By: Lester Laminack

 

Mr. Rogers understood and demonstrated the elegance and power in simple and consistent structures and routines.  His framework was predictable and visible, even to his young viewers. Think about the opening scene for any episode.  He enters and speaks to you, directly to you, in the singular. He sings and moves toward the closet where he unbuttons his jacket, removes it, and hangs it in the closet.  He takes his sweater from a hanger, puts it on and buttons or zips. Then he steps down to a bench where he removes his loafers, neatly tucks them away before slipping his foot into one sneaker and tying it, and then the other.  In that simple routine, he greets you, speaks directly to you and engages you in the familiar song that is your welcome each time you visit. During the time it takes to sing that simple song he demonstrates buttoning/unbuttoning, zipping/unzipping, tying/untying, and putting things where they belong so you can locate them the next time.  And, then, at the end of each episode, he does it all again as he makes his way to the door signaling the closure of our time together.

 

Each of the daily routines is paired with a song or his gentle, focused voice giving you an overview of what he has planned.  He tells you what to expect as he begins to unfold the episode and you move forward with a story, a visit to picture-picture for a virtual field trip or a deeper look into a topic, or he phones a neighbor to request permission to bring you along for visit, or on occasion someone drops in to visit with you.  In all this, he models civility and the importance of planning and preparation, the efficiency of reflection and thought before action.

 

These simple routines remind us of the impact a consistent practice can have. They provide a structure that enables our students to anticipate what is coming next. It sets them up to prepare their materials and their mindset.

 

What You Can Learn From Mr. Rogers

 

Each episode includes time for nurturing the imagination. You know Mr. Rogers will lead you there when he takes a seat on the bench next to Trolley.  Almost always the plan for “make-believe” will extend the theme of the day (e.g. worry, feelings, competition, mistakes). As you move through the tunnel and come out on the other side in “The Land of Make Believe” you have trusted friends there as well, ( e.g. X the Owl, Henrietta Pussycat, Lady Aberlin, Mr. McFeely, Daniel Striped Tiger, and others). You know that in each visit several of these trusted friends will be involved in some drama of their own. The storyline is typically simple and relatable, the variety of characters lets you see that it is possible for the same events to be perceived differently by a group of individuals.  Feelings get hurt, friends realize their comments and or actions can inadvertently cause another to feel bad. You see the powerful positive impact of heartfelt apologies and the opportunity to change thinking and behavior. Perhaps the beauty of those simple puppets is that they can say things you feel; things you may not have the words to say or that you may not be sure it is ok to say.  Mr. Rogers and your friends in “The Land of Make Believe” allow you to acknowledge feelings even before you can name them, to see the impact of words and actions and to understand that you have control of your own.

 

The entire episode moves through a series of events or scenes hinged one to another with a simple routine (e.g. an action, a movement, a song). The predictability of his routine does not result in boredom; rather it brings a sense of stability in a world of the fast-paced, ever-changing schedules and routines in the lives of children. There is never a wasted moment, yet there is never a moment when you feel rushed.  There is no pressure to do it right or do it better. There is no suggestion that your value as a person hinges on your success with any activity. Instead, Mr. Rogers assures you over and over again that you are enough just the way you are. He assures you that he is proud to be your neighbor and that you are the only you in this great wide world.

 

Important lessons for Teachers

 

Mr. Rogers is still teaching us.  His show spanned over 30 years and in that time his structures and routines remained consistent.  Let’s pause here to consider what this can mean for us today.

• Each of us desires to be acknowledged, to have our humanity recognized and confirmed.  Mr. Rogers greets you and makes you feel welcome. We owe that to our students, each of them deserves to be acknowledged and welcomed each day.
• Simple structures, rituals, and routines help us focus and move into the frame of mind needed to engage. Mr. Rogers had songs that marked various transitions in the visit.  We can easily adapt that to sharing a poem, a song, or a rhyme that is age appropriate to mark the opening and closing of a class meeting.
• Unspoken visible rituals can be effective as transition markers. Mr. Rogers had several of these including his jacket, sweater, loafers, sneakers, feeding the fish, and more. We can adapt these easily.  Designate a stool for read-aloud and sit on it only when sharing a text. Or set aside a cap or hat that you wear only when reading aloud. You may keep a pair of reading glasses on a shelf next to the basket of read-aloud texts for the week. Wear those particular glasses only when you share a text.  Simple routines send clear messages that soon become a part of the classroom culture.
• Civility is learned.  Mr. Rogers was a living model of civility.  He was always kind. He never had an unkind word for or about anyone.  He greeted visitors warmly and genuinely. He always phoned ahead to request permission to visit and to bring you along with him.  He was conscious of the feelings of others. Today we often hear adults lament the loss of civility. Well, my friends, it is we adults who must be the models of what it looks like and why it is needed. This one is easy, but essential.
• Planning and advanced preparation reduces anxiety and increases efficiency. In each episode, Mr. Rogers talks through his plans for our visit.  He poses questions, offers ideas, reflects, and then takes action. He invites us to think. Consider the importance of sharing aloud your plan for the day. When students know how the class will unfold and how each piece fits into the whole we reduce the potential for misunderstanding, misconnections, and misbehavior.  
• Imagination is a powerful tool. Mr. Rogers folded imagination/pretend into each episode.  It was in our visits to “The Land of Make Believe” that we had an opportunity to see the “theme” of the episode play out inside the stories of a familiar cast of characters.  As teachers, we recognize the importance of giving our students multiple access points to the lesson. Follow Mr. Rogers’ lead and offer students the opportunity to imagine and to consider the lesson through a different lens.

