I’m sure you’ve all heard that phrase in one variation or another. But when you genuinely take the time to pause and reflect on the idea, ask yourself, How often do you truly make every moment count?
Sometimes those moments may exist within your personal lives. Making sure you take time for yourself means: slowing down long enough to plant a flower garden; create a piece of artwork; indulge in a Netflix binge; or even just walk through the local park. When you set aside moments to slow down and spend time with yourself, you’re making moments count. You’re acknowledging that personal moments can fuel you with energy, creativity, and a desire to reflect.
So many of us, especially educators, find ourselves spinning our wheels constantly trying be better, working harder, taking on more projects. And in doing that, we often allow special, quiet moments slip right by us. Unnoticed.
Taking time to nurture yourself is not a bad thing. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy, blase, self-obsessed, or unattached. Instead, it shows how much you value your personal health and knowing that to be your best you need to be mindful of three elements: your mental, spiritual, and physical health. You will never be able to do what you’re meant to do unless you cultivate and maintain the creative fire within you.
Making every moment count also includes the students and adults you come in contact with every day. You can quickly allow the to-do list, constant stream of interruptions, and your own emotional reaction to events to distract you. Being engulfed by work can push aside those moments that fall right in front of you, waiting to be noticed–moments such as:
That moment where the teacher across the hall is suffering through a recent cancer diagnosis. She longs for someone on her team to ask, “How are you doing?” so she feels she isn’t walking this road alone.
That moment where a child walks in with his head down, hating who he is, because that morning his father beat him again and spewed hateful untruths about the boy he raised.
The single mother, who works three jobs to give her children the life she never had. She struggles to get her kids to school on time and every morning keeps from making eye contact with the school staff fearing they’ll label her a “bad mother.”
The high school senior who just learned of his acceptance into the college of his dreams but has no one to share the good news with.
Or even something as simple as the little girl who passed her first test of the year and wants someone to tell her, “I’m proud of you.”
Moments like those I described exist, and they’re there for the taking. The question though is Will you see them? There is scientific research that proves when you show gratitude to others, it increases your positive mood, more than it increases theirs. But will you understand the power of a single moment? Will you make it a priority to find ways to make moments matter for others?
“Make every moment count!”
You and I have heard it before. So today, let’s pay attention to the silent whispers of moments that are calling you to action: moments when you reserve time to care for your mental, spiritual, and physical well being; moments when you reach out to support others crying for help. Grab and hold those moments close to your heart. Take a deep breath and find the time to make every moment matter more than it ever has before.
In my latest book The Quickwrite Handbook (Heinemann, 2018) I described how I came to do what I called “quickwrites.” Year after year I noticed several kids, frequently boys, staring into space more often than they were putting words on paper. Talking to them, trying to help them with their ideas was not a big help. I read Don Murray’s work about writing fast to outrun the censor in all of us. Sounded good. But for those kids that continued staring into space, telling them to write fast didn’t help if they still couldn’t think of anything to write. That’s when I thought, if I put a short, compelling piece of writing in front of them to show them what someone else did, and encourage them to “borrow a line” and write as fast as they can for two to three minutes off that line, that might give them something to hold onto, something from which to build their own ideas. Write fast, I told them. Don’t think too hard. Don’t plan what comes next. You are writing to find writing—the words you didn’t know you were going to write until you wrote them.
Photo from Heinemann
And it worked, and has continued to work, for most of my kids.
Holding on to someone else’s line has been magical in helping my students find their own words. More often than not they can get rid of that line as they continue to draft their thinking in their words.
Maybe it was the notion of holding on to someone else’s line that led me to Nikki Grimes’ book One Last Word. In this book Grimes has found inspiration from many of the poets of the Harlem Renaissance to write her own poems. The poetry she is writing takes the form of what is called the Golden Shovel. In her words “The idea of a Golden Shovel poem is to take a short poem in its entirety, or a line from that poem (called a striking line), and create a new poem, using the words from the original. Say you decide to use a single line: you would arrange that line, word by word (one word under another), in the right margin. Then you would write a new poem, each line ending in one of those words.”
This is the first year I have tried this form with my students. We had just finished reading Refugee by Alan Gratz. As we read the book I asked them to collect lines that resonated with them from the three families’ stories. I asked them to write down questions that came to mind as we read, and to look up articles and pictures that might help them answer the questions. When we were done with the book I encouraged them to share response or reaction in any form they chose. But, I did show them One Last Word as a possibility.
