Teaching at 3am

A year ago, the last day of school brought me to my knees, sobbing uncontrollably in my classroom after the students all left. While I would miss them, my tears and my grief were for my husband and the very uncertain path ahead of us.

This year has been the most tumultuous year of my professional career and I hope I never experience anything like it again. For the past eighteen months, my heart and mind have been torn between the needs of my husband and my students. My students have lost that battle more than they have won.

Today, I face the last day of the year once again, this time knowing I do it without my husband to greet me at home or to spend my summer days with. I now know the outcome of our journey. But even more importantly, I now know that those moments when I am on my knees are just that – moments. They aren’t where I stay. I get up again. I re-engage with the world, I try to figure out my life without him.

Last week, one of the students I share with my co-teacher lost her baby sister in a devastating car accident. The tragedy has taken me back to those deep dark days of early grief, but they have also reminded me that we all walk a path laden with heavy burdens. None of us are immune to life’s tragedies.

So today, I will continue to make notes about ways to improve professionally next year. I will make the last day full of laughter and reminiscing with my students and send them off into summer vacation with book lists, memory books and a sense, hopefully, that they are capable of doing hard things. I will leave the building without participating in the bus-loop goodbye, knowing the trigger it is likely to be. I will head home to an empty house with long summer days stretching out in front of me. But there, on my porch, looking out over my farm and thinking about my path ahead, I will remind myself that I, too, am capable of doing hard things. This year is proof of that. I still don’t know the road ahead for me. I still don’t know what challenges are yet to come, but I know that if I can survive this, I can survive anything.

I greatly revised Daily 3 this week.  I’ve spent the last month and a half pulling my hair out at the lack of effort my students were putting into their work during independent station time.  I had created what I felt was very meaningful spelling and vocabulary application practice and yet they wasted time, procrastinated and then finally rushed through the work to meet the deadline for turning it in.  I offer extended time for those who need it to finish, but even with that, nearly half of my class was still unable to complete the work – and complete it well – on their own.  

So, as a last resort, I made my kids stay at their tables this week.  No more moving about to comfy spots, no more choosing which station to work on first and worst of all, no more small guided reading groups.  We abandoned the novels we were all very much enjoying together so that I could monitor the class during the Daily 3 station time instead. 

The kids have told me that they love this.  In unsolicited feedback, several have shared how much more work they are getting done, how much more focused they are this week.  I see that, as I walk around, monitoring their progress.  I see higher quality work being produced.  I see kids actually reading instead of pretending to, and I see students applying things we’ve learned in the moment of their writing and reading.  

I’ve seen the new practice routine also benefit my numerous students with attention issues.  While they still struggle to stay on task, I’m more able to help nudge them than I am when I am working with groups.  My students are normally very quiet and give the appearance of being on task during Daily 3 rotations, but with everyone at tables, my easily-distractables now have less to pull them away from their work.  When they look around, they see others right beside them, focused on the same task and it seems to help keep them engaged.  For the last few weeks of school, their behavior is remarkably good during this time and some are even eager to go above and beyond on the work. 

But I hate it.  I cannot even begin to explain how much I hate this.  Reading in small groups feels like the absolute best teaching that I do.  With text literally in hand, we have the best in-the-moment discussions and applications of learning.  We use the various chosen texts to work on the standards we are focused on and I model and provide practice for reading strategies right in the context of grappling with difficult words or comprehension.  This is too much of a sacrifice to abandon it altogether and return to whole-group instruction only.

 So I am left wondering how can I get this same focus and same attention to detail and same motivation to put in their best work without sacrificing small group time?  There is just too much to be gained during small groups to give it up entirely!  

I don’t have a ready answer, and I am not one to vent without trying to create a solution in the next breath.  I think teachers have had to evolve their practices dramatically in the last few years to address the apathy and lack of motivation we see in our students.  This profession is never stagnant and never should be, but I think all of us in education wish our time could be spent finding better materials and diving deeper into the research of learning to help our students more expediently instead of trying to reinvent teaching processes just to get students to put in the time and effort necessary to learning any task, skill or strategy. 

During this time of year, I always keep a Google doc of concepts, practices and ideas that I want to put into practice in the fall.  Improvements on my teaching, ways to get more meaningful practice out of my students and better ways to assess what they know.  I also use this time to test out an idea or two.  The kids love the novelty of change during the last few weeks and it’s a great time to try out things and start tweaking before trying full implementation in the fall.  
This week, as I look around my quiet classroom full of focused, hard-working students, I wonder what independent task(s) can I create for them that will keep them this engaged so that I can return to small groups in the fall?  Maybe this is only a temporary need; perhaps this lack of attention is the result of several things in recent years and eventually we will see students with better dedication to tasks and more intrinsic motivation to do their best work.  Who knows?  But I know I have to adapt to the students in front of me every year and I know that I have to maximize their time on meaningful work each and every day.  It’s up to me to find a solution.  I suspect this one, like so many, is going to require more than just out-of-the-box thinking.  It’s going to require trial and error, and additional time spent on my part as well as collaboration with colleagues across the country.  But most of all, I know this is a problem that has to be addressed and solved before our kids get any further behind. 