Keep in mind that children thrive on routines, kindness, and recognition of what they do well.  Reach and develop the imagination of every child you teach, for heightened imagination is a path to creative thinking.

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 Laura Robb

Though we are social beings who crave relationships and meaningful interactions with others, we also relish having time alone.  And that’s a good thing. Alone time cultivates reflection, the ability to raise questions and to look back at an experience, think deeply about it, and gain self-knowledge.

Recently, Gracie, a fifth grader, and her group finished reading Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner. Gracie closed her eyes for a few moments, hoping more pages would pop into the book. “There has to be more,” she blurted out. “It can’t end. I want to know what happened after Searchlight died.”   Gently, her teacher reminded Gracie that she could imagine what happened by extending the end of the story in her mind, and she could continue to think about what she had learned from the characters and events.

Gracie and her teacher illustrate what reflecting about reading looks like, and how reflection can boost students’ connections to characters, conflicts, problems, and new information. But it can also do more. Gracie and her group developed empathy for being an orphan and little Willy shouldering adult responsibilities.

Defining Reflection

Reflection is the act of thinking about something and can be a personal experience like planning a vegetable garden, mulling over a book during and after reading or thinking about a movie or play. A powerful learning and imagining tool, reflection enhances experiences by deepening our insights, helping us make sense of new information, and making it possible to use prior knowledge to create new understandings.  Those who reflect experience joy in reading, learning, and daily life. They also develop agency and the capacity for positive change.

A solo activity, reflection is unique to each person’s experiences and prior knowledge. It’s also meta-cognitive, providing a learner with knowledge about processing information, connecting to past experiences, and transferring learning to new situations.  However, reflecting is individualized thinking and learning that requires modeling and practice.

Promoting Reflective Classrooms

Teachers who squarely see the benefits of questions and reflection in their lives can become the intermediary in developing the habit of raising questions and reflecting among students.  When teachers reflect on lessons, observations of and conferences with students, they collect stories and information that can support scaffolding learning and provide insights into students’ behavior and attitudes.  It’s helpful to set aside ten to fifteen minutes each day to think about what worked and what you can do to increase students’ engagement and desire to learn.

Reflecting on Teaching:  For me, the level of success in a class has everything to do with students’ engagement in the work and their motivation to work hard and learn. By cultivating the habit of thinking about each teaching day, you can celebrate successes as well as repair areas that require attention.   The questions that follow encourage reflecting on teaching:

• How can I help students become more involved in their learning?
• Why were most students engaged, and a few disengaged?
• How do I involve students in planning learning experiences?
• Do students offer input and feedback on using technology on the classroom?
• Why is it important to invite students to help decide how to arrange our classroom for project-based learning, book discussions, genius hour, collaborative planning?
• Am I giving students feedback that helps them improve?
• Are students doing most of the talking and work? If not, how can I flip this?
• Is choice a part of independent and instructional reading? Of collaborative projects? Of presentations?
• Does the way I use technology enhance students’ learning?
• Am I effectively modeling how to reflect on reading, on a discussion,  a collaborative project, and on the use of technology?

Nurture your curiosity and ask questions to examine your teaching and students’ learning. Your questions can help you resolve issues independently or more likely, send you to colleagues for suggestions. When you wonder why a student didn’t absorb a lesson or why a child misbehaves or can’t complete a task, you’ve taken the first step to explore ways to scaffold and support.  Be curious. Wonder. Find the path to help yourself and students grow.

