Seeing is Believing

Envisioning my Success

Now that I know what I want to do in my classroom by resetting my purpose I need to create a vision, literally see it in action.  First I'll start with the purpose statement as discussed in my prior blog:

"To inspire students to explore the world through reading various literary genres and media types to discover and develop their passion in life"

What do I see myself doing to put this into action?  What do I see my students doing?  

It's time for a mind movie {insert harp music and fade to alternate universe, what I call "Michelle's Perfect World"}:

I see a peaceful classroom with all students having access to the books, magazines, and online reading materials of their choice.  Some students are working independently reading books, magazines, or scouring online for articles or using reading apps.  Others are sitting in a small book club group discussing their latest reading selection.  Perhaps I'm in one of the small groups or conferring one-on-one either discussing a book we both read or guiding a student through a selection in the classroom library.  Maybe a student is even giving me a book recommendation and I am taking their challenge seriously.  I see a classroom library overflowing with offerings both classical and contemporary with both books and magazines.  The students iPads have applications geared towards increasing their reading skills, applications for online magazine subscriptions.  Students are free to choose between what hard text offerings are in the classroom or the applications on their iPads or simply browsing book lists and searching online articles to read.  Sounds idyllic.

{FLASHBACK}  How do I even begin to accomplish this?  I've had this dream for years but have lacked the courage to move outside the comfort zone of teacher directed everything.  After all, can I trust the students to be doing what they're supposed to be doing?  Aren't I supposed to be using the curriculum to guide my instruction?  That reality left a lifeless, robotic reading of bored students.  Students who are capable readers and might enjoy their reading.  Then enters The Book Whisperer.

Reading this book opened my eyes to what made me a reader, reading books, lots of books.  Just like in my previous posting moving from first to fourth grade gave me the opportunity to reset my teaching purpose which, in turn, meant I KNEW THE KIDS!  Many of the students I have this year I taught three years ago.  That thought comforted me and gave me the courage to begin to move away from 100% teacher directed reading groups to a reader's workshop format using many of the ideas and suggestions Donalyn Miller outlined in her book.  There, done, vision created:

I envision myself implementing daily reader's workshop with both teacher selected and student selected reading in electronic, book, and magazine format.

This vision is a small step towards letting go and letting children become immersed in a story, so captivated by what they're reading that they don't even realize it's time for lunch.  Now, all I need to do is get the materials and put this into action.