Although this worked especially well after reading the book Refugee, because of its emotional topic, I imagine these examples could be used at any time for any kind of writing. These were the instructions and examples I gave my students, adapted from Nikki Grimes.
Write a poem by
using the line/s from a poem, each word of the line becomes the last word in each line of your poem, or
using a favorite quote from Refugee or any author or book you love, each word of the quote becomes the last word in each line of your poem, or
using a newspaper headline with a compelling lead or poignant photo attached, each word in the headline becomes the last word in each line of your poem
I gave the students several examples from Nikki Grimes book One Last Word. I showed them how she took the poem “Hope” by Georgia Johnson and used the first line of that poem to shape her poem “On Bully Patrol.” Then I showed them what I wrote.
I used the last line from Mary Oliver’s poem “The Summer Day” because it is a line I use as a mantra in working with eighth graders: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
This is what I wrote, using that line:
Sometimes, in their writer-reader notebooks students tell
Truths that they are admitting to me
And so often I don’t know what
it is
That would help them cope with it
Whether the “it” is hunger or homelessness, self-doubt
or bullying or even dysphoria. As a teacher you
Try your best to plan
A strategy to
Help each child do
What they need to do, with
Compassion and sensitivity. Your
Concern and helplessness make you worry that one
Day this wild
Child, who is only defending herself and
Trying to make the world work for her, will know what to do with her one precious
life.
Linda Rief
Many students found poetry by crafting their poems in this form. Sophie asked, “Do we have to stick with that form, one last word?”
“Absolutely not,” I told her. “Form should never drive what you have to say. It is only a suggestion. Let your words take the form that best fits what you want to say.”
Sophie wrote:
Tallying the Daily Dead
Line from Refugee by Alan Gratz, p.195
When you were in kindergarten
you learned how to tally.
You thought nothing of it,
nor should you have.
It was just a way
to count the numbers
that were put in front of you by a teacher.
You were always told
tallying should not be used for big numbers,
like 65.6 million people displaced at the end of 2016 or,
the 40.3 million displaced
within their owncountry or
perhaps not
the 22.5 million forced to flee
to another country.
In kindergarten,
you tallied numbers.
Now,
we tally lives.
Sophie M. 8th grade
I am always looking for a variety of ways to help students get words on paper. No matter what way that might be, we need to remember: try the idea ourselves, give the students examples (ours, professionals, other students), give them choices within the framework, and let the framework go if they have other ideas. The bottom line in writing: finding every, and any way we can, to help students communicate their thinking in order to grow their voices.
References:
Gratz, Alan. 2017. Refugee. NY. Scholastic.
Grimes, Nikki. 2017. One Last Word. NY: Bloomsbury Children’s Books.
Rief, Linda. 2018. The Quickwrite Handbook. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
I am always entranced by the sounds of reading—the turning pages, the rhythmic breathing, the steady movements. These sounds, intoxicating and inviting, are part of the language of book love. There is no tension, no aggravation. Just kids engaged with books. My teaching philosophy rests on the belief that all students want to read and have the capacity to develop an authentic reading life. Not all students enter my classroom prepared to live and to think beside books, though. The act of joyful reading, where they have time to self-select books, talk with friends about their reading lives, exchange books recommendations, and write about their reading, has too often been absent from their experiences. Opportunities to fall in love with books, in many cases, have been scarce. But I believe a classroom rich with literacy can change that. When kids have access to books, and that access is founded on choice, they migrate from the arid land of non-reading and wade into an oasis of story.
Authentic reading instruction, the work of real readers, is powerful. Beyond the walls of my classroom, books speak to people, and those people, moved by story and language, share their reading lives with those around them. There are no cumbersome projects or dense worksheets that accompany that type of reading experience. Instead, people read and fall in love with books and invite others to engage in joyful reading. That’s the type of environment I work hard to create for my students. Readers are complex thinkers—they analyze, synthesize, evaluate, and critique. Although I want students to think critically and to use their awareness of structure and craft moves to interpret text, I want more than that for them. I want them to read because they love books.
