“Sound can act like a psycho-active substance, altering and enhancing consciousness.” ~ Jonathan Goldman, Tantra of Sound.

I was in my yoga class the other morning it came to my attention, after we all chanted the sound Hammmmm that this sound alone can actually calm one down as the vibrations move through our bodies.  Being the ever -present skeptic I decided to put this into practice.  So each time I started to feel a bit stressed or frustrated I simply hummed to myself and the results were kind of freaky.  I did instantly feel calmer as the vibrations moved through my bodies, like a tuning fork settling me in a most calming bath of sound.  I liked it. I looked weird, I realize.  But I liked it.

Babies do this automatically as they coo and hum to themselves in the cribs.  Those moments I would steal outside the nursery just listening to my baby’s sooth themselves.  I miss that.

That night I went, reluctantly to my singing group.  I sing with a group of 200 women and we meet weekly on Mondays.  This was the beginning of a new session and it was a rainy, cold night and the couch looked so much more appealing than actually stepping out into that crud.  But I went.  And of course, as is always the case, I left that rehearsal in great spirits.  The “sound” of the collective voices will never cease to amaze me! We knock the walls off of that church.  The sound is amazing!!  I either get the chills or I well up at least once at every single rehearsal.  The sound moves me.

So the question then becomes, what does sound have to do with learning?  I am wondering about the silence of learning and how many of our kids are struggling within the cells of silence.  My 19-year-old daughter, Emma, has always loved to read out loud.  From the time she could hold a book in her hand she would line up her stuffed animals and dolls creating her own audience and “read” to them, holding the book up so that they could all see the pictures.  Her stories went on and on, the book often even upside down.  Her delight in herself and in her creation of sounds was always mesmerizing.  Her stamina always outlasted mine as I sat off to the side listening or hopefully videotaping these acts of sheer pleasure.  Nonsense words she would trill over her tongue over and over and over until the next string of words and phrases would come along.  The stories sometimes made sense, as she recalled information from our readings together, but more often she would go off into a world of her own just bathing in the sound of her own voice.

Emma still reads out loud to herself.  It is one of the things I miss with her being off at college. Thank goodness Zachary’s music fills in for her words bouncing off the walls.  When I ask her about this she tells me that she understands it so much more when she reads it out loud.  She loves to hear as well as see what she is reading.  She knows it only slows her down, but the pure enjoyment she gets out of this process is one that she is not willing to give up.

So my question then becomes, why are so many classrooms going silent?  Why have we created a self -imposed sound barrier of sorts?  How many of our students need to “hear” themselves and others to make sense?  How many opportunities are our students given to include the idea of sound, or as Newkirk refers to in his book The Art of Slow Reading, “auditorazation” when they are learning?

This generation is the “sound” generation.  Never before has sound been more accessible and available to everyone.  These kids are plugged in or jamming out to music wherever they go.  As the “elder” generation we are supposed to see this as bad, and yet I can conjure up the days when I spent my entire summer’s earnings and bought myself my first stereo complete with turntable, receiver and kick ass huge advent speakers.  I drove all the way to Manchester for a tent sale to get that sound and the first time I blasted Journey was sheer ecstasy.  Kids don’t have to drive to get the sounds they love.  They don’t have to wait to get the vinyl.  They are surrounded by the sounds they love all day every day.  They use this sound to connect with each other and the world.

And yet, in sharp contrast the classroom still remains mostly silent, less the sound of the teacher’s voice.  How can we expect our students to listen to one voice for hours at a time when their minds are consciously aware at how one -dimensional it is?  (The Charlie Brown teacher, wah wah wah rings in my head as I write this)  When is the last time you saw a classroom bursting with sound?  We don’t even want our kids talking in the halls.

I think back to the  “Noisy Reading Around the Classroom” where my students would take rulers and pointers and anything else they could find and go around the room reading everything on the walls.  The walls were plastered with poetry, lyrics, and phrases and such.  The directions would only be that each child read noisily alongside each other and read with great passion and expression.  It was sheer chaos and while I realize not for all students, it allowed others the chance to move and express loudly.   How often are students asked to express themselves?  Not nearly as often as they are asked to be quiet and sit down, or to walk quietly in the hallway in a straight line.

And as a disclaimer, please realize that I know there are many classrooms out there where it is not silent all of the time…. at the same time I would argue that more and more and younger and younger I see students in their seats and being asked to work quietly.  And also know that I am not against silence either.  My point here is that while we need silent time for quiet work we also need a balance of sound in our schools where kids are collaborating, talking, expressing themselves out loud, and connecting with each other, as well as having quiet work times and yes, maybe even perhaps humming to themselves along the way.