I spent several hours at school yesterday.  I cleaned and rearranged.  I puttered and planned.  I wrote lessons for Monday and made a spreadsheet for next fall.  I tried to feel myself within those four walls again and tried to remember who I am as a teacher.  

I return to work tomorrow.  Easing back into the feel of it, I will be there three days this week, four the next.  With the help of my therapist, I have planned the day.  Hoping to keep my anxiety at bay and the tsunami of emotions under control, I have laid out my clothes, written out the schedule and all but packed my lunch.  Dinner ingredients are ready in the fridge and my headsets are charged and ready for a walk or time on the elliptical, or whatever my body needs at the end of the day. I have some coping strategies and breathing techniques at the ready.  The plan is in place and ready to go.

But the truth is, I’m not worried about teaching, I’m not worried about getting the kids back into my routine. I don’t feel anxious about seeing colleagues or even figuring out the new behavior plan or the accommodations some of my students now require. I know the kids will be happy to see me and I know that overall the day will go smoothly and without incident. I know there will be difficult emotions to deal with throughout my day; things will arise that will give me pause and cause me heartache for sure.

What makes me sick to my stomach with dread and fear, however, is the thought of coming home.  James was always home at the end of my day.  Always.  On nice days he would have already finished his outdoor chores and would meet me on the porch with the dog where we would sit and talk for hours.  On cold or rainy days he would be in the kitchen, already prepping dinner, oftentimes with a glass of wine already poured for me, waiting.  I would sit at the counter and talk about the day and he would listen and listen.  Our whole evening would be spent together.  

But not tomorrow.  Not ever again.  

Tomorrow is another step forward in my life without James.  For some, returning to work is cathartic, helpful, healing even.  But for me, the day results in unavoidable pain.  An agony I wish I could get around without going through.  

Tomorrow, I will teach.  But at the end of the day I will be learning new ways to move forward in a world without him.  A lesson I’d rather not learn at all.

I’ve been away from school since Thanksgiving.  It was then we knew our battle against cancer was in its final rounds and by mid December, my beloved lost the fight and I lost my beloved.  Other than one quick visit to see the students right before Winter Break and going in to write up lesson plans in two week increments, I haven’t been back to school.  Grief is unique to everyone and every situation, and for some, diving back into the routine of work, or being surrounded by people might help the healing process. For me, however, the very thought of doing either has been terrifying.  When I go in to write up plans I feel numb, disconnected, lost.  It takes me hours to do the simplest things and I struggle to put together anything of any true significance.   

Planning out lessons is something I normally love to do.  I spend my summers, even, thinking about ways to improve my writing instruction, creating plans and researching mentor texts.  I think about ways to connect learning to life and how to get students to be more intrinsically motivated to do their best work.  My beloved called it “the itch” when, in early July, I would start reaching for my phone in the middle of the night to type up a note to myself.  And I continued to do it all year long. Normally.

This “itch” is the reason I haven’t walked away from the profession.  For all the meetings that feel unnecessary; all the angry parents who assume ill-intent; for all the “new and improved” methods we are continually trying to understand, learn and implement; for all the ways I feel like our system is broken and even detrimental at times, there is still this pilot light of passion that keeps me hanging on.  This joy that comes from the spark of an idea that develops itself into an energy that manifests itself through an experience in my classroom.  I’m humble enough to know that my lessons might not always hit the mark they intend, but I am hopeful that even if it needs tweaking, the lesson might at least spark an enthusiasm for learning and a contagion for trying.

But since my beloved’s diagnosis less than a year ago, that itch has taken a far backseat.  I didn’t spend one moment of my summer thinking about plans.  I didn’t write a single note in my phone about a book to use or a phrase to try.  I have gone to school all spring and fall and taught the standards and in recent months, I have written plans for someone else to teach them with heavy reliance on a curriculum publisher to make the material engaging.  Years ago, my husband and I met with a professional who’s wife was a teacher and in conversation this man said, “I tell my wife all the time, if the world and her administration is going to treat them like C+ professionals, then she should be a C+ teacher.” Ever since, my husband would tongue-in-cheek suggest that I aspire to be a C+ teacher, knowing full well it wasn’t in my DNA to not pour every ounce of myself into my students.  But for the last year, I’ve been just that.  It was out of necessity for my own well being, but I have been just that. 