In thinking about my own classroom and the practices that have helped students develop a love of reading, I notice that conversations, writing, and reading are the most effective methods. There are choices I make as an educator, both pedagogically and philosophically, that give kids a stronger foundation in adopting healthy reading habits. The following ideas and routines are several of many that have helped my kids fall in love with reading. I hope you find them useful.
Provide daily time for free choice independent reading.
Students need and deserve time to read every day. In my classroom, we begin each language arts period with 15-20 minutes of reading time. There are times when students are asked to pay attention to certain details in their reading, such as unfamiliar vocabulary or characterization, but mostly, I want them to read and to fall in love with their books. Providing a consistent time for reading establishes routine. With this time, I am telling students that reading matters, and I am willing to set time aside for this purpose. And there are no strings attached to the reading. Just enjoy.
Surround kids with lots of books.
We adopt the habits and qualities of the people and things around us. I want kids to become readers, so I surround them with books. The bookshelves, ledges, and countertops have books on them. A diverse classroom library, full of books that represent a wide range of interests, cultures, and genres, is essential. Students need to see themselves represented in books and they need to be exposed to books with characters who do not look and sound like them. Diversity matters. At the beginning of the year, students complete an interest inventory and from these, I learn a great deal about their lives, their hopes, and the things they love. The inventories, as well as conversations with students, help me stock the classroom library. Additionally, there is a poster at the front of my room where students write the titles of books they have finished as a visual display of our class reading life. I want books to be visible in my classroom, and when a child finishes a book, I want them to be surrounded with options to continue their reading habits.
A quick note on book talks: To engage kids with reading is to talk about books–a lot. Providing time to read is an essential part of a classroom, but moving kids to adopt authentic reading lives means finding books that will speak to them and sharing them. Give a brief summary, read a high-interest part, and pass it off to students. Let them hear the language of the story. This gifts them with a beautiful reason to read.
Allow time for writing about books.
Students need opportunities to write about their reading. Students keep reader’s notebook in my class, and often, we go into our notebooks (I write with them) and record our thoughts, feelings, and reactions. Readers will have visceral reactions to characters, and they will worry, hurt, and love alongside them. A notebook is a perfect place for those feelings to land. I have found that freewrites are powerful tools for students to examine their feelings and reactions to books. I also give students time to recommend through writing, either through adding an image and quick review on a Padlet or writing a note on a sticky and placing it in the front of a fascinating book. They solidify their reading and recommend a book to someone else. Simplicity is remarkable.
Encourage talk among students.
Reading is a social act. I ask students to write about their reading often; however, I want them to talk about their reading, too. After independent reading, I may ask kids to turn and talk to a neighbor about the section they just read, a character they are connecting with, or a word that stood out to them. Talk encourages rich thinking and deep comprehension, and it nudges us forward in our reading lives.
Discuss and share your personal reading life.
Reading and our reading lives are not static. Readers do not read with consistent vigor or engage in an academic close reading of every text they encounter. Students often assumed that was my reading life, and even when I confronted their bias with the truth (I read widely and intrepidly), they assumed that their judgment was the same. So I came up with a helpful solution—I decided to invite students into my personal reading life. And I was honest. I shared that there were books I did not like and books I abandoned because they did not speak to me. When I finished a book, I shared it with kids, even if it wasn’t one I felt they would pick up and read. I began listing my reading life on the door of my classroom so students could see that I participated in the process of reading alongside them. Sharing our reading lives with students humanizes the experience. It shows them that we do not read for school. We read read for life.
Encourage reflection.
All readers need time to think about their reading lives. Each week, I invite students to consider their reading lives and write their thinking inside their notebooks. Students are allowed to write about characters, big ideas, lessons they’ve learned, goals, and how they have grown and changed as readers. I also invite students to consider the ways that they have challenged themselves and to write about the types of books they may want to explore. Reflection provides clarity and direction for all readers, but developing readers grow beside this practice. Through writing or conversation, kids verbalize where they’ve been, and when they do, they have a better idea of where they need to go.
Sit beside kids and talk with them about their reading.
Helping kids grow as readers and thinkers means sitting beside them and talking with them about books. I have conversations with students constantly about their reading lives, asking them to describe how books make them feel, how they connect to characters, and what book(s) they want to read once they finish with their current read. Conversations foster deeper thinking.
I think about talking with students as ways to nudge them further. By sitting beside them and talking about books, I am validating their humanity. I am saying, “You matter and I want to talk to you about your reading.”
