Third Eye Education
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Learning from Our Students

12/19/2021

 
by Jean Prokott
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The sophomores have spent December writing creative nonfiction, short vignettes that allow them to rummage around for the metaphors hiding in their lives. I’ve been teaching personal essay for the last decade, so I often predict the topics students will choose (failing a test, church mission trip, sports injury) and the symbols they will find (butterflies, water, clouds) and preemptively direct them away from those clichés. The best part is to tell them what not to write. They have to keep rummaging.

Every once in a while, a kid finds a perfect peach of a topic and writes about it in a way that unties me. I want to share with you the story of “nonnie” so you see what I mean.* ​

​nonnie
​

When I found nonnie she was lying on her side, her stomach bloated, legs straight out, stiff, eyes wide open. The flies had already found her; they swarmed around her mouth, entered and exited as they pleased. She never let anyone as close as I was to her, she should have been running, putting a comfortable distance between us, keeping an eye on me as I fed the other cows. Yet there at my feet she lay motionless, off guard, vulnerable. Her fur coat fluffy, white and grey splotches with black running through like ink in water. Swirling, twisting, winding its way down her back and along her sides, creating an elegant contrast. This beautiful creature one foot away who should be running but is still as a rock. This beautiful creature with fluid creeping out of her mouth forming a puddle at my feet. The same fluid that built up in her lungs and drowned her, all because she faced an incline and couldn't get up. Such a simple action. There were visible imprints on the ground like a marred snow angel, made while she fought for life.
 
nonnie wasn't a tame cow, never one to crowd for food. She found out how to get under a fence in the far paddock and went for a couple joy runs. She ate grass in the pasture. She liked potatoes. I watched her birth, the first time I had ever seen a cow born. 3 days late, quick labor, the placenta covered her nose and I helped cut it away. Her mom tiredly cleaned her. She nursed the first milk, the most important for the calf, the colostrum containing antibodies necessary for immunity.  I remembered those things as I looked at her lifeless body. I saw this cow as a fresh little calf and I now see her as a bloated, lifeless, mound.
  
When Bill got there he told me what happened to nonnie. He got the skid loader and moved her to a grove of trees far from the house. I asked if he buried her, he said the coyotes would find her.​
That comma splice in the last line alone.

That structure with time, to start and end with death, to bring nonnie to life in the middle.

Her metaphor is one we all know. There's a defining moment in our lives when we learn about death. nonnie represents the literal of this coming-of-age, but also her struggle up the hill represents how my student felt when she lost nonnie.
Related read: On the Joy of Discomfort
It was a gift to read this piece. I wrote tomes of feedback in purple pen—mostly stars and wut and this is powerful over and over to the point where she probably thought I’d been living as a recluse for the last decade with only episodes of trash TV to keep me company. (Although to be fair, I think I just described last year and most of this one.)

One would have to be a callous car crash of a person if they didn’t feel their heart explode when they learned about nonnie’s fate and the effect she'd had on my student, and the day I read this, the time of year I read this, that this had been the 80th out of 95 essays I’d read—nonnie’s story was literally the saddest thing I’d ever heard in my whole sad life and I would spend the rest of my days mourning nonnie and my student’s loss.
​
After I read about nonnie, I had a flashback to an experience I’d had on my grandparents’ dairy farm and a cow named Flopsy, who’d been born with a messed-up leg. The end of that story is predictable: while eating hamburgers one evening, my father brought it up.

