Walking Trees

Good morning fellow UNCWP writers!  So as a pre-requisite to help us dive into our writing journey this summer we were asked to complete a book review of a book we chose during the SI Orientation. The book I was drawn to was Ralph Fletcher's Walking Trees: Portraits of Teachers and Children in the Cultures of Schools.  In the book Ralph Fletcher writes about his experience as a teacher trainer with the Teachers College Writing Project at Columbia University in New York City (NYC).  The chapters consist of stories about his encounters with principals, teachers, students, and other writng projects participants.  Fletcher gives a very candid and transparent account of his days working in K-12 classrooms in NYC Public Schools.  The title of the book is interesting in that he uses the notion of "Walking Trees" as a form of symbolism to describe how change occurs in public education.  We all know that trees do not walk! Once they are planted they remain where they are because their roots take hold beneath the ground.   Flethcher gained this title from the writing of a NYC student who told a story about a tree she learned about while on a family trip to Florida.  Suppossedly, every hundred years the tree takes one step.  His belief is that change occurs in education at the same slow pace.  Throughout the book Fletcher writes about his challenges trying to teach teachers the writing process so in turn they could teach their students how the writing process should be approached.  The writing process that he is trying to get them to adopt is the process that we are familiar with: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editiing. As a trainer Fletcher encounters a mixed bag of reactions from administrators, teachers, and students to engage in the writing process.  As a Social Studies teacher I partnered with the UNCWP to incorporate writing in my classroom so I know all to well the resistance that students can exhibit to writing.  The majority of them view it as a chore versus as a way to speak their mind and create a living document.  However, I also know how rewarding it is to see students who were once reluctant to write ask for more time to share their thoughts through a pen or pencil.  In his book Fletcher highlights the same type of experience with students. His personal stories confim my believe that at the end of the day they all have something to say but they just dont believe they can write; I've been there before.  Interesitingly, Fletcher's most poignant moments in the book arise when he begins to question the significance of his job and its relevance in the life of the students he encounters.  Majority of the schools he worked in were low-performing schools in impoverished urban communities.  Thus, majority of the students were African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian and recipients of free or reduced luch.  Throughout the book he struggles with the relevance of teaching "these type of students" how to write when their future opportunites realistically may not include going to college, let alone graduating from an institution of higher education.  His honesty definitely pushed me to reflect on my on biases and archetypes after my first month in the classroom last year.  As a Teach for America (TFA) teacher I came in to my first year ready to take on the achievement gap that exists in our country.  I had high expectations, grand ideas and projects in store for my students, and relentless determination only to be smacked in the face by the harsh hand of reality once I began to recieve work from them.  I had spent the previous summer in Chicago going through TFA teacher boot camp in preparation for the school year.  I did some student teaching and endured hours of professional development geared towards giving me a clear understanding of the achievemnt gap and how to teach struggling students.  However, no training could prepare me for the real thing!  I found myself questioning my significance daily just like Fletcher and wondering was I really making a difference.  In retrospect I can emphatically say yes!!! Fletcher writes about how at different schools the students would light up, clap, and become energetic on the days he showed up to their class to teach writing.  He would refer to the students as authors, and he would allow them to write from their own personal experiences, which often perplexed the teachers who felt they had to provide them a topic to write about.  For the students he gave them a different perspective...he changed their mindset about writing!  The root latin word for education is educare, which means "to bring forth out of."  Fletcher was able to bring the writer out of them by allowing them to write their own stories...isn't that what an author is? A creator of his or her own story!  As a Social Studies teacher my desire is that my students leave my class viewing history as a story that is still unfolding and that it is my story, their story, and essentially our stories!  They need to be writers so that they can tell their story because at the end of the day no one can tell their story like they can!  Often history has only been told from the perspective of the victor or the dominant group.  It is imperative that the disenfranchised, oppressed, and voiceless write their own story so that we can hear different perspectives.  My students writing allowed me to see the world from their perspective and the opportunity to get to know them better. I would recommend any teacher to read Walking Trees because it gives a candid look at the education system and the task we have to challenge the status quo and be the best educators we can possibly be.  Not for recognition but because our students need it and they deserve it!  I would like to end with this qoute by Fletcher around the concept of being an "incubated spy" as a teacher:

"The nature of my job, I quickly realized, was to function as a catalyst, a change agent myslef.  But, by design, the change would happen slowly, surreptitiously."

Be the change!!!!