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By Travis Crowder

Exceptional writing teachers have taught me valuable lessons about how writers find ideas. Over time, writing has become a space for me to wrestle with my thinking, and I've accepted that when I finalize a blog or book, or essay, that piece of writing is only as good as my current understanding of the topic is. It is imperfect, but that's what makes it worthwhile. It's an invitation to continue grappling with an idea. It's in this space that I commune with the philosophy that defines my classroom. I write to discover things about teaching young people. Many times while writing into ideas about engaging readers and writers, I've forged new thinking. Generally speaking, I'm always excited to sit down with my notebook and a cup of coffee and just write. Beautiful things lurk at the edges of writing. I'm always amazed at the possibility of discovery.

It was in this spirit that I sat down to craft this blog post. So many experiences from the past year were, in my opinion, noteworthy things to write about. Because of the pandemic, I shifted from physical to digital notebooks. During hybrid and remote teaching, I learned a great deal about engaging readers and writers, even from a distance. I found the intersection of poetry and writing to be a meaningful place to explore ideas. And so did many students. But each time I sat down to craft any one of these ideas, I found my writing leaning elsewhere. Instead of writing about strategy and engagement in literacy, the ideas tilted toward my current teaching context.

You see, this current year has been one of the hardest of my career. Not just because of the pandemic- although it has definitely contributed- but because of the continued, intensive push to standardize. Instead of decreasing, conversations about standardization have actually increased. During lesson planning periods, I've been asked repeatedly what standards I'm tying my lesson to and to explain the exact procedural plan for the lesson. Trying to argue that many standards are embedded in authentic reading and writing practices is futile. Explaining that identifying specific procedures for a plan is difficult when planning without students is a challenge, especially when traditional ideals plague any sort of PLC. I'm not against standards or having a specific lesson plan, but across time, I've learned that rigid alliances between classroom activities and standards and allegiance to a specific lesson plan suffocate opportunities for creativity. The expectation with lesson planning, it seems, is that every activity and assessment will be planned prior to walking into a room of students. Essential questions have to echo the swollen lexicon of the standards. I much prefer to ask engaging questions, but they have been critiqued by administrators who prefer cold, antiseptic questions instead of ones that genuinely excite inquiry. The language we use in our lessons or in essential questions may be academic, but, if it lacks relevance, it's useless. And if our procedures don't allow us to follow our students' inquiries, what good is the lesson?

The disturbing contradiction I've witnessed reveals itself in actions. Lip service is paid to giving students space and time to complete tasks and receive extra practice in a skill area, but allegiances to pacing guides and year-long plans tell another story. Emphasis is placed on completing tasks quickly and moving on to another assignment. Recently, an instructional coach with very little literacy background said, in reference to a skill, Oh, that's easy to teach. I found an activity online students can use to learn that skill. Here it is. Let me know how it goes. It's as if a quick online search will meet the needs of every student I teach. Why spend time listening to them talk about their reading and writing lives if an online search will do all of the work?

In early December, while revisiting an anticipation guide after a novel study, several students explained that they realized how complex ideas are. They realized that gray areas exist. I can't quantify that or give that a grade. I can't plot their conversation (and just to be clear, they were facilitating the conversation, not me) on a graph and track progress toward a goal. And who would want to? The conversation took a turn while they were discussing, and it veered away from the main topic at hand. Yes, the conversation was different, but it was still relevant. I didn't herd them back into territory where the standards, essential question, and goals lived. I let their conversation roam freely. Because that's what conversation does. It's fluent and alive and it deepens as we move further and further into ideas. I couldn't have found a template for a conversation like this online. And I wouldn't want to.

Again and again, though, I've watched instructional support staff offer worksheets and activities that were the result of an internet search. I'm more interested in moving with the flow of conversation and helping students make sense of ideas they land on, not prescribing documents I find online. Instead of these worksheets, students could be working on independent passion projects, writing about a book they've read and loved, or working with a partner to generate more ideas for their writing notebooks. At the end of class, students could share beautiful lines from their writing or powerful lines from their independent reading on a class Padlet, with a partner, or with the whole class.