Despite that being true, it recently became so obvious to me that I had really lost something, that this spark wasn’t just in the backseat, it seemed to be gone. It was a change that I suspect was noticed by my principal as well, as his gentle questions about my return to work became a bit more insistent.  But my anxieties about returning have been so significant they are the weekly topic at therapy.  It isn’t just a “return to normalcy” that I fear betrays my husband; it isn’t just the difficulty of being immersed in a group of people for whom life didn’t change at all when there is not a single aspect of mine that remained the same; it isn’t just the neediness of ten year olds and the emotional demands of the job; it isn’t just the strength required to complete the mundane tasks that accompany any job when my give-a-damns are shattered.  My anxiety is compounded by my fear that I’m not ever going to be that passionate teacher again.  That what I’ve lost, I’ve lost permanently.  

But then, last night, it happened. I was watching Iron Man- a movie I’ve seen several times, but a favorite of my husbands and a comfort in its familiarity and memory.  I was about an hour in to the movie when the thought struck me, much as the blast of energy from Iron Man’s palm when he blasts his enemies or rockets into space.  Look at how he is improving his original model, I thought.  How many times does he improve on the Iron Man suit in just this movie alone?  What a great visual reminder to students of the importance of revision!  By the end of the movie, I had jotted eight notes into my phone, including time stamps to scenes in the movie that I wanted to later capture and put together to show this point exactly. 

And there it was.  The spark. The thought of how to put this into a series of mini writing lessons has bounced around in my head all night and today I woke with a new purpose and intention.  

Even more than feeling excited about the idea or feeling energized about planning, however, even more than that, I felt relief.  While I am still not certain that the classroom is where I want to stay for my remaining years in the profession, I know that this passion of mine requires a connection to the classroom. Lessons cannot be designed in a vacuum, and so my ties to the classroom will forever remain strong, even if it’s not where I may eventually spend all my hours.  I am not even sure of how I could best use these ideas and passions of mine without being a full-time classroom teacher, but I know this moment helped me realize once again what I love about what I do.  And it gives me hope that when I do return, I will once again feel that passion within me.

Through the visual aid of Iron Man and the many iterations of his suit, I hope to show to my students how to get excited about revision and improvement in all their work efforts. I hope to make them not only see the value but to desire the improvements enough to put in the effort.

As for me, I feel a bit like Tony Stark myself, tweaking and fixing, struggling and improving as I form new iterations of my own professional path. I hope to not only help my students to rise to new heights, but to also let my own talents and passions soar.

Thirty days ago, I set out on an adventure with 57 students. We joined in the National Novel Writing Month Young Writer’s Program and we set to writing novels with personal word count goals. At the half way point, forty students were still actively participating, with two coming to me begging to join for the last half of the month. I don’t know just yet how many will actually reach their word count, but it’s not what concerns me at all.

One of the hardest parts about my taking a leave of absence was knowing that I had to leave in the midst of this challenge. No more weekly encouragement meetings. No more recesses with my young writers typing away with me. No more clickety-clack during Daily 3 stations as some of my students worked toward their goal. I did keep up with my almost-daily encouraging emails, and I know the classroom teachers for many of the students still gave little pep talks to keep the students motivated in my absence, but I really struggled with leaving before the project was done.

Personally, for the first time in all the years that I’ve participated, I fell behind in my own word count. Further behind than I have ever been, even to the point where I wondered if I would even finish it at all. I’ve never not completed the challenge. If I set out to do it, then I’m going to do it, but obviously this year, life got a bit in the way. But, the last two days were days spent in waiting rooms and hotel rooms and treatment rooms, all places that a Chromebook works quite nicely in and so I clickety-clacked my word count up while we waited on doctors, waiting on appointments, waited to fall asleep and waiting on treatment.

Today, while I sat with my husband in the infusion treatment room typing away, I received an email message. Opening it up (happy for the distraction from typing my convoluted novel) I saw that it was from one of my students. She was telling me how hard she was working to reach her goal. She was in at recess, with the substitute teacher, typing away. I responded immediately back with my words of encouragement and confession that I was busy typing away, too. Then came another email and another, from each of the girls that usually type during recess with me. It would seem that on the last day, despite being in different places, we were all still typing together.

I have other emails in my inbox over the past month from several of the students participating in the 30-day challenge and they all more or less say the same thing. They are all behind in their word counts, having overestimated how much time they would actually spend on the project, but they were all having a blast and giving up wasn’t an option despite their slow progress.

Apparently, I needn’t have worried. All it took was to get the ball rolling and these kids just kept it going all on their own. All they needed were some words of encouragement along the way and they were off to the races. While I am sure we all would have loved to have met weekly or even more often than that, it turns out, many of the students didn’t depend on those meetings, they were able to persevere without.

Tonight, at just after nine o’clock, I finally hit 50,000 words. It’s the worst novel I’ve ever written, but I tried something new, added a dose of fantasy and I gave it a go. It was never about getting published for me. It was just about the challenge and about forcing myself to do the thing. Oh, and it was definitely about doing it with the kids. Even when friends and family told me to not worry about it for heaven’s sake, pointing out all that I have going on currently, I just couldn’t let it go. I couldn’t let the kids down. If they were determined to finish, so was I.

