Last Wednesday, I had the honor of traveling to the Garnet Valley School District to participate in an incredible professional development session with Maggie Roberts (@MaggieBRoberts). Maggie worked with the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project at Columbia University before developing her own literacy consultation business with Kate Roberts (kateandmaggie.com). The experience was unlike any professional development that I have been a part of before, but I am hopeful that this unique way of teaching will become more readily available due to its immediate applicability and relevance to today’s teaching environment.
East Penn Language Arts teachers with literacy consultant, Maggie Roberts
As we arrived at the beautiful Garnet Valley Middle School campus, our group was warmly greeted by Anthony Gabriele (@mrgabriele), and we were given a tour of the school. He showed us several projects that the students helped to create while participating in a unique summer program, which included a school store, a makers space, and a reading lounge. All of these spaces were beautifully designed and welcoming to the students and staff that use them on a daily basis.
The professional development with Maggie began with her telling us the importance of the workshop model. She stressed that the workshop model was important in order for our students to be able to “read and think critically about fiction, nonfiction, information, news, social media, and people” (The world). She was preaching to the choir with me as my classroom is mostly workshop model since our main curriculum is the Lucy Calkins Unit of Writing, but I still got some great ideas out of her presentation and mini-lesson that will help me to make my mini-lessons that much more meaningful.
After the initial presentation about the importance of workshop, we (all of the teachers) got to see Maggie in action as she taught a mini-lesson to a 7th grade ELA class at Garnet Valley Middle School. This was the part that I loved! We all went to the same classroom, and the kids’ eyes were wide as the teachers filed in. Maggie explained that she would be teaching them and that the teachers in the room were all there to learn as well. She then began her lesson.
The first thing that she did that I think would be helpful in teaching a mini-lesson is set a timer. I don’t do that currently, but I think it would help me to be more aware of the time that passes when giving students a task to complete, and I would be able to get through more of the lesson per period. Maggie had some great attention getters as well to bring the kids’ attention back to her when she needed it. It wasn’t loud or flashy, she simply said, “clap once if you can hear me, (some kids clap), clap twice if you can hear me, (more kids clap), etc…” I think I will use this in the future as well as a way to manage my time and the students.
The lesson for the students was a great interactive investigation of photos of schools in the city of Detroit. Students were given tasks such as noticing, asking questions, drawing conclusions based on what they saw. In between each step she gave to the students, though, Maggie spoke to the teachers to explain why she was having them do the things they were doing. We also were able to observe the students being engaged in the lesson. Being removed from the classroom as “the teacher,” I was able to really reflect on the components of the lesson and how the students received the information and tasks that they were given. Upon conclusion of the lesson, we traveled back to the library where we debriefed about the things that we saw and what a follow-up lesson might look like the next day.
This professional development session was invaluable and something, I believe, many teachers would benefit from experiencing. It is not often that teachers are able to see someone put their words into action and, at the same time, explain why they are doing what they are doing. Usually, professional development is discussing, reading, and watching videos about new or innovative teaching techniques. This unique experience allowed teachers to see, first hand, the benefits of the workshop model as well as other good basic practices of classroom management. I hope that our district provides more teachers with this meaningful PD experience sometime in the near future. It’s something that teachers would benefit from greatly!
Knechtion in the Classroom 