5 Top Posts of 2019

The difference a decade makes: Essenburgs at the end of 2019 and 2009 (constant: my sweater!)

Personally significant events of the 2010’s for me included gaining 2 sons-in-law, becoming a grandmother, losing my mother, moving twice, and blogging. This blog’s inaugural post I wrote 7-1/2 years ago. The 344 posts I’ve written since then have been transformative for me, disciplining me in reflective practice, cementing my identity as a writer which makes me more effective as a writing teacher, and keeping me closer to the digital divide. The past 2 years around this time I’ve reflected on my blog’s most popular posts of the year (see here for 2017 and here for 2018). What posts did readers find most interesting in 2019?   

#1: “Writing toward the Answers” (7/12) This was a “doing what I teach” post—a poem I wrote this summer as I processed the grief of a number of losses both significant and more trivial. While it felt so personal that I hesitated to publish it, in 5 months it has shot to my 3rd most-read post. The poem uses the analogy of the answers in the back of a math textbook to explore the difference between knowing the right answer to life’s conundrums and living the struggle: “My faith tells me the answer: all will be well, but sometimes my heart is still working through the process of coming up with that answer itself.” 

#2 “Nurturing Questions” (3/1) Teaching is so much more fun when the students are formulating their own questions and seeking or constructing answers to them, rather than hunting for answers to the teacher’s questions. But this takes some intentionality: “I suspect it has something to do with modeling, a bit of competition, acceptance that there are a variety of types of questions, and a lot of practice.” This post  explored what that looked like in the juniors’ study of The Scarlet Letter. (This topic seems to be perennially interesting, as the post “Who’s Asking the Questions?” from 2018 is #10 in my all-time list.)

#3 “Trying Online Book Discussion Using Workshopping the Canon” (7/19) This was a 2-for-the-price-of-1 post—a review of a new process (using a Facebook group for a book discussion) and of a professional book (blending class study of a single text with a workshop approach to supporting texts). 

#4: “Differentiating Process Helps Students Assimilate New Concepts” (4/26) Sometimes I struggle with how to access different ways of learning when English class is about the skills of reading, writing, speaking. The point is, when the skill is the target, there are no options, but when a concept is the target, there are many options. Here’s an example from my AP 11 class. (Differentiation, too, is a hot topic, with “Baby Steps in Differentiation” from 2017 at #7 in my all-time list.)

#5: “When I Work Less and Students Learn More” (5/10) Was this a click-bait title? No—because it’s true! The internet is full of resources we use as adults when we want to learn something. Here are some ways I connect students with those resources rather than creating my own. “I was impressed again with the beauty of the teaching hack of directing students to real-life resources. 

• It saves me having to create things. 
• It connects class to life. 
• Advice seems so much more authoritative coming from a real-life person (as opposed to your teacher). 
• Students gain access to tools they can continue to use long after they’ve lost all Mrs. Essenburg’s handouts.”

As soon as I’d written the first sentence of this post, I realized I could actually link blog post titles to each personally significant development of the decade. While I’m not sure what the next decade or even year hold, I know that a disciplined practice for processing both the big challenges of living faithfully and the daily challenges of teaching effectively will help me grow through them. For the time being, that will continue to include this blog. Will it always? Who knows! A decade ago I probably hadn’t heard of blogging, let alone imagined myself doing it. Maybe there’s another unimagined platform out there I’ll be using!

Practicing Presence and Joy at Christmas

With a dinosaur in my pocket and a 3-year-old by my side, I set out in the late afternoon twilight on a walking tour of the neighborhood Christmas lights. I ended up with a half hour of pure delight. “Grandma, I LOVE this! It’s so beautiful!” He breathed, transfixed. Then unable to contain the emotion, dashed down the sidewalk singing at the top of his lungs, “Oh, what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh!”

