Month: January 2020

After a very crazy, busy week, I can finally take some time to reflect on my learning at Heinemann’s Multi-Day Institute “Curiosity Across the Curriculum: Pursuing Engagement, Literacy, and Action through Inquiry.” What a time of learning it was!

I must be honest – when the day came to travel to Charleston, SC, I was in a “Do I really want to go to this” mood. It had already been a long week, and I truly wanted to just stay home and sleep. I found out very quickly once the institute started that I had 3 exciting days ahead of me. This was not like a conference where you pick and choose your sessions, but every session built on the last one so you didn’t want to miss a single meeting. We were asked to choose a grade level group and that group became your “family.” You learned from them. You read with them. You researched with them. This was nothing I had ever attended before. You didn’t want to let your group down so you became an active participant in each session.

There was the key – Active Participation. I wanted to learn.

Here are my take aways from this phenomenal weekend:

1. We can’t expect our students to do anything that we haven’t done/experienced ourselves.
2. We are not ready to teach a child until we know ten things about them. (Donald Graves)
3. Content teaching should not be about filling students with content knowledge to spit back on a test. Content teaching is about teaching your students how to better UNDERSTAND, THINK ABOUT, and REMEMBER their content area studies.
4. “Most children spend their whole school day without asking a single question or engaging in a sequence of behavior aimed at finding something new.” Susan Engel
5. See, Think, Wonder (This strategy is something that I had known about for many years and really did not understand the depth of it until this PD. We used it many times throughout the weekend, and the more I used it, the more I wanted to learn about what I saw, what I thought, and what I wondered.)

I will stop at 5 take aways but there were many more! Sometimes educators think they have arrived in their teaching, or they think that they do not have the time to learn more about their profession. I told my preservice teachers this week that when they stop developing their knowledge as a teacher, and when they stop reflecting on what they do, that is the time for them to get out of the teaching profession. They are not only short changing themselves since education changes rapidly, but they are also short changing their students. Students need teachers that are the best, and when teachers stop growing in their profession, they are no longer at their best.

I was tired going into this institute, and I was exhausted coming out of it, but I want to be the best professor that I can be, so I will never stop learning. What about you?

A new year! I’m always excited to start a new year. I don’t do resolutions since I usually break them by January 2, but I do like to make goals. So what will my goals for Literacy by Lisa be for 2020?

Goal 1: Stay connected. It is easy as a university professor to become disconnected with classroom teachers. I left the classroom as a job, but I don’t want to leave the classroom as a professional. There is so much change that happens each year, and I want to know what changes and how that affects the educational world. If you are a classroom teacher, please feel free to contact me with topics of interest to you, and I will do my research and write on that topic. Let’s stay connected!

Goal 2: Read. I am toying with the idea of doing book reviews of children’s and YA literature. This is a goal that I will have to be disciplined in accomplishing, but I need to stay current with what students are reading. Do you have any suggestions of books that I should read and review?

Goal 3: Write. I feel that writing is my way of getting a message out to educators. I frequently speak at conferences which I LOVE to do, but that is usually only a 60 minute conversation, and I may or may not see the attendees again. But writing possibly reaches more educators. It connects ideas – not only mine but all who read this blog. Discussions can get started and develop all through a piece of writing. I encourage everyone who reads this blog to add to the conversation through the comments. I can start the discussion, but it doesn’t go very far when I have to reply to my own writing!

I want to thank you for spending a few minutes reading my thoughts and ideas. With these 3 goals before me, I hope to broaden and deepen not only your knowledge base of reading but also mine.

Here’s to a wonderful 2020!