A Historical Event in Room 222

My 7th graders were truly amazing today, and showed me the kind of teacher I want to be.  It was incredible.  I spent 2 hours after school on Monday in my classroom with my Penn mentor (an unheard of amount of time for me, since I have last period prep and am usually out by 4, at the latest) cleaning and throwing out the forest's-worth of papers that I had accumulated in my classroom.  All of this was in preparation to start the much talked of and rather scary Writer's Workshop,when kids get to produce their own writing at their own pace without me hovering as I always have to when I announce that it's time to write. 

While ideally I would have wanted to spend my night prepping for my first foray into this teaching method, I had to spend it instead worrying over the massive unit plan due for my English methods class.  Thus, this morning found me running around my classroom frantically trying to get posters made, get the supplies set up, and to prep myself for giving my first writing mini-lesson that could be mildly successful.

When my 7th graders came in, I was mildly panicky- I literally had nothing else to teach this morning if this failed somehow, and on top of that, the Learning Support teacher was out this morning, so all of the special ed kids I normally do not have to worry about management-wise were in my room for what I considered to be a slightly dangerous activity.  I explained the writer's workshop after our daily edit, and the kids actually seemed mildly interested.  We talked about ideas for writing and how to set up their writing materials, and then I gave them the challenge: write for 15 minutes without anyone in the class talking or being disruptive.  15 minutes of silence is probably some that has never been achieved in my classroom, so it was with trepidation that I sat down to write myself, as my students chose their topics and began their own writing.....

...and magically, it was silent in my room.  I made silent bets with myself about how long this could last...3 minutes? 5?  do i hear 10?  I kept glancing at the clock and to my complete and utter amazement, every kid in my classroom WROTE about something for 15 MINUTES.  On top of that, almost every kid then volunteered to share out one interesting word, phrase, or sentence from their writing- and it was all really good! 

Not only that, but with some mild chaos (but very mild, compared to the norm) we moved into silent reading, with even one of my toughest students stretching out on the reading rug and reading his book about the Titanic in a way that, if he wasn't engaged the whole time with it, at least was a very convincing act.

I was so shocked at the end of class I almost cried for joy, and compromised by promising to buy them donuts for Thursday.  The way to a student's heart is almost always through his or her stomach... and today, apparently, it was also through writing.