This school year I have done a lot of reflecting on my craft as a reading teacher. This was my 8th year teaching 4th grade. I love TO read, but have never loved TEACHING reading. Why is that? In my beginning years, I read and read and read books about teaching reading and nothing seemed to connect with me and nothing seemed to work. I finally let go the teaching of reading and took over math as a teaching colleague and I partnered our classes. This past year, she switched buildings and I started teaching reading again. I also committed to bringing #classroombookay to my classroom. We read 200 pictures books this year! It was empowering. Students who were non-readers were picking up books and reading. During the year, I read Striving to Thriving: How to Grow Confident, Capable Readers and attended a literacy workshop in the spring by Mr. Schu. As I journeyed through the year, I began to realize the "KEY" to teaching reading is to bring PASSION and ENERGY to reading instruction. I love to read! Why not start with that love and passion and work to enhance my students' own literacy motivation and engagement? I tell my students all the time, you can't become an Olympic swimmer without getting in the pool and you can't become a better reader without reading. Well, I think the same is true for teaching...we can't teach kids all the "strokes" of reading, if they are not in a pool of books!

This summer, I decided to read Passionate Readers: The Art of Reaching and Engaging Every Child by Pernille Ripp and participate in a summer book study with other teachers. As I read chapter one (Teacher Reading Identity and How It Matters) and listened to Pernille share her own similar journey, I suddenly realized that my struggles were real and my gut feelings were on target. I need to teach from my heart. I need to let the passion and energy and my own love of reading drive the bus! Thank you Pernille! I look forward to journeying through your book this summer with you and others and learning the art of reaching and engaging EVERY child! I cannot put my faith in teachers yet to come for my students. I need to be THAT teacher that engages my students in the love of reading and creates meaning reading experiences for all the children I will teach in the many years to come! 

"Consequently, on that day, four years into teaching, I realized that merely having some books and time to read them was not enough and would never inspire students to fall in love with the reading experience. Those who hated reading would never become readers who influenced others to read unless I changed the way I taught reading. Unless I changed the very reading conversation we were having. Unless I finally connected my own reading identity with that of being a reading teacher and then taught through my own love of reading rather than just following a curriculum. This therefore becomes our very first change for creating passionate readers in our learning communities; admitting or cultivating our own love of reading first. For our students to become passionate readers, we must, therefore, become visible ones ourselves." (Pernille Ripp, Passionate Readers, p. 4).  

What if I did this with students?  There are often times we used video as a way to gather knowledge in science. Once day when we had a video scheduled, I brought in large pieces of butcher paper and put them on the tables. I brought out markers and told the students to capture their "thinking" about the ideas in the video. 

So What (happened)....
​When I gave the instructions to the students, they just looked at me at first, confused. One girl raised her hand and said, "so, we can write anything we are thinking about the video in any format we want?' I said, "yes." I encouraged them to draw pictures, make connections between their own ideas and each others. They were expecting me to give them questions to answer and specific items to capture and in a specific way. I was fully expecting only some students to write and to write a minimal amount. I was SO shocked! Every single student participated and wrote throughout the entire video. I couldn't believe it! When we were done, we have 5 charts - one from each table group charting all the thinking that was done during the video to foster the conversation and to be able to refer back to throughout the unit. Talk about making the "invisible" ...."visible!" If I had done it the traditional way, ...gather all kids to the front, watch the video, ask a view prompting questions and discuss, ...so much of their thinking would never be visible! 

Now What ('s next)....
This is definitely a strategy I will repeat in my classroom. I told a colleague about it and she put the paper on her guided reading table and when the kids were having book club conversations, they recorded their thinking. She dated the paper and brought it back out to refer to and add to at the next meeting. I see great possibilities for this strategy as well for math discussions. Not all schools can turn entire walls into giant whiteboards using IdeaPaint to help with visibility...but all schools have paper and markers and table space. My only regret is that I didn't grab my iPad to take a photo to share! 