Honestly, PLCs have become places where I generate lessons that are difficult to use. The lessons aren't inherently bad, but I've rarely seen a lesson plan proceed as written when it greets a group of students. Instead of trying to create plans independently of students, we could spend our time interrogating our curriculum and ourselves and finding ways to center BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) authors. Instead of centering standards and goals, we could discuss ways to center students and questions of humanity, too. This means decentering the system, and when we decenter it, lesson planning has room to breathe.

And so do we and our students.

Every time I consider lessons or activities, I have to make students the core of my work. I don't consider their test scores or projected test scores or grades. I consider them - their stories and humanity. I consider what they need, how current events influence them, and how I can sensitively handle issues that bombard them. It takes courage to think this way, though, and honestly, I'm still learning what it means to be courageous in the classroom. But we all need courage to deconstruct those imaginary boundaries that have been placed around our classrooms. These boundaries tell us what is "effective" and "necessary." But we can do better. I know I can.

Nothing I do is perfect. There are many days that lessons fail, that students are unmotivated, and that I am not at the top of my game. There are days when students refuse to write, can't find the energy to read their independent reading books, or aren't interested in something I've planned, certain that it will engage them. But there are also many days filled with deep reading and conversations. There are many days where students can't wait to talk with me about a book they've read or want an air high-five (the COVID version of a high five) because they've read another book and last year they didn't even read one! There are other days when students write poems or responses that make me cry or cheer along with them. These are the days I am overwhelmed with joy.

Last August, I started a doctorate in curriculum and instruction at UNC-Wilmington. Coursework has focused on curriculum studies and leadership, and since starting, I've learned a ton about what it means to think and to write into current iterations of curriculum. I've realized, yet again, that choices we are making in education are conscious choices, and while we know that they do not work, we continue to stand beside them.

I still dwell in hope, though.

I imagine an educational space where students write and read to find themselves, where they learn about their world and engage in the tough questions that have been part of the human experience for decades. I imagine a place where we attend PLCs to confront our biases and to engage in critical thought about what we teach and how we teach it. And we encourage change and refuse to shy away from conversations that are "too controversial."

This is what I imagine.

As I move further into 2021, I want this flame of possibility to burn brighter. I want my reading life to move me to action and to encourage others to do the same. I know many are out there, and together, we are working for a better educational space. Sometimes I feel incredibly isolated, but I have to remember, as John Lennon said, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."

Follow Travis on Twitter @teachermantrav

Learn more about Travis!

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Of Courage, Possibility, and Dwelling in Hope - The Robb Review Blog

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By Travis Crowder Exceptional writing teachers have taught me valuable lessons about how writers find ideas. Over time, writing has become a space for me to wrestle with my thinking, and I've accepted that when I finalize a blog or book, or essay, that piece of writing is only as good as my current understanding of the topic is.

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Bringing Community into the Virtual Classroom Islah Tauheed

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Michelle Morris Jones has worked with PEBC since 2002, supporting teachers, coaches, and leaders, both locally and nationally, in the area of instructional practices that cultivate literacy and understanding across grade levels and content areas. She leads, designs, and co-facilitates a variety of literacy, workshop, and leadership institutes, including the Thinking Strategies Institute, the Foundations of Literacy Institute, the Investigating Thinking Strategies Institute, the Making the Workshop Work Institute, Going Deeper with Coaching, and Impact Facilitation. In addition, she teaches PEBC Online Courses, produces and hosts the PEBC Phenomenal Teaching Podcast, and leads her team as the Director of Professional Development Design.

Her experience as an educator includes teaching elementary and middle school, as well as serving as a Reading Interventionist, parent liaison, and staff developer. She taught for seven years as an adjunct professor with the Boettcher Teacher Residency, and also provided clinical supervision for Residents. She holds a Master's degree in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Colorado, Denver, and a Bachelor's degree from University of Colorado at Boulder. She is a contributing author to the PEBC publication, The Right to Literacy in Secondary Schools and has written a number of blogs for the PEBC.