So, tonight, I am a NaNoWriMo winner, complete with a print-it-myself certificate and a t-shirt that’s in the mail. But far more than that, I am excited for all the kids that stuck with it, that stuck with me. For all those kids that gave this challenge a go for the first (or second!) try. I am so proud of the work they put in. I am proud for the ways they pushed through when it got hard. I am proud to see them be proud of themselves. For that is what really matters.

To all my NaNo Young Writers – you are all winners in my book tonight!

I’ve had multiple trainings on working with students in trauma. While I may never be an expert in that field, I know that a major part of the equation is building strong relationships with our students. In all honesty, I don’t know any other way to teach. I enjoy teaching at the level that I do because students still, for the most part, want to have a relationship with their teachers. I spend hours every day with these fifty kids. We work through tough days, hard mornings, lack of sleep, lack of breakfast and more so that we can work through hard texts, difficult words, complicated comprehension and writing that takes all our energy.

I have students that are routinely absent and I spend every day they are present being excited to have them in class. I know it’s not their fault they aren’t there on the other days, I don’t need to add guilt to their too-full plate. I have students who can’t focus on anything at school and I try to muster every ounce of patience (to which I am not always successful) to help them tackle their work in smaller bites, to work through their distractions and to help them have positive experiences with learning. I try to implement the things I have learned in my trainings to help students who are in or have experienced trauma to build positive relationships that help them find solid footing and to fill their basic needs enough that we can start to build their academics, too.

But it wasn’t until today, my first day on an extended leave of absence, that I realized I am the one in trauma. From my husband’s diagnosis nine months ago, I have been operating on less than emotional stability. I have been on a rollercoaster of mental and physical anguish and I have had to carry that stress with me to the classroom, just like my students in trauma do. I have had to exert intensive energy to put on a game face and get through the day sometimes because the load of everything else made it difficult to get through the day.

Today I realized that for all the ways that I work so hard to build relationships with the kids, it’s those same relationships that are making it so very hard on my heart to be home right now. I know this is where I want to be, and I want to be here with my husband, but my lord, how I miss the kids. I worked hours yesterday to put together lesson plans, to gather materials and to get a few things organized for someone to step in for the duration and it was all I could do to walk away from my classroom last night. While I know there is no other choice, I feel as unsettled by my departure as I expect some of the kids do. Where else will I get that many hugs in one day? Where else will I be able to set aside the realities of what’s happening at home and just exhale and live in a moment of joy within those four walls? Where else will I be able to busy myself with tasks that make me feel successful and in control in ways I cannot feel fighting this diagnosis?

Today I am able to focus completely and entirely on my husband and on all that he needs right now and I am grateful beyond words for a career and an employer that allows me to do just that. But today, I am missing my kids, missing my classroom, missing my colleagues. Today I realize just how much I depend on all those people, big and small, to help me navigate through my own trauma.

It’s been a long, tough week. Conferences always seem like three weeks bottled up into two days somehow. There’s just so much assessing, so much paper collecting, so much data updating to be done to prepare for meaningful conversations with parents.

In addition, we had some added stress from our latest U of M visit, which meant that not only was I mentally exhausted from school, I was emotionally wrought out from all that’s going on with my husband. Which is just to say that by the time today, Friday, rolled around and we were officially done with conferences and the weekend was within reach, I was ready to just let today be as simple and easy as I could possibly make it.

We still completed our vocabulary and short reading comprehension assessments on the standard we’ve been focusing on. I’m not seeing as much progress on that standard and I wanted to see if it was just the stories they read last time, or if it truly was still a skill that needed significant more work. We took time, as always, to do some personal reading and personal writing today as well. We read from our read aloud book that we are using to practice summarizing. We also took time to do our weekly “Shout Outs” that has not happened in the past couple of weeks. We shared Very Cool Words, idioms and books that we were super excited about with each other. But when all that was said and done, we still had about 45 minutes of time, with nothing left in the lesson plans to accomplish. So, I decided we would play a game.

The part of speech we have been focusing on the last couple of weeks is adjectives, so I pulled out the game “Apples to Apples.” This is my favorite classroom game, other than it tends to get louder than I prefer. I explained that they would all have noun cards and I would choose an adjective. They had to work in teams and so we reviewed how to disagree with kindness and how to remain good sports even when it didn’t feel like we were getting our way. I took time to explain that sometimes none of their nouns were going to seem to fit the adjective and that’s where it was going to take some persuasion on their parts to convince me it did. Finally, I explained that while I would award points, they didn’t matter in the least and no one was getting any prizes of any kind for “winning.” The goal was simply to have some fun.

