I started implementing this second semester last year with my middle school history classes. I LOVED IT!! Reading their reflections about different assignments was such a highlight for me, and also guided some of my future planning for units as well. One of the main things kids noticed about themselves was that the quality of their notes improved over time, since almost all of my assessments were open note. Such a joy. Thank you for sharing. Highly recommend.
This is great, Marcus. I'm reminded of a possibly misremembered line from The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony: "The gods become bored with people who have no stories." (And you really, really don't want to have the Greek gods getting bored with you...)
As it happens, I'm in the process of working over the Story of Your Project guide/tool that I use with my students. As the name suggests, the framing is somewhat different from what you're discussing here, though I think we're broadly working in the same direction.
One thing that can be really helpful about the Story approach: thinking about learning as a story offers an intuitive way of understanding the value of difficulty. A good story has conflict, questioning, struggle, uncertainty. ("Everything went smoothly and I was right the whole time" is not a good story.) When we encourage our students to think about learning as a story, we can offer students a way of recognizing the value of experiences they've often been trained to see as negative: not knowing the answer, realizing you were wrong, trying something that didn't work out, etc.
That being said, one challenge I've encountered with this kind of reflective writing is that it can sometimes become performative. Students sometimes think that they know the kind of story you want to hear and they just give you that. I'm curious if this is something that you've run into and if so how you've navigated it.
I read this earlier today and have been ruminating it ever since—what a great point about the performative nature of reflection.
Here are my three responses to it, since (a) it is very much a thing and (b) I think it is important to be cognizant of when leaning into reflection:
[1] This is why it is super important for this not to be a high-stakes grade or even scored against a specific rubric. I love the idea of centering reflection in terms of time and attention in the classroom, but I worry very much about attaching too much of a grading emphasis to it for this very reason.
[2] The exemplars you present matter, too, along with how you frame it (as you give an example of yourself with the idea of "story"). So your delivery as well as your response to it throughout the year is a major factor as a teacher.
[3] Finally, this is why I'd argue that collaboration amongst peers is essential—as that "performative writing" collapses when they are talking with each other about how they feel and authenticity is the paradigm.
Still, though, this is one of my favorite comments ever since starting The Broken Copier—so thank you very much for pushing my thinking!
Really good points, Marcus, and I feel like there's an especially important insight in the second when you allude to the way that we respond *throughout the year.* Building those relationships over time seems like it's really key to supporting authentic reflection.
As always, you've knocked it out of the park with this one.
With it being a new school year, we're finally comitting to starting a new version of PLC work (our current PLCs are abysimal dinasours) -- a program I'm introducing next week called PLC Builder. We've delayed for the past 2 years, but we're on year 3 of our 4 year MSIP evaluation cycle, and there's no more delaying. Long story short, I'm currently working on concrete examples to show teachers how they can use the new PLC structure to create broader goals, track evidence and think wider about how we can both help students grow and create more student centered learning. This will be one of the examples I show next week.
I started implementing this second semester last year with my middle school history classes. I LOVED IT!! Reading their reflections about different assignments was such a highlight for me, and also guided some of my future planning for units as well. One of the main things kids noticed about themselves was that the quality of their notes improved over time, since almost all of my assessments were open note. Such a joy. Thank you for sharing. Highly recommend.
This is great, Marcus. I'm reminded of a possibly misremembered line from The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony: "The gods become bored with people who have no stories." (And you really, really don't want to have the Greek gods getting bored with you...)
As it happens, I'm in the process of working over the Story of Your Project guide/tool that I use with my students. As the name suggests, the framing is somewhat different from what you're discussing here, though I think we're broadly working in the same direction.
One thing that can be really helpful about the Story approach: thinking about learning as a story offers an intuitive way of understanding the value of difficulty. A good story has conflict, questioning, struggle, uncertainty. ("Everything went smoothly and I was right the whole time" is not a good story.) When we encourage our students to think about learning as a story, we can offer students a way of recognizing the value of experiences they've often been trained to see as negative: not knowing the answer, realizing you were wrong, trying something that didn't work out, etc.
That being said, one challenge I've encountered with this kind of reflective writing is that it can sometimes become performative. Students sometimes think that they know the kind of story you want to hear and they just give you that. I'm curious if this is something that you've run into and if so how you've navigated it.
I read this earlier today and have been ruminating it ever since—what a great point about the performative nature of reflection.
Here are my three responses to it, since (a) it is very much a thing and (b) I think it is important to be cognizant of when leaning into reflection:
[1] This is why it is super important for this not to be a high-stakes grade or even scored against a specific rubric. I love the idea of centering reflection in terms of time and attention in the classroom, but I worry very much about attaching too much of a grading emphasis to it for this very reason.
[2] The exemplars you present matter, too, along with how you frame it (as you give an example of yourself with the idea of "story"). So your delivery as well as your response to it throughout the year is a major factor as a teacher.
[3] Finally, this is why I'd argue that collaboration amongst peers is essential—as that "performative writing" collapses when they are talking with each other about how they feel and authenticity is the paradigm.
Still, though, this is one of my favorite comments ever since starting The Broken Copier—so thank you very much for pushing my thinking!
Really good points, Marcus, and I feel like there's an especially important insight in the second when you allude to the way that we respond *throughout the year.* Building those relationships over time seems like it's really key to supporting authentic reflection.
As always, you've knocked it out of the park with this one.
With it being a new school year, we're finally comitting to starting a new version of PLC work (our current PLCs are abysimal dinasours) -- a program I'm introducing next week called PLC Builder. We've delayed for the past 2 years, but we're on year 3 of our 4 year MSIP evaluation cycle, and there's no more delaying. Long story short, I'm currently working on concrete examples to show teachers how they can use the new PLC structure to create broader goals, track evidence and think wider about how we can both help students grow and create more student centered learning. This will be one of the examples I show next week.
Thank you for this and for sharing.
Good luck this year!! - Cyndi
What a kind note and an even more purposeful intention—love the idea of "thinking wider," too. Wishing you the best in this work!