and there is a place for that type of reading. But I think we are all familiar with what it is like to assign a particular passage, an article or even an entire book for students to read. I am asking us to consider something beyond that.

I work with a lot of wonderful teachers who love reading, have read many of the books in their classroom libraries and they are excited to share their love for many of these books with their students. Often these teachers, who are lovely, lovely people, offer their students an artificial choice between two very similar books that reflect the teacher's own reading preferences. Or, some teachers disregard books students bring from home, labeling them as too easy, too silly, or not classic literature. Again, these are fabulous teachers with the best of intentions, but they are inadvertently narrowing the choice for the student. Many students will dutifully complete the reading, but are they really reading? We might think it is "real" reading because the book is a classic, but if my many years of teaching reading have taught me anything, it is that children are amazing fakers. Some of them could win Tony Awards for the performances.

Where is there time in your day for students to read texts of their choice? And what do students have to choose from? Are we validating these choices as "real" reading or subconsciously sending children the message that only certain types of texts count? If you are looking to expand the choices you offer to students, I know that can feel daunting, expensive, or just impossible. Consider these ideas:

• Photo copy poems from favorite anthologies
• Download digital texts on a tablet through a resource such as Scholastic's Storia
• Offer access to reading-centric apps
• Print out online articles from engaging sites such as National Geographic Kids or Wonderopolis
• Laminate copies of song lyrics familiar to or popular with students
• Snip articles from a variety of sections of the local paper
• Collect maps of the world or menus from local restaurants
• Put together a bin of magazines
• Add graphic novels to your library
• Offer a bin of photographs as wordless texts
• Gather a variety of advertisements or other persuasive texts such as book reviews

 

I am not saying to go anti-classics because my life would not be the same without The Trumpet of the Swans. I am merely suggesting we mix things up and prioritize the choices of our students as readers. Sometimes I just want to curl up with People magazine and put my latest The New York Times best seller down for a bit. And I am still a real reader despite my penchant for celebrity gossip.

Mrs. Mimi, aka Jennifer Scoggin, is a teacher who taught both first and second grades at a public elementary school in New York City. She's the author of the upcoming Be Fabulous The Reading Teacher's Guide to Reclaiming Your Happiness in the Classroom and It's Not All Flowers and Sausages: My Adventures in Second Grade, which sprung from her popular blog of the same name. Mimi also has her doctorate in education from Teachers College, Columbia University.