I've got something to say - Gail Loane

Recently as part of my professional readings I have been reading the book "I've got something to say" by Gail Loane.  Below are things that I have read and that have captivated my interest and which I will both continue to do and also try to include into my practice.

We demonstrate how readers and writers think and behave - even when we are not consciously modelling it.

Every student has something to say -they might not always realise it though so it is our job to believe it and have our students believe it also.  We need to include a variety of ways of doing this - it is important to provide time for reading, talking, listening, non verbal communication and writing daily - all of these aspects form literacy and communication not just one of them.

Lev Vygotsky (1978) describes language as a socially mediated process - where interactions with others play an important role in language development.  When we transfer this to our classrooms it is clear that collaboration between students can help provide a way forward - indeed research demonstrates that when students respond to the work of others and seek feedback on their own work they show more definitive progress.  Effective ways of applying this within senior classrooms include things such as partner conferencing, peer response, whole class sharing.  These ways of working together are effective as they allow immediate feedback, the opportunity to make amends whilst writing, a wider range of opinions not just the teachers, a greater awareness of what works, a less threatening small group audience, chance to take risks and not just try and please the teacher - an opportunity for everyone's voice to be heard.

In order to teach writing effectively we need to ensure that we start with the whole and its meaning, draw out the teaching point for exploration and then return it to the whole.  When we are deconstructing texts over a number of days it is important to acknowledge the context of the whole text - yes we may need to put a magnifying glass on a particular aspect of it but we then need to zoom back out for children to truly appreciate the effect of that aspect.

To the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world

The last month has been a time of exploration, trying new things and going back to my roots all at once.  It is an interesting and intriguing place to be - one that I am glad that I have been in also.  The title of this post - that to the world you may be just one person, but to one person you may be the world has hit home in all aspects of my professional life over the past month.

Over the weekend, two of my mentors sent links to me that seem to have mixed together more than I thought that they would - one of these people works with me and is on a course and so directed me towards a strengths quiz that she is doing as part of this, the other used to be my tutor teacher and sent me an reading that he thought would be relevant based on previous discussions that we have had in the past and continue to have via email.  The reading is by Kate Mason and is titled 'How does personality affect teaching and learning: Judging or perceiving?'.  The strengths quiz is run through the University of Pennsylvania and is titled the VIA Survey of Character Strengths.  Both of these things have helped me to step back and see who I am and how this reflects in my classroom, rather than allowing me to remain caught up in the day to day running of a classroom filled with energetic, hormone filled 11 year olds.

My strengths as per the character quiz came out as follows:

I am lucky enough to have a range of wonderful mentors that I look up to within my workplace.  The first is my tutor teacher - she is always there to ask questions to and has a lot of faith in our ability to help our students achieve success even when things seem hard.

The second person who continually helps to shape and inspire me both personally and professionally is a colleague from another team within the school.  She is someone who uplifts me and inspires me with her practice and her relationships with her students and other colleagues.  I was looking up mentoring this morning and came across the following two quotes that I think summarise her mentoring style quite succinctly.
These are:

• "A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could, because someone else thought that they could."
• "The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches but to reveal to them their own."

The third person who I look up to as a mentor and guide was my tutor teacher but no longer works at this school.  He asks questions that inspire me to grow, questions that he does not always know the answers to, but questions that he knows will hook me and help me drive my own inquiry.  The following quotes sprung out at me about this person when I was searching mentoring this morning were:

• "Always surround yourself with people who are better than you."
• "We all need someone who inspires us to do better than we know how."

During the past week I found myself reaching into things that these three people have taught me when facing a difficult situation with a student.  The character survey that I completed above was evident throughout this interaction.  This student is one of the most loving children that I know but she has faced difficulties that are emotionally beyond her years in her childhood.  On Thursday she left my class without warning and in a huge mood, she proceeded to tell other students many negative things about me and my practice.  However, thanks to the leadership that I have experienced and my background knowledge of this student I understood where she was coming from and how I could help her.  She calmed down over the next couple of hours and came back to class just before the bell.  I asked her to stay behind after the bell and had a chat with her, in which she emphasised that she just needed someone who could listen and care and did not feel that the other students were doing that for her.  I reminded her that I am always there for her, and we discussed the weekend excursions that we had been on previously to support this.  She went home a much happier child.  I did not see her until the following afternoon as I was away at a school gymnastics competition all day, however when I returned to school the following afternoon she came running up to me and told me how much she had missed me that day before proceeding to tell me all about her day.  At that moment I realised that without knowing it, I had applied mentoring techniques that I had learnt from those who inspire me to help this girl see the love this world had for her and to make her worth felt.

The only way to sum up the past month is in fact - to the world you may just be one person, but to one person you may be the world.  As teachers we never know who we are influencing and where our influence starts and stops and so it is crucial that we do indeed spend time with those who lift us up so that we can continue to be those people to others also.