The Lesson
This is what one of the kids wrote in her reading notebook a few weeks ago:
"While reading Lost and Found I maid a text to self connection. Becouse in the story her dad leaves them for another women without telling them thay had to figur out themselves. So I maid a connection to her dad leaving because my dad left when I was a baby with out saiying nothing and I have not seen him or herd from him sence. Making this connection made me relize I love my dad."
I happened to be reading this entry before a meeting, and another teacher was looking over my shoulder at it.
"Hmph," she sighed. "Looks like you got your work cut out for you."
I looked up at her.
"Grammar aside - bad enough - you can't even figure out what she's trying to say there."
Luckily, the meeting began and we didn't really have the opportunity to talk about it. The thing is, we're supposed to respond to their writing and correct it for grammar and ask questions that push them to think about how they can better express and organize their ideas. We're supposed to see a clear topic sentence, three supporting details, and a concluding sentence that connects back to how using their strategy helped them understand something more about a specific character, event, or idea in their reading. Clearly, this kid can't write for shit as a sixth grader and her ideas are jumbled. So this teacher's right: I have my work cut out for me.
Anyway, a few days later, we had to bring our kids' reading notebooks to a big meeting and talk about how to respond to their writing in a way that helps them become stronger writers and responders to their reading. It got me thinking about this girl's notebook.
Should I write:
- A, work on your spelling and grammar please. Remember to proofread.
- A, where are your text details? How do the characters figure out that their dad left? Are they sad? You need to include these.
- A, your response doesn't make much sense. How can you love your dad if he left without any notice and you haven't heard from him? Please explain.
- A, that's a nice but probably hard realization to have.
In the end, I went with a combination of the second and last one. I didn't even know if that was right, but it felt the closest to right, so that's what I did. And that's honestly how a lot of teaching is for me. Sometimes I don't know if what I'm doing is the best choice, but it's the best I know, and I always hope that the kids will know my intentions and heart were in the right place, even if it doesn't come out that way.
There are moments when you're in front of a group of sixth graders when you think you're not speaking the same language because nobody's responding to anything you're saying. And your patience can snap when six of them decide to put up their chairs in the loudest way possible and you hear the loud slams of the seats against the desks. And when one of them turns around and their huge backpack knocks down the chairs just slammed up there so they crash to the floor, it's almost impossible not to flip out on them and yell at them for, well, just being.
And just as tough are the moments when you consider how you should take into account their personal stories while not making excuses for them. It's hard to understand that while I should respond to this girl's realization about her dad who basically abandoned her, if I don't comment on the academic parts of her work, I'm not doing my job.
So anyway, today I was meeting with her for our weekly reading conference. We were talking about this book we were reading, and she was telling me that the house in the book reminded her of her old house but she didn't want to write about that because she was too embarrassed to write down all the gross things that happened in her old house, like mice and roaches. I caught myself for a moment almost making a face of sympathy and "poor you" when I could almost see my pity mirrored in her eyes, and I realized that I owed her more than that and to give her my pity would be an insult and a disservice to her. So I told her that if she didn't want to write about her house, fine, but she had to go back and write a response with details from the book. And we had to work on that spelling and grammar, so let's get started on that.
She began to write down a few notes from our conference. "By the way," she said to me, "I fixed that other response about Lost and Found." She flipped back a few pages to the response about her father. I saw that she had copied it over with my editing corrections. She had added a detail about the girl in the book and her relationship with her mother, which didn't really address her topic. It wasn't that much better overall, but the effort had been made.
I gave her a tiny high five, and then I couldn't help it. I told her, "Hey, by the way, when I read your response, I really felt like you must've understood the character, probably more than I could have. I didn't have to go through what must have been really hard for you with your dad."
"Yeah," she said. "I could get what she meant when she said she loved and hated her dad at the same time. I do that every day."
I nodded. What else can I say to that? How can I work from there?
"But do you see I changed some spelling? And I added that part about how the girl doesn't get along with her mom now?" she asked me, pointing to her careful writing. "Is this right?"
