Celebrating Educators: Penny Kittle

Ever since I read Write Beside Them, I was instantly hooked by Penny Kittle's voice as an educator. Being able to meet her at Heinemann's Boothbay Literacy Retreat and hear her read aloud from her Public Teaching was a powerful experience, and it was always a special treat to read her contributions to NCTE's Voices from the Middle. I am excited to have Penny Kittle as the first guest blog post in the Celebrating Educators series on my blog. Enjoy!

I completed an elementary education degree at Oregon State University in 1983. I started teaching in southern California just two weeks after graduation because it was a year-round school. I had third graders in a portable classroom behind the school in the desert above Los Angeles, and every day I played my guitar and we made books. I had always wanted to be an elementary teacher, so I was energized by the students and the opportunity. I was also in love, though, and my future husband finished his engineering degree and took a job in Oregon that spring. I decided to move back to Oregon to teach 5th grade in a rural elementary school near the paper mill where he worked. I taught 5th and then 7th and 8th the following year, where I was assigned everything from remedial math to physical science to woodcarving to creative writing. 

We bought a house in Washington state across the river from the mill, so I moved to teach at an elementary school there. I was blessed with two years with grade 4 and those were happy times. I then moved to grade 5 for a year and finished my Master's of Arts in Teaching that spring. It was a double major: Educational Leadership and British Literature. I loved every minute of my time at Lewis and Clark College and read the writing of so many people who helped me understand this complex thing called teaching. I wasn't finished with school, though, and began considering work towards a Ph.D. 

Pat took a position at a paper mill near Cincinnati, Ohio, so I applied to the Ph.D program in Curriculum and Supervision at Miami University. I had two small children by then, so it was nice to stay home with our kids and go to school in the evening. Pat's work took him within a year to Michigan, so I left the program and went to work at Eastern Michigan University. For five years I supervised student teachers in districts as diverse as Detroit and Walled Lake, and also taught the methods courses for the College of Education. I learned so much because I was in classrooms from K-12 in all content areas and each school was its own community. I am forever grateful for those years observing dozens of enthusiastic new teachers.

We moved one last time for Pat's work in 1997. We had family on both coasts, so living in the middle of the country meant for a lot of traveling. Pat was offered a job managing a paper mill in New Hampshire. I was thrilled to interview with Jane Hansen at the University of New Hampshire as I considered entering their Ph.D program, walking the halls where many of my heroes had taught and written. We decided that it was just too far with our kids so young, though, so I applied to teach 8th grade in town and spent the next three years experimenting again with reading and writing workshop.

Eleven years ago now I was offered a job mentoring new teachers for our school district. It meant leaving full-time teaching, but I was excited to combine what I had learned at Eastern to our teacher turnover problem in the school district. I have since spent 1/3 of my day teaching high school, 1/3 mentoring new teachers K-12, and 1/3 as a K-12 literacy coach. It is all demanding, inspiring work. I am grateful.

I teach for the University of New Hampshire in the summer literacy institutes and work as a consultant in the Learning Through Teaching program during the school year, offering graduate courses for teachers in my school district each semester. 

I have also been writing. Since 2003 I've published four books and have a fifth due this fall. Don Graves and Don Murray were my mentors in moving from ideas to text, and they helped me believe that my voice mattered. Each time I wrote I learned something I could take into my classroom and it has enriched my work in more ways than I can tell you. The year Don Graves and I spent videotaping elementary classrooms and talking about what we saw was a year I continue to learn from. I also wrote a column for Voices from the Middle for six years, and that quarterly deadline kept me writing even when I didn't think I had anything to say. 

Today I keep a notebook and write in it most days, I read like a wolf eats, as Gary Paulson says, and I still love teaching. I've spent the last few years focused on what I'm learning about teaching reading and look forward to putting all that thinking together in my next book. I still get the most energy from writing stories of my students. 

For me, this career has been about risk taking and reflection. I have been given opportunities and I often didn't think I knew enough to take them, but I did. I learned along the way, challenging myself to read and think about this work in complex ways and never settle for less than reaching every student. Teachers are powerful. I work every day to use that power well.

Introducing Celebrating Educators

Friday morning as I neared the school, I smiled as I thought about how I would be able to pull into the prime center lot parking reserved for parents. Little did I know that the parking lot was jam packed and I would actually be parking off to the side of the building along with other parents who had to be creative about finding a spot before escorting their kids in for the first day.

First we went to my 2nd grader's room to get her settled, and then I headed up to kindergarten. Diana instantly found her name on the table. I sat with her as she ate her breakfast, we sat on the carpet and read a couple of books, and I watched her play a bit before heading off for my comprehensive exam proposal. All the while, snapping away documenting the big day.

I pulled out of the parking lot with a mixture of emotions. It felt weird that for the first time in six years I was not in my own classroom welcoming in students and establishing a sense of classroom community. Yet, I was able to savor the start of the first day with my daughters, rather than rushing them to class, snapping a picture, and zipping back to my own class.

