Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello, my growing and powerful tribe and welcome to revoke rewriting our kids education podcast. My name is Michelle person, and we are on a journey to change the face of education. We are rethinking re-examining and re-educating ourselves and our children. Last season, we dipped our toes into each of the core academic subjects taught in traditional public school. This season, we are taking a deeper dive with even more insights, strategies, and tips on how to make learning more engaging, authentic, and culturally relevant for our kids. Today, we are re-examining writing and I am excited to have teacher of the year from spring independent school district and the great state of Texas Jasmine Thomas on the show. Jasmine definitely knows a thing or two about engaging writing instruction, and she is going to share some of that knowledge with us today. So I hope you were ready and oh yeah. Are you
Speaker 0 00:01:27 More and more emphasis is being put on writing in school at lower and lower grades. In addition to simply summarizing what they may have heard or read students are being expected to effectively communicate thoughts, ideas, opinions, critiques, all of that at levels never seen before. One school of thought is that we need to emphasize writing early because it helps stimulate emotional growth, develop critical thinking skills and improve overall school performance. And yes, all of that might be true. But like I have made mentioned before I have been in the classroom for over 20 years. Kids hate writing. Luckily our guest today, Ms. Jasmine Thomas has some tips for us, Jasmine Thomas teacher of the year or spring independent school district outside of Houston, Texas. Thank you so much for taking time out of your busy, busy schedule to hop on over to revoke and have a conversation with us about writing.
Speaker 2 00:02:31 Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me
Speaker 0 00:02:34 Tell everybody who is not familiar with your master teaching abilities. Tell us who you are, where you're from, how long you've been teaching, what you do, all that stuff.
Speaker 2 00:02:43 Absolutely. So, um, my journey to the classroom in a very purposeful one, but not a traditional one. Um, so I went to school to study theater and communications studies, and then I was recruited by teach for America. So my first two years, um, I was actually getting my teaching certification while I was teaching. We were starting a newcomer academy at a school in Southwest Houston. Um, students from all around the world, 12, 14 different countries represented 12 different languages spoken. I only speak two languages. So I learned a lot. I'm sure. Um, I then moved to New York city. I'm also an actress to actual time and I got a job working remotely as a consultant for ESL teachers. So I would create classes and create resources, um, to help people within teach for America around the country, get more familiar with teaching our English language learners.
Speaker 2 00:03:40 Um, after that I moved back home to Houston and, um, I was still, I was tutoring and I was working with how much assess a substitute teacher. Um, and then I got hired by a nonprofit theater to manage some of the arts integration program. So then I learned, um, just a whole new side of teaching using theater, arts and games and collaboration and acting and improvisation inside the classroom to teach core content, math, science, reading history. What have you. Um, and then when the pandemic hit, I decided, you know, I really think that I want to make that journey back to the classroom. So I joined spring, I started teaching fourth grade writing. So this is my first year in this position after a bit of a break
Speaker 0 00:04:31 And master teacher, teacher of the year and her first year people, I need us to that needs to be recognized teacher of the year, her first year back in the class.
Speaker 2 00:04:41 Yes, it has been wild. So I was able to get a teacher at campus and then also in my district and tomorrow, um, I became a regional finalist. So tomorrow I'm actually gonna find out, um, the outcome of that. I'm not thinking too much about it because I'm less, but yeah, that's my journey so far,
Speaker 0 00:05:03 First of all, your journey is so, um, so parallel to mine in so many ways, I was also a theater major. Um, I also went to New York after graduation to try my hand, try my hand and, um, an acting and I am also teach for America. So I mean, there's just so many, Uh, 2000 core in Newark, New Jersey. That's where I started my teaching career And I went to Houston for my training. So that's where
Speaker 2 00:05:34 Was it at rice university? That's awesome.
Speaker 0 00:05:41 So, so Kendrick spirit there is as what I see here, and this is teacher of the year person that we have talking to us today. Well, given that you taught specifically only writing this year, like that's one of the reasons why I wanted to speak with you because you, in your bag, I'm sure you have all the tricks. Um, and we want, we want all level for it. We want everything you have to offer. Um, my thing, I always pushed writing in the classroom and I was very intentional about it. My kids, by the time they would leave, they, because writing has become so important on the state tests and you have to be able to put together, you know, not just, uh, uh, answer a question, but a coherent thought, at least a paragraph, if you expect to get any points on the state test. And I tell people all the time, if your kid can not write, do not expect them to be able to pass that test, they have made it virtually impossible where they could answer every multiple choice question. Correct. And if they do not get some writing points, they will not pass the English, the reading section of the test, but my kids ate it, like write out your writing journals. And it was so why do they, and your opinion, why do they hate it so much?
