How do I understand?

A large group of coaches and teachers in our state had the joy this week of attending a professional development seminar with Ellin Oliver Keene, author of To Understand and co-author of Mosaics of Thought. She challenged us to ask ourselves the provocative question to which she has devoted much of her recent work:
Is our definition of comprehension worthy of our students' intellectual capacity?

If frequent actions describe intent, then our present and most common definition of comprehension seems to be: the ability to answer questions and retell. In that case, Ellin had another question for us: If all students are expected to be able to do is retell and answer questions, then why do they even need strategy instruction?

Then she asked: How do we pursue a new definition of comprehension?

And she gave us three avenues for that pursuit of that question:
- observing ourselves in the process of comprehending
-observing students in the process of comprehending
-applying a new, and ambitious, discourse to define and describe comprehension

I am inquiring into the first avenue, attending to my own processes of comprehending as I read. I want to see what matters to me, what works for me, what is it that I do in order to comprehend in the act of reading, and what I do to deepen my understanding of the piece or the content afterward? Or, conversely, what gets in the way, or prevents my understanding.

Here is a piece that is interesting , yet challenging enough, for me to have to do a bit of intellectual work to "get it". (It is from one of my very favorite blogs, 37 days by Patti Digh, and relates to this topic as well as another previous entry on understanding.) I am going to read it and note the "voices in my head," as Ellin calls metacognitive awareness. Will you give it a go as well?....to try to name what kinds of thinking you do as you read it? As you share those insights in your comments, we can begin to think/write our way into a new, more ambitions discourse as we work to define and describe our growing understanding of comprehension.

Being in the Mood

Who is in control, you or your moods?
Are your moods serving your work, relationships, and life well, or do they sometimes cause you trouble?

What is the relationship between your thoughts and your emotions?

Moods are emotions that persist, or stick around. Alan Sieler and Mark Raymond, of the Newfield Institute, describe moods as emotional responses that persist on a daily basis to the point that they "take up residence." The power of moods is that while they operate out of awareness, they play a dominant role in our thoughts and behavior---be that for better or worse. Moods are a filter to our perceptions and influence what we believe we can and cannot do.

Coaches within an organization need to be particularly aware of their emotional responses to crises within their organizations and their personal lives, because as a leader in a school they serve as "tone setters" in the organization: their response to a crisis or event will have great impact on the staff and students. In order to develop and maintain a positive and resourceful culture , it is the responsibility of a leader to set a positive tone.

It is very difficult in most schools, right now, not to be taken over by a mood of anxiety, a very debilitating mood. When in the mood of anxiety we tend to crave certainty, we imagine worst-case scenarios and begin to "live" them with our nervous system. Then much of the present and future appears threatening and harmful. If we let this mood of anxiety run, we begin to believe that we will be unable to cope if the worst happened, and then begin to live as if that were the truth by withdrawing from the very human resources and resilience that serve us so well in challenging times.

While moods of anxiety, resignation, and resentment are unhelpful and can lead us to despair, despondency, and self-pity, the counter moods of acceptance and wonder are quite resourceful. In the mood of acceptance, we can work from clarity and thoughtfulness, realizing what we can and cannot change and discerning where we might get the best return for our energy. In a mood of wonder, we can become curious about what will happen and how we will deal with it.

Moods can be both individual and social. Are you aware of the impact of your moods on others in your school? What is the mood of your school?

How do you go about shifting your moods? What helps to shift from a mood of anxiety to a mood of acceptance?

The best thing for being sad.....

When as a young adult I first read The Sword in the Stone, by T. H. White, there was one place in the book which I read over and over again. It so struck a cord in my heart, a deep place of knowing that I wasn't even aware I knew until I read those words:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then---to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."

Reading is what I do when I am sad. It is the place I go to "learn why the world wags and what wags it." Reading takes me out of myself, my worries, my limited perspectives and experiences, my moods and attitudes, and levers me into worlds, experiences, perspectives, moods, and knowledge beyond myself. Reading opens my mind and heart, while somehow sheltering the tender, vulnerable, defensive and sad places there. It is a space holder I need in my life to experience sadness and learn from it, rather than hide from it or hide it from me. Stories, poetry, novels, essays, informative articles, and sacred scripture give me the insights and reminders that I have the inner resources and support to face those difficult things in life.

There are many other reasons I read, besides because I am sad, yet it for this reason that I am most grateful for the gift of books. I wonder in our efforts to lure students (and teachers, who sadly are oftentimes not readers themselves) to reading if we don't rely too heavily on the entertainment value of reading, and not enough on those other values that reading plays in our lives.