​​​That wasn’t the impetus of my response, however.
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I sent a few lines of the essay to a few teacher friends with the note:

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​And they wrote back: 

Because it is quite clear we are all nonnie. 
Related read: Our Stories are Data, Too
Her tragedy was that she’d wanted to climb a hill. There are so many hills this year. nonnie drowned “all because she faced an incline and couldn't get up. Such a simple action.” nonnie had spent her life free and sassy and getting under fences. She “liked potatoes.”  I like potatoes, too, I’d thought. I like potatoes, too.
​
Since the assignment was not one short scene, but three, when I conferenced with my student this week, I reviewed more rough drafts. One was about a horse named Iago (and I’m sorry, but find a more perfect name for a horse). An excerpt:
He broke through the fence the first day we had him […] Iago became my favorite horse. First I was brushing him, that soon turned into riding him, performing tricks like standing on him, spending hours in the barnyard making different ¨5 star meals¨ out of oats, potatoes, and grass (sushi was the favorite).
Is Iago still alive? I asked. Yes, Ms. Prokott, Iago is still alive.
​

The third scene was about a chicken.
the chicken I refuse to name

​Just two weeks after we got the chicks they had doubled in size. Besse chickens, white, fat, feathers missing, they were meat birds. As chicks they were cute but the chick phase quickly disappeared, lasting only two weeks. This type of chicken is bred to grow fast as most meat birds are. It's easier that way, the stressed heart, weak legs, achy joints, and poor quality of life are a small setback. So small in fact that it gets skipped over, we don't care about the living chicken, we care about the meat. The fact that it grows fast and is ready to butcher in about a month and a half outweighs the chicken's life experience.
 
The chicken I refuse to name was probably three weeks old, it was in a really ugly period where the feathers were patchy, bare pink skin showed through, like a red stain on white. The chicken's feathers were dusty, making her look cream. She was probably two pounds, not fully grown but not a chick. I found her laying down in the chick coop, her breath irregular, heavy, all the energy she had quickly depleted as she tried to prolong her life. Slow, sickly, inhale, shaky, lacking, exhale. Her eyes tired, head heavy, dropped like a weight to the hard ground. She was suffering. I brought over a bowl of water and a small handful of food, like that was going to help. She didn't even seem to notice me, eyes lazily fixed ahead of her, hanging on to all the energy she had left. When she didn't eat or drink I sat there for a while, I knew what was going to happen next. Though it was selfish I wasn't ready for her to die, maybe she would get better. As I sat there though, I knew I was kidding myself, she wasn't going to get any better. I looked at her one last time, in all her frailty and weakness. Then I told Bill.
 
As he walked toward the chickens I walked slowly the other way. I came back to the chickens, shovel in hand, gloves on. With a hole, about a foot deep, dug under the cover of a large maple, I picked up her small, delicate, body and buried her.
I read this, I looked up, I said: Why are you doing this? Why are you trying to kill me?
Related read: Creating Space for Student Empowerment
What also kills me is how humble she is. I think I might spend the rest of the year convincing her that, yes, it is that good. I know I will spend the next decade using her essay as a model for the assignment. And I just now realize this random IKEA print of a cow I have hanging in my classroom will never look the same.
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My reaction to this powerful piece was not only reader-response, of course—this student has mastered empathy and control of language and voice and happy accidents and every possible technique to make me react the way I did. But I don’t want to talk about how she got there, don’t care to list which activities we did in the classroom, don’t want to get my nails dirty in pedagogy. This was all her. I simply want to share this victory. Her victory to write such a heart wrenching piece, to have the maturity to revisit grief and make it beautiful.

While we’re all nonnies this year, struggling up the hill (and praying we don’t meet her fate) maybe we can also be my student. It’s been a year of loss, so let’s talk about it. Maybe find the metaphors. Learn from our students. 
​
And the next time you have a glass of milk, please pour one out for nonnie.

​* The student has given me permission to share. 

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​Jean Prokott is an English teacher in the Rochester Public Schools. She is also the author of the book The Second Longest Day of the Year which won the Howling Bird Press Book Prize, author of the chapbook The Birthday Effect, a recipient of the AWP Intro Journals Award, and has both poetry and nonfiction published in numerous journals.  Learn more about Prokott online or connect via ​email.


Saving Students & Saving Ourselves

12/12/2021

 
by Amit Sood (with a frame by the Third Eye Education writing team)
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No question, this school year has started off like no other. On Third Eye Education alone, these last few months have been fodder for a handful articles rooted in frustration (see: You Have Learned Something/You Have Lost Something, Finding Our Portals to Transcendence, and We Are the Leaders We Seek). Add in the fact that many entered this year thinking it would be a ‘return to normal,’ and it can be a very hard pill to swallow.

