Small Changes

As a teacher (actually in anything that I tackle) I am a bit of a perfectionist. I get all too easily frustrated when things don't work easily and often want to quit when the going gets tough. I have learned from my twenties that quitting just creates more problems, and struggling through something that is a challenge brings its own rewards. In fact, I may have come to relish the challenge of tasks (at least in my professional life - we won't talk about my personal life right now) that don't come easily.

Since my first year of teaching I have immersed myself in professional reading on literacy. I have read everything I could get my hands on, subscribed to and pored over various web chatboards and mailrings dedicated to literacy, and shamelessly experimented with different strategies and ideas on my guinea pigs students. I have learned a lot and enjoyed it a lot.

For the past two years I have been struggling with the whole levelled reading groups issue that is part of current teaching pedagogy. I know that they groups we do now are not the same as the robin/wren/eagle groups that were a part of schools in the seventies and eighties, but I still really have an emotional aversion to the whole small groups/centers framework. I can't find any research-based reason for my struggle, and so have decided that it is simply my stubbornness that wants to do it "the way that I have for ten years, and that worked very well, thank you very much".

This fall we were sent to a workshop by a colleague of Debbie Diller, who has written a number of books on using the reading workshop time that students are working independently for practice of literacy skills that don't require cutsey colouring or photocopied worksheets. I went in to the workshop hoping to get an "aha" solution to my frustrations and a way to get through my emotional block.

I got it. I am not sure what the "it" was, but it worked. And now I am taking another small step forward in teaching my students better. I am excited (as I always am when I start on a new project) about the possibilities.

And I hope that the small change of incorporating literacy work stations (not to be confused with literacy centers- of course the terms are too close to be clear at all, so yes there is confusion) into our reading workshop and shifting a few things around in our daily schedule means a more enjoyable day for my students as well as more learning.

Sometimes a few small changes make a big difference. I hope they will this time too.