FREEZE - Throwback to My Critical Friends Group Days, Annenburg Trained & Thinking

 One of my favorite protocols implemented by the visionary principal, Ron Freeman, at the J. Graham Brown School came from our work in Cambridge through the Coalition of Essential Schools and Critical Friends Group. Our practice was to think critically about our teaching practices, but also to find meaning in the wide variety of instruction that occurs to help students to be educated, productive citizens. In one exercise, Ron would announce "Freeze" over the intercom and teachers knew to stop what they were doing to capture that moment in time, so that all of us could bring our frozen moments in time to a faculty meeting later in the afternoon. The point was for all of us to talk about our practices and to explain to others what pedagogy we were implementing at the moment. We would then describe that to others.

I decided to "freeze" my own classes last night, taking snapshots of moments of time so that I could capture my crazy practices in last night's classes. I chose to think about The Literate Learner, a graduate class for content area specialists to think about the ways literacies work in their subject area.

The first thing I notice is that I have a cup of coffee, which is abnormal for me as I usually can't have caffeine after 10 a.m. because it keeps me up at night (but I really needed one last night). I'm also intrigued by engagement, noting to my graduate students that they make my job look easy, always participating in the activities I design each night.

I chose to use Scholastic Art winners as a backdrop to my presentations last night, because we discussed visual literacies and each were to present on their own artistic abilities to represent their subject area in visual forms.

Around the room are my 'writing pals,' equipped with snacks, pens, markers, sticky notes, glue and scissors which students have grown to utilize. We have been working with Lost Boy, Lost Girl as a touchtone text and I see that is on top of the materials I prepared for the night (having judged the book by its cover for its own visual representation).

I also noticed that my room is messy. I create a socratic square (sort of impossible to do a circle) in my graduate courses and the students are all able to see one another. There are papers everywhere and students are reading, looking, and writing - which is what I hoped they'd do with the supplemental materials I provided to assist the evening's objectives. There are also two screens in the room that offer directions for those that aren't clear with my oral instruction.

What can't be captured here, however, is the instructions I gave or the dialogue the activity created (all revolving around 'rigor' and 'relevance' with reading materials, especially when working with a diverse room of learners: history, French, Spanish, English, and math teachers - each student had a different article chosen specifically with their subject areas in mind and each connected back to Lost Boy, Lost Girl in some way as we built our content knowledge chosen about the Sudanese relocation experience with a YA middle school non-fiction text).

Frozen in time. That's what I was after and from the two photos I can see much (not everything, but some of the things I wanted to know about my instructional practices). Now, if only I chose a colleague to do this with to discuss my practice further.

It's humpday, though, and I'm moving on to writing projects. For now, I am putting my teaching had back on the shelf until we meet again.