For some reason, the number 19 has always been my lucky number.  Just a few days ago, on May 19th, it was the anniversary of my college graduation, the day I became a teacher.  In fact, it was the 19th anniversary!  Yes, it was May of 1996.  Bill Clinton was approaching the end of his first term in the White House.  Friends was at the end of its second season. You could still walk up to the gate when meeting someone at the airport. 

It's amazing how quickly the years fly by, and all the learning that can happen in 19 years. So in honor of this anniversary, I'd like to share here some of the things I've learned about teaching and learning. (Don't worry, there won't be 19 things!)

1. When you stop learning, you stop teaching.  I remember thinking that once I got my teaching degree, I would be all right.  I'd know how to handle every situation that would come up.  I'd understand the content and delivery of my teaching.  It would have its challenges, but all in all, I'd have it all figured out.  WRONG. 

In going back to graduate school, and through some awesome professional development experiences I had, formally in staff development and informally through professional conversations with colleagues, I began to realize that there was so much more left to learn...that there was so much I didn't yet know.  It's a humbling experience to be reminded that you really don't know everything, but you need this humility to be a true learner.  This humility creates drive in us that somehow helps us translate that into our teaching work.  When you teach with a learner's soul, it's just more exciting, and that can give you the energy that will help you sustain a long career.

You have to do this. Read a new professional text. Subscribe to a professional organization. Visit someone else's classroom. Write professionally. Talk shop with colleagues. Do something to maintain your own learning. Otherwise, it's too easy to get caught up in the minutia that is a part of our world right now! Just keep learning!

2. Teaching is both an art and a science.  Yes, it's both.  The much younger me graduated with the same enthusiasm about teaching that hopefully all of us had.  The 20-something me would say it was an art.  There was something absolutely intangible about teaching...that the only definite was that it was indefinite...and that the world would never understand what it meant to teach. This might somehow have contributed to the rift between our field and others around us, leading to some of the changes that have made schools a much different place these last few years.  

We have to hang on to the artfulness of knowing the avenue with which to bring learning to each and every student.  However, there is a science to that as well.  We have to be research-minded so that we can make those decisions wisely, knowing that there is an entire of field of research of the giants who have come before us or might be teaching alongside us today, that can scientifically inform our artfulness.  We don't look at data, because we like data.  We don't quote research just to do it.  We don't work in teams and schools and districts, because it's some business model that's been imposed on us.  We do these things, because collaboration improves what we do. Teaching is an art, and a science.

3. Learning is much better with friends!  Engaging in this learning is so much more meaningful when you can do it in community.  We try to set up partnerships for out students to work in.  Tony Wagner of Harvard University tells us that one of major things that businesses look for in college graduates is the ability to work together.  It's no coincidence, even in our world as teachers.  

Face it.  Teaching is lonely work.  Although the company of children is wonderful, many teachers never have contact with their colleagues for most of the work day.  Most teachers don't have phones in their rooms with which they can call a colleague to ask a question.  However, we always tell our students that when something is difficult, it's best to work it out with a partner.

Today, the educational world is paying more attention to this.  We try to build teams that can meet together often and have meaningful discussions with one another.  I think as a field, we've come so far past the cooperative learning models that were so big in 1996 where everyone had one specific role to pay attention to.  In the best schools, teachers are growing ideas together systemically, as one learning unit.  Michael Fullan tells us in his 2014 book Principal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact that the key to improving schools is by improving teacher performance in groups rather than individuals.  Teams of teachers can support each other individually, but we have to think in groups. 

It's exciting to see teachers and principals working with colleagues across the hall, across town, and across districts to refine their practice!  If you're not doing this yet, or you're not happy with the way it's going, make a concerted effort to reach out to some professional friends, and say, "I'd like to study something with you."  Collaborate on something by talking about something that's perplexing to you.  Visit each other's classrooms or schools, and talk about what you see or don't see, what you hear or don't hear, what you feel or don't feel.  It will change the way you see your own work every day!