Speaker 2 00:06:56 Yes. Um, uh, same exact same experience. My kids moan and groan. And I say, y'all, I always say a few reasons why kids hate writing. And just from what I got to experience this year, one of them, it's a very slow process. And I think all kids, black, brown and otherwise are very, are getting more and more used to having immediate results. I'm going to do this multiple choice, click, click, click, and I'm done. I'm going to get on Tik TOK, look at all these 15 second videos and I'm done. So I'm not trying to be like, well, it's you, the technology that's shortening our attention span. I think technology is important, but we have to acknowledge the reality here. You know? So, um, writing is a slow process. It's an iterative process. And I think that kids just don't like the idea that I can't just get it done and be done. I actually have to work on it. You know,
Speaker 0 00:07:57 Sometimes I have
Speaker 2 00:07:57 To work on it several times. I got to go back and I got to reread, oh my God. When I would tell my kids reread what you wrote. I also think it's a very, it's both subjective and objective, right? And so a lot of my black and brown, all my kids I'm and all of them due to the pandemic were all in trauma, but a lot of them have external traumas outside of what we're experiencing now as a country. Um, and, uh, well let me go back for two seconds. So I got to get really, really deep into social and emotional learning when I was working for that nonprofit theater, um, partnering with the minute your clinics, figuring out how can we integrate social and emotional learning into the classroom. And so I just learned a lot about trauma, informed healing centered teaching, and that really guides a lot of what I do in the classroom.
Speaker 2 00:08:50 So when you think about writing something that the students, a lot of them are still struggling to decode letter sounds. So if they understand the prompts, now you have to think of my answer and then think of each letter sound that I'm trying to say for the word in my head, and then remember what that symbol looks like. That's a lot of pressure. And then you're going to tell me whether it's good or bad. You're going to tell me if it's right or wrong. And I just poured my heart and soul. You know, it's not one plus one is two. I put my, you know, my personal thoughts in this. I put my own journey in itself and this writing. So I think because it's so subjective and objective at the same time, our kids are kind of put off. Cause it kind of feels, you know, like you're reading my diary, get out of here. Even when the topic isn't a personal topic, they have that personal connection because writing is such a task for a lot of them. Um, I would say those, those are some of the top reasons that, that they hate it. It's hard to do when you're still decoding the language.
Speaker 2 00:09:53 It's hard to be critiqued at something that you spent so much time with. It's just hard to continue and work on this very slow.
Speaker 0 00:09:59 And that the slope, the idea, even my best writers when like they would, you know, you've got those best writers for like, I'm done, this is a, this is a five. I want to buy it. And I'm like, yeah, that's great. So here are the things with my red pen I need, they're like, what are you doing? How do we make it? I mean, we know that we have to revise. That is part of the writing process. You have to put pen to paper, you have to put those thoughts out there. You have to clarify, you have to, you know, go back and provide examples. How do we make this process more enjoyable?
Speaker 2 00:10:34 I think, I think there's a lot of ways. And just speaking from my own experience last year, I was truly getting every tool out of my toolbox. I was, I was just reaching anything that was going to help. Um, well, one thing that I think was helpful is chunking it into bits and having that as a very understood, um, method, methodology, I guess, in your classroom that when it's time to write, you know, that there's the time to brainstorming. There's the time to plan. There's the time to draft there's peer editing and getting used to that system. Um, something that also works for kids that have experienced trauma or a teacher who's trying to promote a human centered classroom is having a predictable schedule. Um, so if you have, you know, some time of your day where you're teaching, writing conventions, grammar, and then it actually goes to composition writing, make that transition known and understood students feel more comfortable and they feel more, um, they feel set up to achieve because they know that this time is not, you knew it was coming.
Speaker 2 00:11:34 We're not about to complain. Y'all knew, y'all knew what time it was. Right. And that predictability helps them. It'll get a little leg up and they feel like, okay, I might not ACE this, but I can at least approach it. Right. Um, and just with arts integration, that's such a big focus in my classroom. Um, so day I really consider how can I make this space, a safer space for my students, a space that they feel competent enough to Sharon to make mistakes, um, and to be celebrated, you know? So we do a lot of things together, like breathing exercises. We do a lot of stretching. Um, and I incorporate that with my arts integration where, you know, we're doing a stretch, so I'll give an example of a sentence and they have to show me what their body, what punctuation mark comes at the end of that sentence.
