Constructing Kasun, Educator

If you’re a teacher, there’s no doubt you yawn at thought of the in-service you’re required to attend.

If you were at the Barry Lane in-service the ESOL Office in my district provided, if you were yawning, we need to check your pulse.

Lane was a drink of cold water for those of us stuck in the desert of standardized tests, forced curricula, and mediocre administrators (remember, I DO have the world’s best administrator–so she’s exempt).  For an entire workday, we learned writing instruction strategies that will get students excited about writing as well as a hefty dose of remembering why we teach in the first place.

Lane began  by telling us about his beloved elementary teacher Miss Foley.  She inspired him to experiment with learning and was beloved by many of her former students.  He asked other teachers in the audience to recognize their own “Miss Foleys.”  One of the women was asked to describe what made her teacher so special.  “She loved us,” she answered.  That simple.  Lane explained that this was at the heart of teaching and what makes us good teachers.  We know this, right?  But how often do we get to hear these words at our in-services?

Lane proceeded to plant seeds of great writing instruction with clever anecdotes and lots of heart.  He showed us his own awful book reports from elementary and high school–real yawners with no passion–written for the sole purpose of the transactive act of getting a grade so the teacher could write across the top, “Improve penmanship.”  Then he showed us sample writing from other students who wrote about things they cared about.  Students wrote advice columns to polygons who had identity issues–were they too square?  He reminded us to write with the students (something I find personally gratifying and gives me credibility because I often share my work with students).  After we wrote for ten minutes while listening to Claire de Lune, he told us that if we were anxious about writing, we needed to relax and address the “Watcher,” as he calls it, that awful voice inside our heads that tells us our writing is no good.  He showed some student sample letters to their “Watchers.”  The voice students demonstrated was so personal and funny as they beat their watchers into submission.

Lane remembered the words of his students, not needing to read the words off the screen as he presented, a loving tribute to the power of their voices.  He helped us consider writing leads (student collect favorite leads and explain why, ask students to write several leads before beginning their writing, among others).  We learned about revision, using “binoculars” to help focus on the subject you’re discussing, and finding the details that make writing interesting.

Throughout the in-service, Lane inspired us with the work of several great people.  Mandela, he told us, wrote his autobiography on toilet paper from prison.  Words can be powerful, and it’s hard to strip us of our humanity if we use them well, even in prison.  Freire, the great Brazilian educator and philosopher, said that, “When you write well, you read the world.”  The writer is always looking into the details of life, and by writing, you dig deeper and reveal the layers to get at life’s essence.

The one quotation that made the greatest impression on me was one from Albert Einstein:  “Great spirits have always faced violent opposition from mediocre minds.”  I think there’s something great about all of our spirits, but how often have we acquiesced to the demands of minds-gone-mediocre?  The testing requirements our states have mandated are mediocre examples of our expectations of students.  The sad ways we talk to children in classrooms are products of the mediocre.  The things we’re mandated to teach as part of the curriculum–results of the mediocre.

What I remembered is that I need to stop being disappointed when my students don’t look like the end product the mediocre mind has mandated at me.  I need to embrace the students where they’re at, inspire them to move ahead at the best pace they can manage, and teach them in ways that are respectful and meaningful to them.