4. Approximation and celebration are critical to learning!  As a teaching child of whole language in the 1990's, I was very much into invented spelling.  This was the notion that a student's best approximation at spelling a word would suffice.  I was young and naïve at the time, and thought that this was just about spelling words.  I've since come to believe that it's about everything.  We all invent everything we're trying to learn to do with conformity...walking, speaking a foreign language, dancing, cooking, even blogging!  This is approximation, through which learners approach something they are trying to master.  I guess I was approximating the work of a teacher by associating this primarily with spelling. 

However, the more experienced teacher I am today sees that my work is really to find my students on a map, recognizing their approximation in whatever they are trying to learn, celebrate that with a specific compliment that forces me to name exactly where students are in their approximation, and then teach from there, meeting them at their strength.  Just like in conferring, we compliment and teach, compliment and teach, honing in precisely with each compliment and lifting up with each piece of teaching.  The trick of it is to lift just the right amount so as not to do too little or too much.  Approximation and celebration go hand in hand in getting anyone to learn anything! 

5. Finally, if you build it, they will come!  Nineteen years ago, when the Macarena was new and Jerry Maguire, Twister, The English Patient, and Independence Day were your choices at the movies, our field was still in the midst of what we called, "The Reading Wars."  Camps of educators rallied around whole language or phonics instruction.  In the end, the cease fire of balance prevailed.  Today's wars seem to be about text complexity.  For this argument, I defer to Vicki Vinton's recent blog post. However, I'd like to make a case for thought complexity.

I remember debating with classmates in college, when interdisciplinary learning and thematic studies were so big, about how kids could or couldn't take an idea like explorers and apply it to the Age of Exploration, and then to space exploration, and then to their own explorations of characters in books or discovering a new rule in math or science through inquiry.  Boy, was I wrong!  If you build it, they will come!  When we create classrooms that are rich in thinking, kids thrive!  

When you create a classroom or school community in which children develop big ideas through conversation, through inquiry, and through courage that's created by taking away the fear of wrong answers, kids can do it.  Sometimes, I joke with my wife that the 3rd and 4th Graders in my school carry on better book club conversations than the adult book club we really belong to, simply because we teach and believe in them.  We give kids the tools, scaffolds, and the environment in which they are able to think their way through anything!

The world has changed tremendously in many ways in the last 19 years!  Fashion is different.  Values have changed. Politics, economics, technology, security at airports and in schools are all far different than we ever would have imagined them back then!  Of course education has changed also! There are many changes that have come that are not so favorable for us.  We can name those very easily.  

However, in 19 years of learning about learning, I'm so happy with the many advances our field has made.  We know so much more about how to push kids to think more deeply, and we've become smarter about maintaining learning lives ourselves that help our students get there.  It's been a long ride, filled with both smooth and bumpy parts...but that's just learning, isn't it?

Has this ever happened to you? You get in your car to go to work, or the store, or someone's house. You start driving, maybe listening to the radio, maybe thinking about the day's events, or what you're about to do. All of a sudden, you're there. You've arrived without even thinking about how to get there. You remember back to when you first started taking that same drive. You used to have to study a map before leaving, watch for a particular turn that was easy to confuse, or look for the house numbers on the last bend in the road. How does this happen? When do you go from thinking so meticulously about every step to being able to accomplish the task with your eyes closed (not that I'm recommending driving with your eyes closed!)

This is actually because you've taken the drive so many times, you're able to do this with a sense of fluency!  Fluency is the ability to do something without much concentration at all, because you've done it so many times. You can achieve fluency in anything you've learned: driving, parallel parking, mowing the lawn, cooking your favorite recipe, playing a song you've practiced on an instrument, tying a boy scout knot, any move in a sport, writing in cursive, typing on a keyboard, anything! The old adage must be true...practice makes perfect!  