Speaker 2 00:12:23 So we're going to squish really low, like a period or jump up like an exclamation mark or, or, you know what I mean? So finding ways to still do review, but also integrated in moving their bodies and collaborating and laughing. Um, and when I'm able to work that in there, the students just feel more comfortable when it's time to sit down and write, because I'm like, we've, we've done the things we've gotten up. We shared, we talk to one another, we've collaborated. We use our bodies. Now it's time to write. So helping with that transition and just any, any way to collaborate. I think collaborating is so important here. Editing, having students understand what they are good at with writing and understand where their challenges are. We're very open. I don't force the kids to talk about it, but we're very open in our class about, you know, who's really great at understanding subject and predicate.
Speaker 2 00:13:11 Who's really great at writing details. Who's really awesome that never forgetting punctuation. And I pair them specifically based on the skills that they've mastered. So someone who is not that great at writing complete sentences of subject and predicate is matched with someone who is, but maybe they're really good at punctuation. And that's where they're, uh, you know, what the other student is challenged. Um, so finding ways to get out of the seat, to finding ways to talk, finding ways to get it in my brain as well, and not just immediately threw my hand, the paper,
Speaker 0 00:13:44 All of what you said. I w I want to rewind that. And it's like all of it, because I remember when the one thing that I did do that I think got my kids really helped them become better. Writers was the last year. I think one of the last year that I had an actual classroom, I taught fourth grade, just like you. That was the second and fourth for the grades I taught the most often. And we had, we had a system in class. So like, you know, that first half hour class, you know, um, was one day the Monday, it was the math review. I would do a spiral review in math, Tuesday, I would do on the board. There would be sentences. They would have to fix sentences what mistakes, but then there was also a writing journal prompt on there and they had the right that, um, and I knew that I expected a paragraph.
Speaker 0 00:14:27 Wednesday was math. Thursday was, um, Thursday was the writing again. And then on Friday it was clean out your desk day in the morning. But also your morning work was to pick one of the two things we wrote about take the skills we practice from the, the rewriting things like, and make sure that you apply them in the one rewriting topic that you did on Friday. And that's what I would grade. And so what I would find is like, if I'm up, because they got a small choice, they got to pick which one they submitted for me to grade B. They knew what I was looking for because we practiced punctuation all this week. You better make sure when I read this thing, that it has a capital letter, you know, if you don't want to hear my mouth and it was, so it was that helped to basically even my lowest kids could give me by the end two to three sentences.
Speaker 0 00:15:18 Now, obviously in fourth grade, you want to make sure they can write far more than that. And the test, the way they're written now, want them to see what a white, small books in my system. And once they got into that habit, even my most rowdy, my most ADH kid DAC, they had a system, we had a flow, they got it in the first half hour of class was, was easy, right? Like the rest of the day, you don't know what they're going to get, but the first half hour class we had that down. Um, so there was that. I thought that was amazing. But the one thing, what I can honestly say and teachers and parents, I hope you heard her. I was really bad at peer editing. So one of the things that would, would make writing hard for teachers is you had this feeling within you, that you have to look at every piece of writing. You have to, you have to critique it, give feedback, and you'll do you know, it is a lot, but I did not take advantage of peer, peer writers, like you just described. And that peer to peer editing is so key. If you can integrate that and get a system going there where the kids are talking to each other and they know their strengths, everybody, and you, and you pair them like that, that, I mean, that's nugget just got myself.
Speaker 2 00:16:33 Yeah. And like you said, when you're trying to find things that are going to work with the students, and you're saying, okay, so I'm not going to grade all of this. I'm going to grade this one assignment. And then, you know, specifically when I'm looking for, when I would do that, it's like a weight comes off their shoulders and I would tell them, you know what, I'm only looking for. At least these words in the prompts have to be spelled correctly. The other words, try your best. I'm not grading on that. I would get so much longer responses when I would say things like that because they weren't afraid. They're not afraid to try to know what I'm looking for. You know? So I really, really liked that method.