What about you? What are the deeper, meaningful roles that books and reading play in your life? What are the different sorts of reasons, beyond those stated in the state ELA standards ( to inform, to entertain), that you read? How might we share what really matters about reading with teachers, students, parents?

Poem in Your Pocket

Do you know about "Poem in your Pocket" day? I love this idea for everyday, but how fun for coaches, teachers, parents, and students to try this out together with national support. Here is some information about it from the Poets.org site:

Celebrate the second national Poem In Your Pocket Day on Thursday, April 30, 2009!

The idea is simple: select a poem you love during National Poetry Month then carry it with you to share with co-workers, family, and friends on April 30, 2009.

Poems from pockets will be unfolded throughout the day with events in parks, libraries, schools, workplaces, and bookstores.

In this age of mechanical and digital reproduction, it's easy to carry a poem, share a poem, or start your own PIYP day event. Here are some ideas of how you might get involved:

Start a "poems for pockets" give-a-way in your school or workplace Urge local businesses to offer discounts for those carrying poems Post pocket-sized verses in public places Start a street team to pass out poems in your community Distribute bookmarks with your favorite immortal lines Add a poem to your email footer Post a poem on your blog or social networking page Project a poem on a wall, inside or out Text a poem to friends

What ideas and plans do you have for Poetry in Your Pocket day?
Or, what are the ways that you carry poetry with you in your life?

I write or paste poems in my writer's notebooks. (Really more of a life notebook than just a writer's notebook, to be truthful.) Part of my process for beginning a new notebook is to include a poem that holds relevance for me on one of the first pages. I just started a new notebook a few weeks ago, always a very difficult transition for me. I get so attached to the fullness and comfort of the present notebook, and though I may have filled its pages, I don't want to give up the relationship with that notebook to begin a new one. Beginnings are just hard to..... begin. Anyway, here is the poem I chose for the beginning of my new notebook.

Patient Trust In Ourselves & The Slow Work Of God

By Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are all, quite naturally,
impatient in everything to reach the end
without delay.
We should like to skip
the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being
on the way to something unknown,
something new,
and yet it is the law of all progress
that is made by passing through
some stages of instability-
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually –
let them grow,
let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today
what time (that is to say, grace and
circumstances acting on your own good will)
will make you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you
and accept the anxiety of
feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

Poetry "interests me, strangely"

April is Poetry month!

William Stafford, one of my favorite poets, seems just the right poet, with just the right poem, to remind us what poetry can do for us. He wakes me up with his warning of becoming one of those "vacant effective people," and then gives good guidance about the " line along from one thing to the next," that thread, which leads me into what matters for me, what "interests me strangely."

Are there poems, poets, or even "lines" that remind you of what matters and who "interest you, strangely?"

An Introduction to Some Poems

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
Strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.

~ by William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems © Graywolf Press, 1998.

The gist of knowing.....

How do you know when you know something?

I have been wondering about this for a while. I notice, in myself and others, this tendency when we read or hear about something which we know a bit about, to then claim to be knowledgeable about it. However, from so many years as a person on this planet, and as a teacher of both children and adults, I believe that knowledge is built in layers and layers of learning through reading, viewing, listening, discovering, experiencing, experimenting, reflecting, doing, reconstructing misconceptions and understandings, etc. So I am often frustrated with myself, and others, when we claim knowledge, proudly and definitively, about things with which we often have limited experiences. And I wonder: is there a relationship between thinking we "know"something and how open and willing we are to learning more about it? What makes us decide we want to widen or deepen our knowledge of something?

For instance, recently someone was talking about the new exercise/dance class rage called Zumba. I was thrilled that I already knew about it from my daughter and her friends ( i.e. had heard of it). Now, I have never tried it, not even seen it practiced, but in the group I was with, I was the only other one that had even heard of it, so that put my knowledge of it far beyond the others in the group. I acted like I was "in the know." I was thinking I "knew" about Zumba because I had heard of it and knew the gist of what it is.

I wonder about all the concepts about which I probably convince myself that I know when in reality I just have the gist of. And does that tendency get in the way of my being open and willing to deepening my learning about some of those things?

How do we help ourselves, our teachers, and students discern the difference between having the "gist" of something and really "knowing" it? And then, how do we discern when it matters?

How do we know when we really don't know what we think we know?