• No lesson plans.
• No lunch duty.
• No meetings.
• No grading.
• No bells ringing.
• No parent conferences.
• No parent emails.
• No wondering what I’m going to wear that will allow me to pick up anything I drop on the floor without risking a sexual harassment violation.
• No inhaling lunch to give myself time to dash to the bathroom before the 30 minutes have passed.
• No copies to make.
• No prayers that the copiers are not out of toner, jammed, or otherwise cranky.
• No standing in line to use the copy machines.
• No repeating every hour between classes to kids in the mall, “Where’s your ID?”
• Did I mention no grading?

What makes your vacation a vacation?

“The late and wonderful Donald Graves once said, “anything we ask children to do must be for us first.”

I believe that we must experience and analyze what we are asking children to complete in our classrooms, and perhaps more importantly, what we ask them to do in their out-of-class lives. This is easier said than done! When we are able to bring our own intellectual lives vividly into the classroom, we can uncover, unpack, and explore the process with our students in ways far richer than any teachers manual could provide.

After all, how can we we encourage our children to read critically, scrutinizing the most complex and abstract elements of text, if we are not prepared to rise to the occasion? We need to walk our talk. Please do not forget the source of our most powerful teaching comes from mining our own literacy lives. “

The above quote comes from a blog post written by Angela Maiers of Angela Maiers Educational Service. Angela, who has over 20 years in the teaching trenches, now works as a consultant in literacy, learning, and 21st century education. She’s written books, articles, and curriculum support materials; in fact, her newest book, Classroom Habitudes, will be available this month. And if I seem like an Angela Maiers groupie, no apology…I am. She’s provided more information, resources, and motivation in the one year I’ve followed her blog than I’ve encountered in any professional development workshops I’ve attended over the past five years.[Don't tell her, but I think Angela is one of a set of identical triplets because I'm confounded by how much she accomplishes...]

Angela challenges me, in positive and productive ways, to be a better teacher. So, when I read this particular blog post, I grew excited because my students had been participating in some of these very processes. It was an Angela-validating moment.

At the beginning of this school year, I’d asked my students to have a book or magazine they wanted to read with them daily. Not a textbook and not a magazine with fold-out anatomically correct photos, and if they didn’t have a book with them, they’d be able to select one from my bookshelf.

Two or three days a week, for ten minutes, I planned to have students read. Just read. Initially and understandably, they were confused. Predictable questions followed: “Is there going to be a test? Will we have to write about or talk about what we’re reading? What if we don’t finish what we’re reading? How are we getting a grade? Are you SURE there’s no test?”

No test. No writing. No talking. No having to finish what you started. Yes, I’m sure.

This concept of reading simply for the sake of reading was almost foreign to them. As a teacher, I’ll own being responsible for this confusion because so much of what happens in a classroom is not for the sake of pure enjoyment. It’s about the grade. But that’s another issue, at least for now.

Walk into my classroom on these reading days and you will hear nothing. Well, exluding the huge sigh of the air conditioner as it kicks off. This silence is absolutely glorious. Not because my students are quiet. It’s because they’re engaged and quiet. I’m not a teacher who believes learning takes place in silent classrooms. So, I don’t promote quiet for the sake of quiet.  But on these reading days, I’m so psyched by their involvement in their books, that I feel guilty having to tell them time’s up. Sometimes, I extend the ten minutes to fifteen or twenty.

Unless I’m compelled to attend to some other teacher business during that time, I’m reading with them. Too many students never see an adult in their home ever read. I want them to see that I’m reading, and what I’m reading. A few months ago, I was rabidly attempting to finish the Twilight series before half my students spilled the plot to me. Some days I’m reading professional development books,Writer’s Digest, or other magazines or books about writing. When the time’s up, I’ll ask students if they want to share anything about what they’ve read…positive or negative. If they don’t share, that’s not a problem. They know they’re not expected to, so there’s none of that uncomfortable squirming, direct eye contact avoidance behavior.

Before I’d started giving myself permission to read with my students, I’d already spent time writing with them. Years ago, I started this when I began teaching my Advanced Placement English classes. One day I realized I was doling out prompts to my students expecting them to face the time constraints and anxiety of having to write a lucid, well-developed, and organized essay. Without experiencing it myself, how could I pretend to understand what faced them? So, I’d sit in a student desk, and attack the prompt right along with them. If nothing else, they appreciated my willingness to humble myself and came to realize that writing can be a struggle at any age. I also think my participation in the challenge added credibility to my comments.

