Constructing Kasun, Educator

My door is open for anyone who wants to find out about what we’re learning. But who comes in? The administrators arrive from time to time (and I happen to have the world’s best assistant principal at this writing), but what about the people who might really have something to learn? Namely, other teachers?

Schools are evolving from a culture of closed-door instruction to further sharing among colleagues. I’ve enjoyed sharing the occasional story with other creative ESOL teachers about a writing-in-nature experience that worked well with a class and finding out about how to make “foldables” or the positives of building word walls, for instance. However, for the first time at my school, I’ve had a positive experience in planning regularly with another teacher.

Jennifer and I meet at least every two weeks to discuss where we’re trying to take our students on their (and our) journey of learning. My district has set it up so that two teachers see the same students but at different class periods for this level of ESOL. Maybe it’s because we have similar personalities, or maybe because we’re awfully different (she’s a lead singer in a band; I try not to sing too loudly in church so as not to offend), but we communicate incredibly well. We usually share what we’re most excited and most upset about together. I’ve been telling her about my success (and struggle) at trying to build community with my classes. She has been sharing the thoughtful process of helping students write college-style essays (a task none of them had yet been assigned, as far as we can tell). We have developed thematic units this year. The first unit was one about immigration, and we brainstormed several activities and objectives–from creating a mock Ellis Island to having the students do a presentation for 200 other students in our school auditorium. It’s exciting to do this planning together because we share adult feedback about our victories with students (wow–the quietest student read her poem loudly with a microphone!) as well as our unsettling questions (why did one of our students get in a fight where he used racial epithets after teaching an entire unit on discrimination?).

We also bump ideas off each other. Sometimes it’s a quick email–”Hey, did you see they’re making a movie about us?” Jennifer quips about Freedom Writers. Or, “What should I do with the students right now during this scary lockdown?” (true email–I was short on advice, unfortunately). Sometimes it’s about a student, “Pablo has been so angry the last couple classes–have you noticed the same thing? What do you think I can do to get him to see that I’m on his side?” Other times it’s about curriculum. “How could we get a class set of the recently published Left to Tell to help our students learn that genocide is still happening today?”

This last question… how do we get resources for our students? It would have been easy to dismiss the idea if I had been working alone. “Who has time to go drumming up money?’ But with another adult, we encourage each other to be more–better teachers. So we sought various ways to buy the books, and, luckily, a sympathetic administrator found funding for us. The students had fresh, hardback books to read a story about forgiveness for unspeakable crimes committed by friends, neighbors and even clerics in Rwanda. We’re hoping the lesson they learn is that in a world still filled with violence, the only way we can reconcile is not through vengeance, but forgiveness.

Working out these themes with Jennifer inspires me. We meet, and, sometimes we feel beat down by negative colleagues. Sometimes we’ve even stooped to their level. But somehow we’ve created a dynamic where meeting isn’t a burden but a source of strength and creativity. It translates into better outcomes for our students and professional gratification for ourselves.

Yes, our administrators are having us participate in PLCs (professional learning communities, based on the DuFour model). Yes, it has forced us to meet a few times when we might have been busy. But I think we’re at the point where we see how well the time is spent and don’t mind communicating as much as we do. Or maybe it’s time for me to ask Jennifer.