Two years ago, in early fall, I was invited to attend a CDWP leadership retreat. I never really viewed myself as a leader as I’ve always seen myself as a follower or wallflower but I said yes since I knew a couple people who were also going. Unfortunately, that weekend I was terribly ill and was unable to attend. When the group met again in December, I popped the address into my GPS and finally found out how far Averill Park was from anything I knew. I entered a stranger’s house and broke bread with a dozen people, only three of whom I really knew. We began the meeting with writing, in true CDWP form. The prompt given was “What do you think is our future? What do you want to get out of this?” This then led to a rich discussion as we talked about the function of CDWP in our lives and what we needed.
In reviewing my writing from that evening, I see that I wrote “I would really like to be involved with some writing project group to push myself to write personally/professionally, to refine pieces and get feedback or even co-write something to be sent to a newspaper, journal or the NWP/CDWP sites.” I remember having a discussion with another participant during which he expressed his frustration that teachers are being given knowledge, being handed common core, being told the best ways to do something and that we are ineffective. I wrote down this following conclusion from this discussion: Be producers of knowledge and not just consumers.
After that evening, a day retreat was planned during February vacation to meet at a member’s camp to further discuss the group and these ideas. I was unable to attend due to a back injury and I was disappointed for many reasons. I was excited when Sean Costello, from my CDWP 2011 Cohort, emailed after that February day inviting me and a number of other teachers to join him for a small group of teacher writers who wanted to produce knowledge.
Sean was a doctoral student who decided to gather a cohort of teachers and write about us for his thesis. Sean took on the role of facilitator and during our first meetings, shared articles with us written by teachers, not doctoral candidates, and not college professors. These were teachers doing research and inquiry in their classrooms and publishing their works in education journals. We all chose areas of inquiry. I was under the impression that we all wanted to publish. (I have since learned that was not the case.)
I identified the areas of cultural literacy and student writing as what I wanted to examine in my own classroom. I was reluctant to produce at the time as I really had no idea what to say about it. But one afternoon, I was at the library and had to wait four hours before being able to pick up a family member from an event and it just flowed. I wrote four pages as I started detailing the journaling system that I’d developed as a result of my CDWP Summer Institute in 2011. It was the first time since my undergraduate program that I was actually really excited and proud about something I produced. It was the first time I thought I might actually have something to share with the world. The first time I felt like a producer of knowledge.
PART TWO
Our group has changed drastically since that moment. We started with six core people and now we are four. Sean moved to Buffalo with his wife and their new infant and Kathryn passed away only a few months into our work together. Despite the setbacks, Chris, Nicole, Veronica and I continued to meet every other Friday, sometimes for four hours. Though we stopped reading articles when Sean left his role as facilitator, we continued to meet. I am not sure if we would have continued to meet had we not also genuinely became friends. There is an interesting phenomenon that happens at any CDWP gathering and I can only describe it as an instantaneous comradery. There is something very profound about being at an event where you know the people care just as much as you, where you know that teaching isn't just their job; it's identity. Without this feeling of complete and utter safety, I might not have continued to be involved.
As I said, I have always seen myself as more of a follower. I am hesitantly social and going to the CDWP for a summer with complete strangers was a huge risk for me. The only reason I took it was because I knew we'd be discussing teaching which is something that never makes me feel insecure. If you go to any CDWP event, you automatically feel a sense of friendship and acceptance. This is one of the most important foundations of our work together as the PWC.
When we began, none of us knew each other very well. It was through our bonding as teachers that we bonded as friends. I now consider them my family. I don't know as if we'd still be meeting if our personal lives didn't intersect with our professional discourse. At gatherings, we often begin with checking up on each other's families. We have supported each other through divorce, bankruptcy, illness, and family court. But we have also celebrated birthdays, engagements, graduations, weddings and professional achievements. The personal connections we've made and the professional work we've done are not mutually exclusive.
Though I was gaining professional confidence, I was also gaining a new family.
PART THREE
Two years ago, I did not see myself as a producer of knowledge. I did not view myself as a leader. When I was invited to the leadership conference I was excited and proud that someone else saw me as a leader. Now? As I sit here today, I know that I am a leader who is gradually coming into her own as a professional.
Since my summer of 2011 induction into the CDWP, my students have been journaling in both Spanish and English. My students get journal topics that are infused with the current unit of study and they write in Spanish. I have also incorporated a lot writing about who we are and how we treat people as well as cultural topics. Students are editing entries for content, primarily, but also grammar, and producing final drafts of short essays, stories and letters. This is very different from my colleagues in Guilderland and probably different from many other world language teachers.
A year and a half ago, Chris began telling me that this was cutting edge language instruction and that I had to be sharing this with others and writing about it. It was because of PWC’s encouragement (and Chris' harping) that I began my blog (bridgeadjuststowater.
Every meeting is a carefully woven tapestry of updates on our personal lives and questions that have arisen in our classrooms. Every meeting starts with someone either sharing a success or a struggle in the classroom. In fact, some times we even text and ask to meet on off weeks or days because something either positive or negative is going on and we need an opinion. One morning I received an evaluation from an observation. I remember flipping out because I was angry and hurt. My classroom management was being called into question and it crushed me and bothered me. I was ready to storm the office and picket. I immediately sent an email to my group at 8:00 in the morning. Within 15 minutes, I had received “calm down” emails from all three along with advice about the system being flawed and for me to take a step back and think about the system and how it gives no room for growth. As I read through their words, I took a step back and realized that there was truth in the criticism of my classroom management in that one particular isolated moment. This is yet another example of us supporting each other professionally.
When you step back and think about us four and who we are, I have to laugh. We are a high school Spanish teacher, two high school ELA teachers (one who primarily teaches seniors and one who primarily teaches freshman) and a sixth grade ELA and math teacher with a Special Ed background. One of us knits and cooks and tends to a family of six while another bike rides for miles while tending to his two young sons. One is recently married and loves walking her dog and runs while managing multiple auto-immune diseases while one visit museums and geeks out over TV shows. We are all so different in our experiences and yet I learn from each of them constantly.
I have called on their ELA expertise often. In fact when I needed to develop a rubric for the journals or come up with strategies for how to read a chapter book with my students, my PWC colleagues were the first I consulted. One conversation that I desperately needed was about grading journals. I was on the fence about grading for completion or content or grammar or some combination of the three. After spending 15 minutes per journal for 140 kids the first time I collected them, I turned to them once again for help.
The enrichment in my teaching and the practice of reflecting daily on what I do is crucial to my survival in the APPR, score-driven world. I would not be the teacher I am today, or the person I am today, without my PWC family.
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