Ta la la

In the classic tale of Hansel and Gretel the two children are left in the forest, and when adventuring deeper into the woods, they leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind to find their way back.  Of course, what they don’t realize is that the birds will come and eat the breadcrumbs and their fate with the wicked witch is secured.  When they come upon the beautiful cottage of cake and confectionary, they are drawn in…unaware of the child-eating witch inside…

I was talking with a first grade teacher in our weekly consult the other day and I started our conversation asking her how things were going.  She paused, looked at me with great intensity and replied, “I know what I am doing when I am not using a program.” 

I was stunned and awed by the beauty and sadness of her confession.  I asked her if I could write it down.  Tears came to her eyes as she went on to say that after teaching for more than 30 years she felt as though she was losing her heart.  She even admitted it would be so much easier to just turn the page and do the next required lesson, but she was trying to do both.  Suddenly an image of a tightrope walker flashed in my head.  She was teetering on the edge, stepping lightly to try to find balance on a very thin rope where there is little balance to be found.  How does one teach from a program while trying to maintain what they know is good teaching? How does one teach when they know what is good for their students and maintain the rigorous lesson plans that must be checked off day after day?  How does one survive when they know, dare I say, too much? 

Our conversation went further as we reminisced in the “good ole days” of teaching when you were allowed to “think” as a professional, access and embrace one’s own creativity and ideas to problem solve to best meet the INDIVIDUAL needs of each and every student.  She lamented and her eyes turned downward as she talked about how she had not done one creative thing with her first graders all year and here we were half way through October.  She said she was trying to be a team player and do what was expected of her and even said that she had learned from investigating the many new programs, but still there was a great sadness there, an utter lack of joy. 

Her soulfulness is threatened as she runs through her day checking things off her list to be done.  She is lost in a sea of busyness and she knows she is drowning but she is still not sure what to do.  She does not want to be like some of the other teachers in her school who simply refuse to consider new ideas or programs.  She wants to be supportive on her new principal and his efforts to improve test scores.  In short, she wants to do it all…but I question…is this even possible?

In the past 5 years there has been a major shift in my conversations with teachers.  When I sat down recently with a wonderfully talented kindergarten teacher and asked her how she was and what she was thinking, she simply started listing off her list of what she was “doing”.  She was “doing” CAFÉ.  She was “DOING” Math Escapades, she was “doing”, “doing”, and “doing” and all with the very best intentions. 

This teacher is smart.  I was instantly drawn to her energy and her sense of herself as an educator, but it was this conversation about “doing” that made me realize that this is how most of my conversations today with teachers begin.  5 years ago, all of my conversations with teachers started differently and I never knew where we might go.  No longer do I hear about the struggling writer, or a great reader who doesn’t engage in challenging material.  Very rarely do the words, thinking, learning, teaching, or children enter into our conversations. 

We talk acronyms such as RTI and Leveled readers, and Dibles, but nobody is talking about the children, kids, teenagers, and adolescents, people.   It hit me then.  In our effort to “Leave no child behind” we have left them all behind.  We no longer keep every child in mind, as we are all preoccupied with what we have to do next, and what we are DOING to get everything done on the list.  The list that will ensure that our little robot children will perform, as we need them to on the test.  We have replaced our thinking about children with thinking about programs.  We are lost.  And as that first grade teacher said “I am losing my heart”.

So without any breadcrumbs to find our way back, what can we do?  Who will rescue us?  Certainly not the Common Core.  But, in Hansel and Gretel’s story, it is the children themselves who outwit the witch and create their own freedom.  And I do believe that if we give ourselves the luxury of time to reflect on our teaching and begin to uncover what really matters, then we too, as a profession and as a system can find our way out of the woods.

 “The ungodly witch to be burned to ashes“

“Do you view learning as a moving process?”  Tom Newkirk asked me pointedly at one of our recent Learning Through Teaching meetings.    I stopped.  I thought.  I instantly felt on the spot as thoughts raced through my mind keeping my mouth from moving…(doesn’t everyone think like this?  Isn’t it normal to try to become a concept to truly own it?  Was I weird?  Different?) Visions of movements danced in my head as I pondered this question and the room became breathless and time dragged painfully and silently on, I finally answered, “Yes, I do.  Doesn’t everyone?”

