{"id":105,"date":"2014-06-21T10:40:37","date_gmt":"2014-06-21T10:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/?p=105"},"modified":"2014-06-24T20:44:11","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T20:44:11","slug":"whats-your-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/whats-your-story\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s Your Story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the first full day of the Klingenstein Summer Institute came to a close last night, I was really struggling with what to write. We did so much. We examined our personal philosophies of education aiming to ensure that what we were ultimately focused on is the learned curriculum<\/i> more than the\u00a0taught curriculum<\/em>\u00a0and how we can assess that our philosophy is being enacted.\u00a0<\/em>In my curriculum breakout group we started a list of many of the things we hear from students that act as roadblocks\u00a0to English instruction with the hopes that we can unpack these for what is really the problem when a student says \u201cI think we\u2019re reading too much into this\u201d.<\/p>\n

After dinner we had the very simple, and yet, incredibly daunting task of sharing a personal story with a small group that would serve as our \u201cDiversity Group\u201d for the week. The instructions were open enough:\u00a0\u201cPlease be prepared to share with your peers a personal story, a vignette that speaks to\u00a0<\/span>who you are<\/span>.\u00a0You may wish to draw from your childhood or your adult life, your life as a teacher or your life outside of school. The goal is to let the group start to get to know you as a human being.\u00a0The story should be about three minutes.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>However, the stories that came out were anything but simple. They were powerful, crushing, insightful, and most importantly, honest and authentic. There were tears shed,\u00a0at least one hug, and a lot of silent reflection.<\/p>\n

In the end, we thanked those who started us off in the right tone, challenging the group to be open to vulnerability in order to tell a truly revealing story. While I echo this thanks, I also walked away so grateful to the two Lead Teachers who ran the session, Don Morrison<\/a>\u00a0and Eder J. Williams McKnight<\/a>. I believe it was due in large part to their genuine wanting to know our stories that led to such an open and powerful session. Yes, they\u00a0role-modelled\u00a0great community building strategies (listing group values by having participants complete the sentence \u201cI feel safe in groups when\u2026\u201d), but I couldn\u2019t help but really feel like, above all else, they genuinely just\u00a0wanted to know us and for us to know each other.<\/p>\n

As a teacher who asks students to bring their whole self to my class, and who claims to try to make learning real for my students and help them create personal meaning, I am sometimes blown away by what I hear from students and sometimes I feel like a student is holding back. Sometimes students seem so concerned with what they think I want to hear, that I almost end up telling them that I don\u2019t care what they tell me as long as it is authentic. The truth is I care very deeply about what they tell me AND I want it to be authentic.\u00a0While some things are certainly outside of a teacher\u2019s control, I am certainly taking away an important reflection piece about making a conscious attempt to ensure that my request for my students\u2019 stories is as authentic and honest as I hope their stories are for me.<\/p>\n

Okay Day 2, what have you got in store for us?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the first full day of the Klingenstein Summer Institute came to a close last night, I was really struggling with what to write. We did so much. We examined our personal philosophies of education aiming to ensure that what we were ultimately focused on is the learned curriculum more than the\u00a0taught curriculum\u00a0and how we … Continue reading What’s Your Story?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[8,9,15,7],"class_list":["post-105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ksi14","tag-big-questions","tag-educational-philosophy","tag-reflection","tag-teaching-morals"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/52"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/aaronvigar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}