Pretty much my favorite part of this job has been being in classrooms watching teachers do their thing: leading a circle time, doing a guided read aloud, telling a historical story, facilitating a great discussion. But do you wanna know something that might surprise you? I love it just as much (and sometimes even more) when I pop in and the teacher is NOT direct teaching, when the youth are in centers/stations, working on a project in groups, or presenting their work to the class. Oftentimes the faculty member will smile apologetically, “sorry- maybe not the best time to observe me!” I disagree. It’s often the best. See we can all kind of fake a direct teach performance for 10 minutes for a visitor. (I know I put a little more bounce into my voice when a colleague is in the room.) But what we can’t fake is how prepared our students are to engage in the project, activity, collaboration, lab thing that we’ve designed. Observing the youth in this way surfaces the invisible parts of teaching, like the UV rays that make the invisible ink pop into the world of visibility.
All of this is on my mind because I happened upon a great poster project workday in Kerri Black’s fourth grade literature the other day. After recently completing Lesa Kline-Ransome’s beautiful novel, Finding Langston, students were busy at work planning out a 10-12 panel-dotted poster featuring symbolic color choices, quotes, art, and a reflective paragraph. I caught the tail end of Kerri’s explanation and send-off. The next few moments I popped around from table to table seeing how each student was at a different phase in the process but was indeed progressing. There was a hum of focused energy. This was, indeed, the manifestation of a lot of great routine and expectation building. The 9-10 year olds in the room were ready to dive into the abstract thinking the assignment required and were delighted to put their personal spin on the requirements.
With this month’s blog blast theme in my mind, I couldn’t help but think about Kerri’s classroom as a beautiful example of “letting go” of a bit of class time and control to let students show their learning artistically and multimodally. I decided to sit down with her to see how she conceptualizes “permission to let go” in her own classroom practice. Here’s what she said:
Julie: Kerri, what are some things you’ve let go of in your own teaching practice?
Kerri: [As a] recovering perfectionist, [I’d have to say], making all of the choices for them. When I provide choices for the students, the outcome is so much better. It gives them so much more ownership of it. I have to tell myself “you know you have to give them some freedom and not give them every single guideline in order for them to grow from it.
Julie: That resonates with me. What kinds of choices are you making space for these days?
Kerri: Choices about who they work with in partner or group work, since we do a lot of small group and partner reading. Also choosing materials they are using to complete things and choice as far as reading goes. In their monthly book assignment, I give them the genre but they have to pick the book.
Julie: What do you do when they don’t make the best choices? For example, sometimes I regret letting my 17-18 year olds choose their own group, so I can’t imagine this always plays out well with fourth graders.
Kerri: You have to allow for failure. if they choose a group or partner and it doesn’t work, I tell them ahead of time “you are having the freedom to choose to now, but if you aren’t responsible with that choice you’ll have to move groups/partners or complete the work themself.” That gives them the motivation to do it right. I’ve been reflecting about this project and the way they are in the classroom. Some are self motivated, getting it done, some of them, the freedom is a lot for them. They want to talk to the people around them. I find really hitting expectations at the beginning of class, what should it look like at the beginning (what we should see, hear, etc.) is preventative in terms of the negative issues that can arise.
Julie: I love this! And you have to also speak about the successes that result from these projects and choice. I saw so much joy and focused attention when I walked around your classroom the other day.
Kerri: They’ve really enjoyed that it allows them to be creative. I gave them four or five guidelines. They have the freedom to design it using quotes from the book and artwork that they think is important; it’s helped them reflect on what they’ve read.
Julie: Okay and the big question! How do you assess this sort of thing? Teachers often feel that projects are so subjective in terms of feedback and assessment.
Kerri: I’ll just grade them on the guidelines and requirements. With the paragraph, if you put something on there you have to explain your reason for putting it on there, so I’m looking for that as well so they can explain their choices. I’m not necessarily grading it for content and all that [like I might for a more traditional test]. We emphasize the whole child at St. Andrew’s, and for me, this project is a way to provide a creative reflective outlet. We also sometimes have to realize that [the value of every assignment] doesn’t just come down to the grade. I also have a comprehension test to wrap it up.
Julie: Amazing. Okay, any last piece of advice for teachers trying to “let go” of traditional assignments and embrace some more projects as we hit the last few months of school?
Kerri: The main thing that has been successful with this is allowing them time up front to PLAN the poster [on a small piece of unlined paper]; then they do the final thing. The outcome of the project is so much better allowing them time to plan than just doing it first. They have to bring me their plan so I can check it first to make sure they followed the guidelines. I’ve also had to develop clearer timelines and deadlines for parts of the project; otherwise some would let this go on and on.
Julie: So smart. So it sounds like part of what you’ve learned is “letting go” also involves “holding on” to some really important scaffolding steps. You are still teaching with a capital T. But you’ve had to be flexible and adapt to what students needed, which can be hard to do.
Kerri: One good quality I’m open to is change. I’m okay if a novel isn’t relevant anymore; change it. If a practice isn’t working, change or adapt. One of the toughest things I’ve encountered is the assumption that “we’ve always done it this way”so we have to continue to do so. We get too precious-little time with each group of students to waste a minute on “we’ve always done it this way.”