Promote reading, not books.
Esteemed librarian, author, and educator Jennifer LaGarde first brought this phrase to my attention. Since then, I have marinated in the idea that as a teacher, I am not a teacher of literature. I am a teacher of students. There are books that I have read and loved, and each year, I talk about those books with students. I read and share, brining in books that I am certain will speak to my kids’ interests. I am careful when I talk about books in my classroom because I want students to know that in my room, their reading choices are valued. I may not enjoy a genre or format that they love, but that doesn’t mean their choices are wrong or irrelevant. It just means that we are different people. We come together to read common texts often, but I try to bring it back to their independent reading lives. I am responsible for readers, not books.
Although we are in the middle of a school year, the beginning of 2019 is alive with possibility. This is a beautiful year to fall in love with reading. I ask you to join me in guiding students to a sense of book love, of self-awareness, of joy. Join me in believing that kids want to read, and through their interests and hearts, we can open a world of language and story that will captivate them for years to come. Moving kids to adopt reading habits is not always easy, but nudging them a little each day has great power. During a mini-lesson earlier today, I noticed Mark was still lost inside his book. Part of me wanted him to pay attention, to be polite, during instruction about delivering information through the use of second person narration. But I let him read. I have watched him strive this year to find a book that will speak to him and today, he did. Those nudges–sitting beside him, talking about books, and time to read–moved him to engage with a text, and I am confident that he will find more books that will enhance his growing reading life.
I hope my suggestions give your classroom life and possibility. This work we do is important. To learn beside students is a precious thing. There are many times when kids are not willing to read or are more engaged with something else. I keep trying, though. I refuse to give up. I continue to believe that there is a book that will move them into a love of reading. I invite you to believe alongside me.
I will never forget the moment I heard the words that felt like a cruel stab to my heart. As soon as I finished my session, a woman scurried toward me with a scowl plastered on her face. She identified herself as a special education director, stating in an angry tone:
“Research shows that special education students don’t benefit from independent reading so our teachers are forbidden to do it when they’re in the room.”
She walked away as abruptly as she came, leaving me to catch my breath as the full implications of an irresponsible justification of misinformed “research” washed over me. I began my career as a special education teacher in 1972, so a sense of deep sadness intermingled with conflicting emotions ranging from confused to frustrated to angry.
I wish I could say this display of ignorance is rare, but I’ve heard many variations of this tragic stance. Even worse, I see it play out in too many schools as our striving readers are removed from the very experiences that we should be celebrating. And for too many unsuspecting learners, this tradeoff is an intervention where volume is last on the instructional agenda. Considering our least proficient learners as undeserving of the research-based opportunities we so willingly offer our most proficient students is nothing short of educational malpractice.
“In far too many schools, we accept stagnant or low achievement and play the blame game. We use poverty and other outside factors to shirk our responsibility and maintain our low expectations, and we fail to acknowledge that we can do better. …We need to raise our expectations for what’s possible and see our students as capable and resilient, and assume responsibility for the achievement of all students.”
This illogical view merely blinds us to what’s possible and further widens the volume equity gap. While this is not a new problem, the issue is exacerbated by the intentional act of removing children from our responsibility to them. There are decades of research support for the dramatic role volume plays in student achievement but for the sake of this post, I’ll share just a few of the efforts to close the volume equity gap:
Instead, despite good intentions, educators often make decisions about instruction that compromise or supplant the kind of experiences all children need to become engaged, successful readers. This is especially true for struggling readers, who are much less likely than their peers to participate in the kinds of high-quality instructional activities that would ensure that they learn to read.
The Early Literacy Task Force led by Nell Duke clearly addresses volume in Essential Instructional Practices #8: Abundant reading material and reading opportunities in the classroom with this key bullet point:
opportunities for children to engage in independent reading of materials of their choice every day, with the teacher providing instruction and coaching in how to select texts and employ productive strategies during reading, feedback on children’s reading, and post-reading response activities including text discussion
Choice reading and volume is also highlighted in the newly released Children’s Rights to Read from the International Literacy Association while Stephanie Harvey and Annie Ward remind us in From Striving to Thriving (2017) that “… the best intervention is a good book–one a child can and wants to read.” These are only a few of the brilliant champions of choice and volume including Donalyn Miller, Colby Sharp, Penny Kittle, Kelly Gallagher, Laura Robb, and too many others to mention.