When stuck in a situation (or a series of situations, to be honest) that is disquieting, it can be easy to dwell on the on the negative. When drowning in a glass that’s half empty, it’s hard to acknowledge that it’s also half full.  

Which is why here we lean on Amit Sood, who we’ve collaborated with before, to highlight (1) a way we can reengage students and (2) a way we can reengage ourselves. 

​1  |  Reengage Students with Voice

In January of 2021, Sood noted the following in his Dear Friend column, first published in the Rochester Post Bulletin:
Want to help someone feel good? Let them speak 

​Do you know what is common between dark chocolate, surprises, gambling, winning the house in bingo, and meeting people who agree with us? Each of these experiences causes a surge of a chemical dopamine in our brain’s reward network. That surge feels uplifting, sometimes intensely so.
 
Another activity that increases dopamine in our reward system is talking about the self (saying the word “I”). “I do this,” “I do that,” “This is how I feel,” “I like this,” “I don’t like that,” and so on. Research shows when we talk about ourselves, our reward network activates, and we feel happy.
 
No wonder 40% of speech and 80% of social media content is people talking about themselves.
 
When you choose to listen to others mindfully, even if you cannot solve their concerns, you are helping them. This is because when they inform you, their brain’s pleasure center activates. People would even give up a monetary gain in favor of the joy of sharing information. At least that’s what the research shows.
 
So, a simple way to connect with others and make them happy is to sit back, relax, and enjoy hearing them speak — about themselves. Try this today with someone who may have missed an engaged sympathetic ear for a long time.
 
Listening to others with complete presence is such a simple way of spreading happiness. No wonder we have two ears for each mouth!
Related listen: Give Students a Say with Myron Dueck
To transfer this to the classroom, might it be possible to increase student engagement by increasing opportunities for students to use “I”?
  • I felt this book was challenging because…
  • I think this rubric wasn’t fair because…
  • I turned this assignment in late because…
 
It doesn’t mean we can’t still push deeply into content:
  • I felt this book was challenging because…might lead to ➡ and here are three examples from the text that highlight my point!
  • I think this assignment too hard because… might lead to ➡ I still don’t understand how to use math mountain—can I use another way to get the answer?
  • I turned this assignment in late because… might lead to ​➡ I don’t understand how this applies to the field I’m planning to go into. Does it apply? Can you show me?
Related read: Shifting Views on Assessments: Avoiding Blind Spots

2  |  Reengage Ourselves with Antidotes

In March of 2021, also in his Dear Friend column, Sood noted:
Give no one the power to affect your health
 
Hera was the wife and sister of Zeus, the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion. Hera was known for her jealousy and vengeance, which came partly as a reaction to Zeus’ infidelity.
 
The difficulties Hera faced weren’t unique to her life or her times. Many of us face difficult interpersonal situations that awaken a different Hera within us — the Hera of Hatred, Envy, Revenge and Anger (the kind that produces violent rage). Research shows this HERA predisposes us to a multitude of medical conditions.
 
Just as a physical body fighting an external infectious agent becomes inflamed and injured, and a country at war finds it difficult to keep its citizens peaceful, when we intend to hurt others — either because they hurt us or because we feel hatred or envy — we hurt ourselves.
 
Research shows a mind fighting itself or others predisposes the physical body to cardiovascular disease, cancer, infections, inflammation, dementia, and even premature death. In one of my workshops on forgiveness, a participant got up in the middle and said, “I can’t give my ex the power to increase my risk of dementia. That’s a good enough reason to forgive him, as much as I hate to do that.”
 
The other reason HERA damages our system is that once we are mired in the habit of getting angry, feeling hatred, harboring envy, or seeking revenge with one person, we deploy these missiles to the rest of the world. We paint the world with our negativity and seek out reasons to validate our inner negative feelings. These feelings start defining our life’s course.
 
