I needed today.

I had spent pretty much the whole of last week trying and failing (absolutely and herthwrenchingly) to use diigo in one of my classes, just so that I could arrive here today feeling like I had justified the process, and the time and energy and trust invested in my as part of this process.  So what with my cavalcade of failure this week (did I mention that I spent the week failing?) I felt pretty drained and tentative coming in here.

Then we started talking about goals and action and plans.  With apologies:

(sorry.  it’s how i feel.)

I had a really vague unease, coming into today, about how I teach reading.  More to the point, I had a really vague unease about how I DON’T teach reading: how I spend forever on the writing process, but I just kind of assume that when it comes to reading, students are perfectly able to notice, process, connect, analyze, and articulate all of the literary techniques and virtuosity that I see and find, and that I expect them to draw on as the raw material for their essays.  Of course. that’s a lot of nonsense, and I know it is, but implied in my practice has been the suggestion that they are expert readers without help.

Today, then, I got the chance to focus on my idea.  I got to subject my concerns to the design thinking process, which forced me to think creatively and spontaneously about potential plans and solutions.  I got to subject those ideas to the scrutiny of an insightful colleague (@hadams!), and then to refine them, and then to offer them up to the group in the gallery walk, to talk with a co-worker (@ckirsh rules) and then again to a round table of colleagues.  After all that, it would be a dull and muddy mettled rascal indeed who WOULDN’T walk out with a pretty clear plan.

And whatever I’ve been called in my life, no-one has ever accused me of being a dull and muddy mettled rascal (mostly because I don’t live in the 16th century, but still).

I am going to develop a “reading process.”  It’s going to be awesome.  It’s going to build from grade 7 to 12.  It’s going to be based on the research and thinking of my colleagues and of experts in the field.  It’s going to have a catchy acronym and everything, and by the time my students leave my Grade 12 classroom, it’s going to be second nature: they will read a passage and understand the HELL out of it.  I’m going to develop some curriculum around teaching these skills.  you’ll see.  First up: developing a reading list of thinkers that research and write about this area.

Then, diagnosing my students on my favourite sentence in the history of the world:

“At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.”

Let’s see you read THAT, children.