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I don't go through a day in a classroom with second graders, or seventh graders. It's funny, they should let that be. So, I think seguing to a little bit more serious topic, I've been fascinated and did some rereading in both of your books recently, by the old notion of kid-watching. Yetta Goodman talked a long time ago about the importance of kid-watching.
I've been committing in my own classroom demonstrations and my own visits to classrooms around the country to absolutely, positively, line in the sand, set some time aside to just stand back and observe. And, to ask teachers to do the same, and to really experience the power of observation, which I think is potent. It feels like our classrooms are somewhat high-stress, and I think that stress rolls over to kids.
I've been wondering about the power of silence. I read about that a little bit, and about the power of observation of just standing back and truly just taking time to watch kids. I'm guessing that most teachers would say that they don't have the time to do that. I was pouring through both of your books, Tom, Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones, a title that perhaps is more relevant today than ever.
Ellin: It's always going to be relevant.
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You talk about several habits of mine, including the habit of observation. One that is not evident at first glance. Tom: I think if you're in a hurry, you're going to see what you expected to see. Then, nothing's changed. Basically, you're jut reinforcing your expectations. You're not learning anything. Tom: You're not going to be surprised. There's something invigorating about being surprised.
There's a physiological aspect. You feel it in your body. I think that's what learning is, feeling that in your body. If you're in a hurry, and in a system and on a pace, basically you're not going to experience that at all. Kathy, with your work and Matt's work, when I've read it and heard you and Matt present, I've thought, this is kind of where we came in back at Heinemann.
Looking at what kids do, asking them questions, looking at early reading behavior that we might think are not reading, but really the kids are beginning to put together all the components of reading. If you're in a hurry, you think the kids aren't writing. This is pre-reading. This is something else. I think you've captured that.
Look at some originating ideas for Heinemann, I think that is one of them. Kathy: When I was a research assistant, that was such a great job because all I was doing was going into classrooms, watching kids, and watching teachers. I wasn't watching curriculum, I wasn't watching clocks, I wasn't watching for the most exquisite teaching point.
I was just watching what teachers did, how children responded. It was so funny. Back then, you didn't have your smartphone, you weren't videotaping anything, so I was transcribing. I would go to these think tanks. It was just so funny. Every Thursday, the project would have uppercase think tanks. You'd have the big one, then you'd have the little one that was studying the teaching and reading.
Lucy would ask me to do my bits.
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They valued that so much, the kids' responses, that it taught me to value the kids' responses. I think sometimes when teaching, we're so about us. You've got to get the mini lesson done in this time, and you've got to get to so many conferences, and how am I going to get around to all of my kids? You've both said the rush makes the kids almost opaque in a way.
We get more worried about the clock. That is just really fun, watching them bumble around a little bit. Ellin: Informative, that's the thing. How do you know where you're going tomorrow unless we're really taking time to stand back? You have to teach the kids to let you do that. That's a process in and of itself.
Especially in a transition from a whole class interaction to individual work, or small group work. The first thing, you're going to have six kids clinging, in some way or another. That's the time when I love to say, I'll be so interested to hear how you'll solve that problem, sweetheart. This is my time to watch the readers and writers. It's just a wealth of information.
It's a goldmine, really. Tom: It's a habit of curiosity, too.
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When you're curious about things you feel you don't fully understand, and it's easy to think you understand something, but almost anything you think you understand, if you take some time and look at it more, you're going to see that you didn't understand it. Tom: Reading. You could take a book that you have read a million times. The Great Gatsby.
If you look at a passage carefully in the Great Gatsby, you're going to see something you never saw in any of those earlier readings. Ellin: So, finally, this morning I want to explore this question that we will be exploring in each of the Turn and Talk conversations. It's a question that I'm hoping will be more a part of every school's conversation.
Every pair of the Turn and Talk participants are going to be asked this question. I just need to cite a study to begin. But this positive statistic obscures other troubling facts, such as the decline in the percentage of African American teachers in many large urban districts, and the lower retention rates for teachers of color across the country.
I'm curious what you two make of this, and what conversations you've been a part of that have been productive or useful in terms of solving or addressing these seemingly intransigent problems.
Biography meaning in urdu: Ellin Oliver Keene has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, non-profit director and adjunct professor of reading and writing. For sixteen years she directed staff development initiatives at the Denver-based Public Education & Business Coalition.
Whether we're currently in the classroom or not, what we ought to be doing to address that dilemma? Kathy: I was talking to a principal at a school where there's one teacher of color. I was talking to the principal about hiring, and he was saying how we would love to have more diversity. We post jobs, but we're not getting a diverse applicant pool coming in.
It made think of that Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams. If you post it, they will come. I think that's too passive. There's the National Alliance of Black School Educators reaching out to them, looking on their website. They have career opportunities, they have job postings. Being a little more proactive to find people and to find candidates.
It's urgent that schools reflect the world for students. To add to your statistics, John Hopkins had a study that came out April Gloria Ladson-Billings also said it's good for everybody. White children need to have children of color. One question to your quote is about attracting teachers and hiring them. The other issue is then the retaining.
You look at a community. How does the community support teachers of color? Every teacher I ever meet, I don't have a racist bone in my body, which might be true, but what's structurally and systemically around might be contradicting that.
I don't know, but I'm thinking about it a lot. We can do little things, like when we present at conferences, we can be on panels that are diverse. We can amplify voices of teachers and educators from different communities from ours, different ethnicities and races. Individually, we have a lot to do. One last thing I'll say.
Yara Shahidi was being interviewed on my favorite podcast, Keep It. Little shout out for Keep It. She was being interviewed, she's 18 years old, and she's a human activist. You're going to be voting next year. The new thing I'm doing is when I work at a school or a district and it's my first time, I'll talk to administrator or principal or literacy coach.
There's these little things we can do, as well as the systemic things we can do.
Ellin: These are the important questions. I feel like those of us who are white are flailing a little bit. I think it's a good flailing. Kathy, I really appreciated your question when we first started talking about this gathering. What is the balance going to be across the series of four? It is going to be a balance, and that's been a high priority.
Yet, sure enough, those are the little questions that you're talking about that we just have to remember to ask. In faculty conversations, I think those little questions can go a long way towards raising awareness. Kathy: One thing about retention.
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I've just been reading a lot about the stress on teachers of color. One teacher in this article was talking about how he's always the one when the African American kid has trouble in class, they send him to this teacher. Or, at a faculty meeting, when there's a school shooting or something in society is going on, which is every single day, people turn to that teacher.
Tell us what to do. I think that death by a thousand cuts must be exhausting. Kathy: Exactly. Microaggressions all the time. Ellin works with schools and districts throughout the country and abroad. Her emphasis is long-term, school-based professional development and strategic planning for literacy learning. Now accepting applications for the school year.
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More About Ellin Oliver Keene. Ellin Oliver Keene Biography Ellin Oliver Keene has been a classroom teacher, staff developer, non-profit director, and adjunct professor of reading and writing. Need Instant Answers? Booking Agency Disclaimer:. Popular Topics.