Malcolm Gladwell writes in his book Outliers that researchers have found that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to really become good, or fluent at anything. 10,000 hours! Mem Fox tells us in Reading Magic that in order for kids' brains to be ready to learn to read, they need to hear 1,000 stories, because then their pump is primed and fluent at how stories go and the relationship between print and the spoken word. Richard Allington tells us in What Really Matters Most to Struggling Readers that in order to maintain a student's reading level, he or she needs to read 2 hours a day.

In reading, there are three parts to fluency. Automaticity is the ease and accuracy with which we read. It's about not stumbling or stuttering. It's about getting the words right. Parsing is about the way we phrase the words. We need to break them up and put them together in groups that sound like the rhythm of spoken language. Prosody is the inflection and emotion with which we speak. Reading has to have the right sound based on the type of sentence, or the mood of the piece.

In writing, there are many aspects to fluency. Students have to be able to spell words without much concentration. They also need to be able to write as they talk, or better than they talk, or they'll realize that they'll write, as many of us speak, in short, choppy fragments. They have to have variety to the lengths of their sentences. While doing all of this, they also need to pay attention to the many punctuation marks they'll use, and how each sentence contributes to the overall meaning of the entire piece.

You can imagine how this fits in other subject areas: knowing math facts, applying mathematical operations, conducting certain scientific processes, finding something on a map, or looking up a word in a dictionary or online.

Yes, fluency is important, but here's the essential question to today's post...Wait for it...  

Why is fluency so important? Is it just about speed? Some educational packages would have you think so! They market themselves as being able to increase student fluency in reading, writing, or whatever their subject is. Is it just about saving time? Yes, if you know how to cook well, it will ultimately save you time and allow you to do other things. But is that it?

With certain tasks, that is it! We want a mechanic to be able to do an oil change in under 10 minutes, so we can go home. He can then do more oil changes in a day, and make more money. We want the chef in a restaurant to be able to cook our meal quickly, so that we can go home. She can cook the many meal orders that come in at one time. However, is that the point with reading? Is that the point with writing? Is that the point with math, science, exercise, music, art? Not really.  

When students can do anything with fluency, it allows them to apply the work to some greater cause. If kids can read fluently, they can achieve deeper comprehension. Writing fluency leads to greater expression. We can move toward greater depth in a process of something through fluency in any of these areas: scientific discoveries, mathematical problem solving, playing an entire piece, or winning at a sport! Fluency leads to a higher accomplishment. It allows them to become engrossed in the process they are undertaking. It gives them pleasure, a rush so to speak, because they're not expending all their energy solving words, remember what 4 times 6 is, or concentrating on every stroke of their paintbrush.

If you've gotten this far in this post, congratulations! You've got pretty good reading fluency, but you're also probably interested in the topic. It's causing you to read and grow ideas. You're reading with fluency to get the words right, but you're also reading with something called flow.

In a theory that has been strongly developed by former University of Chicago professor (and my fellow Hungarian!) Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (that might not read so fluently for some of us!) flow is the feeling of utter stimulation that happens when a person becomes engrossed in a task. It's just like when we say that we are "in the zone," performing some task that brings us pleasure.

In Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience, Csikszentmihalyi writes, "Most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that initially one is reluctant to make. But once the interaction starts to provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be intrinsically rewarding." There is a connection between effortless fluency in any task and the pleasure that you can achieve, something he calls the autotelic experience, internal motivation that is a reward itself!

Yes, fluency can lead us to deeper thinking. It creates engagement, immersion, and a sense of reward if we push students and ourselves to that deeper level. It's the motivation to do more and to do better! It's the drive that should be leading us down roads to new professional learning as teachers, never really mastering our work, because we're trapped in the four (sometimes fewer) walls of any specific program. We might feel fluent at teaching any one particular thing, but that means we have to do more with it to make our work as rewarding as it was when we started many years ago!

I often say that we're in the business of learning. That's our capital. That's the life we have to lead. Whether it's in increasing kids' fluency in reading or anything else, or in our teaching fluency, we have to push to the level of flow to create engagement, motivation, and passion for what is learned. Otherwise, we've only done half of our work!