The world lost Maya Angelou yesterday.  She was 86 years old, and was a friend of learning and overcoming tough times.  I love reading her writing, and listening to her read it with her mellifluous voice.

She wrote to inspire, teaching critical life lessons.  Today, I'd like to remember her lessons through some quotes from her writing, in hopes that they inspire us in a time when inspiration really matters in schools.

How many times do we hear our children tell their stories?  Not just the spontaneous Monday morning "What I did over the weekend" stories, but when they open up about their lives.  Are we giving our students enough opportunities to have their voice and choice in their learning, or are we allowing life in our classrooms to become too crowded by our teaching?  How much are we letting kids talk and have a say and joy in their lives with us at school?

Are we getting our own teaching stories out?  How closely do our students know us?  About our families?  Our struggles with our own learning?  How often do we let them into our own minds to witness what good learning should look like?  Are our classrooms and our schools places where learning can live because we give it life, not because we're following a guide?

There are so many changes to our field these days.  What are we doing about it?  Are we trying to make it better through our practice?  Are we remembering that our classrooms and our schools need to be little islands that kids can go to so that they can escape the pain of the world, where they can explore and discover and learn?  How do we fight the pessimism that hangs over our field, and not become part of the problem by letting the pessimism take over?  You have to be optimistic and hopeful to learn something.  How are we keeping the hope in our learning?

With all the demands on our field, we have to forget some of the things we've always done just because we've always done them.  We have to remember that yes, teaching is an art, but it's also a science--the science of which we have to follow.  There are best practices, and better practices.  Sometimes we have to remember to forget what we used to do and make our classrooms state of the art by learning more about learning and putting that into place.  As Maya Angelou might say, our students are all other people's babies, and they deserve no less than that!

This is one that's old hat for teachers.  We didn't enter this profession for monetary richness, but because we knew we could make a difference in the lives of kids.  However, it's easy to forget that.  Last week we heard of a Brooklyn school cancelling its kindergarten concert, because they need time to make 5-year-olds college and career ready.  Tonight I listened to a reporter interviewing three teachers with some 50 years of combined experience tell how they've decided to leave the profession, because the passion is gone.  Some of the bean counters, as Katherine Paterson calls them, think we're just holding back and dangling more money at us in merit pay and bonuses will make us work harder.  They don't realize that if they really want to support us,
they have to let us keep working with passion. What are we doing to keep our love of teaching alive for us?  Professional reading?  Professional writing?  Professional conversation?  Visiting other classrooms and other schools?    

It's so easy to respond to the misconceptions about the state of education today with negativity.  We can complain about the parents, the funding, the testing, the standards, the politics.  It's true, we have to allow our voices to be heard, but we can't let the problems surrounding schools today poison our work.  How do we do that?  How do we fight the good fight in a positive way?  So many of us pride ourselves in figuring out ways to differentiate instruction, finding the avenue through which we can reach each student.  Why can't we do that with those who critique us based on partial information?  Why can't we figure out ways to positively rally parents, reporters, politicians, each in their own way?  I think we can.  We do it every day with kids, don't we?

Finally, we have to remember courage.  Courage isn't being brave in all situations.  It's not the absence of fear or doubt or worry.  It's the ability to keep those feelings at bay, so that we can do things right by kids and by each other...courageously.  How do we protect this greatest of virtues so that we can move on ahead, teaching with the enthusiasm we had on our first day of teaching many Septembers ago?

The answers to the questions raised by Maya Angelou's quotes aren't very simple...but they're easy.  We do it for kids.  When we focus on what students need by mixing what we know about best practices as we've learned through experts in the field with our own personal knowledge of each and every little guy and girl who sits with us throughout the day or ever has, we can find the answers to these important lessons that we remember today from one of our national treasures...Maya Angelou!

How well do you get along with your neighbors at school? Do you just teach next door to each other, or are you really professional friends?  Because it takes a village to raise a child, you really have to be able to grow knowledge with the teachers in the classroom down the hall, and with the school down the road! 