Notice that none of these references exclude any child or group from experiences that increase the volume of reading, and yet we continue to allow the ignorance-fueled idea that some children don’t benefit from choice reading to spread. Misguided educators allow school-based labels to rob some of our children of the voluminous joyful literacy opportunities they need and deserve. In the process, they cheat them of experiences that could maximize their growth as the volume equity divide widens.
So, what can we do? We could begin by ensuring that these priorities are in place:
Put non-negotiables practices such as read-aloud and independent reading in the daily schedule first and hold onto them for dear life for all children
Establish protected times in the day where no child can be removed during these essential events to receive outside support services
Put your money where your mouth is by purchasing the best children’s texts that you can find and fill schoolwide classroom libraries to brimming
Ensure classroom libraries reflect varied interest and need including picture books, chapter books, news magazines, comics, graphic novels and more
Remove all leveling references that tether children to a leveled bin and rob them of choice reading opportunities (this includes Accelerated Reading levels)
Explicitly teach children how to choose good fit books and honor their choices as you celebrate their personal interests in the selection process
Rethink programs like Accelerated Reader that turn reading into a test-fueled agenda and actually decreases the choice that fuels voluminous joyful literacy
Stop purchasing one-size-fits-all programs that wrongly assume that we have one-size-fits-all children and minimize time for meaningful voluminous reading
Alleviate computerized interventions that ignore the power potential of a highly knowledgeable teacher with massive doses of books in hand
Create a professional library that includes articles and books that address the role of volume so that teachers will have easy access to these references
Put volume at the very center of professional learning conversations and explore ways for teachers to embed reading opportunities into every learning day
Offer extensive professional support for elevating the benefits of independent reading through thoughtfully responsive and flexible instructional support
Make tiered pull-out interventions the last resort and prioritize your first line of defense so that classroom teachers will maintain a lead support role
Support teachers in designing more intentional intervention experiences that are carefully embedded into each learning day across all content areas
Model daily that you live and breathe voluminous joyful literacy in your own life as you share and display what you are reading
Provide daily opportunities for children to engage in rich reading collaborations and conversations including advertising reading with peers.
Ensure that interventions prioritize authentic and engaging reading, writing, and talking as you bring voluminous joyful literacy to life instructionally
Make voluminous joyful literacy the heart and soul of your school so active and enthusiastic engagement in choice reading is at the center of your efforts
John Guthrie provides research-based direction for making this important volume shift. His study of fourth graders should inspire our next step efforts as we acknowledge that our most proficient readers read 500% more than our least proficient readers. He adds:
Because engaged readers spend 500% more time reading than disengaged students, educators should attempt to increase engaged reading time by 200%-500%. This may require substantial reconfigurations of curriculum.
This means that we cannot use lack of time or conflicting schedules as an excuse, rather opting to expend our energy reconfiguring the learning day in the name of our readers. Removing children from these experiences adds to the volume equity issue and further removes us from the 500% increase our striving learners need. It’s worth emphasizing that Guthrie’s volume increase includes reading at home and at school. The questionable argument that volume should be considered a home issue ignores that this 500% increase requires both sources and that access widely varies from home to home, again minimizing volume. Our obsession with one-size-fits-all programs has also dramatically decreased volume while turning reading into a marketing frenzy.
For too long we have allowed irresponsible educators to make ill-informed decisions that fail to consider the implications of those decisions on children. Our silence has turned voluminous joyful literacy experiences for all children upside down. It’s time for us to recognize that shallow thoughtless choices that are devoid of logic or research are an insult to this profession and harm the helpless recipients of those choices – children.
Make no mistake about it – there is a serious volume equity issue in our schools and it is our responsibility to lift our collective voices into the professional air and speak out against this travesty of judgment. While I wish that I could have found the words at the fateful moment that inspired this post, I have since found my voice and intend to use it from this day forward. Children should not have to suffer from ignorance, regardless of whatever title of power they may wield. I intend to speak out against this distorted view and I ask that each of you do the same in whatever way you can. Because if we sit idly by in silence, then we become complicit co-conspirators of an irresponsible lie.
I choose voluminous joyful literacy opportunities and I will fight for the children who are depending on us…