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Teaching Literacy in Times of Change and Uncertainty

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Michelle Morris Jones has worked with PEBC since 2002, supporting teachers, coaches, and leaders, both locally and nationally, in the area of instructional practices that cultivate literacy and understanding across grade levels and content areas.

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The late Rita Pearson once said, "People don't learn from people they don't like." This episode is centered around the notion that "love" looks different to each student. Our experiences in life allow us to make connection through literacy and interactions with others. Aeriale Johnson A.K.A. Ms J. gives us great examples of how to build a strong foundation and foster this idea of empowerment, love, agency, and more each and every day. Listen in as she challenges the world's way of doing "school" and allows her students to express themselves, work together, and show empathy as they engage in their learning.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

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Podcast | My Two Cents with Towanda Harris

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The late Rita Pearson once said, "People don't learn from people they don't like." This episode is centered around the notion that "love" looks different to each student. Our experiences in life allow us to make connection through literacy and interactions with others. Aeriale Johnson A.K.A. Ms J.

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Let me begin by letting you know this blog post, and the interview for it, were crafted well before the tragic death of George Floyd or the events that have followed. While this post remains a work the entire Two Writing Teachers team and Cornelius Minor all still stand behind, let me first unequivocally affirm all of our support for Black Lives Matter. To quote Cornelius, "While 'hope', 'positivity', and 'enthusiasm' are essential qualities, they stand as ineffective strategies for combating inequity. Everything about my work is about systemic awareness and sustainable action. People often get stuck on the 'hope' part. And history has taught us that hope alone is insufficient."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

I first met Cornelius Minor in 2012 when I went to work for the Teachers College Reading & Writing Project at Columbia University in New York City. Although the entire Project Team was filled with dozens of incredibly knowledgeable and talented staff developers, Cornelius quickly differentiated himself as one of the most positive and enthusiastic people I had ever met. Those of you who know him or have heard him speak know this to be true. The passion Cornelius brings to the mission of educating young children is both palpable and infectious. While presenting to an overcrowded room at the NCTE Annual Convention in 2019, Cornelius proclaimed himself to be "radically kid-centered," a powerful and apt term that likely contributed to his image landing on the cover of the wonderful middle school resource edition of the If-Then Curriculum book. (If you are not familiar, this book is designed to support teachers in meeting kids where they are and providing individualized writing instruction and coaching). This kid-centric way of being is, indeed, the true essence of Cornelius Minor.

Last year, Cornelius wrote and published a powerful book entitled, We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be , a book I recommend as required reading for any educator. offers a fresh vision for teaching; one that, as the subtitle suggests, helps to bring equity and access where it belongs: to the forefront of our minds. We Got This

When the COVID-19 crisis hit, probably like many of us, I sought out voices of hope. For me personally, I knew one of those voices would be Cornelius. I knew him to be the kind of teacher with the capacity to help us all see things in a new way during this unfamiliar period of virtual teaching. Fortunately, I was able to reach him by text. We sat down recently on a Zoom call to discuss his views on teaching remotely, his book, and a way forward.
I began by asking Cornelius for his top-line reaction to the COVID-19 crisis?
Immediately, Cornelius began to speak to many of the things the pandemic has uncovered. "COVID has rendered visible what's been invisible for a long time," he began. Cornelius went on, talking about our poor communities, our immigrant communities, our indigenous communities, and the needs of our LGTBQ kids. "People blind to inequity are now talking about equity; people blind to the needs of special education students are now talking about ways we can create access." "The systems that served so many of us so well serve many of us so poorly."

Cornelius' vision for the way forward includes more voices, which will require us to be more creative in our thinking and more nimble in our decision-making. "We need to center [our] ideas and solutions and move forward in ways that are flexible," he stated.

Notably, Cornelius made reference to the many who look forward to a return to what we once knew as the "normal" days and ways of educating our students. He holds a different perspective. " The 'normal' we knew seven weeks ago left far too many people in the margins. People talk as if that was a 'Golden Age.' It wasn't. I do not want to return to 'normal'; I want to return to 'better.'"