Students Reflecting on Learning

To help students actively reflect on a lesson or work they’ve been doing, first invite them to silently think about their work.  To guide students, make your inner voice visible and think aloud to show them how you might consider the task. You can say something like: I wish I had set aside more time to work on projects today because 20 minutes wasn’t enough; I’ll do better tomorrow. Or We don’t seem to get to independent reading every day, I’m considering starting the class with it.  Doing this builds students’ mental model of what reflective thinking is like. Point out that frequently reflection can lead to a decision that improves learning and use of time.

Have pairs generate and share questions, write these on chart paper, and invite students to choose one or two. The goal is for students to integrate reflective questioning while working on a task or project, and after it’s completed.  What follows is a list of some learning experiences for student reflection. You and students will pinpoint many more.

• Writing Tasks
• Reviewing Notebook Entries
• Participating in Small-Group Discussions
• Preparation for Lessons
• Contributions to collaborative learning projects
• Book talks
• Taking notes
• Project-based learning
• Genius Hour
• Active listening during discussions
• Silent reading
• Stamina
• Quarterly review of portfolios

Reflection as a Tool for Change

Reflective questioning deepens understanding and can lead to positive changes.  When you and your students reflect and then express what you learned, thinking moves beyond the experience to self-knowledge and transfer to other learning and life situations.

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Check out Evan’s blog posts on ScholasticEDU!

Learn more about Laura’s ideas on reading- check out- Teaching Reading in Middle School

Recently I was in a meeting discussing risk-taking, change, and disrupting routines.  I recall stating dynamic learner-centered classrooms will always be lead by dynamic teachers.  You cannot have an old-fashioned rigid teacher leading a progressive and dynamic classroom. The same parallel is true for a school. Progressive schools have principals who empower staff and students to take risks and grow as learners and thinkers because these principals value:

• curiosity;
• creativity;
• Innovation;
• taking risks;
• relationship building; and
• view making mistakes as information that can support positive change.

 

Why do some schools and classrooms appear so different?  One reason is that through their actions and beliefs, leaders can demonstrate how purposeful risk-taking is important for staff to grow as professionals.  This leading by example can give teachers permission to take risks. A risk can encourage teachers to try something small such as committing to reading aloud every day. Or they can risk disrupting a significant routine by moving from a teacher-centered to a student-centered approach.   Risk-taking can break a cycle of repetition. Permission to take risks is how we grow and become better. It will only happen if staff feel safe and observe you taking risks, missing the mark, but continuing to work hard until you reach your goal.

 

Disrupt what you do.

 

The school principal sets the tone for a school.  A tone of intentional risk-taking and innovation or a tone of rigid compliance.  It is the principal who can stifle creativity, imagination, and risk-taking or empower staff to find their greatness.  Leadership matters. The world we are preparing students for is far different than what we experienced in school. And we educators need to prepare our students for this changing world and the uncertainties and unknowns of the future.

 

Here are my top five ways for a principal to set a tone where taking risks and disrupting routines is part of the school’s culture.  Use these to reflect and then to change. Staff and students deserve it.

 

Model: I have known “leaders” who attempt to communicate appropriate risk-taking, but when staff observes them they don’t see congruence between words and action.  If the principal wants to create a culture where taking risks is acceptable, staff must see the principal doing the same.

 

What are you doing to show staff that you too are taking risks?

 

Define: Taking risks is broad. Effective principals communicate what risk-taking means in their school.  They build understanding through discussion groups and book and article studies. Risk-taking merely to take a risk may not create changes in learning.  However, purposeful risk-taking, evidenced through improved learning, is right on target.

 

Encourage:  Effective school leaders give specific positive praise to staff who are taking risks and growing as teachers. This type of feedback makes a difference.  Specific positive feedback will encourage teachers to continue to try new methods, to take risks, and know if they make mistakes, they can always remedy them.

 

How are you encouraging change using specific praise?

 

Empower:  In the world of business empowered employees bring innovation to a company and can improve the bottom line.  In education, staff who are empowered to take risks and innovate impact student learning. Empowered staff will be more invested in what they do and most importantly why they do it.  Smart risk-taking helps develop empowered teachers who can impact student learning.

 

How do you empower staff to take purposeful risks to improve their practice?

 

Safety: Staff needs to feel safe to take risks, and they need to understand failure is part of taking risks.  If you scold staff for taking a risk or they hear of another staff member admonished for taking a risk, the entire initiative to change can fail. On the other hand, if the principal communicates that failure is a part of risk-taking, he or she lets staff know they can learn from failures and move along the path pointed towards success. When staff have bad experiences and the principal meets trying something new with understanding, they will try again. How you treat staff will spread around the school.

 

Do staff in your school feel it is safe to take risks?

