Elliott_BR_4
I wanted to read Nancie Atwell's In the Middle: Writing, Reading, and Learning with Adolescents when I first heard about it, at the beginning of my teaching career ten years ago. When I moved from teaching all subjects to 5th graders and began teaching writing and reading to 7th graders I thought about it again, and when I found it on the shelf for this class four weeks ago I was delighted, and took temporary possession of the large copy available for loan. But it was too big. Every week there was another, smaller book that was easier to carry around, that I read, and wrote about, while In the Middle sat weightily on my desk.
A more practical teacher would have chosen another slender volume this week, and be finished by now, and in less turmoil about her teaching methods. But I did start it. Monday, and I'm half through now, and committed. Isn't this the way I wanted to teach when I started out? How have I come so far from what I was once so sure of? What kinds of changes can I make this next fall? These are the questions I'm wrestling with now.
I have enjoyed teaching from our officially adopted 7th grade literature anthology. It's full of stories I liked reading and discussing with my students. I can barely remember when I started teaching, in Cottage Grove, with 4th graders, using no texts. "You can read whatever you want!" I told them. "We'll keep track of what you're reading, and I'll recommend books I think you'd like if you run out of ideas. Every time you finish a book we'll decide together how you want to respond to it, how you want to share with the class what you've read." I haven't even gotten to the reading workshop section of In the Middle yet, but her "status-of-the-class" chart in the writing section looks just like the one I remember (as if in a dream) using for reading then.
So this is an unfinished report. The tasks ahead of me this summer are: (1) finish the book, (2) cope with the guilt & confusion, and (3) decide on a new plan, possibly involving some compromise between what I've been doing, become comfortable doing, and what I want to try to do again.