Roland Barth, the founder of the Harvard-based Principals' Center identifies four types of adult relationships within schools in his groundbreaking book Learning By Heart.

1. One type of relationship is like toddlers playing in a sandbox in what we call "parallel play."  They don't really bother each other, but they share the space.  That doesn't mean they necessarily share the toys, and they really know very little about what the other is doing.  Teachers who teach in this dynamic close their doors and actually know very little about one another's professional lives.

2. Another type is the kind where teachers are very social with one another, extending outside of school hours.  The friendship is purely social, but rarely extends into talking shop, because the teachers secretly fear that engaging in professional conversation might lead to disagreement that might threaten the friendship.

3. A third kind of relationship is a cordial one, in which teachers are kind to one another, but actually harbor a hidden hostility toward one another.  The hostility can be caused by things like professional jealousy, competition, and deeply rooted philosophical differences that are never really discussed, just often assumed.

4. The fourth kind of relationship is one in which teachers talk about their practices frequently, study their work together, and are comfortable teaching in front of one another, giving each other collegial, friendly and professional feedback.  Barth tells us that schools in which this culture exists have the greatest success!

These four models exist in the microcosm of a school, but also on a larger scale, in districts and even across districts.  Larger schools can even have combinations of these models within their halls, as smaller communities emerge from the ranks of the entire school.

Whether it's with the teacher down the hall, or someone in the school down the road, remember the importance of partnerships and keeping yourself in the business of learning!  It takes a village to raise a child, but the village has to believe in something.  Discover with the others in your village what that something is.  It will strengthen whatever it is you believe in...while it strengthens your belief in each other, too!

We're all caught up in a testing frenzy right now.  It's a good moment to think about some of the important reasons we love teaching and learning.  I've chosen selections from three beautiful chapter books that every child should read in community at some point in their lives.  These are three books that I had the pleasure of reading again and again each year in read aloud.  I hope you enjoy them!

In Chapter 13 of Baby, Patricia MacLachlan continues to tell the story of a family falling in love with the baby who was left at their doorstep.  The baby grows to be a toddler and jokes about herself saying, "Silly Sophie!" to which Papa says, "Silly Sophie.  That's almost a poem."  He goes on to talk about poems later on on the page.

"Words," said Papa softly.  "Did you know that words have a life?  They travel out into the air with the speed of sound, a small life of their own, before they disappear.  Like the circles that a rock makes when it's tossed into the middle of a pond."

This is actually the book where Katie Wood Ray found the phrase, "wondrous words," that inspired the title of her 1995 book about teaching craft to young writers.  So it's only fitting to think about the power of our words through this book. 

When we teach, we write in the air.  We write the story of what our students will remember about us for the rest of their lives.  We also write the story of what they'll think learning is.  Will they think that learning is true exploration, filled with risk and adventure, where their ideas are developed and honored for all they are, or judged and shot down for all they are not? 

Katie Wood Ray's teaching friend Lester Laminack tells the story of how you can tell what's honored in a classroom.  When kids' work is marked up for all that it's not, and the teacher flies around (Lester's words) like a reconnaissance jet, of course kids will cover up their work when a stranger walks in.  When kids' efforts are celebrated for what they are, kids put forth their papers to share and celebrate when strangers walk in. 

Think about the circles you create with your words.  Not the words of content.  That matters, but think about the words of instruction.  That's what they'll remember.  They'll remember how you influenced the process of their learning.

In Chapter 17 of Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo, Opal tastes a special kind of candy that Miss Frannie Block offers her.

I ate my Littmus Lozenge slow.  It tasted good.  It tasted like root beer and strawberry and something else I didn't have a name for, something that made me feel kind of sad...

"There's a secret ingredient in there," Miss Franny said. 
"I know it," I told her.  "I can taste it. What is it?"
"Sorrow," Miss Franny said.  "Not everybody can taste it.  Children, especially, seem to have a hard time knowing it's there."