Locked in the HERA prison, we start despising the world, jeopardizing our peace.
​
HERA often sneaks in from an unguarded corner of the mind when you aren’t watching. It then multiplies, like a newly hatched virus against which you have no immunity. Carefully guard your mind — not just its living room, but also its attic, basement and backyard — from any elements of HERA, and sweep it clean when you find them hatching.
 
Crowd your space with the antidotes — gratitude, compassion and forgiveness. Transform your negative thoughts, so they surrender to these higher values.
 
When you convert your hatred into compassion, envy into inspiration, revenge into forgiveness, and anger into acceptance, you’ll save yourself and the people you love from much suffering.
Related read: Why Does the Frame We Use Matter? Embracing Curiosity Over Judgment.
To transfer this to our educator selves, might it be possible to “Crowd [our] space with the antidotes — gratitude, compassion and forgiveness?
  • I’m going to lose my prep hour to sub for a teacher out quarantining…might shift to:
    • …but this way at least I can meet the students who I’ll have in class next year. (gratitude)
    • …I hope he doesn’t actually end up getting Covid. (compassion)
    • …yet I’m not going to make do with the lack of sub notes considering he likely had to leave on short notice. (forgiveness)
  • I can’t believe she used that racial slur…might be followed by:
    • …at least I have a strong relationship with her and we can talk about this. (gratitude)
    • …it hurts me to think she may be others who thinks that okay. (compassion)
    • …but I’m going forgive this instance of poor word choice now that we have discussed it and start fresh with her tomorrow.  (forgiveness)
  • That email I just received really cut to the quick…might be followed by:
    • …yet, at least I know they’re engaged and passionate about this. (gratitude)
    • …I wonder what’s troubling them that they felt the need to be so curt and condescending (compassion)
    • …I’m going to share this with my principal to loop her in, and then just delete this so I can move forward. (forgiveness)

Perhaps we can use Amit Sood’s ideas as our life raft: two tools that might help us dry out and float. Once safely on a raft, our clothes no longer waterlogged, it may just be easier to see that the glass we’re floating in is also half full. 

Dr. Amit Sood is one of the world's leading experts on resilience and wellbeing, executive director of the Global Center for Resiliency and Wellbeing, and the creator of the Resilient Option program. He has also athored many articles and books, including The Mayo Clinic Guide to Stress-Free Living.

The Gift of Reading

12/5/2021

 
​by Heather M. F. Lyke
Reading Facts
We all know reading is important. I mean, just take a look at this infographic (aka: my attempt to summarize all the layers of importance).

Since reading is such an essential skill, it’s not surprising that the questions I receive most in my role as Teaching and Learning Director for Dover-Eyota  schools revolve around reading.
  • How can I help my child read more?
  • Do you have books suggestions for my reluctant reader?
  • My grandkid seems to be reading below grade-level: how do I get him up to speed?
  • My niece once loved reading, but now never picks up a book—is there a holiday gift I could get her to help her reengage?
​
​Simply put, there is a lot of passion out there for helping our youth become strong readers.

Plus, ‘tis the season of holiday sales, gift giving, vacation days, and new year’s resolutions…

​Combine these truths, and this becomes a perfect time for finding and sharing books, for having extra time to enjoy literature, and for setting new reading goals.

So, what can we do to support young readers and to foster within them a desire to read that lasts a lifetime?

Here are three sets of ideas:

Model It --

Read aloud to your child.
According to Scholastic (2019), a powerful predictor of kids’ reading frequency is having a parent [or other adult] who personally reads aloud to/with the child 5-7 days a week. Commonly, this is something we do with younger children, but recent studies have shown that even middle-school-aged youth love to be read to.
 
