Classroom Magic

Today, Alex showed up during her lunch. She wanted to read about Seamus Byrne, the decorated veteran (purple heart as a matter of a fact due to being hit by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan) who also happened to have build the Wings Over Haiti School in Croix-DES-Bouquets. He was killed crossing the street after his birthday party.

Alex’s class is designing a t-shirt that they will sell to raise money for Seamus’ wife and children. She sat at my desk, as I taught, and poured through news articles I had printed for her about him, about the Purple Heart medal, our school, etc… She sat and contemplated what she could place on her t-shirt design that would capture the essence of Seamus, the mark he had left on the world. At the end of the period, she left and went to her class. “I’ll be back after school” she said as she walked out.

Forty-five minutes later, she returned, and sat quietly reading, writing, thinking and drawing.

Alex is not my student.

Her reading and writing are not an assignment.

Providing an authentic experience, with choice, intrinsically motivates her to learn and discover.

I am just blown away by my students. I asked them to help me obtain wifi access for the school in Haiti so we can Skype, and communicate regularly. They completed the research, identified the best company and contacted it via telephone. We have a donor purchasing the equipment. The best part — all ELA skills. These kids are no longer my students, and they completed all of this work on their lunch breaks!

A page from Amazing's book

Yesterday a student, whom I have named “Amazing”,  read to my class. Amazing has not spoken in class during the year and a half she has been in a middle school. Amazing has had a terrible fear since she was in second grade. No one, not even her mother, knew the origin of this fear — until now. Amazing started writing a few months ago when she learned she was creating a sock monkey, sewing it, and using it as a focal point for a story. When the writing began, the conversations began. One day, at home, she blurted oout what her mother had been trying to find out for the last five years. And it wasn’t just the conversations that amazed all of us. Or the fact that she was finally able to reveal where this fear first came from. Or even how she captivated the attention of my busy afternoon class when she read them the third book in her trilogy. Its the fact that her writing and sharing is sparking more writing and more sharing. Kyle came in the morning and informed me that he wrote a book last night. He read to me! Joey, who has not found an interest in one thing we have done this year, went home last night and wrote his own comic strip story using a comic generator he had found at school.

When amazing found her voice this year, so did the rest of us.

Here is an overview of the experience going on in our classrooms right  now:

Departmentalized Special Education (DSE) Students in sixth and seventh grade were introduced to a writing project in which they would create sock monkey characters and write picture books about them. These were intended to give to the JFK Students’ Wings Over Haiti School in Haiti to develop reading skills there. DSE students created sock monkeys and used them as anchors to inform their writing. They wrote, edited, revised and published their stories.

1. DSE students came into my Integrated Co-Teaching (ICT) class wiith Natalie Benvin and read their stories to our students. The DSE students had to work on their fluency and reading with inflection (both strong indicators of reading comprehension). Our ICT class had to listen, and take notes (an ELA skill) and then select a DSE student’s story to write a sequel to. This involved analyzing the notes they had taken and questioning the writers for further clarification.
2. ICT students also began a unit on Fantasy. Their independent novels, and reading workshop instruction were rooted in the genre to further inform their writing.
3. ICT students are now creating their own sock monkeys for the sequels, and are moving through the writing process as they look for good ideas in their independent novels.
4. Once the ICT students’ stories have been published, the DSE students will sit down with each sequel written for their stories, and through reading and analysis, determine which sequel is most appropriate.
5. The original stories and their sequels will be published together in one book.

 Why publish?

• First, and foremost, these stories and their sequels represent a beautiful collaboration in our building between the “general education population” and the “special education population” — a collaboration that does not transpire quite often.
• This collaboration was mutually beneficial, all students involved developed important ELA skills that they were in need of developing (reading, writing, listening and speaking).
• The published stories will serve as a reminder to current students and an example to future students of what the possibilities are, what gifts each of us brings to the table and the importance of valuing each other.
• The published stories can also be a means of sharing this kind of collaboration with others. Through differentiated instruction, some students will put together proposals with the final published pieces for professional publishing houses.

Cost

With a budget of about $1200, we will work with our students to determine cost, pages, etc… This in and of itself is a valuable experience. Students will have to critically analyze what goes in the final published piece, why, and the importance of maximizing the pages that we pay for. We will have a town meeting with the DSE students and ICT students so the students can have a discussion about how to proceed with this.

The writer of this piece has failed middle school for three years. Arguably, the “system” sees her school performance as a failure. But when you read her writing, you can see not only sadness and depression, but hope and a need to change that perception.

The magic? She did this on her own, in her own free time.

What does she need to channel this energy and thought into classroom assignments?

Today, Alex came after school. On her own time, she read to one of my students. A special education student reading to a general education student.

This week was beautiful. I watched as students with a milieu of learning difficulties from a Departmentalized Special Education class stand in front of my “general” education class and read stories they had written. They read their stories proudly, some in clear, strong voices and some in quiet, nervous voices. Some came a few times this week, wanting to read their stories again and again. Others begged classmates or teachers assistants to read their stories for them.

What were my students doing?

Glued to their seats, eyes wide open, my students listened. They took notes. Thoughts swirled around in their minds… “Which story do I want to continue?” And the best moment of all, when a student tried to make a joke at the end of one of the stories, and the rest of the class gave him the look, oh, don’t even go there.

What was the magic?

Kids, some of whom had not written all year, wrote original stories, and read them aloud to another class. Students, who have struggled all year to fully listen to each other, sat and listened with an intensity that had not been seen. We are asked to have our students read, and write, and listen, and speak. Magically, they did all those things, on their own, because theywanted to.