This piece by Jay Mathews is a week old, but the writing project summer institute has kept me so busy I haven’t had brain space for anything else. Not sure I really do now, but I’m not going to let that hold me back.

A while ago Mathews decided to host a contest to find the best teaching strategies. The reasoning here is quite sound, he wanted to highlight specific positive things happening rather than just vague educational ideas.

The winner with the best teaching strategy is an eighth grade teacher at a private school.

Here’s how her immigration project works: Her students are grouped into make-believe families. They pretend they are immigrating here in about 1900. In language arts, they blog about the experience. In science, they study the diseases that afflicted immigrants. In social studies, they analyze immigration laws. In foreign language, they take a look at countries that provided the most immigrants.

I love this project. It is engaging, builds connections, and allows for student choice. I would love to see projects like this happening all over the place.

I have two problems however. The standards that policy makers love keep this from happening in our public schools. If the project was planned around social studies standards on immigration and teachers tried to include diseases in science class there wouldn’t be enough time to teach the required science standards. The way our standards are designed completely roadblocks making meaningful connections in this way.

My second issue is more nit-picky. This isn’t a teaching strategy. This is a project. It is an awesome one that I would love to participate in but it isn’t a strategy. Highlighting effective, interesting teaching strategies is worth Jay Mathews’ time still.

Mathews’ posts typically have dozens of comments. This one has only five. What does that mean? Does that suggest that people aren’t interested in this topic? 

This summer there is quite a bit of discussion happening all around the place focused on Peter Johnston’s new book, Opening Minds. As I am often behind the curve, I’m still reading Choice Words, Johnston’s first book (or rereading as the case may be). 

As teachers we have to decide what to be explicit about for which students, and when to be explicit about it.

Then on page nine he continues this idea:

Language, then, is not merely representational (though it is that); it is also constitutive. It actually creates realities and invites identities.

When we explicitly use language thoughtfully we help students see themselves and their world anew and identify possible futures. Just through the words we chose. Amazing.

Chapter Two is Noticing and Naming. Like chapter one it is chock full of powerful thinking. My focus stuck on two parts: another reason language matters and the importance of the positive.

On page twelve Johnston discusses the way we acquire language, without really noticing what we are doing. The problem, he says, is that

many children graduate high school with little change in their level of awareness, leaving them unprepared to manage the effects language has on them and on others.

It seems that we, as teachers, need to not only be very purposeful about how we use language but we also need to be helping our students recognize that and analyze language around them. A big task.

The last bit I couldn’t let go of is on page thirteen and goes far beyond language to me into our beliefs about children and their capabilities.

Focusing on the positive is hardly a new idea. It is just hard to remember to do it sometimes, particularly when the child’s response is nowhere near what you expected. Indeed, the more we rely on expectations and standards, the harder it is to focus on what is going well.

He explains that helping students see what they can do well encourages agency. It helps students continue to grow. It is too easy in education to work from a deficit model, to notice and focus on all the things our students cannot do or cannot do well. In some ways it is natural as our job is to help them learn to do those things. It is detrimental however as it means we miss all they can do and often end up setting lower expectations as a result. Focusing on the positive helps them and keeps us moving forward as well.