For two weeks this summer (followed by three Saturdays this fall) I attend the Massachusetts Intel Mathematics Institute, which was magical. I found that the course was everything school is supposed to be: challenging, engaging, interesting, and informative. I thought about how much more math I know, now that I've taken this course. I finally don't know just enough math to stay ahead of my students -I am way above them now. (Unfortunately, it's still not a skill I can show off to my friends, as they don't care.)
The course is designed to give teachers better mathematical knowledge so that they will have an easier time passing this information along to their students. The major rationale behind this course is that we use TERC, a curriculum that values number sense and a deep understanding of the conceptual root of the mathematics these students are doing. The curriculum is certainly more closely aligned with the kind of mathematical thinking mathematicians have to do, and so the math is more difficult in some ways than the traditional "Here the procedure, please mimic" method of teaching. Therefore, teachers need a better grasp on math as concepts, rather than math as steps 1 through 5.
Then I started thinking about how useful a course like this would be for reading and writing. In my classes with Lucy Calkins, she would talk about how we start designing our minilessons by thinking about what it is that good readers or writers do. Well, what if I don't know what good readers or writers do? What if I'm not a reader or writer myself? Then how am I supposed to teach these skills to my students?
Think about the value this could have for the teaching of English/Language Arts. Imagine a class where we are expected to do what our students do: pick out books, read them, and report back. Talk about books. Write about books. Think about books. Write papers. Revise papers. Write with better grammar and spelling. Help our peers with all of these things.
Maybe I'm imagining this in a world where all teachers use the Reader's and Writer's workshop; my district certainly is not among them. We use a "managed curriculum," one that involves and "anthology" and countless "leveled books" that have us using "quotation marks" ad nauseum. But even within my district, we use the Writer's workshop, and we are quickly finding that our managed curriculum does not necessarily hold up to the demands of the new CCSS, so changes must be made. And if changes must be made, teachers need to know more about the subject they are teaching. I think we assume that just because teachers know how to read and write well enough to pass their certification tests they must know how to teach reading and writing to ever-increasing difficulty levels.
I would argue strongly in favor of a professional development similar to MIMI for reading and writing. Just like teachers need a better understanding of the mathematical concepts they need to teach their students, teachers need a better understanding of the difficult skills involved in being a good reader and writer. Reading is not just absorbing information, and writing is not just regurgitating it. However, that seems to be how most teachers treat these subjects -probably in large part because that's all they know how to do with each subject. If teachers were taught the skills necessary to be good readers and good writers, then perhaps they would be better able to teach their own students the skills necessary to be good readers and writers. I don't think it's enough to expect teachers to go out a read the (millions) of books out there on the subject, since they're not doing that. But by providing a space in which that is an expected behavior, maybe we can get more teachers on board with the same 21st century, college and career readiness skills their students are supposed to be gaining.
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