Multiple days late, many dollars short, but the ideas keep coming
It has been 10 days into the 2018–2019 school year, and already I can see a change in expectation: a change in what teachers expect of their students and a change in what students expect of themselves. This is not only in my department, but also I see it in the school as a whole.
As a matter of fact, one of my colleagues pulled me aside and let me know that a student mentioned to her that it seems different at school this year.
“What seems different?” the art teacher asked.
“It seems like the teachers are working together on stuff this year. Like, I’m getting the same messages in all my classes,” the student responded with a puzzled look on his face.
This was the best beginning of the school year message I have ever heard, and the reason students are getting these coordinated messages is not an accident. It is due to the hard work of administrators, teachers, and students alike.
Three days at the end of July, I worked with the nearly new ELA team at my high school, and we discussed many of the great ideas I learned through my participation in the San Joaquin Valley Writing Project. One of those great ideas is using student choice to increase the amount of daily reading and writing students participate in throughout the school day.
As a department, we are implementing an independent reading system based on Gallagher and Kettle’s text 180 Days (2018). Students are able to choose their reading books, and the library was booked (no pun intended) for the first three weeks of school as class after class examined the stacks of books that have been waiting to be read since they were brought to our school.
The best part, for me, though, was negotiating the dialogue between teachers who are new, fresh, and free of educational cynicism work with those who have been teaching for many years and still ready to revamp curriculum as they came up with great ideas for classroom reading. We have teachers who are scheduling reading conferences with groups of students, both in and out of classroom time. We have teachers who conference with students during the allotted silent reading time in class. We are able to conduct formative assessments with our students that doesn’t mirror testing, that doesn’t take time away from valuable reading time, and we are still making connections with and learning about our students at the same time.
The best thing so far? Students seem to appreciate the time in class to read what they want. We’re hoping that if we help them choose the right books, give them time to read, they will continue reading at home.
We came up with three goals that we borrowed from 180 Days:

Though the reading conferences and reading groups, we can monitor and record what studnets are reading and how they are improving.
Next time, to tackle writing and inquiry!