More fear…and an action plan

It’s been a long time since I have posted here. Since my last post, I’ve experienced some pretty intense challenges in my personal life, one of them being coming to grips with the reality of the pandemic. Like all of us, I watched with wide eyes as our way of life crumbled and we were forced indoors. I was happy to return to work, albeit in a virtual format, to connect with people. I got used to the rhythm of working from home and I have been enjoying it.

I have to say that when things got intense with the pandemic, I was too overwhelmed to open my TweetDeck. I finally got around to it, and even made a post or two, but I think that speaks to where I was in terms of overwhelm. Not that I’m on my own in this; we are all experiencing some level of difficulty through all of this.

I am grateful for the positive tone that the Cohort 21 coaches have fostered. I know we are coming up on our final F2F (virtual format), and I wanted to lay out my action plan. This plan has been on my mind for months now, but I’m going to do my best to flesh it out here. Keep in mind that I intend to implement this next school year (I’m told this is allowed!) when we are …back to…normal? Back to something? I don’t know what we will be back to, or embarking on, but I think this plan is still workable.

Initially I was interested in having fruitful conversations with my students, meeting them in their stress and somehow fostering better mental health and stronger relationships this way. While I still think that this is important, my ideas have kind of narrowed down to an academic focus that allows for conversations. Here is what I have been thinking.

The idea is to create a sense of trust and investment by creating an anchoring topic that we return to in conversation all the time. The topic is an academic goal, or something the student wants to get better at in their academic writing. This isn’t a nebulous “I guess I need to get better at being argumentative in my persuasive essays.” It’s a focused, self-identified, desirable goal that I will help my students work towards by the end of the year.

I do try to connect with my students and ask them how they are doing when we are having conversations about essays. However, I have observed that the sudden “How are you?”doesn’t often yield results. I connect with my students in the classroom when we chat about assignments, but it’s not usually the best setting to have a student open up. Without a relationship, or an anchoring topic to return to again and again, why would a student feel empowered to talk about how they are actually feeling?

I have decided that in order to foster a conversation with adolescents about their work and life, you have to get them invested. They have to care about the “anchor” of your conversation as much as I do.

So when they write their essays next year, I would like to follow steps that look a little like this:

  1. The students should choose one personal thing they want to work on at the start of the essay. This is to get THEM invested in something that they have identified as an area of need based on feedback from earlier work.
  2. I should make plenty of checkpoints for the students to converse with me about that thing throughout the writing process. This would involve regular meetings that target progress on that one area to improve.
  3. I should consider single point rubrics that just focus in on the targeted area. Possibly, there would be co-construction of those rubrics with students. Thank you to Brent Hurley and Jennifer Gonzalez for mentioning these on Twitter and bringing them to my attention.
  4. Students should identify HOW they want their feedback. Would written comments suffice? Do they prefer voice recordings? Perhaps an in-person conversation? All three? Something else?
  5. When they submit essays, they should fill out an honest reflection on the assignment. Things should end off with a one-on-one conversation with the teacher.

Look, I know it’s not fancy. I know it’s not groundbreaking. But I think that having that anchor to converse about will help build relationships with all students. It will create something to invest in for both of us, a point for both of us to return to again and again and build on. In that way, a relationship is built.