It's the little things...

I should be grading right now, but I chose to write instead.  It felt too amazing outside not to soak it up.    It's like Texas just wanted to give us a glimpse of what fall is supposed to feel like - cool, stagnant air just relaxing in the peaceful silence.  Sadly, these envied temperatures will be melted away by the end of the week.  Oh well, we can always hope for more rain.

As I'm sitting out in the coolness, I'm reflecting on my teaching week.  Everyday I feel a little more drained than the last, so by Friday, it's a miracle I'm still walking.  However, this Friday (yesterday), was different.  After three years of teaching, I felt like the best teacher version of myself. We were working on our first personal narrative essays of the year, and yesterday was revising day.  As usual, I wrote an essay of my own as an example, but I did something with it I've never done before.  I put my rough draft - my sloppiness, open and exposed - under our document camera for the kids to see. I have done that before.  I've written with them and modeled how to start an essay.  I've given check lists of what makes a good essay or what they should have in theirs.  We've answered questions about revising essays.  I've even done musical revising, where they get up and move around while music plays and they revise whichever paper they arrive at when the music stops.  But I've never had them revise mine or modeled what revising looks like.  To tell the truth, it was one of my least favorite things to teach because I could never really find a good, meaningful way to do it.  I'm sure there plenty of simple ways out there that much better teachers breeze through.   But Friday, although small, I had a victory.

I put my rough draft under the camera, so everyone could see.  I read it to them and had them follow along.  Occasionally, I stopped and told them what I was thinking when I wrote a part or when I though I needed to get rid of something.  I also told them to revise it.  I wanted to see if they would pick up on the many things I did wrong.  At first they were unsure when I opened the floor for discussion of my essay.

"You mean, we won't get in trouble for correcting you?"
"No ma'am, This is a conversation - writer-to-writer."

Once they realized I was serious, they jumped in, excited for the opportunity to correct the teacher.    More importantly, I finally started hearing music to my ears.  They were genuinely decoding the message of my essay and thinking through the words I chose.

"You went on too long about your courage."
"I think you repeated yourself when you said mountains twice."
"I think that sentence is too long.  I can't understand it."
"You said one thing in that paragraph that doesn't go with your story."

Just when I had them right where I wanted them, I brought my lesson home.

"This is revising.  What you just corrected is my first draft.  Clearly, it was not ready to be my final draft.  You had to figure out what I was trying to say and delete the extra stuff."

I saw some lightbulbs begin to click.  It wasn't profound or even that creative and it may not sound like it, but I felt like I finally taught them that revising is not just replacing a word or fixing a comma.  Revising is about shaping and molding your words to paint the picture you want your reader to see.  Words are the clay and students can mold them into any art form they want.  It won't be perfect the first time, which is why they have to keep running their fingers through it.

Again, it is pretty insignificant, and I'm sure all you other more talented teachers are laughing at me, but I'll take a small victory.  I know I have a long way to go to becoming a "great" teacher, but I had so much fun watching my students genuinely revise and shape their essays, crafting their words into little masterpieces.  Even though I was so drained and nearly dragging, my students turned my day completely around.  It was refreshing to watch them work and actually realize why we do this.  Sometimes it's the little things that keep me going on days when I don't want to get out of bed.