Reading, Writing and Rising Up

Monday in class we got the opportunity to do a read-around of our "I Am From" Poem. I really enjoyed getting the chance to think back to my childhood and all the memories I have of my family & childhood home. The poem that we wrote is from an exercise in a book written by Linda Christensen (hint: it's the title of this blog post) and the read-around is also an exercise Christensen implements in her own classroom. 

After finishing Christensen's book Reading, Writing, and Rising Up, I have really gotten a grasp on the different approaches and exercises that I can use as a teacher. Each chapter was a different topic and then exercises to use in the classroom. For example; Chapter 1 is called "Building Community Out of Chaos" and some of the exercises explained are to say everyone's name to begin the first day of class, the read-around to develop new writers, the where I'm from poems, sweet learning and lastly childhood narratives. 

What I found to be really interesting is the concept that Christensen has on reaching every student with different ethnicities and diversity. The exercises she uses in her classroom are pretty universal so that every student is able to use things like the childhood narratives or the where I'm from poems to reach back into their childhood where they may or may not have sensitive subjects. I mentioned in class last week that I didn't think that making your students write about really personal life experiences was the most effective thing to do. Yes, talking about your past and sensitive topics is good but when things like death and maybe something along the lines of drugs/alcoholism are in the family, it might make some of your students shut down in the classroom. 

There are so many situations that can/will happen when I'm a teacher and nothing can never prepare me for those moments but it's helpful to have things like this book to help with activities and exercises to use in my own classroom one day.