Read time: approximately 15 minutes

This week

• Wednesday, 25 February co-facilitated with a friend the first day of a multi-session teacher workshop on effective assessment design at Halden VGS in Halden. Then headed over to  Høgskolen i Østfold to do a workshop for teachers and teacher educators on defining and enacting justice. Then traveled to Askim in Inner Østfold to stay overnight for Thursday and Friday workshop sessions.
• Thursday, 26 February facilitated two workshops for 8th graders on What it Means to be American? To be Norwegian? at Askim Ungdomsskole. Walked around the town of Askim after school to get a late lunch, bubble tea, and pick up lunch for Friday from the grocery store. Had a few meetings with folks in Colorado and Michigan.
• Friday, 27 February back to Askim Ungdomsskole to facilitate two more American/Norwegian workshops, one for 8th graders and one for 9th graders, and a workshop for 9th graders on How Systems of Oppression persist. Caught the bus to the train station for home. 

Earlier in February I was in Bergen observing a Rover friend teach and he told me he really felt like he was hitting Rover Flow: he felt like workshops were going great and he had finally figured out the sequencing of workshops to maximize student involvement and understanding. He had honed the timing for pauses, figured out which questions to ask, and learned when was best to have students talk in small groups. I thought about my own workshops and if I felt the same way, and I almost did, but set to work figuring out how to achieve that same level of Flow. I think key to achieving Rover Flow, or any kind of Flow as a teacher, is learning how to listen to learners, and then using their responses to shape the next portion of the lesson. 

When I was able to facilitate two of my most popular workshops this week for 8th and 9th graders, I wanted to see if I could make some adjustments to smooth out portions of the workshop that seemed to not hit as well and where I felt like I lost the students: how could I better listen and respond to them? As Rovers, we get to teach the same thing approximately 47 million times, which hasn’t happened for me in any other context yet, so this year is the perfect opportunity to try new things to figure out what generally works, given that as teachers we always have to make adjustments based on students, context, time of day, time of year, what recent shenanigans the US is engaged in, etc. But here I can practice my listening, understanding, and responding skills while the content remains relatively stable.

This week, I reminded myself of my principle to start with student knowledge first and to engage in where students are at, listening, adjusting, and responding to their questions and comments. So in the workshops about what makes an American and what makes a Norwegian, I decided to start by asking them their impressions of Americans, knowing I would get answers that might make me uncomfortable. When students think of “Americans,” they said, they think of: fast food, obesity, guns, geopolitics. Oh, sometimes also professional sports like the NFL and NBA and Air Jordans. Then I asked them what they think of when they think about “Norwegians” they said: brunost (brown cheese), ostehøvel (literally cheese shovel, but a cheese slicer), ski (which Norwegians invented), Grandiosa pizza (which I have learned every adolescent boy and man likes and holds as the pinnacle of pizza; other adults have also told me it tastes like cardboard with pizza sauce on top), nature, and walking in nature. 

Then I told them that I was going to expand their ideas about Americans beyond fast food, obesity, guns, geopolitics, and sports, and to think of how they might expand their ideas about what it means to be Norwegian outside of food and outdoor activities. I told them, like I usually do, that if you asked 50 Americans what it means to be American, they’d get 50 answers. Same with Norwegians. But, I continued, I’m the American they booked, so they get to hear my opinions. I then launch into my top three things of what it means to be an American, inviting their questions as I talk. I get great questions, usually about stereotypes they have of Americans, and I have gotten better and better at listening and connecting these questions back to my top three things. 

After going through my top three things, I ask them to turn and talk with a neighbor about what it means to be Norwegian. I ask them to get a little deeper, just like I got a little deeper than first impressions about what it means to be American. This week, I initially thought that showing them a cultural iceberg would help them get deeper, but it turned out to be just more confusing, because I learned that they’re not thinking about culture in the ways that the cultural iceberg references culture; we’d need more time to use the cultural iceberg and the entire workshop is usually only 45-60 minutes. So, back to asking them what they think and listening to their responses. 

