How a Grade 5 'non-writer' taught me a valuable lesson about writing!

One of the great challenges we face as a teachers is that if we don't know our students then we are at a great disadvantage in extracting the best from them. I talk in chapter 5 of my book 'Pedagogy and Education for Life' about the depth of community life in our schools and classrooms and has this has a key formative role in the lives of our students. I shared a story from my days as a Teacher in Charge of a one teacher school and how in a school community, whether a group of friends, a class, or perhaps the whole school. I suggested that this was a rich and important element of any shared community. 

My take home message in relation to that classroom even was that as teachers we need to understand the complexity of the shared communities of practice that exist in schools and be able to tap into them. Sadly, some teachers visit the classroom, teach content and control behaviour without ever developing deep understanding of their students. We might know some of our students well, some a little, and others perhaps barely at all except in relation to their behaviour, work and interactions in class. What do we know about their hopes, loves, dreams and the things that excite them most outside school?

In my book I talk about the need to "orchestrate classroom life". We do this in many ways, but a key tool is to listen and observe classroom and school life in the 'cracks' of the school day. I've just shared a post on my literacy blog "Literacy, Families & Learning" that should be of interest to readers of this blog. I share a story of an elementary (primary) student who I was teaching in the US. She was a difficult students at times, who did little work. 

 

But as I share in the post "On an ordinary morning, as I prepared for the school day I heard the yellow school buses arrive, and the rush of students down the corridor shortly just minutes later. Students burst through the door and we did the usual crowd control as. Imagine my surprise when a bundle of poetry spilled on the floor in front of me."

You can read the full blog post HERE.

I hope that it proves helpful in reinforcing the vital need to know our students.