He continued by explaining that "what works" for a lot of people doesn't actually apply universally. Inviting us to think specifically about the verb 'work', Cornelius asserted that it should not be considered a monolithic word. "A thing can work in several different ways. Things that 'work' for one might not 'work' for another. We need to resist binary thinking rooted in the past. We don't have to think 'this or that'; this AND that can co-exist."

View Cornelius' reaction to COVID-19 crisis here
One of the major themes in the book We Got This is listening to kids. I asked Cornelius about listening: Can we listen in a way that really matters or really makes a difference?
"Absolutely! If the only way we know how to hear kids is sitting next to them in a classroom, then we're not actually kid-centered," began Cornelius. He explained the need to both seek out and recognize opportunities we have as teachers to listen to kids in this current moment. Are we willing to engage and "pivot into" those opportunities? Are we willing to engage with kids both synchronously and asynchronously? Are we willing to just sometimes simply ask kids, "How do you best receive learning?" In the view of Cornelius, the educators willing to do those things will have a lot to hear because those are the ways we can listen now; those are the ways kids are interacting with us. he maintains. "We just need to be willing to hear the different ways kids are speaking,"

View Cornelius' endorsement for close listening here
I asked Cornelius, "You value responding to kids and providing choice. What do you say to those teachers who share that value and want to teach this way in a virtual learning environment?"
"How creative are we?" asked Cornelius. He asserted that as teachers, we cannot be the kinds of teachers who wait around for others to tell us what to do. Teachers are "insanely creative" people. And now is a moment in history that requires us to lean on that creativity; or as Cornelius put it, This means inventing "...walk back into the creativity [we] came into this profession with..." opportunities for kids to "show up." For example, Cornelius points out that asking students to meet on Zoom calls or download an assignment and then turn it in on the teacher-sponsored due date cannot be the only ways we ask kids to demonstrate learning and express themselves. Rather, Cornelius encourages us to think about all multiple the different ways kids can show up, and about how all of those different ways can co-exist. he states. But it requires an understanding of who our kids are, where they come from, what their capabilities are in these moments. "It doesn't have to be this one-size-fits-all thing,"

View Cornelius' endorsement for creativity here
In We Got This, Cornelius emphasizes the importance for teachers to clarify for students how they can be successful in our classes. Yet sometimes we unintentionally erect barriers to that success. I asked him, "How can we apply that wisdom to remote learning?"
around participation. For our students, this could mean: (1) downloading materials and submitting them "when [they] can,"; (2) getting in touch with the teacher; (3) participating in the virtual meeting and engaging in the dialogue. Cornelius reminds us that some of our students are literally caring for their own family members, which means they would be unable to participate in virtual meetings. "We need to rethink what it means to 'participate'," Cornelius responded. What if we reimagined notions of requiring all kids to join virtual meetings at a specified time and limiting participation to that? Or we rethought the idea that if a kid didn't turn in his assignment on time he's 'not participating?' Cornelius poses the question, "What can participation mean?" In his view, this moment requires flexibility "Allowing for all those different methods of participation to exist, I think, is really important," he stated.

"There's this idea," Cornelius continued, "that everything must be uniform for school to have some meaning. That [all kids] must turn things in the exact same way. We've got this illusion of meritocracy, this illusion of 'fair'." It is time, as Cornelius put it, to "crash" those ideas. Think, for example, of the many different environments in which kids are now attempting to learn: they can look completely different. Cornelius used the example of comparing two students living in two different homes- one with several siblings attempting to use one computer versus the single child household with one computer. The way these two students show up in school is going to look "radically different." Thus, allowing for these differences in our classrooms in our virtual learning spaces is crucial. But, as Cornelius pointed out, "That requires creativity, sensitivity, and flexibility- all things teachers walk into the profession with."

