Attribution: Scott Ableman

Dear Doug,

Finally– in so, so many ways. First “finally”: finally climbing out of the thicket of familial and school challenges to get back to blogging in general. Second “finally”: finally answering your first post here, Doug, and once again, thank you for agreeing to this exciting joint venture. Third “finally”: I think it speaks to the inherent quality of the workshop model that even with the craziness of the last few weeks going on, I finally feel like I am doing something worthwhile with my students’ precious time.

Precious, as you know, because our classrooms are not the delightful white and yolk cradled so carefully by Nancie Atwell’s own school, where she has designed the schedule around the model, and not vice-versa. Consider, for example, that she sees her students– no more than nineteen– for at least 90 minutes every single day for language arts instruction. Consider also something that I just learned from our literacy coach, who studied with Nancie in 2008: kids have Friday, Saturday, AND Sunday to complete substantial reading and writing at home. Consider also that although clearly the Center for Teaching and Learning does not seek out gifted students or discriminate financially, its population still self-selects for involvement, commitment, and “standard” students by a) being a private school that has a detailed application process; b) not having the financial means to address special needs, as they themselves state on their website; and c) requiring substantial parental involvement from the get-go.

So, then– precious, because we see our kids for so much less time. Precious, because our kids leave our rooms and enter a swift, unforgiving current of school culture to the very contrary of the principles we espouse through workshop. Precious, because our kids are so massively diverse in their needs, and so large in their numbers, and so often unsupported even at home.

And this, I would argue, is precisely why workshop is so important in the public schools. A public school does not make workshop unfathomable and unworkable. It makes itself the place where an oasis of personal choice, differentiation, meaningful instruction, and physical comfort like workshop is needed the most of all.

We’re five weeks into the model now, and I had my 100+ students rate themselves on a rubric to assess how successful they felt at the work. I reviewed each rubric with the student, and made adjustments to their self-assigned percentages in conference with them where necessary. I could count on one hand the times I did this. No student rated themselves below a 70% on one or more of the rubric elements, and those students were only a handful.

And I AGREE with them, Doug! They *are* silently sinking into their self-chosen books. They *are* producing 3-5 pages of draft on personally meaningful topics every week. They *are* engaging in daily, lively discussions of poetry. My high-needs IEP kids are working up to snuff. My ESL and former ESL students are indistinguishable from their peers.

Now, all that being said, we are now jumping into the far more instructional (versus procedural) form of workshop, and things may be very different in another five weeks. But I don’t think so. And here’s why: because workshop has let these kids know that their choices matter; that their voices mean something; and that workshop curriculum which is more arbitrarily taught still has a rationale.

In otherwords: workshop has bought their trust. And once you have the kids’ trust, I am discovering you can do nearly anything you like with them.

Could your next post reflect on how workshop and trust intersect in your classroom?

I’d also like to hear about the top major challenge you’ve got going. Actually, maybe we could make this a regular part of our posts back and forth: the workshop Challenge Du Jour. What do you think?

Yours,

Dina