And just like that, I knew.
"While reading Lost and Found I maid a text to self connection. Becouse in the story her dad leaves them for another women without telling them thay had to figur out themselves. So I maid a connection to her dad leaving because my dad left when I was a baby with out saiying nothing and I have not seen him or herd from him sence. Making this connection made me relize I love my dad."
I happened to be reading this entry before a meeting, and another teacher was looking over my shoulder at it.
"Hmph," she sighed. "Looks like you got your work cut out for you."
I looked up at her.
"Grammar aside - bad enough - you can't even figure out what she's trying to say there."
Luckily, the meeting began and we didn't really have the opportunity to talk about it. The thing is, we're supposed to respond to their writing and correct it for grammar and ask questions that push them to think about how they can better express and organize their ideas. We're supposed to see a clear topic sentence, three supporting details, and a concluding sentence that connects back to how using their strategy helped them understand something more about a specific character, event, or idea in their reading. Clearly, this kid can't write for shit as a sixth grader and her ideas are jumbled. So this teacher's right: I have my work cut out for me.
Anyway, a few days later, we had to bring our kids' reading notebooks to a big meeting and talk about how to respond to their writing in a way that helps them become stronger writers and responders to their reading. It got me thinking about this girl's notebook.
Should I write:
- A, work on your spelling and grammar please. Remember to proofread.
- A, where are your text details? How do the characters figure out that their dad left? Are they sad? You need to include these.
- A, your response doesn't make much sense. How can you love your dad if he left without any notice and you haven't heard from him? Please explain.
- A, that's a nice but probably hard realization to have.
In the end, I went with a combination of the second and last one. I didn't even know if that was right, but it felt the closest to right, so that's what I did. And that's honestly how a lot of teaching is for me. Sometimes I don't know if what I'm doing is the best choice, but it's the best I know, and I always hope that the kids will know my intentions and heart were in the right place, even if it doesn't come out that way.
There are moments when you're in front of a group of sixth graders when you think you're not speaking the same language because nobody's responding to anything you're saying. And your patience can snap when six of them decide to put up their chairs in the loudest way possible and you hear the loud slams of the seats against the desks. And when one of them turns around and their huge backpack knocks down the chairs just slammed up there so they crash to the floor, it's almost impossible not to flip out on them and yell at them for, well, just being.
And just as tough are the moments when you consider how you should take into account their personal stories while not making excuses for them. It's hard to understand that while I should respond to this girl's realization about her dad who basically abandoned her, if I don't comment on the academic parts of her work, I'm not doing my job.
So anyway, today I was meeting with her for our weekly reading conference. We were talking about this book we were reading, and she was telling me that the house in the book reminded her of her old house but she didn't want to write about that because she was too embarrassed to write down all the gross things that happened in her old house, like mice and roaches. I caught myself for a moment almost making a face of sympathy and "poor you" when I could almost see my pity mirrored in her eyes, and I realized that I owed her more than that and to give her my pity would be an insult and a disservice to her. So I told her that if she didn't want to write about her house, fine, but she had to go back and write a response with details from the book. And we had to work on that spelling and grammar, so let's get started on that.
She began to write down a few notes from our conference. "By the way," she said to me, "I fixed that other response about Lost and Found." She flipped back a few pages to the response about her father. I saw that she had copied it over with my editing corrections. She had added a detail about the girl in the book and her relationship with her mother, which didn't really address her topic. It wasn't that much better overall, but the effort had been made.
I gave her a tiny high five, and then I couldn't help it. I told her, "Hey, by the way, when I read your response, I really felt like you must've understood the character, probably more than I could have. I didn't have to go through what must have been really hard for you with your dad."
"Yeah," she said. "I could get what she meant when she said she loved and hated her dad at the same time. I do that every day."
I nodded. What else can I say to that? How can I work from there?
"But do you see I changed some spelling? And I added that part about how the girl doesn't get along with her mom now?" she asked me, pointing to her careful writing. "Is this right?"
And just like that, I knew.
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