The question came in response to my reporting on the work I was doing in a 7^th grade science classroom where students were reading about tectonic plates. The textbook was overly busy with gaudy colorful features in an attempt to give flavor to the flat and deadly boring text.  And getting through that text was my mission for the day.  How does one even begin to make their way through so much information, never mind actually digesting it?

And so we moved slowly, as slowly as those tectonic plates themselves and for the first part of the lesson I was able to keep those kids with me, until I couldn’t.   One minute they were there and the next, they checked out, noticing the intricate patterns on the cement block walls, what was happening out in the hall, up at the ceiling, out the window or anywhere else they might find interest.  I had lost them.  They had been sitting for over a half an hour and they were done.  Overloaded with too much information about how to read as well as the content covered.  What to do?

A quick charge of energy surges through me as I envision these kids up and out of their seats and actually showing their learning with their minds and their bodies.  I had not planned this, but this is how I teach.  I start in one place and based on the “read and the lead” of the group I make a teaching move, to provoke them into a different kind of thinking and learning.

So many times I observe teachers plowing through information just to get through it even though as many as half of their students are not with them.  I NEED everyone to be with me.  THAT is my underlying goal no matter where I am, whom I am teaching and what we are learning about.  Are they WITH me?  And as soon as they are not it is up to me to switch gears.  I never know where it will take me, but I do know when it needs to happen.

I stop mid page and tell them all that their next job is to create a moving tableau of their learning.  Tableaus are statues, but this content demanded movement for understanding…thus moving tableaus. I walk around to each group of 4 or 5 students, giving them one word that they as a group would have to “show” in front of the class.  As I am handing out words such as tectonic plates I see faces of confusion, excitement and horror all in the same room.  “What do you mean?”   I simply tell them that they can refer back to their reading and that as a group they had to become that word.   They had five minutes to plan this, rehearse and be ready to perform for the group.

The classroom bursts with energy moving from a morgue like state into one of organized chaos with sounds, shrieks, laughter and conversation.  The time limit is there, yet flexible in my mind as I walk around noticing what each group is planning.  THIS is where the true learning takes place as each student argues and vies for their place in the tableau.   I remind them that the only rule is that EVERYONE in the group must be involved.  Some groups work through their concepts together where as other groups real leaders emerge and attempt to tell the rest of the group what to do.  I move in and out of the groups observing and bathing in this newfound energy and the relief of hearing so many voices other than my own!!   THIS is why I teach!  I love that surge of excitement and energy. I am giddy with the thought that these kids might actually learn something that they can take with them that day.

And then the production begins as each group moves to the front of the room and silently shows their concepts.  The tectonic plate group had struggled with the idea of showing movement because the plates in real life actually move so slowly over thousands of years.  In the end they decide to show the movement in the smallest increments as possible as they move and shift one after the other, giving a disclaimer that this movement is fast-forwarded over thousands of years, like a time lapsed photo.  Yes!   The rest of the class shouts out what they think the group is showing and it ends in laughter, clapping, and a collective bow from the group and on to the next group.  It is quick.  It is painless.  It is fun.  They are with me and it is something they will remember.

Why?  Why will they remember?  They will remember because they had to manipulate the information in their minds and to think more deeply about the concepts we had just read.  They had to embody and actually become the tectonic plates.  So when that test that will inevitably come, perhaps somewhere in their cells they will conjure up the movement that they made, the conversations that they had and be able to better show their deeper understanding of some difficult concepts.

So do I see learning as movement?  Yes, because I see movement as a manipulation of information to make it your own; the twisting and turning of ideas around in your head, with your arms, your legs, your whole being and sealing it in to not only your memory, but also your muscle memory and cells.  This energy cements the concepts and allows for our kids to hold on to it for longer.

How much movement do you see in classrooms versus time spent sitting in chairs from one class or subject to the next?  Why do we value this time more than movement and even noise?  It is considered more “academic” if children are quiet and in their seats?  And are we headed into that mindset even more so with the onset of The Common Core and the high stakes tests that will be attached to those standards?

These are the things that keep me up at night, and so we take baby steps… one simple change we can make as professionals is to intentionally “read and lead” our students to true depth of understanding and meaningful learning experiences.  When teaching, ask yourself  “Are they with me?”  “Are they still with me?” “Are they with me now?”  Because ultimately, if they are not with us, then what are we really doing other than dispensing information falling on deaf ears?  We need to listen and learn and provoke our students as often as possible and in our current educational climate we need to make these decisions based on our kids and let all of the other noise fall away as we look into the eyes of each and every kid and remind ourselves who we are and what matters and why!

Moving on…

What do you do poorly?

