2. to leave room for learning...

* NOTE: this content was originally written and posted in SEPTEMBER 2014 in the context of ALL THE STARS project development.

I think a lot about my responsibility as a teacher to really and genuinely see my students.

Not just as who I think they are, or who they seemed to be yesterday or last week (or in our case, last year) but the actual shifts and changes - setbacks - challenges - victories - growth that they each embody every different day.

As a classroom teacher in the role of facilitating learning in a room full of many different needs, this can feel next to impossible at times.

In addition to all of the previously mentioned reasons for why I started the ALL THE STARS program this fall, I feel like sharing the "teacher" role on a regular basis with other folks who can present learning to the students (and to me!) in a whole different way is an excellent opportunity to help create sustainable space for the looking, noticing and SEEing that is essential to how I want to show up as their "most of the time" teacher.

Throughout my career thus far, I have often looked to the REGGIO EMILIA approach to early childhood education as a guidepost, regardless of what age/grade I am teaching. A particular quote by Loris Malaguzzi (one of the original founders of this philosophy) has been running through my head often over these past two weeks;

ATS blog post 2 quote.jpg

In a Reggio Emilia context,

the teacher is always trying to learn about each child, not just what is “typical” of a 3- or 4- or 8-year-old. The teacher is the researcher, the data gatherer, the learner, and the strategic facilitator…

… Responsibility for providing a genuine context for that learning is given to a whole community of educators and often also to members of the broader municipal community.

One of my main goals during the time that I have with my students this year is to help each one learn to recognize, understand and self-advocate for the things that they most need (personally) to continue to thrive as students in the education system as it generally exists in North America today throughout their remaining school years... An education system that is not currently built to either encourage or support a whole-child and whole community approach to learning. My hope with this ALL THE STARS initiative is that we can work together this year to begin re-making some of that space around learning. Perhaps by the end of June 2015, they will have each found more of the words that they need to demand these standards for themselves, as well as the personal affirmation necessary to know that they deserve it.

To conclude; another quote from Loris Malaguzzi:

"I have no interest in a classroom full of children who simply accept everything I say. I want them to doubt, question and challenge, which is the better half of learning, not to mention the proper role of a citizen in democracy. If I can't demonstrate or prove the validity of the things that I say, then maybe I have no business saying them. And that goes for all of the other authority figures out there. It's a high bar sometimes, but the bar should be high."

- Loris Malaguzzi


3. all-ways in transition

* NOTE: this content was originally written and posted in OCTOBER 2014 in the context of ALL THE STARS project development.

"every living thing, at every living moment
is all-ways in transition...”

It was not long ago that my sense of competency as a teacher was so tied up in getting things “right” that unpredictable feelings in regards to my own daily process would have left me paralyzed with anxiety and worry. I was therefore very thankful to realize recently that change has gradually become a reliable internal indicator to me that I am doing my job well… Conversely; stagnation, predictability and rote process are the things that cause me great preoccupation and restlessness. It is therefore now quite exciting for me as both a teacher and a learner to notice places where my own location in this work is changing enough to require a reassessment of certain daily routines I assumed would be for “always”. 

The most poignant example of this shift ties directly to my experiences thus far with ALL THE STARS. This program – though it has only just begun, has felt like such a gift to me in so many ways. Some of these gifts are of the BRIGHT! SHINY! SPARKLY! variety… Things so full-of-amazing that I couldn’t miss them if I tried. Things like;

  • watching a kid who this time last year I could barely get through the door (let alone keep in school for a full day) totally engaged in conversation with a virtual stranger about the trees around our school…

  • seeing my entire class participating in amazing creative movement activities and cheering one another along in the process…

  • the very rare and precious opportunity to step back and really see these wonderful small people for ALL of their wonders – including the bits that are very hard to notice when the only view that it feels like there is time for on many days comes from the front of the classroom…

Other gifts – which I am aware enough of to be thankful for their full-ness, but in many cases cannot yet articulate specifically – are so vast that I only know they are here as a result of the way that the atmosphere is shifting around them; like how the way I see/hear/feel in relation to processes I developed for various reasons over the past 7+ years of my classroom teaching are now also shifting in accordance to who I am and what I do as an educator in this particular classroom, with these particular students, today. 

For the past 6 years + right up until the second week of this school year, I have spent an average of 1-2 hours every single day completing a very detailed pictorial and written documentation of the happenings inside classroom life. I started this process on the first day of my second year of classroom teaching in response to an incredibly difficult first year that felt full of things like hate, violence and homophobic harassment. Coming out of that year, I was willing to try anything, no matter how random or unorthodox, if it would help to shift the feelings of dissociation, numbness and fear that I still experienced even once I was out of that acutely threatening environment. I had heard about the concept of daily documentation through my research into the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education and the use of this process in many Reggio-inspired classrooms to assist in the creation of child-directed curriculum. I was interested in this process for all its more standard pedagogical purposes, but I also had a hunch that it could help me to find some things that I was lacking at the end of that first year; clear sight, greater presence, optimism, and hope. Being a visual artist by both training and vocation, I was already accustomed to the practice of keeping a sketchbook to stay connected to my internal thoughts, feelings and ideas so it seemed quite natural to adopt a similar process in trying to establish and maintain a more authentic connection with my students.

The very short version of the next 6 years is that “it worked”…

Spending a significant amount of time each day on these books was very much a meditative practice. Along with innumerable other benefits, it gave me much of what I needed as a beginning teacher (not insignificantly, one who also transitioned school locations 5 times during those 6 years + legal names, personal pronouns and aspects of my physical gender presentation) to keep track of who I am and what is important to me as an educator and person in the world in the midst of all the change. In regards to my relationships with my students and their families I feel like these books were invaluable on many levels; not the least of which being that it has provided them with tangible “proof” that I care a whole heck of a lot about continuing to improve my understanding of who each of them are and what they specifically need from the education system (such that it is).

I would have been starting in on my 14th full-length class book some time in the next couple of months had I not felt the need – particularly with the start of the ALL THE STARS program – to more closely assess what it is that I currently do for myself each day as part of my teaching practice to keep balanced, present, clear-sighted and full-of-hope… In other words; the things that have been so important to me in continuing this documentation are also becoming the things that can help guide me to questioning whether that exact process it still relevant to who and where I am today.

My conclusion (at this point in this school year anyhow) is that the best way for me to spend both my practical and emotional energy in the service of meeting my students’ needs includes more direct action, connection, and creation. In this, our second and last year together, I am therefore planning to focus more energy on a specific documentation of our work as it is related to the ALL THE STARS program. I have hope that this process could also become a means by which each of my students can take a more vocal and active role in the way that this program evolves over time.

I cannot pretend that deciding to give up this specific daily documentation practice was an easy move. As fond of natural transition as I have become, I am still very much a creature of habit at heart. In addition to the huge benefits for my professional development, I also really like my fancy pens, colour photos, charts, graphs, and various hand-written fonts… These books are kinda pretty, and I like pretty things! Yet therein also lies a core piece of my reason for changing things up right now…

The ALL THE STARS program creation, management and facilitation is taking up a heck of a lot of time each day – all of which I am happy/excited to do. At the same time, I am also painfully aware that there are only so many hours in a day. Something had to go, and it needed to be the thing that was more about how things “looked” than how things actually need to be. That is what my class book began to feel like this year; a very pretty thing that was actually rather redundant with the real, human connections that we are making in 3-dimensions amongst ourselves and with our amazing community educators, volunteers and other supporters. 

I am sure that this decision and my feelings surrounding it will continue to evolve throughout the year in ways that I can’t possibly foresee at this point. At this moment however, I am thank-full for the gift of this change.