A word about the dinosaur in my pocket: It’s a plastic stegosaurus. My grandson holds a pterodactyl. His favorite game is anything involving me and these 2 dinosaurs. Even reading books frequently involves the dinosaurs. Being from the distant past, they have little background for most of what we’re reading. So they ask many questions. (It’s great fun to listen to a 3-year-old’s explanation of what an airplane or a stoplight or a telephone is!) So here we are, walking around the neighborhood, showing our dinosaurs Christmas lights.

“Grandma, where is your guy?”
I’ve tucked it into my pocket again so I can have my phone camera out for capturing the moment.

“Grandma, you have to show him!”
So we stand in front of a lighted house, holding our dinosaurs at the end of extended arms to give them a good view, squeaking to each other in tiny dinosaur voices, “Look! Isn’t it beautiful?” “Yes, it’s beautiful!”

The light-lined walk up to a front door beckons, and he’s halfway up before I can grab him. I remind him to stay on the public sidewalk. 

“Why?”

“Because that sidewalk belongs to the people in that house, and we don’t know them.”

“We could introduce ourselves!”

Somehow I dissuade him, though he isn’t entirely convinced. At the next house an inflated snowman stands on the front porch. The child tenses to take off again, so I wave and call out, “Hello, Mr. Snowman!” The child does the same. Then he says to me conspiratorially, “He’s not answering. He must not be real.” I whisper back, “What if that whole house is filled with a family of snowmen!” His eyes glitter as he breathes back, “Yeah!”

Now it’s time to start supper, so we turn toward home, but I’ve just spent 30 minutes really, fully present in each of them, present to the person next to me, present to beauty and wonder and a child's effervescent joy. May you find such moments in your holiday time—your own version of a Christmas light tour with a dinosaur in one hand and a 3-year-old in the other.

So You Want to Know about Japan?

Sinter Klaas gifts to the family--yeah, we're a little into books...

"But Mom, you always have lots of books to recommend!" My daughters, who are both in the baby-having, child-rearing stage of life, were dumbfounded when I told them that I had no baby books to recommend to them. Nope—at that stage in my life, I was in Japan without Amazon. Someone loaned me a second-hand copy of the first edition of What to Expect When You're Expecting. That's it.

On the other hand, I've been asked several times recently what books I'd recommend on Japan, and I do have an answer for that. Are these really the best books? I don't know. They are just some that I have found interesting and insightful as I have lived out my 30+ year history as a foreign resident in Japan. For what it's worth, here they are.

History:
Japan at War: An Oral History, by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook. I can’t recommend this book enough. This compilation of interviews by a husband-wife team of historians introduces English speakers to the actual experiences of a variety of Japanese people—from students to soldiers to parents; on the home islands and abroad; at the beginning, middle, and end of World War 2. I was particularly struck by several things. One was the control of information by the government—hard to imagine in this Internet age. Another was realizing where historical fiction gets its sources—I recognized one interview from Manchuria in 2 pieces of fiction I later read (The Narrow Road to the Deep North and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle)! 

Culture:
Bushido: The Soul of Japan, by Inazo Nitobe. Written in 1899 by a Japanese Christian in English to explain Japan to the West and convince western Christians that the samurai code of ethics [bushido] could be seen as the equivalent of the Old Testament for the Japanese—the law that prepared them for Christ. While Japanese culture has changed a lot in the last 120 years, it is interesting to trace the lingering effects of the values Nitobe lists: rectitude, courage, benevolence, politeness, sincerity, honor, and loyalty.

The Secrets of Mariko: A Year in the Life of a Japanese Woman and Her Family, by Elizabeth Bumiller (1995). A fascinating glimpse into the life of a Japanese housewife. I once had a student with a Japanese mother and an American father tell me, “Reading this book helped me understand my mother so much better!” A western journalist interviewed a Japanese housewife once a month throughout one year. Times have changed somewhat in the 25 years since the book was written, but a lot still holds true. 

Fiction: 
Shiokari Pass, by Ayako Miura, a well-known Christian author. A best-seller when it was written in 1968 and later a movie, set around 1900 in Tokyo and Hokkaido. It is fiction based on a real-life event. Miura’s fiction fascinates me for how she seems to take the values from Bushido (see above) and say, “What might that look like in the life of a Japanese character grappling with Christianity?” (See the next book as well.)  

