Tag: teaching

Heard

amykoehn

I am 37 days into my summer break. I am drastically under-achieving on personal projects around the house for that amount of time, but considering I am off work, I am greatly over-achieving on professional projects for school. When I’m not redesigning my lesson plan book for the fifth time, or researching a new curriculum that has been proposed, or putting together a “little something” gift box for the new teacher I am mentoring – or – when I am avoiding weeding the flower beds that just need weeding again (and again), or when I have mowed all of the pasture except where the lovely woodchuck and his lovely family have built a lovely abode with many, many, lovely (read that “big” and “deep”) entrances hidden in the tall grass that are just the right size for my mower wheel to get very, very stuck in – when I am not doing any of those things, I have been watching the TV show, “The Bear” on Hulu.

The show came highly recommended to me a couple of years ago and yet I was slow getting into it. The first couple episodes didn’t grab me and it wasn’t until someone else said it was worth sticking it out that I started over, got hooked, and never looked back. When it was announced that Season 4 was going to be released soon, I started back at the beginning and rewatched the first three seasons to be ready for the new one. Believe me, watching all those episodes again was truly a labor of love.

So today, after shopping online for tall yard markers that I could put in all the woodchuck’s lovely holes to maybe prevent a necessary tractor pull to get the mower unstuck during future mowings, and after reading more of a new book on fluency, I sat down to indulge in an episode or two of the new season.

If you haven’t watched the show, I can’t recommend it enough, especially if you have any spot in your heart for the city of Chicago or the restaurant business. But tonight I was struck by it in a way that I think everyone could relate to. In the proverbial nutshell, the show is about a man with a passion for creating meaningful experiences with food that drives him to re-envision a long-standing family business into a very high-end dining experience.

More than that, clearly, it is about the way the transformation of the restaurant is also a transformation of the people that work there. Which is exactly why it is a show that I am more than just mildly obsessed with. Character development and the complexities of the human condition are always of interest to me. It is, in no small measure, the reason I love books so much. (Oh! Imagine if “The Bear” was a book series!! But I digress…)

I didn’t like one particular character at all initially. We weren’t meant to, as the audience, but Richie has turned out to be a character that I now feel deeply moved by, as I experience each new episode. In the first season, he is understandably divorced, with a quick temper and an immature social view. He is stuck in the routine of a life he doesn’t like, but is so adverse to change that it hampers his own happiness. If you’ll forgive me for saying so on my “professional” blog, he’s an ass. He is arrogant but ignorant; he is crass and verbally abusive; he is shallow, and, perhaps most importantly, he is lost and doesn’t even know it.

I won’t give away the show if you haven’t seen it (definitely watch it!) but Richie undergoes one of the best written and best acted character arcs I have watched. And it was during the episode tonight that I took pause and viewed his transformation from a professional standpoint instead of exclusively a personal one.

Tonight, on the episode I watched, (Season 4, episode 2) Richie, the front-of-house manager, enthusiastically approaches one of the head chefs with a short motivational quote he has written for his staff. It is demonstrably apparent that he has labored over these words, and his energy suggests that he is proud and wants to share that. She responds, however, with a quizzical look and starts her response with “I wonder if…” and without fanfare suggests that perhaps his sentiment is too “lofty” for the intended audience. She goes on to suggest that he just simplify what he is trying to say. She doesn’t at all follow the teacher “criticism-sandwich-approach” of complimenting, whereby we provide a compliment, then a small, carefully worded suggestion before slathering more compliments on top. The chef just dives in, makes an unapologetic suggestion, and stands firm on it.

And here’s the part that got me: Richie immediately reacts in agreement, mentally kicking himself for the error. He doesn’t defend his word choice, he doesn’t nod politely and then leave without intention of changing it. He doesn’t go and complain to someone else about how she always cuts him down, or how she thinks she is better than everyone. He looked her in the eyes, listened to her response with his whole self, and owned it. He nods, in obvious appreciation and gratitude and then he says the two words I have come to love most on this show, “Heard, Chef.”

I paused the show. I sat there on the couch and stared at the frozen screen. Richie, the asshole from just a couple seasons ago, is in a suit and he has spent time perfecting words to motivate the people that work for him, in positive, uplifting ways. He took feedback (that wasn’t even overtly requested) in a rational, open-minded, gracious way. And in those amazing two words, “Heard, Chef,” he demonstrated that gratitude and respect back to his colleague. There is a high level of trust that they both want the best, and that is the only thing that matters. This level of trust not only fosters cooperation, it has created a community of people on the show, that all bring their unique talents together to achieve one common goal.

My question, my pause, is how do we foster this kind of mutual trust, support, cooperation, and gratitude for each other in the teaching profession? Or, to be brutally honest, my question is, what am I doing that is preventing or prohibiting this kind of teamwork with my colleagues?