It's our job to make sure that learning isn't a Littmus Lozenge for kids.  We have to stay tuned to the fact that learning is meant to be joyful, an adventure, and an exciting part of childhood.  About a year ago, Katherine Paterson addressed thousands of teachers in Riverside Church at the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Saturday Reunion shared a study that asked hundreds of people what they remember most about elementary school.  Only one mentioned an academic subject.  Most of them mentioned friends, a special teacher, a humiliating event, or a moment of creativity like writing, art, or being in a play. 

There are so many factors that easily take away joy from our children's lives at school.  It's hard to keep our own joy going.  It's true, you have to keep your eye on testing and curriculum, but first and foremost, we have to keep our eyes on the kids...teaching them and preparing them for the rigorous standards in ways in which they'll really learn.  Chris Lehman tells us, "Engagement isn't just a thing.  It's the only thing."  Choosing books of beauty to read aloud, having rich conversations and creating good energy around learning will help.  We also need to engage ourselves in our own joyous reading, writing, and learning to keep our own energy about school headed in the right direction.  It will replace the sorrow in the Littmus Lozenge of learning with a drop of joy...and that tastes much better.

Finally, some words from Natalie Babbitt in her 1969 classic, The Search for Delicious.  This tale that was an allegory for the Vietnam War deals with Gaylen, a 12-year-old messenger on a quest in a magical kingdom.  He is upset with the people of the kingdom who are fighting over the definition of a word in the dictionary and with the magical and indifferent creatures he meets along the way.  He wants to leave them all behind and go live on his own.  In a scene near the end of the book, Gaylen gazes at the reflection of his face in the lake. 

Past his mind's eye streamed all the faces he had seen, all the kind, angry, laughing, anxious faces that had peopled the days of his great adventure.  And he remembered, too, those others: the woldweller's gray cheeks, fixed into furrows like the bark of a tree; the dwarfs, impassive and calm as the mountains themselves; the wind that spoke through a hundred wayward, invisible mouths; and Ardis [the mermaid] with her eyes wet and unfathomable as the lake that glimmered before him.  He leaned over and studied the dim reflection of his own face in the water.  Young and skinny, he decided, and tired and worried, too.  A transient, changeable, ageable face.  A people face.  "And that's where I belong," he said to himself at last.

It's hard to be a teacher nowadays.  The world is watching our faces.  We aren't surrounded by mermaids and dwarfs, but by parents who don't always understand that we, too are acting as their children's advocates, by a public who think they can comment on our field because they all went to school once, and by leadership somewhere far away that thinks they can quantify our wondrous words and the craft of teaching and learning with some standard assessments. 

Like Gaylen, we might be tempted to throw in the towel and do something else, because we're just tired of all the things that make our work so tough, maybe making our calling feel just like another job.  But, also like Gaylen, we can notice our reflection, and realize that we have changeable, ageable, human faces...teacher faces that can change and grow and learn, because that's what we are called to do in schools that are exciting learning communities where we discover alongside our students, where year in and year out the teaching and learning feel different, because we make it that way, and that's something the reporters and politicians and bean counters will never understand.  We have to say when looking at these reflections, "And that's where I belong."

Three beautiful books.  Three fantastic stories.  Stories that can become our stories.

One day, many years from now, when they look back at our generation of teachers and school leaders and they close read the learning in the Age of Common Core, this is what they'll remember about us. 

It took a special type of person to work in the classroom...the kind that could use his or her words to take away sorrow and create joy and excitement for school, even when it was tough.

It was a rite of passage of spring today!  It was the first lawn-mowing day of the season.  I took out my rusty but trusty lawn mower and my 5-year-old son Kende got out his Fisher Price lawn mower that seems smaller and smaller each year.  He stood behind it and started pushing it alongside me.  While he was pushing, he asked me questions about how the lawn mower works.  I explained about the blade at the bottom, the mulcher on the side, and I just made up the other stuff that I really don't know much about. 

Then he asked me if he could mow with my machine.  Thinking about the dangers of it, I let him push for a minute with me.  "That's cool!" he said.  I told him that when he's bigger he can do this all the time!  "I can't wait," he screamed!

