Finding your own "pen"

I am just going to be honest and come out and say it: this is the first time I have ever blogged. I was not into the whole xanga phase that came and went in my middle school days. I am however, a dedicated journal writer. Notepads and paper were the place where I let my imagination and my emotions out. I would love to sit and write down all of my thoughts in places that were special and secret. I wrote in things that I thought no one would ever get a hold of, or so I thought.

One day when I had finished journaling in my lovely little diary, I put it back into its secret place and went down stairs to swim a bit. When I came in, drenching wet with the pool's assistance, I ran up to my room quickly so as not to spread a thick and incriminating trail of where I had been in the house with my chlorined-up self. In this fast-paced scene, I walked into my room to hear my mother and sister reading excerpts from my dear diary. Not only that, they were mocking it, with voices and all! I was crushed, but I was more furious than I was crushed. So in the spirit of the moment, I grabbed my journal, ran to the restroom, plunged all the pages of my diary into the toilet, and flushed. It was gone.

With this horrifying yet somewhat comical experience under my belt, I decided that keeping a diary was not right for me. It just caused too much drama. So I turned my attention towards other means of self-expression dealing with the pen. I began to write down song lyrics and compose worship songs from my thoughts and feelings. I thought that if I wrote about Jesus in the same entries as my feelings and experiences, no one could bash it! To say the least, it worked.

Even to this day I find that I must write out things on a pad of paper with a pencil before I can type it up. I love to sit down with a spiral-bound notepad and just let my imagination take me places. The places can be joyful or dreamy. They can be inspiring and heroic. They can be reflective and challenging. But most of all, the places always bring me hope. It may just be a pad of paper and a pencil, but to me it is a release. A safe haven where I can write and get out all of my thoughts. Its a way of handing those thoughts, stories, creativity, and words over to my Lord: The Author of all things Good.

In the same way, God has given creative abilities and talents to all of His children. He has infused us all with different ways of expressing ourselves. Mine is through a pen, yet others may express themselves through xanga, through dance, through speeches, through singing, or through numbers. As a believer I am called to listen to everyone's stories, and then not just to love them, but to truly care.

Elementary children especially just need someone to care. They need someone to come along side of them and believe that their voice is important, no matter how weak or unique it may be. As a teacher, I have the blessed opportunity to listen and then instruct. As I was reading in the book "Other People's Children" this week I came across some startling truths. Ever since I began in the education field, I have strongly supported diversity in the classroom and differentiated instruction. I have seen the need first hand for curriculums that accept children as they come and challenge them to reach the next step. I believe that IQ's can change and that dreams matter. Like I said before, hope is infused in all of us, it is just a matter of finding out how to bring it out. Children who have never had anyone believe in them need someone to hope for them. As a Christian teacher I believe that this is my call from the Lord. I am not just teaching facts and skills, I am teaching faith, hope, values, how to live successfully and joyfully, and confidence. I pray that I may be this sort of teacher: a Redemptive teacher to whatever people the Lord calls me to.

As I was reading I could not help but notice many of the things I believe in being challenged. In the introduction to the book, Lisa Delpit brought up so unique experiences she has gone through. Not unlike myself, she came through college with a desire to have a constructivist classroom infused with differentiated instruction, hands-on learning, centers, student-centered education, and discovery. She had success with many of the white students in her classroom, but not with the African-American students. She did not understand this result so she simply continued to teach fluency and progressivist concepts to help children "find their voice," when in reality they already had them.

From reading this chapter I realize something I lacked in my philosophy of education. Children do not need me to find their voice, they simply need me to find their "pen." In the book, the reason that the black students were not succeeding in the classroom and school system is because they only learned how to express themselves and gain fluency concepts. However, they never received the skills necessary to allow them to express themselves and their fluency. Teachers get so hung up on letting children find their own path and allowing them freedom in the classroom to express themselves through specific tasks. I realized that in constantly helping children voice their own ideas and concepts through specific and guided stations or interactions, we are telling them that we do not hear their individual voices. We see them all in a mass and see creativity and learning taking place, yet we do not care about where the children come from and whether or not their learning will benefit them in real life.

One thing that really stuck out to me was the fact that a large majority of black children typically do not graduate from high school. I knew this already, yet I did not relate it to the reason they do not graduate is because we do not focus on teaching them skills necessary to succeed. As teachers, myself included, we are so guilty of fearing a boring classroom. We see the old styles of teaching skills as outdated and dull. Yet, by ignoring these traditional styles, we do not teach skills many times. I think that there must be a balance between the two. There must be times when we teach skills and write on the board while children follow and listen through direct instruction, yet there also must be creativity and progressivism infused in the classroom as well. Children learn best through play. Let's not ignore the fact that children need to express themselves, but let's also allow them to find their own "pen" and use it in a variety of ways after they learn the skills necessary to do so well.

A couple questions I am left with after reading the first section of this book are how do we bring about "super" classrooms like this, and how do we teach to all of our students without falling into a rut and focusing more on our own activities than on the children's needs?

I never want to be the teacher that makes a child rip out all of her pages, and I'm excited to learn more about how to interact with other cultures and groups of children that do not learn or "write" the same way that I do. Praise the Lord for all the different expressions of His Glory!