I intentionally chose team captains so that some of my quieter students had to speak on behalf of the team. I knew some of those would never have spoken up over the noise and insistence of the other players and by making them captain, I guaranteed they felt included in the game. I told them that this was a kids version of the game and that some of the nouns were things I didn’t know anything about because it had to do with TV shows or video games that I’ve never seen or even heard of. I stressed the importance of talking as a team to help each other with those things we might not all know, which was my way of also giving those who struggle to read or understand English options for getting help without feeling embarrassed about doing so.

And so for 45 minutes today, my kids discussed, debated, cheered, celebrated, admitted defeat (they knew their word of “bowling” was never going to beat “Spiderman” when the adjective was “athletic”!) Every single child was involved and excited. When one team was losing by a lot, I upped the point values for the next couple rounds and “helped” them catch up.

I heard fantastic discussions that helped students determine the difference between “harmful” and “harmless”. I heard students discuss whether “odorous” could apply to something that smelled a lot, but smelled good. And I heard a captain explain that they chose “kissing” in response to “sickening” not because it was unhealthy, but because it was just gross to them, applying multiple meanings to a word.

The room was louder than I ever like it, despite all my efforts, and I felt badly for the teacher next door, but I was absolutely giddy with all that I saw and heard and witnessed in those 45 minutes of “extra” time today. The teamwork, the compliments, the voices of my shyest kids, the kind debating, the compromising! At one point, two boys played a quick game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors” to determine whose word was going to be presented.

Having just come out of conferences where parents are always asking, “What can we do at home to help?” I wish I could show them a video of today and the value of playing games together as a family. The vocabulary assessment these kids took this morning was nothing in comparison to all the ways they manipulated, thought about and applied words this afternoon.

This was a game we all won at today.

Last year there were eight. We may have started out with a few more, but eight spent nearly every recess with me, typing every day and sticking with it to the end.

This year, I hemmed and hawed for far too long over whether or not I should even add this to my plate, until it was nearly too late to start. At that point, I wasn’t sure if any students would be interested in repeating the challenge with me, so I opened the gates, a bit too widely perhaps, and found myself with not only several of the eight that took the challenge with me last year, but fifty more that thought it somehow sounded like something they wanted to try.

58 students crowded on my classroom floor with Chromebooks in their laps on Friday afternoon with little more than the promise of working with me to write a draft of a book. They typed away with all the speed two index fingers can muster when you are still young enough to have to search for the letters on the keyboard. Heads down, they focused on their task and the room sounded like an office of secretaries from the 1950’s. Too soon to start the challenge, they were typing nothing in particular, just to get an idea of how fast they could type so we could roughly determine a word count goal. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack went their keys for the five minutes I timed them for. We multiplied this word count out and set personal word count goals for we begin the challenge in earnest.

The challenge, should they choose to stick with it, is to write a book – a chapter book – during the thirty days of November. A take-off from National Novel Writing Month, the Young Writer’s Program allows students of all ages to participate in the writing challenge, but with a self-determined word count goal, (instead of the daunting 50,000 words that we mere mortal adults will attempt to achieve).

The room is mostly fifth graders, due to the fact that my participants from last year were spread out over six fifth grade classrooms, so when their teachers asked if anyone wanted to try it again with me, new recruits, more likely naïve recruits, were eager to join in. I invited my current fourth grade students as well, and there are more of those than I had last year, bringing our total group to a bit more than my classroom can comfortably hold, but it’s a number that I expect to dwindle over the course of the month, so perhaps it will become more manageable as we go.

On Friday, I stood in front of the crowd, and explained, the concept. Draft a story. A long story. A longer story than they have probably ever written before. And with nothing more to promise at the end than it will most likely be quite lousy and it will still need an enormous amount of work to become anything good, but, and this is the real hook of the challenge, but, I told them, you will be able to forever say, “I wrote a book,” and I emphasized the power in that statement.

Today, the first day of November, my number of my crowd of authors is down to 47, with one teacher who forgot to send her kids down to my room. As I call off the students’ names, several times their peers respond with, “Oh, they quit already.” It turns out, the promise of a near-empty fifth grade classroom is more enticing than the idea of joining a large mass of typists on a quest to become authors of mostly crappy chapter books. That’s okay with me. I’m not trying to mass produce lukewarm writers. I’m trying to give those students who have a passion for the process an outlet for their ideas. I’m trying to hand a blank page to those with ink dripping out of their fingertips so they might capture the words in their hearts and see their stories unfold before them.

A half hour isn’t even close to enough time with these kids. I will email every day my words of encouragement and my less than helpful suggestions for overcoming writer’s block, but I don’t share a recess time with fifth grade and so many of the students will miss out on the collective, daily writing like we did last year. It will do, for now, though. Perhaps next year my life will be slightly more stable and I’ll be able to commit some time outside of school hours to supporting these young authors in their quest. Perhaps by then I will have learned more about how to cultivate young writers, to help muster enthusiasm and motivation when the word count feels insurmountable, when the blinking cursor feels like a pulsing reminder that we don’t have a clue of what we are writing. For now, I will do everything I know and can do to model, encourage and support these kids.

