60/40
50/50
40/60
20/80
No, it's not the amount of fat in my ground beef or the decline of my eyesight. It's the evolution of my teaching, twenty years in the making.
In the beginning, I controlled 80% of our class time, and my students controlled 20%. I selected everything - their seats, their reads, their pen color. I designed calendars where students connected dots A to B to C easily because I only allowed them to look toward the next dot. Dot B was the only option after A, and I pointed the way. Forced the way, really.
With time, I stepped back, adjusting the percentage numbers slightly. Students selected from some output options based on the texts I selected. They read in literature circles on a book or two I provided. They still moved from point A to only point B, but the path was more potato chip wavy than pretzel stick straight.
Then, conversion. Metamorphosis. Revolution. Or finally finding myself and my teaching philosophy. It. Was. Liberating.
Today, students in room 1600 select their long texts and read from them daily. They write about and record their progress in both a writer's notebook and on a blog (see sidebar to your right!). We mini-lesson on specific skills and together study short texts for style and craft. And they write. They revise. They talk and share. They run their 80%. Meanwhile, I use my 20% to plan with them, coach them, point them from A to M or Z. Yes, I still have some control. I control the type of writing we are studying and experimenting with at the time. I control most of the shorter texts we uses as mentors. And I do control where they sit by having them draw cards each Monday to win a new table and new peer group.
But I don't care what pen color they use. As long as it's not highlighter yellow. My old lady eyes can't read that!
It has certainly been a slow progression of change. Maybe that makes me a slow learner. So much of it dealt with my confidence level and the idea that I would be judged or didn't really own the freedom to do things differently. However, with a few key professional development moments, a couple of significant mentors, and a desire to continually push my students and myself, it happened.
I'll never go back. I'm having too much fun!
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