Speaker 0 00:17:09 Oh, that kind of leads into my next question, which was going to be, what are your, what strategies, what systems, what hacks you just gave us too, right? Like utilize, utilize the peers that are in the classroom and make sure that they are working together. And that way that you're integrating conversation and we know our kids need to talk, you're integrating, you know, that that is an awesome tip. Make sure that you are very explicit with them about what is actually being graded. So they have that comfort and they're able to be vulnerable in those other areas, as long as they can be, you know, that they have to be graded on these two things. I think I, 100% agree with you. Give me something else. I want more, I want, I want
Speaker 2 00:17:49 Another thing. Absolutely. I want to stretch out one of those little bit more when we're being absolutely clear on what we're looking for. Um, giving things like rubrics and, um, at the beginning of when you assign something that at the end, as a gift, you say, did you do these things, but in the beginning, when I'm explaining to you what we're going to write, giving them a rubric. And I know that takes time as a teacher, but there's so many resources online that you literally type it. Fourth grade writing rubric, and I promise you, stuff will pop up. You do not have to create this. Um, but having them understand how you grade also relieve some of that anxiety they have about writing. And like you said, being explicitly clear on what I'm looking for, there's even a rubric. So you can see where are you on, you know, on this list.
Speaker 2 00:18:37 And it lets them be more self-reflective as well. Um, I think another tip would be though, too, in the sense of some of my arts integration and collaborating games is letting them talk before we write. And like you said, students need to speak with one another. And with my, um, working with English language learners in my background, you know, I really try to focus on all facets of language acquisition every day in my classroom. So we're reading, we're speaking, we're writing and we're listening. Um, and, and you, you, you gotta plan for all of that. Truly make sure it happens because it's easy to have a whole day where you're like, wow, my kids did not talk to each other at all. I just spoke to them. And then they wrote, so finding time to make sure that they're talking with one another, I think that this is so true.
Speaker 2 00:19:28 And you know what, I don't, I don't know if this is, if this is like scientifically true, but I know for me, um, I work better once I'm writing it down after I've talked about it first, and I know that there are some learners that agree in that sense, in that same way. And I think it comes from our backgrounds as black and brown people. Our history is telling stories is not, has not always been writing them down. Right. So when you're talking to my students and when we just have conversations and they don't even realize I'm having them brainstorm the prompts, I'm just asking them questions about their lives, about their family, about, you know, general keywords. They're going to see later in the prompt, whole, they just talk so much. They have so much to say and then saying, okay, now let's start brainstorming circle and let's start writing.
Speaker 2 00:20:16 I get so much more out of it. Rather if I had just went straight to pen and paper, right. I think, and I'm sure it works with every student, but I think it really rings true for our black and brown kids, because we're such an, we have such an oral tradition in our history, you know? Um, so how can you make things more verbal? How can you have them do that brainstorming out loud. Um, and then how do you build in those supports to help them go from listening and speaking into writing, because it's not going to happen naturally, they're going to talk, talk, and he say, all right, y'all write down. What we talked about summer was how do you then build in supports? And of course, it's six time in your classroom. We're going to talk, talk, talk, and either the teacher's writing notes on the board, or you have a street scribe, who's writing down some of the key words where you have students like, okay, if someone says, uh, now that you're going to write it on the left left side of your paper, write it on the right side, let's see how many you get.
Speaker 2 00:21:19 And that's just helping them be active listeners. Um, but it's also helping them understand that this discussion we had is very related to the writing you're about to do. And that's something I realized that they had to be taught
Speaker 0 00:21:32 To be able to build
Speaker 2 00:21:35 That bridge. So finding a way to work, talking in there to work communication, or whether it be some games, conversation, discussion, and then working that bridge, building that bridge for them.
Speaker 0 00:21:46 Those are all those so many, like they just nuggets, they just it's like taking them, taking it off. Um, so you gave a lot of great nuggets for teachers who are actually in the classroom, educators, administrators, that we can go back and take these things and say, Hey, why don't you try this when I'm doing your walkthrough? And then they think Regina says, um,
Speaker 2 00:22:07 So
Speaker 0 00:22:09 My question now is, well, what about the parents? What can they do at home? How can they support writing, um, developing their writers at home?
Speaker 2 00:22:19 I think the biggest thing is talk to your kids care if it's in English or Spanish or Vietnamese, I don't care if it is, um, over dinner or when they get home, talk to your kids. We, what I see with my students is our parents are not home. Often they work multiple jobs or during the pandemic, they were home. But so were the students five other siblings. And some of my kids would literally be like, I haven't talked to my mom in the past, like couple of days and they'll realize it'd be like, wow, even though I'm living in the same home and not even leaving the home, when we talk to our students, when we talk to our kids, rather we get them to realize that communication is important, like, which is what they have to understand in order to want to write. Is that communicating, having someone understand what you want to share is important.