Lady Gracia, by Ayako Miura. Living around 1600, right before the closing of Japan to Christianity, the title character was a historical samurai wife who converted to Christianity, but the details about her life are scant. In Miura’s fictionalization, I enjoyed the character’s search for answers to her ethical questions as well as a story that for the first time helped me make sense of the relationships of the various war lords of this chaotic and pivotal time in Japanese history. I actually like this one even more than Shiokari Pass, but it is unfortunately out of print, so sometimes it’s available used for $20 and sometimes for $200 (or more!). Or if you visit me or my daughter or my mother-in-law, one of us would be happy to loan it to you.  

After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (2008). Moving into the present, Murakami is currently a popular writer in Japan. I’ve read a number of well-known Japanese literary writers, and they seem unrelentingly bleak to me. Murakami’s characters are odd-balls who don’t eventually succumb to the system, but stay slightly apart, questioning society and looking for real connections with their neighbors. This one follows a cast of characters through one night in downtown Tokyo. I’ve read it with my10th grade class, and they’ve really enjoyed it. (Warning: The weird thread of magical realism isn’t for everyone, but makes for great classroom discussion!) 

Extra, just for fun—suspense/mystery by western authors, but seem accurate to me as a 30+ year foreign resident of Japan:
Japantown by Barry Lancet (series of 3). The main character is both Japanese and American, an antiques dealer specializing in Asian art who keeps getting pulled into the business of the Tokyo investigative service he inherited from his father. I gave this to my kids for a recreational taste of “home” once they’d started adulting in the US.

Betrayal at Iga, by Susan Spann (Shinobi Mystery book 5). This is a series set in the late 1600s Japan, where a ninja and a Portuguese priest get cornered into solving mysteries. (The ninja is secretly assigned to be the priest’s bodyguard, but his cover is as his translator.) I started with #5 because I came across it on a Kindle sale. I went back to 1-3 because my daughter reserved them from the library, and I was on leave, missing Japan, and preparing to move to Kyoto on my return, which is the setting of the first 4 of the books. They’re sort of fun and full of cultural, historical, religious, and philosophical tidbits.  The interplay of the priest and the ninja as they negotiate each other’s points of view is interesting.

Whatever it is you are curious about, may you find many good books to read!

No More Isolation: Growing a Virtual Professional Learning Network

Thirty-two years ago I went to Japan to teach in a small international Christian school. I might have felt, professionally, a little isolated. Then came Amazon. It was almost unbelievable to be able to buy any English book I wanted with the touch of a button and have it in my hands in a couple of weeks! Now there are Kindles and a whole Internet full of professional connections, from journals and memberships to blogs to Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook. I discovered today that there is a Facebook page for teachers of The Crucible—talk about a specific resource! As long as one has a device and Internet access, there is no longer any reason for professional isolation. 

A virtual professional learning network (PLN) can provide all the community and support of a trip to a major conference or a huge school with a vibrant department. I've rather blundered my way into the PLN I've developed, so if you're already convinced you need one and are looking for an organized approach, go straight to the Edublog series here. It’s a set of 7 blogs that will guide you through the steps of building your own PLN. I came across it doing a Google search to make sure I was using the right term. I’ve bookmarked it because it looks like a resource I want to go back and review myself.

What I can do here is just reflect on a few of the amazing online resources I’ve been experimenting with recently—a Facebook group and an online course—and share a little of the joy. 

I found out about the Crucible Facebook group in another Facebook group I recently joined: Creative High School English hosted by Betsy Potash of the Spark Creativity website/blog/podcast. When I joined the group in October, there were 10,000-some members; now membership is 11,657. People ask about everything from how to handle a discipline issue to what short stories can pair with a given novel to project ideas. From all my life being the only teacher of my grade level subject area at my school, to having thousands of other 10th grade English teachers and their expertise at my fingertips is truly a gift!