After our all too brief meeting ended today, a student in my afternoon fourth grade class confided in me. “Mrs. Koehn?” he said to me quietly and with grave concern. “There’s just no way I can write 14,000 words!” Having just finished reading a book about perseverance, I respond by saying, “You don’t have to. All I’m asking is that you write 460 words today. Can you do that? Just focus on today. 460 words. Tomorrow isn’t even here yet. One day at a time.” He nods back at me, “I can do that, Mrs. Koehn. I can do 460 words.” It’s his goal. It’s what he set for himself. And my heart will absolutely soar if he hits it. Crappy first drafts or not, these kids are going to learn so much more than typing and story telling along the way.

This, is what it feels like to be a teacher. Today, in this moment, surrounded by kids choosing to put in extra work, choosing to give up the opportunity to do something else, choosing to spend time at school and at home working on a writing, choosing to push through difficulties, choosing to be writers – this, this is the moment I live for in my classroom. When students are so eager to participate in learning that they willingly choose it, join with enthusiasm and dive in to the task with complete abandon.

Last year, one of my students who participated in the month-long challenge with me, exceeded her word count goal and wrote a first draft with enormous potential. Copying the books she devours day and night, she wrote a dedication page on her November novel and thanked me for introducing her to NaNoWriMo, the writing challenged that pushed her to finish her first book. I could end my career today knowing that was enough. That was enough to set her ball rolling. I don’t know where this challenge will lead for any of my crowd of authors, but I know this: it will change them. Just as it does me.

To the National Novel Writing Month Young Writer’s Program, my floor of two-finger typists and I send a resounding, “Challenge accepted!”

See you in 30 days.

At our first PLC meeting of the year, we took a recurring survey of how we are progressing as a collaborative team. We went over the questions, which ranged from how well do we adhere to our meeting norms to how far are we on addressing the needs of students who already have mastery of a standard before we have taught it. We’ve taken this survey a number of times, and each time we grapple more with the wording of some of the questions than with the content it seems, but it continues to provoke feelings in me that make me more and more uncomfortable.

I have been teaching for over a dozen years now. I have taught first through fourth grades, I have been a Title 1 reading paraprofessional and I have taught technology classes in a K-2 building. I cannot point to one single year where I would say I did a very effective job of teaching meaningful, whole-group, standards-based content and also very effectively addressed the needs of both my struggling students and my accelerated ones. And the more I think about this, the more frustrated I become. How could this be so hard to do?

Thinking about what I have in my lesson plans for these first starting weeks of school, I wonder how the benchmark assessments I give will really change my instruction. Our district uses the Star test to show student growth, but I have never used the information to change anything in my instruction. It will provide a general indication of a student’s reading level, and if I dig deeper into the reports, it will tell me a bit more specifically what skills the student was successful with and which ones they need additional support in, but I have never used those reports, because, when students complete an online assessment, I’ll admit, I feel completely detached from it. I don’t know what questions they were asked, I don’t know if they were hung up on the wording of the questions (like my grade level team is with our PLC survey questions) or if they truly could not complete the task. The online assessment will adjust as the student progresses, but it does not necessarily go back and re-ask a question at a lower reading level, so I don’t know if the student could have completed the task if the reading level was more appropriate. The information gathered from this assessment feels difficult to navigate, interpret and put into any kind of meaningful action.

In addition to the Star test, I also sit with each of my students at the start of the year and have them read for me. I start with a benchmark ORF passage, but I also listen to them read from a book of their own choosing. This provides me with great information, including accuracy, fluency, some decoding strategies, and basic comprehension if I have the time to ask a few questions. But there is no direct correlation to intervention based on this, either. I can identify the students that are at, below and above the benchmark, but I don’t have specific resources that I then turn to as a way to address those needs. For example, a student who can read the passage very fluently and answers my questions well gets some encouraging words from me, returns to his/her seat and the most I will do with that information is to make sure they read the higher level books for small group, and I will monitor their choice of texts when they independently read to make sure they are appropriately challenging themselves. A student who struggles to decode many of the words in the benchmark passage will be identified in my mind as a student who needs additional phonics support and so I will work with that student more regularly in small groups and one-on-ones, but what specifically I’m working on feels very vague to me and I do not have a clear set of materials or resources that I would use for such instruction. This is not to say my district doesn’t have such materials, in fact, we probably have many options. I just don’t know them, or how to effectively use them, or quite honestly, how to find, learn and implement them in a time-effective manner. For the twenty-five fourth graders that I have, if ten are below benchmark as we start the year, their needs will vary remarkably as we all know. How do I find and utilize intervention materials to address those who need very basic decoding skills, those who need very basic comprehension strategies, those who need decoding support with multisyllabic words and those who need all of the above?

