Tuesdays with TWIG
May 11, 2021
4 pm
Written by Patti Wiseman-Adams
What is central to our design process for instructional routines?
This week's gathering was led by Meribeth and Maddie in which teachers were asked to look back into the current school year, also lovingly known as the never-ending school year that was crazy, chaotic, and utterly, undeniably tough! Was it a little too soon to take a look back? For some maybe, but our group facilitators led us through some deep thinking about what things had gone right this year. What? You read correctly dear reader, we had the same initial reaction, however, as we used one of our tried and true rituals of writing into the day, pencils scratched and keyboards clicked. With our mindsets geared to find the positive, we were pleasantly surprised to find that each of the participants had in fact found many bright spots that could have been overshadowed by the enormity of teaching in a pandemic.
How did they do this? With a little help from John Spencer and his "Food Truck Motivation Mindset" video.
We learned that food truck entrepreneurs rely heavily on relationships, connections, empathy, and feedback to be successful. Educating young minds also requires those things, so we found camaraderie with those food truckers. Like them, educators use limitations to design better products/results. Instead of having us write about the difficulties we faced teaching in a pandemic, those lists would have been long, Maddie and Meribeth connected the food truck metaphor to the things that we actually want to be sure to hold onto this year. We were given a note catcher to capture our thoughts about current routines, protocols, and activities that we considered part of our High Leverage Practices. The list includes the following, but changes as we encounter, rename or blend current practices. This is the framework we used to help us with our thinking today:
- Frequent low stakes writing opportunities
- Co-construction of meaning
- In-process feedback
- Revision
- Making thinking visible
- Play and joyful intentions
We then used a second column to add, revise, or enhance those practices that we want to hang onto for next year. Amy mentioned the success she had this year by implementing "rough draft" thinking in math class. The group loved how thinking common for writers may transfer to mathematical thinking. Julia mentioned exploring student interests, while Nic reminded us of the importance of choice. Low-stakes sharing is a category that I wanted to add to our graphic organizer to move beyond our valuable low-stakes writing activities. Jess reminds us of the value of student portfolios as an authentic artifact to demonstrate growth, pride, and joy.
Through this discussion, we discussed if joy is always secondary to content when building instruction. Eric asked if joy is an ingredient or byproduct? Student-centered learning naturally has joy as an outcome that can be witnessed in the joy of students creating, participating, producing, and reflecting on the learning task. Julia really wanted to revisit my idea of low risk-sharing strategies in various grouping in the classroom. This was not due to her feeling like she had to back me up due to just completing her student teaching in my classroom, on the contrary, she is planning for her first job in the Fall in a rural Idaho school where she will be teaching science and social studies to three different grade levels. Regardless of next year being the first year of teaching or the thirtieth year of teaching, 2020-2021 needs to end. As we wrap up the end of the year in a frenzy of lovely chaos that leaves us exhausted while looking ahead to how to decide what we will put in our food truck next fall?
Our Final Tuesday With TWIG this school year will be Tuesday, May 25, 2021, at 4:00 pm. You can find information about our group and access TWIG resources, our podcast, and past blog posts at www.twig.fun.
May you find joy in the work you did with students this past school year as we wind down for a much-deserved summer break.
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