The story of how I discovered this group illustrates the organic way my PLN grows. Cult of Pedagogy is one of the core blogs I follow. Last spring it featured Betsy Potash and one-pagers with a link to 4 free templates with rubrics from Betsy’s site Spark Creativity. To get the free materials, I had to sign up for Betsy’s newsletter. Then early in the fall, that newsletter advertised a book discussion for In Search of Deeper Learning she would host on her Facebook group. So I joined the group in order to participate in the book discussion, and I found this whole great new community resource! Someday I may explore some other Facebook groups, but between this one and the online course I’m taking, I have all the input I can fruitfully use for now.

The course—for lack of a better word—is Angela Watson’s 40-Hour Teacher Workweek Club, which I also found out about from Cult of Pedagogy. The goal of the course is to help teachers attain better work-life balance. It provides materials and guidance for everything from scheduling to back-to-school night to differentiating lesson plans to handling homework and beyond. It does this through a year’s worth of weekly podcasts/pdfs on different topics, curation of scads of online resources, and membership in a Facebook group where one can find further support. (I haven’t even gotten around to joining the Facebook group yet—I’m so busy just reading the pdfs and exploring the curated materials.) 

As opposed to the Creative High School English Facebook group, there is a cost for all this help. However, I think it is so well worth $149 for eternal access to all the excellent materials. In fact, while I think just the guidance and curating is worth it, the sticker price of materials available for purchase online that are made available free to club members far exceeds the membership cost. For the college or school that wants to put feet to its concern about teacher retention, this club should be a part of the final semester of every teacher training program or made available to every 2nd year teacher. (I think the first-year ones may be too busy!)

There are still so many ways I could better utilize my virtual PLN--like joining more Twitter chats (I tried my first this summer) and making more thorough use of my organizational memberships in NCTE and ASCD. I'd also like, someday, to actually attend an NCTE conference. In the meantime, I have more than enough opportunity to stay professionally connected and growing.

What parts of your virtual PLN do you find most invigorating to your professional practice right now? If you're feeling un-invigorated or isolated, how might you access a virtual PLN to help?

Kitchen Cultures and Classroom Cultures

“Mom, did you put chia seeds in the stir fry last night?” “Oh…I thought your sesame seeds looked different. No wonder the sauce was so thick!”

I could give a list of excuses: I’ve never used chia seeds before (they’re just starting to hit the health market in Japan). I figured maybe I just had forgotten what American sesame seeds looked like. I didn’t want to interrupt my daughter with yet another question about where to find stuff in her kitchen—I should be able to figure this out for myself. But that was really weird stir fry. 

I’m at an odd interlude in my life, living with each of my 2 daughters’ families for a month or so at a time (they live less than 2 miles apart). I’m thankful I can be here to help, to be part of my grandkids’ lives when we normally have the whole Pacific Ocean between us. To join in the 3-year-old’s elaborate dinosaur/shark roleplaying games. To hear the 1-year-old’s first word: outside. To rock the baby to sleep during Bible study. To cook dinner twice a week while one daughter takes online graduate courses.

It’s the kitchens that throw me off. I’m supposed to be the kitchen authority. The mother providing food for her children. And my children’s kitchens are sort of like mine, but different. And sort of like each other’s, but different. Every once in a while I get this weird Twilight Zone feeling of dislocation—now where is that rolling pin? I know I just used it the other day…or was that at the other house? Wait…is this the nut-free house or the meat-free house? 

My students must feel a bit of that dislocation, rotating from classroom to classroom—not once a month, but 7 times a day! What are the rules and expectations here again? They must differ from the math classroom to the English classroom at least as much they do from one daughter’s house to the other. That perspective motivates me to be clear and consistent with class expectations, culture, and protocols--maybe a mini-orientation every time students walk into the room, more anchor charts, and keep the daily agenda current--to be patient with extra reminders, and to have grace and maybe even humor when confusion and mistakes happen. It also gives me visceral understanding of the power of learning from failure: I will never again mistake chia seeds for sesame! 