Then, a few years ago, when I began to seriously pursue my fiction writing, I began to share my writing with my students. Not so much to uphold what I wrote as a model, but to show them that writing can be a messy and frustrating process, one that may not result in anything worth the paper it was written on. At times, I think my scratchings reassured them that even teachers write poopy papers. What I hoped to demonstrate was that the power was in the process and the willingness to give and get feedback. And I hoped to show that them I wasn’t unwilling to do what I was asking them to do.

Too many teachers of reading and writing aren’t willing to read or write with their students. I’m amazed by the arrogance of some teachers who believe that their teaching certificate exempts them from having to participate in what they’re asking their students to do.

How can one effectively teach writing if one’s not struggling with the very process in his/her own writing? I realize that many teachers pursued a degree in English because of their passion for literature, not for writing. But the reality is, high school English teachers are expected to teach writing. When we bring ourselves to the classroom, our struggles and insecurities, I believe we’re sending a message to our students that learning isn’t so much about “covering” material as it is about “uncovering” it. Making the process transparent and even trusting our students in the way that we expect them to trust us.

Clearly, I don’t pretend that because I read and write with my students that I’ve reached educational nirvana. And certainly, I don’t pretend that I’m a better teacher than someone who chooses not to do the same.

What I do believe is what Angela said in this blog: “When we read and write for ourselves, collaborate and create with others around those experiences we can understand the learning process from the inside out-the best way.”

So, if a human brain is, give or take a few hamburger bun tops, equal to a gazillion sesame seeds, my students should be able to memorize the eight parts of speech. Right?

In no particular order, here are my latest teacher concerns:

1. Students have foregone using planners for writing on their hands. When I ask them to write down a due date, they make a fist and diligently record the information on their little fleshy hand tablet. I find this disturbing for several reasons:

• If a student is in my first hour class, does s/he go to the bathroom anytime during the school day? If so, and the assignment’s still there, we have a handwashing/hygiene issue of massive germy proportions;
• Since students are in seven classes each day, where are they recording their other assignments? How many appendages are components of this planning system?;
• If they can write this on their hands, how difficult would it be to make the leap to paper? I’d buy into the, “But I remember it better this way,” if they truly did.
• This system is not transferable to the real world. I doubt if Michael Dell or the cast of HSM 3 or the heavy equipment operator is checking off “to do” lists on the backs of their hands. And if they are, I’m wondering about their bathroom hygiene as well.

2. Rubber bands. A student actually said, “You mean there’s a place you can BUY rubber bands?”  Eighty-six students. Eighty-six [sure, in Pollyanna-teacher-world, everyone turns it in] sets of 25 index cards. Five students thought to use a rubber band. The others stared at me with (not so) Precious Moments eyes, flabbergasted that I expected them to supply the rubber band. The conversation, repeated throughout the day:

Student [perky-voiced]: “Mrs. Allan, I have my literary term cards. Do you have rubber bands?”

Me: “Yes.”

Student [still perky]” “Great. Can I have one?”

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Me: “No.”

Student [perky fading]: “Why not? How am I supposed to keep all these cards together?”

Of course the issue, at least for me, wasn’t the rubber bands. It was their assumption that it was my responsibility to supply seven or so dozen students with what they needed to submit their work.

I already supply them with endless boxes of facial tissue. Again, not that I’m seriously depleting my retirement account purchasing these items.  But when I hear, “Mrs. Allan, I need to blow my nose. The box is empty. You need to get some more Kleenex,” I wonder about the boundaries of my job description.

Do I buy it? You betcha. Try going through a day with two or three students in every class doing the wet nose sniffle and snot-sucking. It’s self-defense. I also purchase industrial-size bottles of anti-bacterial lotion.

On any given day, I’m asked for Kleenex, paper towels, band aids, pens, safety pins, bobby pins, a mirror, hand lotion, paper, hole-puncher, paper clips, glue, glue sticks, Post-It notes, lunch money, Liquid Paper, and/or contact lens solution. Again, do I mind being all-maternal-like providing what they need? Usually, no. What I mind is the assumption that I should supply it. For my 140 or so students.

3. Politeness is becoming an anomaly. Saturday I proctored the ACT. Students are given a 10-minute break halfway through the test. The yaddayadda we have to read out of the official manual states students cannot use their cell phones during the break. So, three minutes later, I see a student holding her cell phone, appearing to be texting or contemplating texting. I remind her she’s not supposed to use her cell phone, and she needs to put it away.

Eye roll. “Well, what if I texting my father?” Smirk.

Eye bulge. “Well, what if I just invalidate your test?” Steam.

Some days I don’t get it. We read the rules. They hear the rules. They ignore the rules. We enforce the rules. They get snarky.

But, in the twenty or so years I’ve spent in high school classrooms, I’ve experienced the kindness, energy, humor, perseverance, generosity, and trust of hundreds of students. They’re gems.

The others are just stones waiting to be polished. . .