I know administrators have tried and tried to almost push teamwork upon us, which even as I type and you read those words, we all know cooperation and collaboration won’t happen unless it is organic, but I appreciate their mindset. I can even reluctantly admit that I am fortunate to work for a district that has created weekly collaboration time. And yet… I don’t feel it. I don’t feel that cooperation is achieved during these times. I actually dread our weekly meetings. They are something to be endured, in my mind, not enjoyed, and I have never gone into one thinking I would emerge with meaningful suggestions that helped me grow professionally. That is just to say that if a colleague told me a lesson I had worked on was too “lofty” and that I should “simplify,” I wouldn’t react like Richie did. Not universally. There are only a couple colleagues that I would graciously hear meaningful suggestions from, especially unsolicited ones.

The transformation of “The Bear,” (the physical restaurant itself, and the personal changes in the staff) did not happen quickly, and it did not happen seamlessly. It was a mountainous struggle, with far more valleys than peaks. Each character had their own personal journey and battles to get to this high level of trust. The timelines were all different, the process was unique to each character, and the methods were as distinctive.

Administration can provide the time and the shared goal, but, first, we need to address our personal needs and obstacles and align our mindset with the common goal. Only then can we collaborate effectively to create something amazing.

To that end, I am declaring this year, “The Year of The Bear.” At least for me. My goal, my overarching professional goal, is to cooperatively identify a common ELA goal with my colleagues and then, to personally, wholeheartedly, buy in to that one goal so much that I cannot help but say, “Heard, Chef,” whenever someone helps me take steps forward toward that goal. The goal for us as teachers, it seems to me, is to create positive learning environments that not only foster a lifelong love of learning for every student in our care, but also helps these small humans grow into gracious, respectful and responsible citizens of this world.

And to that end, I say, “Heard, Chef.”

Every Intention

amykoehn

I had every intention today of following the lesson plans I put together two weeks ago. I had the vocabulary activity copied, the reading passage (with noted discussion points) we were going to continue to work on as a whole class, small group activities already in folders, and the next poem we were going to work on in writing ready to go. All of my teaching materials were organized in my green go-to folder, my small group clipboard was ready for the day’s focus, and our current read aloud was bookmarked and ready to go by my reading chair.

But that’s not how teaching goes, is it? It’s now 4:30 and the stack on my desk still has the new poem type we never got to. The read aloud book still sits in the same spot, untouched today, and there’s a globe on my front table that wasn’t there when the day started.

Our reading passage this week is aligned with what my co-teacher is focused on in social studies. We are looking more closely at what the main products and industries are in Michigan. I have read so much research this year about how important background knowledge is to reading growth, that I have tried to augment, supplement and continue the topics that my partner teaches to help solidify not only the reading strategies but to build up their knowledge base while we do it.

But as we dove into the reading passage today, we stopped to really dissect a particular sentence that said, “…the moderating effect of the Great Lakes creates perfect conditions for growing [blueberries].” We pulled up a map of the United States so we could visually support what we were reading. We talked extensively about the word “moderating” until we had a good understanding of it, particularly how it could relate to one of the Great Lakes.

And then, the conversation just kept evolving. I shared how I had never seen fields of blueberry bushes or grapevines until I moved to Michigan. They asked where I had lived before and I showed (on the map) about where in northern Illinois I grew up. This led to quite a conversation about how the proximity (another word we had a great discussion about, with several “Ah ha!” moments as they related it to “approximation” in Math!) of my Illinois location was about the same with regard to Lake Michigan as where we live now. “How could it be so different?” they wondered. And a conversation about the jet stream ensued.

Which somehow led to a discussion about time zones (a topic very few knew anything about). Which led to a discussion about seasons and to my shock that these ten-year-olds didn’t know the earth was on a tilt. Hence, the globe (that I ran to fetch from the copy room, momentarily abandoning my class for a prop that I hoped would help them better understand how seasons are created.)

Which is all to say that the discussion points that I had already noted for today in my plans were abandoned. The small group work was cut short, and we never did finish reading the rest of the whole group passage. I handwrite my plans, and this means a mess in my playbook for sure, but I cannot say I mind one bit.

THIS is building background knowledge. My objective for today was still met. It is impossible to know the exact gaps that students have in their experience, or to know what they have learned but forgotten. As these moments arise, (when I can afford to let a tangent take over the lesson), I want to seize them. I want to help students in the moment to connect new concepts to prior learning and if that prior learning isn’t there, then I want to help them build a scaffold from what they knew to where we are, including learning what knowledge they need to know along that route.

So, at the end of ELA today, the vocabulary page was completed, but no cinquain poems had been written in our notebooks; the small group work had been minimized; a map of the United States remained on the board with lines denoting time zones, jet streams, and lake effect notations; and a dusty globe sat on my table. But, with any luck, some gaps were filled. And when we get back to that same reading passage tomorrow, their understanding of how Lake Michigan helps our area of the state produce such amazing blueberries, grapes, apples and asparagus will be deeper and more complete.

That’s what it was all about to begin with anyway, wasn’t it?