But I do continue to be reminded of this perspective every time a new kitchen comedy occurs:

• “I’m afraid the tabouli salad is short on mint—the mint in your yard is so dried out I couldn’t get enough.” “Um…our mint is fine. Could you show me what plant you’re talking about?…Oh, that one? No idea what that one is. Our mint is over here.” 
• “I love just being able to go out in your garden and get stuff for dinner: tomatoes, kale, green onions.” “Um…we don’t have green onions.” “Hmm…I wonder what’s on the salad?”
• “I used up all your white flour in the noodles.” “Really!? No, look, there’s still a whole canister left. So what did you use?… Oh, that’s the high gluten flour I add to whole wheat flour to help it rise well.” “Ah…no wonder the noodles chewed like rubber!”

I'm glad I can laugh at and learn from my own mistakes as I bounce between the kitchen cultures of my 2 daughters. I'm glad my family can laugh at them, too. I hope remembering this can help me extend the same grace, humor, patience, and safety to my students as they bounce between many classroom cultures every day.

What's Most Important in Teaching: Who, What, or How?

Did you go into teaching because you love children or because you love a content area? Okay, false dichotomy. The choices aren’t mutually exclusive. So assign percentages that add up to 100%. “Children” sounds like the best answer. Who wants to hire a teacher who doesn’t love children? Sometimes I hear, “You don’t teach content; you teach students.” “Content area” sounds like the smart answer. But the word that both of those sentences share is “teach.” So I think there’s a 3rd leg necessary to support the stool of a teacher's efforts: pedagogy. 

Most veteran teachers who have sustained their passion for their profession answer the question “What is your favorite thing about teaching?” with something about seeing a student “get it.” The process or moment or result of learning. I’ve also discovered over the last 30 years that sometimes my students don’t get it no matter how much I love them or know about the content. At this point, I need to look at the times they do get it, figure out what it was that worked, and then intentionally structure my class to do more of that. I’ve come to be a studier of how learning takes place in my room, and how I can structure class so that learning is more likely to occur more deeply for more students. I have to know both my students and my content, and I have to know something else, too: how to connect the two.

This connecting students and content is pedagogy. I could say “teaching,” but I want to avoid that word because the traditional image of teaching is one person standing in front of a class delivering information to be assimilated by the students. That image makes it too easy to blame students when learning doesn’t happen. And while that may be true to a greater or lesser extent, blame doesn’t help. It lets me off the hook. It isn’t about the students we used to have or wish we had or used to be. It’s about the students in front of me right now. How can I increase the likelihood that learning will occur for them?  

In order to be a studier of how learning takes place in my room, I first have to answer the question “What is the learning I want to see?” As I define it, I need to include not just content and skills (like parts of speech and identifying irony) but also understandings (the importance of audience and purpose) and dispositions (curiosity and love of reading). We know now that what students learn depends greatly on how they learn it. Do they have a significant purpose? Do they have time to process the information or practice the skill? Are they engaged or merely compliant? 

How learning opportunities are structured affects not only the extent to which students learn what I think I taught, but what else they learn. In a worst-case scenario this could be things like the following: School is disconnected from life. This is boring. I can’t do it. Don’t get caught. Win at all costs. However, it’s also possible to structure learning opportunities so that in addition to the content and skills, students also learn things like this: The world is an amazing place. I can get what I need to learn. We are smarter and stronger together than alone.

I became a teacher 30 years ago because I loved the content. That was probably 80% of my motivation. Basically, I decided I’d rather spend the bulk of my college credit hours reading and writing than in a science lab. Teaching was a way I could make my living having taken that course of study. I wanted to love kids—though introvert that I am I didn’t feel entirely comfortable with them. My first year I was terrified that I’d made a horrible mistake in career choice and wasted 4 years of college. 