Speaker 2 00:23:12 Um, you know, but it also helps them understand the details. And, um, I didn't like identifying the question, right. So if I ask you, how was your day today? And you say, good. Okay, well, what did you do today? Let me change up the, how I asked my questions. So now you can't say good. You now have to answer the question. Um, every week I would send my parents an email, um, that just outlined, this is what we learned this week. Ask your students, ask your students to play one of these games with the other kiddos in the house. And just take some time aside where everyone puts their phone down for five minutes to play this game that we learned in class. Um, but I, I let the tee this up, excuse me, I let the parents know what we're doing in school so that hopefully, hopefully these conversations can continue in the home. And if you're not talking about what we're doing in school, at least just talk, talk, talk, talk, ask questions that require the students to say more than one word, answer, ask questions that forced them. I say forced, but a support detail and colorful language, because just getting them to think like that is going to help them later on in writing.
Speaker 0 00:24:29 Awesome. And it's something simple that everybody can do. Um, now, so we got the talking thing down. You mentioned some games that you sometimes send home. Do you have any, um, websites, resources that you recommend that parents or teachers or anybody listening might want to check out? Um, you know, that supports strong?
Speaker 2 00:24:50 Absolutely. Um, so recommend design is one that we use in our school and it takes down step by step, starting from the brainstorming to the planning, to the writing, editing, revising the whole, correct? Yes. Um, and it's very clear with how to go through it all, but like we said, it requires a little bit of possess to make it interesting to make the kids want to do it all. But I liked that it provides structure and a good base to start with. Um, a lot of the, uh, a lot of the activities that I used this year online, I created just using Google, uh, Google slides. Um, some of the things when we're working on grammar and identifying sentences, sentence fragments, all that kind of stuff. Um, my students did really well drag and drop assignments. So it's, uh, you can find tutorials online of how to use it in this way and this tons of resources online that can do this.
Speaker 2 00:25:51 But I particularly, I like Google slides because I have a history of working with it. Um, but just making really simple drag and drop assignments. And I'll keep those either as a classroom assignment during class or as an intervention assignment. If we have time where I'm working in small groups, you know, go in your intervention folders and do some of those drag and drop identifying, um, assignments and things like that. Um, also now that we're moving more online, I wanted to get my kids more time to practice typing, but I just did not have the time to me keyboarding teacher. So, um, nitro type was one of the websites that we used. It's free to use the kids. They'll found a way to cheat. If you just hit the space bar a whole bunch, apparently your car goes, but you're supposed to type the words to make the car go
Speaker 0 00:26:43 Find out. So, I mean, they are technology savvy, but It gets bad when you literally like, as a principal, I w something would go wrong with my computer. And I knew which kid to go get and say, go get, go get a manual. I can't do this. Like he needs to fix,
Speaker 2 00:27:02 Yes, we had, we would have our technical, our technical assistance in the classroom. And they were the person who would come in. But, um, but finding ways to get them used to typing and typing words and not just texting, you know what I mean? And also, um, as I said, I mentioned arts integration. So this is something that I've been doing for the past four years now. And so I used to lead workshops in person, but now I've started to do them virtually. So if you're interested in any of my arts integration for writing techniques or activities, um, so feel free to send me a DM on Instagram tutor time. Um, and I will shoot you a link out our next workshop that I'm going to be having. Um, and what we're going to play. Some of the games we're going to, uh, I'll share some instructions so you can play them on your own time and just talk about how they work in our classrooms and in real time, and not just when we're adults online,
Speaker 0 00:28:04 Jasmine, I thank you so much. I mean, you gave so many great nuggets. Um, but that's what happens when we like, we literally, we lead parallel lives. Like, you know, it's like two people say, you know, same spirit, you know, coming together, babies writing. So thank you so much for your time today.
Speaker 2 00:28:22 Absolutely. I'm so glad to drive. I'm so glad that I responded and that you were able to work all this together. I thank you for all the work that you're doing.
Speaker 0 00:28:32 Talk, talk, talk. If you want better writers, let kids talk to you and to their peers. I want to thank my guest, Mrs. Jasmine Thomas for taking time to speak with us today. And thank you for listening. Show notes and links to the things we've mentioned are available on our website. Www just like me, presents.com. Make sure you hit subscribe and share this podcast with other educators and parents in your circle. Next week, we will be pulling back the curtain on special education. What it is, what it is not and why. So many of our students are being labeled with learning disabilities. So you next week, and remember if our children can see it, they can achieve it.
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