Education Changes Lives

Tyler teaches his students about writing, and how to do it, via a writer’s workshop in his classroom. This is excellent. In all of my academic history I have never seen nor participated in a writer’s workshop. Sad huh. Tyler has his students set up their writing notebooks like textbooks. He has them cut out notes and outlines he provides, and tape them in their notebooks for reference. Then, they can also write their own notes and writing drafts. This works so well for student and information organization.

Tyler had previously shared with us that he suggests taking everything and anything anyone else gives you to use as teaching tools and references. Compile your resources. A lot of the notes and worksheets he uses he has taken, borrowed, or stolen from other teachers. He even saved things from his student teaching, currently uses them, and has for ten years. I guess, “good teachers are good thieves.” When a student busts Tyler on a typo on one of his old worksheets, Tyler allows a few laughs, giggles, and even laughs with them. Then he woofs, “let’s keep going, we’ve had our fun, we laughed a joked for a minute, but let’s get back to business.” He then does a remarkable job at explaining the 6 Traits of Writing process and rubrics, and I’m intensely impressed with his ability to explain the usage and importance of details.

Later that day we had the opportunity to grill Tyler on his personal perspectives on teaching, why he was a teacher, what was his philosophy, etc. He only laughed and said, “it’s hard to answer that without using clichés.” This is so true. We all seem to want some kind of profound, deep and caring reason to want to teach children. We probably have these, but more often than not, we all have the cliché reasons in common. However, he did tell us, “I believe all kids can learn and that I can help. I’m driven to be good at what I do, so I think that helps fill in the blanks.” I’m not sure there is a better reason or explanation for wanting to be an educator.

One of my favorite days to be at Crosswinds was the day after the election. Kids all over the school were wearing Obama shirts. Upon entering Tyler’s class that day we asked as a group, “do you always have lesson plans? Everyday?” He smiled and said no. Then he and his class talked about the election and the history that was made for the next thirty minutes. “This is a teachable moment, why would I use lesson plans today,” he said. I got chills just typing that. That’s why I want to teach.