In the last 10 years what I’ve discovered is that there is this whole extra leg of pedagogy—better ways to structure learning opportunities. And I am happiest and most effective when I’m growing in all 3 legs of my teaching: content knowledge, love for students, and pedagogy. I grow in my content knowledge by reading and writing. I grow in my love for students (see my blog "Relationships Aren't the Frosting on the Cake of Education"). And I grow in my pedagogy by reading professional books, engaging in book discussions, forming a virtual professional learning network, and reflecting on my teaching through my own blogging.  

Why did you become a teacher? What keeps you teaching?

What I Learned in 4 Years as a Curriculum Coordinator

Two things to start with--not big, I used them probably every day:

• Don’t apologize for taking people’s time—that devalues the thing I’m taking their time for. Thank them for using some their valuable time to do this really important thing. This helps me value both the task and the person.
• If 2 emails haven’t clarified an issue, walk to the person’s office or classroom (during a free period) and address it in person. This seems like it takes a lot of time, but in the long run, not nearly as much time as 15 emails back and forth and the frustration engendered.

Four years ago I went into the curriculum coordinator job feeling not entirely qualified (see last week’s blog), but also with a small seed of hope. I might be able to help someone experience the same increase in joy that I had gotten from discovering that it is possible to grow as a teacher, and from seeing a class buzzing with learning resulting from planning meaningful curriculum and engaging instruction. Some of what I’d learned about doing that in English class must be transferable. But preparing for professional development meetings I’d psyche myself out thinking, “There will be 25 people in here for 1 hour. That’s 25 man-hours. That’s over 1/2 a workweek. Is what I have for people worth that?” 

I ended up learning mountains of stuff that I’d never really thought about (like grappling with standards for 12 different subject areas!). My least favorite part: figuring out how to administer all of the school’s online textbooks. Why does every publisher run their platform differently? There was one publisher I never did fully figure out. Greatly increased my appreciation for the librarian in my previous school who did this task! My favorite part—exactly the same as in the classroom—seeing growth: teachers excited about helping students learn even more effectively. 

In the long run, while I absorbed a lot of information and ran a lot of meetings, my biggest takeaways were as follows:  

• I’ve learned something in 30+ years of teaching! 
• There is always more to learn. 
• Learning is a community thing—my attitude and practice in my own learning shapes the learning of my colleagues and my students, and, like I tell my students, we are smarter together than alone.

It seems that it really is all about the people—the small learnings and the big ones. I ended up enjoying my time as a curriculum coordinator. I'd do it again, if it were needed, but I'd also be happy just working with students. Either way, it was an experience that shaped and grew me. Thanks to all the colleagues who walked with me through it and helped me learn. I wouldn't be the person I am today without you! 

Falling into Leading

Things I’ve said at various times in my life:

• I would never want to be a teacher.
• I would never want to be a department chair.
• I would never want to be a curriculum coordinator.

Things I’ve been: a teacher, a department chair, a curriculum coordinator.

I’ve been sucked into each position by a vacuum. I’ve felt at first like an imposter, scared of being found out. I’ve gradually grown into each role. (Here’s my reflection on growing into my teacher role.) How? I believe the key to all 3 is the same: becoming curious, a student of pedagogy and of my students (whether they are children or colleagues) as well as of my discipline, focused on the learning rather than the teaching—which is just structuring whatever experiences and environment cause the most learning—finding the courage to experiment and the community of like-minded peers for encouragement. 

Still, I don’t really feel like a leader. All I really want to do is to explore ways to make learning come alive for the kids in my classroom. But even then I am being a leader in my classroom. And I also want to share that journey with other teachers—look how life-giving this can be! What is life-giving for you in your classroom? Here’s this idea I think would be great, but I need help figuring out how it works and a community that won't let me forget it. 

Here are some things that have helped me along the way to think about a style of leading that may possibly be me:

• Being a “first follower” to transform a “lone nut” into a leader and begin a movement: While I don’t feel like a leader, Simon Sinek’s concept of “first follower” resonates with me. (Watch this 3-minute video for a great demonstration.)

