Easter Island, The Story Behind the Name, Potential Structures, and Book Characters Galore (What can voice look like?)

As I write my third blog post, I realize I never clarified the blog’s title. In a recent conversation with a peer, I told them the story behind the name of the blog, and they encouraged me to share these stories. As I consider student voice this semester, I desire to consider what students share when they get to CHOOSE what they share. I want to know what kids think, feel, and believe outside of the response to the promptings of others. Three specific children and their unbridled voices are behind this name: “Rhinoceri, Peace, and Indomitable Spirit.” I have an amazing student who loves to tell me riddles. He has the greatest Ethiopian accent, and I so love hearing his stories and riddles. At the beginning of the year, I was sitting at lunch when he asked me. . .”Ms. Rector, what is the most ferocious animal in all the land?!” Trying to quickly down my lunch, I responded by saying: “I don’t know. . . a rhinocerous?” He quickly came back with, “NO, Ms. Rector. I said ANIMAL. Not dinosaur, silly. It’s the cheetah of course!!” We thus began a conversation about the difference between and animals and dinosaurs. . .but, not in a way to crush his enthusiasm. The “Peace” of the name comes from my ever peaceful child from Bhutan. He called me over during recess to look at what he had drawn in the dirt with a stick. I approached the three large hards drawn in the dust, and questioned him about the words he had inscribed inside of the hearts. They read “love, good, and peace.” “Why did you choose those words?” I asked. He explained, “Well, if you love everyone that is very good and it is very peaceful and when you are very peaceful that is good because you can love everyone.” What great truth! Finally, “indomitable spirit” are words straight from the mouth of a student last year during morning meeting. We always began the day discussing a “word of the week” such as integrity, creativity, respect. One day, my student said he had a suggestion for our word of the week. I asked him what his suggestion was. He responded by saying, “Indomitable Spirit.” He had learned about this attitude of bravery and tenacity during his karate class, and thus we began to work to embody indomitable spirits in our classrooms. I share all this to stress that I am certain that when kids speak their own hearts and mind, beautiful things take place. They almost always come up with something their teacher could never prompt them to say, for their words are far outside of the more compartmentalized and goal-oriented nature of their teacher (namely, me). What joy we can experience in our classroom and our world, when kids have space to share their voice!

I have appreciated the comments on my blog speaking to potential structures for this project. While I am still very much in the learning stages, as I consider these encouragements and suggestions and continue to teach my students every day, I realize ALL of my students are crying out to be heard. I am at a place in the year where my classroom is taking a turn for the negative, and I am realizing that kids are crying out to be heard because I am not honoring them because I am not creating a space to be heard in positive ways. Perhaps it is best to begin to rethink my classroom structures and how they allow kids to express themselves, and then follow these lines and work with a few students after school as well. I believe that centers and Writing Workshop are very respectable structures, but if I am holding onto these structures just to hold onto them while sacrificing space for dramatic response, student selected-inquiry projects, scientific explorations, and opening students worlds to the great wide world through the use of technology and texts, then I am falling short of what it means to educate children. If I want my students to be explorers and discoverers, but I am keeping them from exploring and discovering and voicing their thoughts, then I am effectively squashing what I am driving toward. I recently sent home a “Resident Expert Project” with one of my students. I basically spoke with her mother and encouraged the child to pick a topic she was interested in and then find out more about it and choose a way to share what she learned with the class. That was all I did. She came in the following week with the poster below:

She stood up in front of the class and proudly shared what she had learned about Easter Island. She shared facts and images, and responded to students’ questions with information beyond what was included on her poster. She really became our “Resident Expert” on Easter Island. How powerful to see her passion, and to see the intense and focused ways the other students learned from her! I know that this required a lot of parent supports and that not all students (in my classroom or yours) have this. However, it was easy for me to see this was a lot more about my student’s voice and passion than her mother’s or father’s. This same experience could be true in my classroom. What if students researched Beluga Whales and then shared a song full of Beluga facts with the class? What if students researched Amelia Earhart and then stood inside a large cardboard box converted into a “television” and gave a news report full of facts on this inspiring individual?

