Sharon Doyle - Blogpost #3: Routman, Chapter 4 Teach with a Sense of Urgency

      Urgency is a word that sometimes conjures up stress and anxiety, but Routman does not portray such an image as she explains the concept of making every teaching moment count for the teacher and the students.  The goal for all students should be independence.  We are not teaching children to remain dependent or children.  We want them to begin the process of thinking, creating, and developing as independent beings and this can only happen with dedicated teachers providing students with strong toolboxes for learning. There appears to be a general theme in both of the texts we are currently reading and that is providing students with enough challenge to engage, enough help to support, and enough strategies to educate them to success.  Routman stresses the need to bond with students building a healthy relationship where students feel safe, cared for, and important to their own learning processes.

     Most important in this chapter is to recognize just what students need to improve their skills and how the teacher can effectively provide it.  A classroom must be engaged initially in building relationships where students are safe to be risk takers and where students can learn in integrated ways (Yay, WHES).  It is important that skills not be taught in isolation, but within a context of more complex learning concepts and ideas.  Allowing for this mini-lesson approach when the need arises seems to me would be more efficient as to time management and more effective for long term memory.  An old idea of theme-based learning comes to mind as I read parts of this chapter. 

     A final and very critical point found in this chapter is the connection between reading and writing.  In working with students on their writing, I know from personal experience that once engaged students love to write about themselves or a personal story.  When I explain to them the need to read their own writing like a reader rather than the writer, I get puzzled looks until I share with them a particularly boring piece of writing that I have written for this purpose.  Students begin to let me know that this is not very interesting and when I ask them if they want to read more, a resounding “No” is heard.  I then point out to them that they are asking me to read this kind of writing all the time and that readers are far more critical and want to be engaged with what they read.  I challenge them to write like a reader and the results are often quite different.  Seems like someone mentioned the idea of ‘high expectations’ – you better believe it.