• Hearing other educational leaders’ personal stories of being authentic, vulnerable, empathetic, and wise to help others be their best selves in schools. One great resource for this is Lead with Grace: Leaning into the Soft Skills of Leadership by Jessica Cabeen which I just finished last week. For the research, graphics, mnemonics, and variety of specific component skills, I’m going to circle back and read 2 other formative books for me (see the next 2 entries). 

• Being truly curious about other people’s perspectives can transform threatening conversations into productive ones. Crucial Conversations is the first book that helped me think about conflict in positive ways. I’m currently revisiting this book that I read and discussed with colleagues 7 years ago (see blog here). One of the skills I picked up then has even embedded itself into a literature unit as an essential question for A Doll’s House: "Why would a reasonable, rational, normal human being do that?" 
  

• Understanding that authenticity, curiosity, vulnerability, and empathy can be sources of strength rather than weakness when practiced with courage and wisdom. Brene Brown has helped me here. I’ve read 2 of her books in the last year and plan to re-read them sooner rather than later (Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts; Rising Strong: How the Ability to Reset Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead). For a taste of this researcher, writer, and speaker, see this 3-minute video on sympathy vs. empathy or this 20-minute TED Talk on vulnerability.

  
Isn’t education an adventure? I’d love to have some companions. What helps you think about how you lead in your classroom, school, and elsewhere?

Reflections on You Are What You Love

I could practically smell the aroma of Mom’s favorite chicken casserole as I scanned my careful pre-married handwriting on the recipe card I’d copied before setting up my own household way back in 1985. The ink was splattered with the evidence of many makings before the recipe had somehow slipped out of use. Having rediscovered it, I couldn’t wait to make it again. However, when the anticipated first forkful finally arrived in my mouth, I could hardly eat it. It was so salty! I remember how difficult it had seemed back when the dietary experts first cautioned us to cut back on salt. How bland everything tasted. How I craved that flavor. But over the years, I must have grown accustomed to its absence. Not only had I ceased to crave it—when I finally (accidentally) got it—I could no longer eat it. Habit had formed my love. 

Reading You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit by James K.A. Smith gave me ways to identify and talk about some of the formative practices I’ve experienced in my personal and professional life. One of Smith's lines that has become part of my repertoire is that we don’t just do things—the things we do also do things to us. As I eat less salt, I become a person who appreciates other flavors. As I blog, I become a more reflective teacher. As my students read and write, they take on the identity of readers and writers. And, as we will be hearing a lot about this month of November, as we practice gratitude, we become more grateful people. (See "Writing My Way into Gratitude," one of my blogs from last November.)

Our habits form our loves, and our loves also form our habits. This might be our more usual thinking—I love reading, so I read—but note 2 things: not only can we re-form our loves by re-forming habits, but also what we really love may not be what we think we love. Our habits give us away. I may say, “I love getting out in nature,” but if I never get around to it, there are other things I actually love more. Or when we say, “I’d give anything to play the piano [or tennis, or what have you] like that,” but we wouldn’t really, otherwise we’d have given the hours of daily practice for years that the subject in question has. The good news is the cycle of love producing habit strengthening love is susceptible to intervention at either stroke. It is possible to analyze what our loves are given our current habits, to articulate what we want to love instead, and to put ourselves in commitments and communities that will help us form the habits that will form those loves.

Where the rubber hits the road with teaching: we articulate what we want our students to love, design the commitments and community that will help form the habits that will form those loves, and—here’s the big thing—become ourselves the model, the first member of that community that we will invite students into. For me as an English teacher in a Christian school, I want my students to love language and skillfully wielding it in beautiful, just, peaceful, powerful, compassionate ways, that honor its Creator, His creation, and His image bearers. We do this by reading, listening, thinking, speaking, and writing together as we learn about the world.

One habit that has formed me as a teacher is the discipline of the novels and themes I’ve taught every year in 10th grade world lit: Cry, the Beloved Country and how we build and break shalom, Night and how human dignity is disregarded, After Dark and the importance of empathy, A Doll’s House and how identity is formed, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream and our search for love. There are quotes, concepts, and background information that spring to mind so frequently I have to squelch them in non-English-teachery company or I may be suspected as a bit obsessive. Warning: this is the spiritual power of habit—the habit of re-reading significant literature.