This year my personal career as an educator will be going a different route. Taking a year of absence from my regular position, I will be filling in as a sabbatical replacement teaching mainly undergraduate ESL and literacy courses. When trying to decide what I wanted to do, I emailed Penny Kittle, an educator that has always inspired me. She was kind enough to respond and had very wise advice, "I think it helps to consider what you still want to accomplish in teaching and how you can best do that. And then think about what you want to do beyond the classroom and how you can make that happen. All of the options have merit..." She also talked about the value of each position to provide avenues for growth as an educator.

Last year I thought often about what the future holds for me as an educator. As I read professional books, I noticed the background information about the authors - k-12 teachers, support staff, consultants, professors... As I was gearing up for the last year of my doctoral program, I was trying to decide what would be the most fulfilling as an educator - to continue being a classroom teacher or something else. Going back and forth frequently for many different reasons and hearing perspectives of various educators taught me one thing - there are so many ways to have a satisfying career as an educator, so many avenues to make an impact.

I am still fascinated with the stories behind the career choices educators make, hearing about their personal journeys. I thought others might be interested as well; thus, I decided to start Celebrating Educators. At different points throughout the year I will have guest posts from different educators sharing about their diverse backgrounds. The posts will typically be on Tuesdays, although, it might not necessarily be every Tuesday. It will be a way to celebrate that there is not one best career path, but rather various when it comes to positively impacting students.

The next three weeks will feature Penny Kittle, Troy Hicks, and Pat Johnson.

Reading and Writing Workshop Training: Other Possibilities

Earlier I mentioned a little bit about the schedule for my workshop training and how I decided which components to include. When it was complete, I reflected on how it all went. For future trainings I will definitely start with a getting to know you (or you as a reader and writer) activity, as well as background about the current context of literacy and workshop philosophy. I will also make sure to include time for teachers to collaborate and plan. However, I may organize it a little bit differently.

I am thinking that after the morning of the first day would be very much the same, but then I would shift to planning and collaborating for either reading or writing workshop (whichever one I focused on in the morning) for the afternoon. Then on the second day I would start by focusing on the whichever I did not highlight on the first day before shifting over to planning and collaboration.

I am weighing advantages and disadvantages of both the way the training was set up and this alternate idea, thinking about which would be most beneficial, which would provide a better blend of introducing concepts, reflecting, thinking, processing, and planning.

Another aspect that I would emphasize more would be encouraging teachers to set up a plan for focusing on themselves as writers or providing a scaffold for a long term teachers as writers community. Many of us already participate in a book club (and here), which has been so fulfilling and a great learning experience for me. It would be nice to also have a writing component.

There's always so many possibilities with teaching and growing as professionals...

Reading and Writing Workshop Training: Collaboration

For the past three years I have taught in a small, rural charter school, being the only teacher of certain subjects at my grade level. I loved the close-knit environment that reminded me of the community where I grew up; yet, at times I also missed having other teachers at my same grade level teaching the same content that I was used to in the larger school districts where I had previously worked. In addition, workshop teaching is fairly rare in my community. Instead, I was thankful to have the blogosphere, as well as conversational style books written by teachers for teachers as I navigated my way with workshop teaching. 

Nonetheless, there is always something special about being able to collaborate with other teachers face-to-face. I was thrilled when it worked out that another teacher from a nearby K-8 rural charter school was able to attend the reading and writing workshop training. It provided the teacher who will be teaching in my position next year with an opportunity to collaborate with another local teacher who also integrates workshop teaching into her classroom. While both teachers have unique contexts, one who will juggle two languages in a dual immersion setting and another who will be teaching all subjects in a 6th-8th grade blend, they will be able to learn so much from each other. 

I saw other collaborations with teachers within my school, such as primary teachers watching more of the Calkins' clips and talking about how their literacy instruction would work, determining what already aligned with workshop, as well as aspects they would like to change or fine-tune. They also created anecdotal records forms together and talked about organization. 

All participants know that they can check in with me for further clarification or support, but they also know that they have a valuable resource in each other. They will be able to have conversations about what is working well and areas where they would still like to grow. Whether it is on-line, through professional development books, face-to-face (or a combination of all three), I am learning that fostering collaboration and relationships for long-term mutual support are so beneficial.

Reading and Writing Workshop Training: Resources - Where to Start?

When I was preparing the resources that I would have available for the second day that was set aside for collaborating and planning, I was unsure of how many to include. I did not want to overwhelm teachers by having too many, yet I also wanted to have whatever was most helpful at the time. I observed during that day and noticed that not surprisingly, there was not one or two resources that everyone wanted. Instead, different teachers were drawn to different resources as their initial starting points, making me realize that I was glad I had various options available.