Read around your child.
Show the children in your life that you, too, are a reader. “Children who see adults reading and enjoying it,” according to Pearson Education (2021), “are much more likely to want to read themselves.” Maria Russo and Pamela Paul, authors of How to Raise a Reader, note that “when I’m sitting there on my couch, reading a book, and my kids are doing their own thing, I like to think, I’m parenting right now—they can see me reading this book”—conversely, if “right after dinner, the first thing you do is scroll through your phone, open up your laptop, or watch TV, kids are likely to take note.”
Related podcast episode: Literacy for All
Listen to audiobooks together.
Audiobooks support literacy skills in ways that physical books sometimes can’t. The web resource Reading Rockets (2003) shares that audiobooks model strong interpretive reading, make difficult vocabulary words or dialects more accessible, and enhance listening skills among other things.

Tip: there are a lot of ways to access free audiobooks. Visit the website LibriVox or try the app Libby (you just need a public library card!).

Remove Barriers --

Keep literature in reach.
Pearson Education (2021) shares a few tips: at home, have books on accessible shelves and coffee tables; when traveling, toss a few books in the car or suitcase; and when headed to an appointment, have a book at the ready should there be time spent in the waiting room. Personally, I’m currently reading 4 books: an audiobook, a bedside-table book, a living-room book, and one waiting-in-line book (which I actually access electronically on my phone).
Related read: Accessing Mirrors and Seeing Through Windows: Why Students Need Diverse Books
Embrace whatever text they choose.
From nonfiction to fiction, from poetry to graphic novels, from magazines to thick novels, from comic strips to junk-mail…anything with text is an opportunity to build vocabulary, to increase interest, and grow reading stamina. Additionally, each genre has its own unique trends when it comes to plot structures, character development, and literary techniques: reading widely exposes one to all the trends, making it easier to navigate future works of the same genre.   ​

Look past levels.

Once a reader is able to decode basic words, according to the School Library Journal (2020), which is typically around first grade, students should be encouraged to “read a wide range of texts…they should read easy books to things that kick their butt. The variation of difficulty does matter.” Simpler texts can build fluency, enjoyment, and stamina; while a text outside of one’s comfort level can introduce a reader to new vocabulary and increase understanding of what skills they’ve yet to master. ​
Related read: Creating Space for Student Empowerment

Encourage Interests --

Ask questions.
Reading teachers and authors Karen Szymusiak and Franki Sibberson (2007) share the tip that adults should “…talk about the books they [the students] are reading” by having conversations rooted in “open-ended questions they can use in discussing their reading.” They suggest questions that fit each of three layers:
  1. questions about the self -- How are you like the character of Rory?
  2. questions about the text -- You said it was set in Texas: how do you know? Can you show me where it says that in the book?
  3. questions about the world -- What you read reminds me of what we saw at the grocery store yesterday. How is the puppy in a vest that you just read about like the one we saw with the women getting milk?).
Related read: Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Doors
Leverage hook books.
Reading a book series, going on author binges, rereading a favorite book—these sometimes get bad reps. Yet, they are integral to creating lifelong readers. Author Devon Corneal shared on Read Brightly (2021) that rereading helps learners develop strong word recognition, notice patterns, enhance fluency, strengthen comprehension, and foster confidence. Similarly, a reader who is hooked on a series deepens their connections with characters, increases comprehension, spends more time reading, and quickens the process of finding what book to read next, according to Edutopia (2016): likewise, reading multiple books by the same author can have similar impacts. 
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Celebrate books and reading.
Make literacy a reward. Make going to the library, visiting the bookmobile, or browsing at a bookstore a regular and joyful event. Combine reading with what your learner enjoys. For me, that was lunch with my father at Wong’s in downtown Rochester after spending a summer morning with my mom at the library. For my third-grade niece and nephew, it’s being allowed time to read uninterrupted in their small, end-of-bunkbed nooks they created with their father last year—simple plywood nests filled with blankets, pillows, and a few favorite reads. Lifelong reading is fostered by the memories of contentment we nurture now. ​

If you ever want to dig more deeply into reading, I’d love to connect! Until then, I hope you and the youth in your life find a great piece of literature to cuddle up with and enjoy this holiday season. 

Heather M. F. Lyke is the Director of Teaching & Learning for Dover-Eyota Schools and author of numerous articles focusing on quality education.

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