MAC Week 1 Comment - Jamie Sibley's Blog

Jamie said:
In Chapter 1 of the reading, the author states, “All of life comes to us in narrative form; it’s a story we tell.” I really related to this because my school has been focusing on a school wide writing program for the past 3-4 years. We are being trained 1grade level at a time per year. The program we are using is Lucy Calkins, Writer’s Workshop. One of the areas she focuses on is narrative writing and having students tell a story. Even in the other areas of writing Lucy teaches she has the student focus on small stories. I’m starting to embrace Writer’s Workshop more, as my students prove to me that they become better writers through small increments of writing instead of a big overall prompt.

Have you ever stopped to think that you are not the only one to have problems, issues? I bet you haven’t, or if you have, it was only a fleeting thought. I don’t know about you, but I can get very overwhelmed at the problems in my personal, professional, and educational life. I do try to put things in perspective and do my best to not “overreact.” As the author states, “Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view.” That should be our goal, to have the right frame of mind when attempting to solve a problem. But, those darn emotions and stress get in the way many times when I try to be rational. How about you?

I responded:
You know what I thought about when I read that part of the book, Jamie, not really me personally, but my students! How many of them cannot see past their own situations to choose to be successful despite their circumstances. I know your population and I know that's likely a problem for your students as well. I wonder if there's a constructive way to take some of these lessons and put them in kid-friendly language to teach our students?

I think that it's such a critical life skill to be able to take a step back and say, wait a minute, this is not the end of the world, how can I work around this. I really connected with the story of the Me'en people and how a photograph held absolutely no meaning for them because it hadn't been assigned meaning. Imaging how many of our students feel the same way about our content because of the minimal background knowledge they possess when they walk through our doors. Then, consider how we have the ability to shape and mold them, and provide them with a more profound world-view. It's incredible to think about!