I look forward to additional opportunities to support my students literally putting their thinking "on the table!" 
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This week, our Cultures of Thinking (CoT) leadership team met to create a plan for facilitating the learning in year four of our cultures of thinking journey. One of the things I learned in my leadership classes is the importance of having a clear vision and purpose for what you do. I decided to start our day of professional learning with Simon Sinek's Ted talk, Start with Why. Sinek refers to the concept as the Golden Circle. Great leaders start with the why, not the how or what. He also says 100% of the people on the planet know what they do, but very few know why they do it. I decided to ask the leadership team. 

After watching the video clip, team members sat down to articulate their belief statements about why we do what we do. Their responses were as follows:

• "We believe in preparing students to be successful in all aspects of life. We want to help grow children to be inquisitive and adventurous in their education. We believe in molding students into caring individuals who thrive on a team." 
• "We believe that each child deserves the best education possible for their own personal needs, including creating life-long habits that will enable them to be successful in their own way."  
• "We believe in pushing students' thinking. Encouraging all students to have their own voice and ideas and share that with others. We believe in creating learners who are independent, kind, and knowledgeable." 
• "We believe in cultivating learners who can be successful in the 21st century so we can have creative thinkers who are excited to learn and challenge themselves to do their best. "
• "We believe in developing 21st century learners that know how to think and how to take care of themselves, others, and their school and world...true leaders of their learning."

At our school, teachers work together to grow and learn in order to help our students reach these goals. The "how" includes working together to bring the best to our students in curriculum, instruction, and assessment. We work tirelessly to educate the whole child by designing lessons not only in academics and the tools of thinking, but also in the habits of mind that support taking care of ourselves, each other, and our school and world. Teachers are strongly committed to their own professional learning and are highly reflective on the process.  

In order to grow and learn as teachers and to continue to study how to shape the culture to reach our goals, we know that we must design powerful professional learning experiences for teachers centered on transforming our school into a culture of thinking by mastering the cultural forces outlined in Ron Ritchhart's book,  Creating Cultures of Thinking: the 8 Forces We Must Master to Truly Transform Our Schools . We decided to focus our learning on the following question: 

"What else might we do to grow and develop our thinking about students' learning and deepen the culture of thinking in our classrooms and at our school?"

In order to grow and learn as teachers, we need to design professional learning opportunities that are effective and engaging. We then brainstormed responses to the question, "What makes an effective learning experience?" Answers included words like "engaging," "collaborative," "active," "reflective," "choice," etc. As we contemplated the answers, we realized that a traditional book study only includes parts of an effective learning experience and we must go further in our learning in order to truly achieve our goals. We decided to structure our learning based on Ritchhart's suggestion of read-discuss-act-reflect. Teachers will collaborate and grow and learn in vertical inquiry-action teams. We will structure our learning in cycles of read-discuss-act-reflect as follows:

• Whole group engagement on each cultural force
• Read/discuss - team members will read and discuss chapters on each cultural force in vertical teams using discourse protocols
• Act - team members will chose an action to try related to the cultural force
• Reflect - teachers will bring an artifact to share with a reflection centered around: Here's what (I tried)....So what (happened).....Now what (next....)
• Whole group reflective piece 

Lastly, we discussed the importance of building strong teams in order to build strong schools. We used Dennis Sparks' article and rubric, Strong Teams, Strong Schools to set norms and expectations for effective teams based on the following key characteristics: 

• Clarity of purpose
• Accountability
• Team structure
• Trust

The leadership team is excited for our year-long professional learning series on shaping a culture of thinking through the 8 cultural forces outlined in Ritchhart's book. Lev Vygotsky, Russian psychologist, once said, "Children grow into the intellectual life around them." At our school, teachers are working to shape a culture that is intellectually stimulating and is centered on our beliefs about developing 21st century learners who know how to think and how to take care of themselves, others, and their school and world....true leaders of their learning!