Figuring out the precise questions to ask them to get deeper into their culture has been the key; this week was the fourth iteration of how I’ve taught this workshop and I think I finally found something that works. And now I actually don’t think I will be teaching this workshop again—at least no one else has booked me to teach this workshop for the remainder of the term. Womp womp. 

Likewise for the Systems of Oppression workshop in terms of listening and shaping my teaching based on their responses. One of the questions I have students respond to so I can get a sense of their knowledge is what could be changed about Norway in terms of rights or what they think isn’t fair. I offer them my response for the US (state and federal governments should guarantee all children to receive a high-quality education regardless of where they live), and then they turn and talk with a neighbor to brainstorm some ideas before we go around the classroom. 

Drawing on student knowledge first for this workshop has been challenging, because I haven’t quite figured out what to ask them to elicit their existing knowledge and tie it into the workshop theme. I really want to ask them when they witness and/or experience oppression in Norway. But they don’t really know what “oppression” means until we define it as part of the workshop. So I start instead by asking them what they want changed, hoping that some of their responses match the workshop theme. 

Sometimes they do—students will say equal pay for the same work for men and women and better access to mental health care. Their teachers often say that immigrant and refugee populations should have better linguistic and financial support when they move to Norway. But the student responses and the workshop theme don’t match as often as I would like. Mostly students say that they should get free lunch at school (because they need nutrition to learn), have less homework (because they should be able to do what they want after school), shouldn’t have to pay or pay a discounted rate for public transportation (because they’re kids), pay fewer taxes (because all their money, er their caregivers’ money, goes to taxes), should have a lowered age to drive (because freedom). These things are great things! But they’re not related to systemic oppression. So I have to figure out that part.

This week, I tried something new. We still went around the room to share what we want changed about Norway. Then, we defined “oppression.” Then I showed them The Problem We All Live With by Norman Rockwell (1964). I asked them what they saw and they turned and talked with a neighbor to pick out some things, and then we shared whole-class. After a few responses and explaining to them some of the context (what’s a US Marshall, what’s KKK, why would a tomato be thrown at this young girl, why is she walking in between US Marshalls, where is she going), I get into how we got to this moment, where a child is being escorted to school by US Marshalls. 

I think this did a better job of explaining to students in a short amount of time how systems of oppression exist and persist. And instead of drawing on their impressions, like I did with the American/Norwegian workshop, I still feel like I’m drawing on their knowledge because we’re starting by them telling me what they see in the painting. What I think I’m coming to is that drawing on student knowledge doesn’t always just mean eliciting whatever is in their heads, but asking them to share knowledge with me first, even if that means I show them something and they tell me what they see and/or how they are experiencing the thing I am showing them.

The tricky part, I think, is which to do when. Do I ask them a question to get at what’s in their heads? Or maybe if they don’t have the background knowledge or context to have a response in their heads, then I show them something that could elicit that knowledge. And then, once I know, figuring out what question to ask them or what to show them so we can start with learner knowledge.

This week at the writing workshop for teachers I think my co-facilitator and I were successful in listening and drawing on teacher knowledge. Our community building question that also helped us understand learners’ experiences teaching writing and how they thought about writing was, How did you become a teacher of writing? It was so fun hearing the learners’ responses! My co-facilitator and I listened carefully, I took notes, and we will take this knowledge and use it to shape our remaining workshops as we tailor them to the learners. 

Same with the defining and enacting justice workshop I facilitated at the College this week. I asked learners how they define (social) justice and then asked them to build onto that definition as I shared how the field defines justice and how I have come to complicate that understanding through my lived experiences; experiences teaching English, English teachers, and teacher educators; and experiences learning more about the discipline of English. I wish we had a companion workshop to share their definitions, and I think that might be coming. But for the teacher workshops I feel like I have a better sense of starting with learner knowledge.