Me?  I am completely disorganized with my clothes.  On any given day you can walk into my bedroom and find piles and piles of clothes, some dirty, some clean, none properly put away.

I have tried various strategies to improve the organization of my clothes, but have yet to find anything that I follow through with consistently!  I have gotten new systems in place time after time only to be left with the same damn piles of clothes everywhere.  I know this is a weakness for me.  I feel it everyday as I scrounge through those piles in an effort to find that one item of clothing that I “must” have that is lost in the sea of black on my dresser.

Now imagine someone reminding you every day of this weakness.  I imagine everyone entering my bedroom, heads shaking in disapproval of what a colossal slob I really am. Would this motivate me to get better at it?  I think not.

And yet that seems to be the mindset we are working with in our schools everyday.  We are so focused on the deficits, or supposed deficits and weakness that there is little time to point out what is going well!  Where is the delight and wonder in what we see in each student?  Where are the high fives and the specific feedback that might just actually motivate our students?

My son, now a junior in High School, has never seen himself as a student.  He does the bare minimum to get by.  He is rarely engaged in school academically, but is a social magnet.  He is a good kid.  But he just doesn’t care.

This year he bumped himself up to an Honors level Composition class with the idea that he would not have to do any reading!  He HATES to read and he loves to tell me that on every occasion that he can.  I laughed inside, knowing he would also be reading, but supporting him in his choice. 

So here we are, the end of October and Zach starts out strong just like every year and then his grades start to fall.  He loses interest.  But one day he came home and told me that his English teacher conferred with him  and told him he was a really great writer, perhaps one of the best writers in the class, and that he starts out strong with every piece, but then he looses steam and it progressively gets less and less strong.  He was surprised to hear this teacher nail his lack of writing stamina exactly.  He said, “You are absolutely right.  That is how writing has always been for me.  I get a good idea and then I don’t know what to do with it!”  She told him to just try to do more of what he does in the beginning and to leave it and then to go back to it. She started with what he did well and then made a suggestion for how he could improve his writing.  It was that simple.  It was that meaningful.

So his next piece was to be a compare and contrast essay.  His first paragraph was quite well done and that is where the brilliance stopped.  He was frustrated and lost in the compare and contrast structure that was limiting his vision of all of the possibilities of the piece.  He was frustrated and ended up going to school with less than a page written when he was supposed to have 2.  I worried.

He came home that night and talked about how they had peer conferences and how this one student was actually telling a story within the confines of the compare and contrast structure.  This model allowed him to envision his piece with new eyes.  He came home, actually told me about it.  (Which unless you have a 16-year-old boy does not seem like such a big thing, but trust me this is HUGE!).  And so he sat with the piece after gaining some feedback and began to write, and rewrite and play.  It was almost 11 at night and as I walked into the kitchen he exclaimed, “This is actually fun!  Trying to get this to say what I want it to say!” 

And yes, as a mother, as a teacher of writing, as a teacher period, I felt the warmth of a smile spread over my body with a heavy sigh of delight…thinking…he is finally engaged in something from school that has brought him into the zone.  Oh how I wish these moments were more frequent!!  But I will take what I can get!

Fast forward a couple of days and there is Zach, brimming with pride.  “You know what, I turned in my paper and I told my teacher, this is the BEST writing I have ever done for this class!”  And he was right as he went on to tell me that he got the best grade in the class, an A- on this essay that he had spent so much time with and actually enjoyed working on!

This story is one that I want to hold onto and remember, because the subtle moves of this teacher along with the structure of the classroom is designed not to point out over and over what he is doing poorly and harping on it and red penning it to death, but to identify FIRST what is done well and then suggesting some writerly moves for improvement.  The peer conference in this case was also powerful as it gave him a more concrete mentor text to consider.  The unfortunate part is that this is not the norm.  I don’t think Zach has had a Writing Workshop since fourth grade.  Writing instruction has just not been a regular part of his education…

And you know what, it is NOT rocket science.  We learn through models, practice and giving and receiving feedback.  Whether you are learning to ski or to write, it is essentially the same process.  All Zach needed was time, choice, direct teaching and authentic responses to his work to move him forward in the process.  Why must we muddy up the waters with so many minute details that just get in the way of student success? 

 I have written many horror stories about Zachary’s experiences in school, and this time, it is a delight to focus on something that went well, that made sense, that gave him the time he needed to make the changes he wanted to make and create something that he felt good about.  He was a part of the process, instead of being outside of the typical assign and assess model.  Just imagine if this was “common” for all of our students.  What a wonderful world it would be!