Thinking about how to continue to get my kids to fall in love with reading, I asked my students to come to school Friday dressed as their favorite book character. I knew many families might not have the time to help fashion intricate costumes, so I just sent home a paper plate with each child and asked that they make a mask of the character they wanted to be. I dressed up as the one and only Ms. Frizzle of the Magic School Bus and covered my dress, ears, boots, neck, and hair with magnets of all sorts, magnetic objects, and words such as attract and repel. I was amazed at the creativity of my kids! As I stood in morning carpool, I witness Madeline herself step out of her uncle’s truck (complete with straw hat and black Mary Janes) and Fleur Delacour (from Harry Potter) skip into the classroom. These students certainly had parent help. My little guy who game in with a shirt with sharks on it and a paper fin he asked me to tape to his back didn’t. One child came with her paper plate parsed in two. I asked her what she was. She explained she was the bird from Dr. Suess’ Are You My Mother? OF COURSE SHE IS. That is her FAVORITE book. She’s read it nearly every day ALL year. Of course she is dressed as the bird from Are You My Mother? I didn’t ask my kids to come dressed as book characters because I was thinking about my Capstone Project. I asked them to come dressed as book characters because I thought it would be a good way to keep them enthused about reading, but as they walked into the classroom, I realized that through this experience I was seeing new sides of them. They were sharing their voices and expressing themselves! Even students who showed up without costumes were stoked to transform into book characters with the help of their classmates and teachers. My little friend who loves riddles became Tedd Arnold’s Fly Guy by quickly stapling together 4 paper plates and tying them to his back as wings and creating large buggy eyes with black antennae sticking straight out of them. How fun to watch Fly Guy himself play football during recess as his wings flapped in the wind. Creative man himself fashioned big black wings and taped them to both sides of his arm to transform into a bat from a non-fiction text. Perhaps I will continue to pursue exploring voice with a small group of students afterschool. I also want to rethink what I am doing on a daily basis on the classroom and allow for more student expression and sharing of voice as a whole group. This week has taught me just how beautiful that can be.

 

Check out Garfield in the back, Ted Arnold's Fly Guy with large eyes, Madeline herself, and the bird from Are You My Mother? (in front with pink sweater). 

 

Amelia Bedelia (front far right), me as Ms. Frizzle the magnet lady, Ms. Frizzle's student Tim from Magic School Bus (no, Tim and I did not coordinate our characters--it just worked out that way!), Ginny Weasely (bottom left), Ben Ten (top right). 

 

On a side note, but certainly connected, was a conversation I recently had with one of my students who speaks Nepali. He told me, “I can’t tell you my words because they are silly, Ms. Rector.” I responded by assuring him “his words” weren’t silly at all.” He suggested I could ask his mom or sister about his words. What about school, and specifically, my classroom community, is making him feel that his words are “silly?” Something to think about . . .
 

Mostly, I am learning how to listen to kids’ voices from my own students. Yet, as I read and explore texts, I am realizing more and more that this is a question and exploration many educators have thought about.  I keep being brought back to bell hooks and her text Teaching to Transgress. I have not yet read this text, but I was recently reading an article by Kirsten Olson Lanier entitled “The Teaching Philosophy of bell hooks: The Classroom As A Site For Passionate Interrogation” and was again encouraged to seek out this text. What would it look like for my own classroom to be a classroom like hooks describes: full of the “joys of learning in such a freed environment, when the classroom becomes a "location of possibility...a place where paradise can be created” (p. 207) (Lanier, 5) How can I rethink the idea that I want my students to listen to me and begin thinking about how they can share their own voices and listen to one another? hooks very “ deliberately attempts to turn students away from her voice and her presence, to listening to each other” (Lanier 11).  I am hopeful that this question can be unfurled in the coming months as I continue to pursue what it means to be an educator. . .

* Lanier, K. (2001). The Teaching Philosophy of bell hooks: The Classroom as a Site for Passionate Interrogation.