Let's Celebrate What Students CAN Do

Last week a student came bouncing into class and said, "Mrs. Neill, you are going to be so proud of me. I finished a book." And you know what, he was right - I was SO proud of him. We celebrated the fact that he completed a book, he wrote down his title, added a number to the class total and then headed to the library.  The next day in class, we celebrated a young lady who read the largest number of pages in one sitting that she could remember - I told her I was proud of her. Her mom messaged me that night on Facebook to tell me that her daughter was home reading again because of the recognition I gave her for her hard work. I also got to celebrate a student last week in an IEP meeting. This was a meeting that was filled with concerns about his learning - how his plan would follow him to college and how he can utilize resources to be successful. That's when I interjected and shared that he has read two free-verse novels this year. It was so much fun to see the conversation shift and the mother's shoulders raise - from worry about what her son was struggling with in school to what her son has already done this year. I have no doubt that this mom knows I am on her side. I also think that in the middle of that meeting, it dawned on me how much these students need to be celebrated.

When students walk into my classroom, many have already labeled themselves as bad readers and writers. They feel as thought they have spent years being asked to fix what they are doing incorrectly, even though I know that teachers do their best to balance the compliments with the criticism. Last year it dawned on me that I was going about my teaching the wrong way. Instead of pointing out what they were doing wrong, what would happen if we started with what we were doing right? What I wasn't expecting was how difficult that would be for some of my students.

We started with reading - we record our pages each day to check our progress. I simply ask students what pages they are on, write down the number they say, and then we start our 10 minutes of reading.   I don't need to see their books to check pages. I trust them, and they respect that. As of now, in 9 weeks, they have read 226 books. I trust them. We preview books. We keep a "to-read" list. We celebrate a 10 page increase from the previous days reading the same way we celebrate a 100 page increase. It costs me noting -- zip, zero, zilch -- to say aloud, "Wow, good job," or "You put in some reading time last night, " or my favorite: "Whoo hoo!" But you know what, taking the time to recognize effort puts smiles on their faces and a willingness in their hearts to keep trying. They now let me know if they don't like a book. They stick around after class to tell me about their book. We celebrate their reading successes in class, and they are beginning to love reading again. It is a beautiful sight.

Sometimes, (just like a mom who sneaks into her children's rooms to watch them sleep) I just stop and look in awe of them and their reading habits. I love these kids to pieces!

I have also changed how I approach writing. True story - I am teaching white collar, blue collar, and no collar English. The majority of my students are not going to be English majors, but they will all have to write throughout their lives. When these kiddos walk out of my classroom, they need to be able to identify the techniques they have learned that have improved their writing. One of the activities we do is we look for "red flag" words, and we learn grammar rules or patterns specific to those words. We drop the grammatically correct terms, and make them useable. As much as it pains this former sentence diagrammer to say it, students do not need to be able to tell me that a coordinating conjunction is joining two independent clauses. One example of how we do this is we look for the word "and" in our sentences; we try to determine if "and" is joining a list of two words, a list of three or more words, or two simple sentences. Once we can determine what the word is doing in a sentence, we know how to punctuate it. When it comes to revising our writing, students now have a game plan. They know to look for those words and determine their function in the sentence. They know check for any punctuation marks surrounding them. So much of writing is a mind-game. It is being able to tell their inner critics to hush-up because they know there are doing a few more things better on this essay than the last. It is a way to know before turning in that you have done everything right that you can -- that is a powerful feeling. In a sense, we celebrate what we are doing right which allows us to be more open about what we need to improve.

These are just two ways the approach to learning in my class is changing. I am constantly asking myself, how can I celebrate the good that students are bringing to my class each day? How can I make students feel appreciated for taking chances in their reading or writing? Energy attracts like energy - this is why I will continue to work each day to establish a classroom environment that attracts risk-taking and celebrating. (And, it is fun!)

How can you celebrate your learners - to meet them where they are at, lift them up, and then watch their learning soar to levels they never knew were possible?