For writing workshop the Calkins and Atwell curriculum was a definite given as being highly useful for teachers. The Daily Five, The CAFE Book, Aimee Buckner resources, Conferring, and The Continuum of Literacy Learning were also among the top choices.

In combination with the resources I was also available to answer questions. It was ideal that the training was at my school because I was able to pull up documents that I used with my students to share as examples. Teachers were able to move flexibly around the room with different resources or to lean in on others' conversations when they overheard something that seemed to be relevant to them.

Workshop teaching is about flexibility and drawing on multiple resources to continually build capacity about reading, writing, thinking, and teaching, so it was only appropriate that having various resources ended up being the right fit. However, I did talk to teachers about trying to set goals and layer in different aspects. I mentioned that some of the resources would be helpful but they would decide that they were not ready for them yet. We discussed how they could utilize the resources most aligned with where they are right now and what they would like to implement in the fall. Then as they start to feel that they are ready to further explore a specific aspect they can seek out resources that fit those needs.

Reading and Writing Workshop Training: The Power of Seeing

By and far one of the most powerful aspects of the training was sharing video clips of workshop teaching.  I think that and being able to experience workshop first hand were the most helpful and influential for teachers. One teachers even commented that she loved the writing style for the Calkins' units of study resource, which really paints the picture of what is happening, but that she would much rather prefer to just watch it. She talked about how she is a visual learner. Even though I don't necessarily consider myself a visual learner, I can relate to the power of being able to actually see it. I loved the DVD component of Penny Kittle's Write Beside Them and was thrilled to see the Atwell resources after reading so many of her ideas.

I could tell every time I showed a video clip that it really helped to solidify the concepts we were talking about or to open up a whole other avenue of possibilities. I shared clips from Atwell's resources for reading and writing workshop, and clips from Calkins' videos for writing workshop. It really helped to have the Calkins' resources to show how it looks k-5, while having the Atwell resources to show what it looks like at the middle school level. Teachers could get ideas that they could adapt to their grade level from every video clip, yet there was also the added value of seeing how workshop teaching can progress and the foundation that the younger years can provide for the older years being even more powerful.

I will be watching for more video resources. I was excited to see that Stenhouse has a new Patrick Allen resource coming out focusing on reading conferring. I'm sure that would be an amazing one to add to any workshop resource library!

Reading and Writing Workshop Training: Launching the Workshop

I gave the teachers in my Reading and Writing Workshop a taste of what workshop is like similar to the way that I launch workshop each year - with a narrative genre study. Because of the compact nature of the time allotted, I did have to explain what I would do in a regular classroom in some stages, while having them try it out in other portions.

Influenced by Aimee Buckner, I explained that I start the year with stories, reading books that I think have universal themes or experiences with which my students can connect in order to prompt their own thinking about stories they have to share. I showed them one of my favorite start of the year texts, Marianthe's Story: Painted Words and Spoken Memories. I shared with teachers how it is a perfect fit for our community of dual immersion students since all students have stories of learning a new language.

I often talked to students about my own list of possible experiences, such as the first time riding alone in a taxi cab in Mexico when I paid the driver a 50 cent piece (thinking they only had pesos) and being confused when the driver was waiting for more money, rather than getting me my change. I talk about trying to express my confusion and the driver eventually having to take another 50 cent piece out of my hand, holding the two together to say "un peso" and my embarrassment of realizing that I had only given him half of a peso. As such, my students and I would laugh together about experiences learning languages - the joys, the challenges, the laughter...

I mentioned to teachers that I would not necessarily use this book as a start of the year writing workshop launch if I was teaching in my hometown community where most students have not yet experienced learning another language. In that context I would choose another book that would closely connect to my rural community's experience. I shared with teachers how depending on the age and stories students have to tell, it might be that students start writing on the first day or it is just fine to have successive days reading and orally sharing stories, as oral rehearsing is a vital portion of the process, waiting as Buckner says until the day when it seems that everyone in the class has a story to tell.

Then I transitioned into a narrative just for them, Penny Kittle's "of frog legs, crickets, and Superman's cape", one that I first heard when she read it out loud at the Boothbay Literacy Retreat. Just as I imagined I saw teachers smiling and laughing as I read it aloud, and after they were able to think of their own memorable moments with teaching. I guided them through listing, partner sharing, and then writing quick writes, again highlighting the importance of oral rehearsing with the sharing portion in between listing and quick writes. Then they did a whip-around share, each sharing a small portion of their quick write in order to model a different way of sharing.

Next teachers "sat in" on a mini-lesson with Lucy Calkins in her Units of Study for Teaching Writing, Grades 3-5, and I had teachers go back and experiment with their quick write with Calkins' lesson in mind. Then teachers shared with partners again. I heard them respond naturally to each other's writing, as well as noting what stood out to them. They were getting a sense of what it is like to be a part of a community of writers, of what they could foster in their own classrooms.