Cornelius also stressed the important need for balancing self-care and the aforementioned educational ingenuity. Teaching during this time means we need to make time for things like mourning, like dealing with our frustrations- in other words, the things that make us human. "There are moments for [our own] incredible humanity, but there's also these moments where [we] can be really bold and thoughtful and creative. And those two things aren't mutually exclusive."

View Cornelius' encouragement for flexibility here
There is a beautiful quote in We Got This, "Kids' voices do not belong just in their writing and in their schoolwork. They belong in my thinking and decision-making." (p. 43). I asked Cornelius, "Can we bring kids' voices into our own decision-making, now that we are working to teach remotely?"
"Absolutely! Who do we serve?" Cornelius posed. "We serve children. If I'm making decisions without children, without families, without communities, then I'm doing it completely wrong." He reiterated the fact that many ways exist to think about kids and welcome kids' voices in, and he reminded us again that sometimes it is just a simple question, He continued, Cornelius contended that any school that's making decisions or policy without considering the needs of families, communities, and children is, in his words, "doin' it backwards." "What do you think?" "I've become almost zealot-like in my belief in children and communities. The way forward cannot happen without them."

View Cornelius' support for bringing kids' voices into our decision-making here
Cornelius discusses the Universal-Design-for-Learning Framework in We Got This. I asked him what advice he could provide in regards to the planning of curriculum?
"UDL is just good teaching," Cornelius asserted. "There are multiple ways people express themselves." He explained that it is inherently problematic if we communicate to our kids that they must write this specific paper in this specific way in this specific font. "Creating multiple ways for kids to express what they know is especially critical in this moment. Can kids express what they know visually? By talking into a microphone on their webcam? By submitting something written? It's the idea of multiple means of expression."

Cornelius went further, saying, "It's also the idea of multiple means of representation when it comes to teaching a lesson. If teaching only means getting on camera and talking at you, then I'm doing it wrong." We can be asking kids, 'What are all the different ways you want to hear me, can hear me, need to hear me so that you can learn this concept?'

Another important point Cornelius made is that we can be rethinking what is 'worthy of learning.' He posed the question: Therefore, he contended that kids, many of whom are living in close quarters with relatives, need to be learning to read one another and the humans around them; this can be called (the standard-based) "character analysis", yes. "What about the idea that this concept as scripted by this standard is the only thing worthy of learning right now? We are living through a pandemic." "But it can also be called being a really good human to your cousins who share an apartment with you." He went further to say that it is important for kids to learn ways to ask for help, calling that (the standard-based) 'rhetorical strategies', or we can call that being a good human.

"UDL is student-centered. UDL is bringing the understanding that there's multiple ways to learn and there's no single best way to do something. And it's also about knowing that multiple ways can co-exist."

View Cornelius' support for UDL here

Multiple times across our interview, Cornelius expressed his incredible optimism and enthusiasm for what he hopes is now possible in teaching. Virus aside, this is an exciting time, a time we can rethink and rework our system to be more inclusive, more flexible, more kid-centered. As teachers, we got this!

Congratulations to Lisa Osterman, winner of a copy of We Got This: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be by Cornelius Minor.

Thank you to Heinemann for donating this book, and to all readers who commented.
GIVEAWAY INFORMATION:

Please leave a valid e-mail address when you post your comment so I can contact you to obtain your mailing address if you win. From there, our contact at Heinemann will ship the book to you. (NOTE: Your e-mail address will not be published online if you leave it in the e-mail field only.)

You must have a valid U.S. address to win. Unfortunately, Heinemann is only able to ship to U.S. addresses at this time.

If you are the winner of the book, I will email you with the subject line of TWO WRITING TEACHERS - WE GOT THIS. Please respond to my e-mail with your mailing address within five days of receipt. A new winner will be chosen if a response isn't received within five days of the giveaway announcement.

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Thoughts on a Way Forward: An Interview with Cornelius Minor

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When the COVID-19 crisis hit, probably like many of us, I sought out voices of hope. For me personally, I knew one of those voices would be Cornelius Minor. I knew him to be the kind of teacher with the capacity to help us all see things in a new way during this unfamiliar period...

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