Guiding Quotes.

Today I taped these quotes on the front of my plan book for ninth grade English, which I’m teaching next trimester.

It is not enough to be busy, the question is what are you busy about?

— Henry David Thoreau

I confess.  I started out s a creationist.  The first days of every school year I created, and for the next thirty-six weeks I maintained the creation:  my curriculum.  From behind my big desk I set it in motion; then I managed and maintained it until June.  I wanted to be a great teacher — systematic, purposeful, in control.  I wanted great results from my great practices.  And I wanted to convince other teachers that this creation was superior stuff.  So I studied my curriculum, conducting research designed to show its wonders.  I didn’t learn in my classroom.  I tended my creation.

Today I learn in my classroom.  What happens there has changed, and continues to change.  I’ve become an evolutionist.  The curriculum unfolds as my kids and I learn together and as I teach them what I see they need to learn next.  My aims stay constant — I want us to go deep inside lanugage together and use it to know, shape, and play with our worlds — but my practice evolves as my students and I go deeper.  This going deeper is research.  Today my research shows me the wonders of my kids, not my  methods.  But it has also brought me full circle.  Learning with students, collaborating with them as a writer and reader who both wonders and knows about writing and reading has made me a better teacher than I dreamed possible.

— Nancie Atwell, In the Middle