I started thinking what a cool learning experience this is for a 5-year-old.  He's getting excited by being immersed in this springtime chore.  He's getting to ask questions, and soon, when he's a little bigger, I'll be happy to let him mow the lawn for real on his own.  If he weren't only 5, and if I wasn't afraid of him having my gene for clumsiness, and there weren't sharp objects involved, I'd be glad to let him do it today.  "You'll do it when you're bigger," I told him.  "Soon." 

We learn by doing, not by just talking about something, or doing shades of something.  This is what Brian Cambourne tells us in his work on Conditions of Learning.  To learn something, we must be immersed in it, have it demonstrated for us, be engaged with it, practice it, and have feedback on how we do it.  Watching a video or reading a how-to book on it, only gets us so far in learning a task. 

Plato has a piece of writing called The Allegory of the Cave.  He writes about a person living in cave, whose light source came from a large fire outside.  No one else would come in to see you, and your only perception of what's outside is from the shadows on the wall that are projected by the fire.  Your perception wouldn't really be real.  It would be a distorted shadow that's the wrong size and maybe the wrong shape of reality.  You wouldn't know what a conversation really is, or what real people, animals, trees, or anything looked like.  You'd just have an idea of what it might be like if you were allowed to be a part of its reality...maybe.

That's a confusing way to live, never really experiencing anything.  If my son only stayed with his toy lawn mower, he'd never really get to experience what it's like to cut the grass.

Think of what this means to us as teachers.  We have to find ways to provide kids with experiences in their learning.  They can't just have the distorted shadows of experience.  They need to learn to read...by reading.  No surprise there!  Allington and many other researchers have told us time and again that students improve in their ability as readers by reading.  The same is true in writing, math, science, learning a foreign language, learning to swim, learning to drive, everything!

So where does that leave us in the Age of Common Core?  Maybe in a good place.  For those districts who are trying to find a quick fix to the new rigorous demands, trying to find a shortcut for how to interpret with depth, they will ultimately hit a dead end.  Doing a worksheet will only take you so far...to read closely, you actually have to read books.  To write for an audience, you really need an audience.  We have to create learning situations where kids are experiencing their learning in real ways.  You can't say you've taught a science unit on light, because you've read the chapter in a textbook.  Kids have to play with flashlights and mirrors.  They have to observe how light interacts with objects and your eyes.  They have to do something with light. 

I guess it's no secret that I don't like worksheets.  I know that they can have a place in our learning, but we have to find the proportion with which we use them.  They're good for short practice or review of certain skills that we've taught or will be teaching.  However, they can't be the whole diet.  They're only part of the whole picture...the minor to the major of kids doing things. 

Kids are capable of so much more than worksheets give them credit for.  One of our kindergartners told his mom at dinner the other night, "I wrote an all about book about worms.  It was long, and the adults can actually read it!" he said proudly.  It takes a little time, but they get there, but only because we give them a chance to practice.

Not only can they do it, but they need to have authentic experiences to really grasp concepts.  Nancy Schultz, a local math consultant tells us that if we don't give students a chance to experience number sense by working with manipulatives, they only learn about the iconic and abstract part of math, without realizing what any of it means.  These kids coast through elementary school, but suffer through algebra because they think 2x and x(squared) are the same thing because the symbols are the same.  They need to experience math to really understand it at higher levels. 

So stop to think about the reality you're presenting to your students?  Are you allowing them to live up to their potential?  Are you giving them lots of time to read real books, write original pieces, play with math, observe and create science, learn by doing each day?  How clear is the image on the wall of the cave?  Are your kids escaping the cave and experiencing true learning every day?

If you use lots of worksheets, think of how you can make your students' learning more authentic.  If you already have just a limited use of worksheets, think of what their purpose is, and then maybe cut it in half, replacing them with more experiential learning.

Cambourne tells us it matters.  Allington tells us it matters.  Plato tells us it matters.  Common Core tells us it matters.

And today, Kende told me that it matters.