Blue-Sky Teaching

I teach those kids labeled “struggling readers.” So do you. My class was set up as an intervention, a remediation, a fix-it for students who have fallen behind, fallen off, or fallen out of favor, I’ve learned. It’s convenient to think we’re fixing problems, catching them up, helping them succeed. It’s a nice game we play when we set up interventions. I do not, however, see my classroom the way others might. I do not see a workshop for the broken, a repair shop where I take apart, analyze, diagnose, mend and put back together; a place where I patch and plaster, covering cracks and flaws and shining them up until they’re ready to be sent back to the world, sewn up, fixed, healed and good as new. Instead I see my classroom as a haven, a safe oasis, a place where being you is the best thing this world could ever have. I see my job as cracking open, leading out, uncovering the lost humans who were buried under the avalanche of other people’s massively broken expectations. I ...

If you're anything like me, May has you a little frazzled.  My bedroom has clothes strewn about; my office has books and papers piled in precarious stacks; my kitchen counters have seen cleaner days; and it's possible that my hair looks like I forgot to brush it.  While March holds the end of basketball season and an intense focus on brackets of all sorts--from teams to poetry to books, it's May Madness that really hits me. May is the time of the year when the end is coming and teachers worry they haven't read, written, spoken, listened, commented, nudged, encouraged, impacted, inspired, enlightened, you name it, enough. But this May, I propose that instead of being stressed and overwhelmed, we follow the March Madness elimination idea and pare down to only what's essential--the best things to help our students on their journeys to being life-long readers, writers, thinkers and most of all, engaged human beings with strong voices who are helping make our world a b...

The yellow school bus unloaded and the kids climbed up the stone steps of Memorial Union, into a small room with black and yellow folders laid out for them on the rows of tables.  I could almost hear their thoughts, "Great. Back in a classroom. Some field trip this is." They dutifully filled out  information cards and listened to a bubbly blond admissions rep describing Columbia, the University, admission to MU, grade and test requirements. They were quiet, going through the folder, processing the information. The presentation ended with a college freshman who shared about her experiences and students got to ask questions. And then, the tour guides arrived. Faces lifted, eyes widened, and the kids sat up straight in their chairs.  The line of real college students filed up the middle aisle like a small army, and heads turned to follow them to the front of the room.  They introduced themselves, and when it was time to go, kids sprung out of their chairs to...