 

Risk-taking involves creativity, innovation, and disruption of routine.  Embrace intentional risk-taking, model it, communicate it, and celebrate it.  Empower staff and give them permission to try. Lead the change. Collaboratively create a culture celebrating creativity and innovation.  Staff and students need and deserve innovative schools. Be the leader who allows this to happen!

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by Laura Robb

Why make time for independent reading? It’s a question schools frequently wrestle with. The answer is simple. The more students read, the better readers they become. Independent reading builds stamina, the ability to concentrate for at least thirty minutes. It also enlarges vocabulary, background knowledge, and provides the practice students need to become proficient and advanced readers.  Equally important is that independent reading develops students’ personal reading lives and sets them on the path to becoming lifelong readers because it nurtures their heads and hearts.

When I return to area schools to teach, I ask students this question: What do you think and feel while reading?  The responses that follow are typical of students who avoid reading and those who enjoy it.

• Jerome, an eighth-grade student wrote “0” and added “nothing.”
• Ricardo, a seventh grader, wrote: I learn good stuff about cars when I read. Sometimes I laugh and feel sad from books.”

Jerome dislikes reading and explained why during a conference: “I hate it.

Boring. Got better things to do.” Students like Jerome feel disconnected and alienated from reading. Stories and informational texts don’t affect their heads or their hearts.

In contrast, Ricardo enjoys reading fiction and nonfiction. An independent reading book is always on his desk. “If I have time, it’s [the book] there,” he tells me.  “I like to keep three or four books in my locker. If I finish one, it’s easy to get another [book].”

More than 1500 years ago, Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher wrote: “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” His words help explain why some students love to read and others dislike and avoid it: Unless reading affects mind and heart, students are merely decoders, saying the words on a page. That’s. Not. Reading.

To support students’ independent reading, first, reflect on and evaluate your classroom culture and environment by asking yourself, Does my teaching show how much I value independent reading?

Create a Class Culture That Values Independent Reading

The class environment you create can encourage students, even those who struggle with reading, to enter the reading life. It’s important to have a rich classroom library with books on a wide range of reading levels and diverse topics that offers access to books for students. Display books on your desk, under the chalkboard, on windowsills and advertise books that will motivate students to browse and choose one. In addition, it’s important to:

• Reserve time each week to present a brief book talk on new arrivals and invite students to book talk their favorites.
• Set aside class time for students to self-select independent reading books and find a comfortable place to read for twenty to thirty minutes.
• Share books you’re enjoying and read aloud every day.
• Invite students to share their favorite books on a class blog and/or a school website.
• Have conversations with students about their books and encourage them to discuss their books with a peer partner. Try questions such as: Why did you choose this book? Explain how did the book make you feel? What about the book did you enjoy? What did you learn from this book? How did the book connect to your life?
• Invite the principal and other guests into your class to read aloud.

You’ll want to have books on a wide range of reading levels and topics so all students choose books they can read and understand—books that affect head and heart. In a class where the teacher values independent reading, students develop the motivation and engagement to read more and read widely.

Motivation and Engagement Matter

Motivation comes from within a student and is visible when you observe students choose to read for the pleasure the experience offers. Students past reading experiences affect their motivation to read. If they struggle with texts used at school or find reading tasks such as completing worksheets boring, their motivation or desire to read diminishes.

In contrast, students who are voracious readers have positive and joyful past experiences with reading. Their motivation to read is consistently high because they’re always engaged with the books they choose and the reading experiences teachers offer. Motivated and engaged readers choose to read self-selected books at school and at home.  A sixth grader put it this way: “if I’m into a book the only thing that can get my attention is if my pants are on fire.”

Assessment: The Elephant in the Room

Avoid grading independent reading. Grading dioramas and nightly summaries of completed pages will turn students away from reading. Instead, have students write the title and author of completed or abandoned books on a book log form and choose a book to discuss with their group every six weeks. Encourage students to present short book talks once each month.  In a class with twenty-eight students who present monthly book talks, students will be introduced to 280 books over ten months. Trust. Your. Students. To. Read.

Closing Thoughts

Instead of saving it for the end of class and frequently omitting it, start your class with fifteen to twenty minutes of independent reading. Encourage students to keep a self-selected book on their desks so they can read it when they complete a task early. Make sure the centerpiece of your homework is thirty minutes of reading each night. If you make time for independent reading at school and celebrate books, then a transformation from “I hate reading,” to “Can we have more time to read?” surely will occur.

Follow Laura on Twitter @LRobbTeacher

Check out Evan’s blog posts on ScholasticEDU!

Learn more about Laura’s ideas on reading- check out- Teaching Reading in Middle School