What is challenging, though, to listening, is when I feel pressed for time and teachers challenge what I’m putting down by presenting outdated and/or debunked ideas about whatever it is we’re talking about. It is challenging for me to listen to teachers defend things that “work” because those things harm children. For example, a comment I often get in the defining and enacting justice workshop is, but don’t students need to be taught how to be successful in academic spaces, learning to use the same structures that have whitewashed their educational experiences and will continue to harm them? Okay, so they don’t include that last part (but if they did ask it like that I think they would understand the problem), but they do ask the first part: don’t students need to be taught how to be successful in academic spaces? 

Teachers and teacher educators ask this question to try to understand what I’ve said about challenging the methods we have taught students to be academically successful. Because being successful in academic spaces means subordinating identities that are already marginalized by society: we have to talk one way, write one way, sometimes even think in one way. 

For example, I reject teaching students how to write and teaching teachers how to teach writing in ways that don’t honor students’ communication styles or varieties of English or languages, and ignoring culturally specific ways of communicating. Specifically, I don’t teach the five-paragraph essay as a valuable text type outside timed writing. It has been debunked in our field that teaching students this specific structure first sets them up for successful writing. It doesn’t. It’s too limiting. It doesn’t allow a writer to make their own choices: about sentence structure, about paragraphing, about which evidence to present, about how to present that evidence, about how to set up a counterargument. When teachers teach the five-paragraph form as the only writing structure (and most do), students learn that school writing is only one thing. 

But writers feel like writers and develop as writers because they get to make choices about their writing. Teaching template writing doesn’t allow writers to develop enough complex and nuanced choices about writing. What’s more, the five-paragraph form isn’t how published writers set up arguments. I do agree that all writing has structure, but only test-taking writing has the five-paragraph structure because it’s easy for students to write in timed settings because there’s no time in timed writing situations to think of another structure, and it’s easy for test readers (and machines) to read. 

Teachers will push back and disagree with all the lived experience and research I present, though. I think part of this rejection is because they might feel like they’re really good at teaching writing, yet all they’ve taught is the five-paragraph form, and now I’m threatening their belief about writing and about themselves as writing teachers.

This week, when a teacher educator pushed back against my rejection of these templated forms of writing, she said that it helps her students. I tried to listen here! I responded by noting that yes, it helps students when they have a mentor text to use as a template, but how are they developing that mentor text? Are they able to identify the patterns, or did you just tell them the patterns? And then when they are good at replicating patterns, do we stop there, or do we invite them and show them how to make their own choices beyond the patterns we present to them? Because we also have to evaluate which patterns are valued and thus replicated. It’s usually patterns most privileged in settings where whiteness is valued. But what about our value of students’ voices and their cultural styles of communication? Are we allowing the space for that in our classrooms? So instead of stopping at the patterns of writing we value in school, could we question those patterns and move beyond them? Could we question why school-based success is the only way we define success in school?

I think she responded positively, and I felt good about how I addressed her concerns—I listened with understanding—and responded in a way that made sense to her and to me, but there have been teachers who haven’t been as responsive. Who double down on their own ideas. And I feel so pressed for time in these workshops, because often this moment will be the only time I see these learners, that I don’t know how to listen and understand where they’re coming from and then respond in ways that might get them to reconsider just one iota of their idea. 

This week I offered to help a colleague develop a lesson about language, because I kind of love talking about that and teach about it and do research on it. And she said she’s just going to continue to consult these outdated books about teaching language. She literally said she knew that they are outdated and was going to continue to use them. I was so confused! I told a friend and they said that this colleague might be intimidated by me. After all, they have already called me arrogant in my ideas and how I present them. 

When I talk to colleagues who won’t listen to me I find myself getting defensive and doubling down myself. And maybe this colleague is doing the same thing: getting defensive, not listening, and entrenching themselves in their ideas. I find working with colleagues like this really challenging and can feel myself not wanting to listen to them because I just feel like they’re wrong. But, as Radcliffe notes for us in Rhetorical Listening, I need to learn how to listen to understand and not just listen to respond. How can I listen and respond in ways that allow me to understand where the colleague is coming from and respond in ways they can hear? There’s a time and place for listening to understand and listening to respond, and I have to figure out when to do which.