I think, also, of the supports we have in place for these students. Not only is my building blessed with a great team of Title 1 paraprofessionals, but this year we also have parapros for each grade level, for whatever instructional help we need them for. This is wonderful! But when I think about the students I send out to Title (who qualify based solely on their Star scores), I have no idea what they are doing while they are with the Title team. When I gather a group together to work with a paraprofessional, I depend entirely on that parapro to know what to do with that group. I can hand over texts, or suggest they work on “main idea and supporting details” but I also recognize these people have little or no training at all in how to help students master those reading strategies.

So this leaves me quite frustrated and feeling remarkably ineffective. I mean, remarkably ineffective.

In just the last couple of years, my team has identified the “essential standards” for our grade level. We have created common formative assessments that align with those standards. We have even identified some materials that we would use to teach those standards. But that’s all mainly for whole-group instruction and assessment. And let’s face it, I could be minimally effective at teaching and reach that same exact portion of my class – some kids are just built to learn without needing much outside support. We have had, in the past and I think even this year, an online program that will help provide additional practice with various topics for those students that need additional time on a task, but again, I will have no quick and easy knowledge of what they are working on or what they are struggling with. Perhaps this program will provide some additional instruction that might help a student gain mastery, but if so, then I feel even less effective. If the computer can teach the skill, what do they need me for? Of course, it isn’t that cut and dry, but surely I must be able to provide more meaningful interactions, support and instruction than a student can receive from software?

Even as I write this, I have a stack of spelling pre-tests in front of me. I recognize right off that these are pre-tests, but I can already see many prerequisite skills that are lacking, and they are lacking in abundance. It isn’t just a student or two, but many who have misplaced capital letters. It isn’t just a student or two who clearly do not know several of the six syllable types. And it isn’t just a student or two whose handwriting I can barely read. I teach fourth grade. How do I move forward with my grade level content when I have so many that are coming to me with this much of a learning gap? Again, don’t take this as a rebuke on earlier grade level teachers!! I have been there and I know they are doing the best they can, but it is absolutely no wonder if only half my class is grade-level proficient by the end of the year when I start so far behind.

So where do I begin? I don’t write this to just lament about the status of our classrooms. I write this as a way for me to turn my focus from the problem to solutions. What is it that I need? I need quick, easy ways to assess my students reading abilities – a diagnostic tool that will tell me that this student can decode the following types of words and can comprehend and apply strategies to this level of text. I need specifics. Then, I need to have intervention options that will address those specific deficits. I need materials and resources that will help me with specific decoding strategies. Not just instructional materials, but student practice materials as well. I need a way to track progress, but also a map that shows the standard and the prerequisites necessary to get to that learning. I need the same for the comprehension standards as well. And then, as if that doesn’t feel burdensome enough, I need all the same for kids that have already mastered the standard.

My curriculum director is nodding so hard that his head is going to ache tomorrow. He knows we need this. He has been helping us work toward these goals in our PLC’s. But there isn’t even a fraction of enough time to do this well. And, to be honest, I’m not even sure why it is up to each and every grade level in each and every elementary building in each and every district in every state. The essential standards should be essential for all (perhaps with slight adjustments, but overall, I feel like there should be some pretty set standards that we can all agree are very fundamental to future learning and living.) Additionally, sharing resources, ideas, materials, curriculum, diagnostics, assessments, etc. would allow all of us to spend far less time searching, creating, implementing, revising, adjusting – and it would allow us to get students moving. I am frustrated with the idea of hours and hours of my future PLC meeting time being spent on this. I want to get students moving now.

And yes, I know, there is more of a sense of ownership when we are involved in the process of getting there. But I don’t have it in me to keep sacrificing the learning that could be happening if I had a better grip on the materials or assessments. I would much rather feel the sense of pride at helping get 70 or even 80% of my students to mastery of the essential standards at grade level. There have to be schools that are doing it right. There have to be teachers and educators and researchers who already know the most important standards and the best instructional methods to teach them, and how to effectively intervene when students don’t get them, and how to augment learning when they already have mastery.

I know teachers are leaving the profession in droves and I believe it is for a variety of reasons. We can talk about the lack of respect, we can talk about difficult parents, we can talk about the pressures on our hearts when we deal with kids in trauma and threats of school violence, but in that list as well, has to be, at least for me, the sense that I don’t feel like I am making a hill of beans of difference. I once heard an educational researcher state that if we do nothing at all as teachers, 50% of our class will still learn the materials. I don’t know how accurate that number is, but when I look at our recent state testing scores and see we have 46% that are reaching benchmarks, it makes me feel like not only am I ineffective, I am actually hindering the academic growth of some students. I don’t know how to bear the weight of that thought for one more day.

