Earlier in the Spring I spent a Saturday morning at the new football stadium in Katy, Texas listening to football coaches speak about various aspects of the sport.  That’s right, in January, high school football coaches get together to talk football… for fun.

The speakers presented their philosophies of offense or defense and talked about schemes and personnel.  I loved how, universally, they were: bright, confident, and eager to share their knowledge.

Just like with teachers, collaboration helps grow the profession. Coaches know the importance of sharing insight.  Its something I love and appreciate about the profession.

One speaker, from a school down here by us, presented on the topic of “Tempo.”

Tempo is the offenses ability to change how fast or how slow they snap the football.  In layman’s terms, its a way for an offense to give themselves an advantage over the defense and can be brutally effective when used to full effect.  Often times, tempo can dictate who is going to win or lose a contest.

The same can be true in our classrooms.

Often times, I find myself racing along, pushing the students through this concept or that; when necessary circling back around to re-teach when needed or tie-in an idea that supports our current work. I like to think of workshop pedagogy as weaving a tapestry made of many different threads of many different types and colors.  Sometimes we pull in this string or that one.  Whichever combination of threads that most effectively addresses our students’ needs.

I’m continuously amazed at how well the students facilitate this complexity in their learning.

Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher talked about their process in ” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener”>this amazing podcast. They explain it far better than I ever could.

Momentum

I am a big believer in using momentum in my instruction.  When the students see success in their literacy, I want to capitalize on those feelings of success by moving on to the next idea quickly. Any lull or pause in our movement forward is an opportunity to stop and lose focus. I don’t like “catch up days.”  Every day, in my mind, we should move our literacy forward.

Tempo

What I don’t do often enough, is take a deep breath and slow down.  I’ve found, this year, that I don’t take time to do the “fun” workshop activities. I’m talking about activities that build morale and allow the kids to laugh and, dare I say it…. play.

When they get to approach an activity as “play,” they can find success they haven’t found before:

Or they might find a fun way to learn its okay to come up a little short:

Either way, they are engaged in facilitating their own growth!!!

The assessments I’ve asked them to complete show me so many gaps in their skill sets that I can’t ever find enough time to address them all. But being hard-headed and driving forward without ever taking a moment to relax, we miss out on some of the fun that workshop can facilitate.

I have quantitative data that shows my students are reading and writing more than my previous senior classes and I have the anecdotal information they share with me about reading and writing more than any previous year in their education.  This is important to consider and it is valuable data to analyze as I work towards the end of this year and start thinking about next year.

The data tells me something else.  My students are burned out.  They are done; not just with their writing and reading, but with their thinking. Maybe I moved them too fast through our work in the fall and early spring.  Maybe the world they exist in is so far removed from the one I experienced at that age, that I have no real understanding of their stress levels.

I have to ask myself, what am I trying to accomplish and can I get that done operating the way I operate right now.

“Tempo,” I tell myself, “slow down.”

I have to do a better job keeping our tempo in mind as we finish out their high school education.

I’ll mix in more Poet Moments.  I’ll take more time to let them explore their own voices through narrative work that isn’t for a grade and is for fun.  I’ll change the mode from individual drafting of language to more group feedback. Generally, I’ll ratchet down the intensity of our work and lighten up on the speed with which we attack it.

What are some of the “fun” workshop activities that I can mix into my lesson plans that still hold value and have rigor?

Charles Moore is currently reading Before We Were Yours and The Glass Sword. He spends his newly freed up afternoons waiting to get his kids off the bus and tending to his beloved pool.  He just completed the GRE and hopes to start graduate school in the fall at U of H. One more thing, he recently took his Student Council class to a ropes course leadership facility and it was one of the best days of his teaching career.  Two of the many videos he took are included in this post.