Today is December 28. School should be far from my mind, yet here I am finally relaxed enough to put some honest thought and reflection into my work. I am currently sitting at an airport with a glass of wine waiting for a plane to take me home to my family for the holidays. I decided now was a good time to “review” a teacher resource. The reason I have put review into quotations is that as it would turn out, I’m not reviewing these concepts. Far from it – some feel like they are brand new!
I chose to “review” this book because I recently recommended it to a colleague and told her I would teach some lessons from it… Better get reading! I guess I should tell you the book title. It is called No More “I’m Done”, Fostering Independent Writers in the Primary Grades by Jennifer Jacobson. I read this book about 5 years ago and it rocked my world then. But I attributed that to my lack of experience as a teacher. Yet here I sit, supposedly a Literacy Coordinator, and I am equally as rocked. This is not meant to be a book promotion, more of a self reflection. How can a book I have already read, already learned from and already implemented be so captivating? That’s truly what I love about this profession, I will always be able to be engaged with new learning and thinking.
I have used this “writers workshop” model that Jacobson discusses in the book for the past three years and I swear, if you ask me yesterday I would have told you it had been a great success. Now all I am thinking is of all the opportunities those three years of students missed.
I think I will make it a habit to reread this book and a few others every 5 years. Alot has changed for me in that time. I have learned so much more about teaching reading and writing and about myself as a teacher and learner. What I am trying to say is, I have changed therefore how I receive and apply the information of a text has changed. I tell my students this ALL THE TIME when I reread them a book they have heard before, yet I have never applied it to my self. Hey, maybe I’ll start rereading alittle more!