Lightning woke me at 4:30 this morning. Friday is my “sleeping late day.” I usually roust myself around 5:30 and head to the bus barn to pick up a bus for the varsity football game. The much needed rest was not coming today. Please forgive my anxiety with storms these days. It doesn’t seem to abate. Nor do my thoughts of teaching and coaching and facilitating our Student Council.

Last week was Homecoming Week in Charger Nation. This means dress-up days, a
parade and a carnival. Throw in a day of PSAT testing for fun. It was the end of the first nine weeks grading period; a grading period interrupted by something called Harvey. Heck, we can talk about my son’s soccer practice and robotics meetings. My daughter missed her dance class to be a member of the Homecoming Court. You’ve never seen a girl smile so big as when she rode in the back of that convertible holding a tiara on her lap for dear life.

There is a hurricane metaphor in here somewhere, but I can’t find it. The best word for last week is: chaos.

And yet…I never stop thinking, just like this morning, about my job. Really, I can’t stop thinking about how I do my job and how I can get better at it.

I can’t stop thinking about how I’ve changed as a teacher these last couple of years. Specifically, I’m thinking about how learning about workshop has made me a better teacher, coach, and Student Council Sponsor. My whole approach to this teaching life changed. I ask the kids to take more stake in their learning. I demand that they explore and discover and use me as a resource. It works.

This initial nine weeks was crazy. What with our natural disaster and the recovery and the fact that it was going to only be eight weeks long to begin with. Somehow we made it.

Workshop did that.

What workshop didn’t do was make my students readers. Most of them just didn’t read the first nine weeks of school and their teacher didn’t do a good job engaging them in their self-selected books.

I vowed to change that in the second nine weeks. I sat down with each class roster and noted the progress of every single student in each of my classes. I studied them. I conferred with them about their reading lives. Data emerged. I found that my students fell into one of two categories: Reader or Non-reader. Now that’s an earth shattering breakthrough, I know. The important thing about it is that I knew which one each student was.

So I went to work moving kids out of the books that bogged them down and into books that could engage them. To move them, though, I had to get into their heads and learn about their thinking. What interested them? Not just cars and cliques or dragons and swords, but what themes and what sorts of characters grabbed their attention.

I looked at their college essays and talked to them about what was happening in their lives. I engaged them in talk of who they thought they were. I assigned quick writes about their life as a reader and asked what appealed to their thinking. I checked the progress of my non-readers every day.

Constant Conferring was crucial. Every. Single. Day.

Keeping a visible record of book talks

Also, I committed to book talks. Every single day.

This is hard for someone who doesn’t have a lot of time to read during this time of year. But I found ways to get books in front of them. I might talk about a book on Monday and then read a short selection from it on Tuesday. Rinse and repeat.

I went down to the school library and checked out books that I’ve read that aren’t in my classroom library. They love it. I tell students over and over, “I need you to finish that one quickly because its on my ‘Next to Read’ list.” I have at least 30 books on that list.

Our results vary. Some kids jumped straight into a new book and took off while others still struggle to find time outside of class. Some students tell me how they find time to read on the bus to their cross country meet or at work at the tanning salon. Most of them are trying and I think that’s really the most I can ask of them. It’s not, however, all I can demand of myself.

I crusade to make them life-long readers and writers. I will not relent. I want them to find the joy in reading that I know is there and if we have to do the hard work together, then I’m all in.

Charles Moore is a senior English teacher at Clear Springs High School in League City, TX. He enjoys leisure swimming, reading, and coaching linebackers. Follow Charles on Twitter @ctcoach and read Charles’ other posts here and here.

Tagged: book talks, choice reading, Conferring, student interests