Last year I began a practice of a few minutes of centering my mind before God before daily Scripture reading. I would breathe in and out deeply and slowly as I repeated the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” At a doctor visit, I sat down in front of the automatic blood pressure cuff, inserted my right arm, and took a deep, relaxing breath as the cuff tightened. Suddenly the words sprang unbidden into my mind, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” I nearly laughed out loud at the spiritual power of habit to prompt prayer during routine blood pressure measurement!

Why I Write

I tend to ignore brief time periods devoted to something that should be deeply woven into the fabric of life and learning—as if observing Black History Month, Spiritual Life Emphasis Week, or World Thinking Day absolves me from thinking about the topic for the other 11 months, 51 weeks, or 364 days of the year. When I realized that October 20 was National Day on Writing, with the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) using the hashtag #WhyIWrite, my first thought was to ignore it. 

However, as I continued to see the hashtag, the thought occurred to me that I have blogged frequently about reasons for reading, but only a handful of times about reasons for writing—and mostly it was specifically about writing this blog. So thanks to some prodding from NCTE and the National Day on Writing for bringing this blindspot to light. Isn’t that, after all, what dedicated time periods are for? (Getting real here—I never object to my husband celebrating Valentine’s Day or my children Mother’s Day.)

As an English language arts teacher, it’s my job to value writing. But why? Why should anyone else value it? Do I actually use it in “real life”? Yes. I write many times every day for personal and professional reasons, to explore what I’m thinking and to share it with others, to transact information and to build relationships. 

So here’s the question: Why do I write?

1. To excavate what I think and feel and believe
2. To capture, consider, and internalize powerful writing and thinking
3. To reflect on my teaching practice and life (and hold myself accountable to practice and notice things worthy of reflection)
4. To articulate my thinking in concise, effective ways
5. To connect with others and build community: sharing, modeling, encouraging, inquiring, inviting
6. To remember: shopping lists, calendar items, project plans
7. To transact information: from what is my insurance coverage to why didn't my package arrive on time
8. To embody the identity I want to induct my students into: writer. If writing is vitally important to me personally and professionally, if I am routinely grappling with the issues and wielding the tools of a writer, and if I can articulate and model these—the importance of writing and the practices of writers—that changes everything in the teaching of writing. 

 

I realize that a lot of that list is abstract. Concretely, what does writing look like for me? What do I write?

1. Journals: Powerful quotes, beautiful words, thinking through a problem, strong emotion, or puzzling response (see blogs on gratitude and death) 
2. Blogs: Accountability for myself to reflective teaching practice, connect with like-minded peers, curate my thinking 
3. Emails: Too many to elucidate them all, from sibling news to school to insurance inquiries
4. Social media posts: Twitter, for me, is entirely professional networking—I comment on a resource I’m sharing or retweeting or participate in a Twitter chat. On Facebook, on the other hand, I write both personal and professional posts, on my timeline and in private groups.
5. Goodreads reviews: to connect with friends and model for students.
6. Proposals: for curriculum, schoolwide initiatives like sustained silent reading, professional development credits
7. Recommendations: college recommendations for students, job recommendations for colleagues
8. Letters: yes, actual ink on paper, put into an envelope, and depending on the distance, stamped and mailed (birthday cards, congratulations, thank yous, appreciation, sympathy)
9. Plans and materials: for students (class lessons) and for colleagues (professional development meetings)
10. Reports: like accreditation
11. Responses to student work: their writing, reflection, questions—both electronically and on hard copies
12. Poetry: not as frequently at this point in my life as at others, but, yes, sometimes (see here and here)

I don’t value writing because I’m an English teacher—I’m an English teacher because I value writing. Because of my job and passion, I probably write a little more than the average person. Still, for anyone, writing can enrich the inner life, facilitate the professional life, and strengthen the social life. Some of your reasons and specifics may be the same as mine, and some will be different. What and why do you write?