Despite what all the administrators believe and even what some said into a microphone, the professional development leading up to the start of school each year does not leave me energized or excited. I don’t remember it ever getting me pumped up or causing any increase in my positivity levels or optimism about the upcoming year. This year, in fact, I set my sights only on survival; knowing that at least the first day of seeing colleagues would be difficult. There would be those who know who would, perhaps, want an update and there would be those, who would engage in conversations blissfully unaware and while I wasn’t sure which might prove more emotionally challenging for me, I didn’t look forward to any of it.

Today was the third and final day of meetings and seminars and I was hopeful that the busyness of the day would help me keep my mind on improving my professional practice and not giving my heart much time to wish I was at home with my beloved.

And, to that end, I was doing fairly well. I may have had to become very conscious about my breathing a time or three, like when the motivational quotes projected to inspire and encourage educators before the keynote speaker struck a more personal chord with me with messages like, “Sending love to everyone who’s trying their best to heal from things that they don’t discuss.” Or when a colleague I haven’t seen in a long time stopped to offer me a hug and her prayers, or even when someone inadvertently set my tears to rolling by just complimenting a writing I had done. But by the time I was to meet another colleague for lunch, one who had heartbreakingly lost her own husband just a few months ago, I felt steady on my feet again and up to the conversation.

We sat on the grass and talked about the hard things. What she has been through, and even our own diagnosis. We talked about the support of people around us, from the healthcare professionals to our own administration to our friends and families. I said, more than once to her, that it is a terrible “club” for us to be members of together. And while we agreed, we also felt relief at being able to share our grief and our journey with someone else.

As we stood up to return inside, to find our way to the next presentation room, to set our minds back on our professional year ahead, she said to me, “I sure hate the word, ‘widow’, though.”

As I walked the crowded high school hallway alone to my next chosen session, the word reverberated in my soul. It doesn’t even describe me yet, but I hate it as much as she does. She had said it lightheartedly, from a different vantage point of this excruciating journey. As I walked I found myself struggling to breathe, struggling to think, struggling even to distract my mind. “Widow,” kept repeating in my head, stabbing at my heart. “Widow.”

The session I had chosen to attend was on building vocabulary in writing and I was late to the presentation. The room, was overcrowded and I slipped in long enough to set my things down next to a co-worker but then slipped out just as quickly, retreating to the nearest bathroom. I found myself in the stall, holding on to the door, crying like a high school sophomore who had just been broken up with. I was mean with myself, just like I expect that high school-self to have been, telling myself to pull myself together and get back to the classroom. There was no time for tears right now.

Back in the room, I found a spot to sit in the back, on the floor against the wall. A dear friend was sitting there already, and when I saw her, I lost all the strength I had pulled together in the restroom. She is a widow herself and I felt like it was a word and reality I could not escape from.

So, while the presenter talked about ways to help our students expand their vocabularies, while she wrote “Cats have whiskers,” on the board, I leaned against a wall and silently cried. I would have left, but people would have looked at me and I knew I would fall to pieces if they did. I thought about my breathing and I tried to listen to her words and move my focus and attention to what she was presenting but it was like a dam had burst and there was just no stopping the flood.

She talked about using a picture and a word bank to prompt writing and my mind raced to pictures I didn’t want to see and words I didn’t want to think about. Loneliness, fear, abandonment, death. She showed an example of a “scribble drawing” and I wanted to grab the nearest marker and blacken every page.

The room behind me gets loud. They are “turning and talking” and I try to get lost in the noise. 25 more minutes and I can leave this session with only one more to go before I can make my escape to the car. 25 minutes but she is talking about having a “Word of the Day” and all I can think is my word for today seems to be “widow.”

I make it through the rest of the session and even the session after that. I somehow manage to dry my face and avoid eye contact enough that no one that talks to me seems to realize what a mess I am. Or at least they don’t say anything. And God bless them all for that favor.

When I finally push through the doors and race to my car and climb into the driver’s seat, my face is soaked and my breath is short and I cannot see to drive for all the tears.

Tomorrow, in therapy, I will ask her again how to get a grip on things – enough so that I might get through a day at school without having to do such hard battle with such persistent emotions. And I will continue to pray that I will find such joy and distraction within my classroom walls this fall, that I am able – at least temporarily each day – to set aside my home life and give the kids as much as I am able.

I will, however, also let these tears and this flood and this lack of control to serve as a tangible, personal reminder of what our kids in trauma might feel like some times. I will let this sorrow serve as experience to help me better help those kids who cannot focus on their reading, or who cannot stop the harsh words from flowing, or who cannot even physically remain in the classroom at times. I am a person in trauma. I pray that this pain at least helps me (if not now, down the road) to empathize better with others during their dark and difficult times. I hope I can build and model and teach and foster resiliency. And to that end, I need to find a way to make peace with this pain and to let joy become the word of the day, my mantra for living, again, despite the circumstances.