Sign of a life-longer reader: still under the covers with a flashlight. flickr/purplemattfish

So much of the pre-institute reading and reflection has been about drawing connections between previous work and our new careers as educators. But stopping to think about what I hope the parents and families of my future students say at the end of my first year, I’ll have to defer to a couple of veteran teachers. After all, one of the most important lessons I hope I’ve internalized at this point is that I’m only going to get good at this if I ask for help from experts.

First, I hope that my students and their families say that I expected a lot from the kids in my classes, and that I worked hard for them in return. I want them to say that I pushed my students to their full potential and broadened their opportunities. Moreover, I want them to see that reciprocal hard work integrated with intellectual curiosity and a respect for the common good. But this morning, a DCPS middle school teacher put it much more eloquently than I can in an NPR commentary. Her students, she said, developed these simple class rules, which lived in bold lettering on the walls of her room: “We are kind. We are focused. We are honest. We are brave.”

I’ve really warmed up to some of the sloganeering that appears around highly effective schools. “Work hard. Be nice,” is the most distilled of the KIPP mottos, for instance. But I could imagine little better after a year in the classroom than a group of students declaring in unison that they are kind, focused, honest, and brave.

Kindness is crucial to building a safe and supportive environment where students help one another and share their knowledge. Focus will come only from investing everyone—students, families, parents, coaches—in the goals and hard work we’ll lay out. Honesty will be an important virtue governing student interactions, but students must also be honest about the amount of effort they must put into their work, and must be honest with themselves about recognizing when they need help. And reaching for academic achievements just beyond their current understanding will require bravery on top of focus.

If I can invest students in these habits and virtues, and if they were to write a note recognizing that, I think that would be a successful capstone to a first year.

But what might that look like for students, in terms of personal behaviors? For that, I’ll turn to the legendary Rafe Esquith and imagine that this note from my students and their families highlights the same habits of “life-long readers” recognized by his students.

“We started reading in other classes that were boring because we were dying to finished the books we had,” my students might write.

“We had to start scolding our sons and daughters for reading at the dinner table,” the parents might say. “Not only that, but we couldn’t get them to go to sleep at night. They were always hiding under the covers with flashlights reading their latest books.”

Because sloganeering aside, part of opening up new opportunities for students means cultivating a thirst for new knowledge, new stories, and new ideas to focus on. It will be hard; it will require focus; but it will be a brave thing for them to do.

1. Have you ever secretly read under you desk in school because the teacher was boring and you were dying to finish the book you were reading?
2. Have you ever been scolded for reading at the dinner table?
3. Have you ever read secretly under the covers after being told to go to bed?

The point being that you can do a bang-up job of teaching students the technical skills necessary to absorb and comprehend what they’re asked to read, but real success means helping students cultivate a life-long hunger for knowledge and stories.

I think the current version of this test for myself would go something like this:

1. Have you ever been reading something on the bus, then kept reading as you went up the elevator into the office, and then kept reading after you turned on your computer and were supposed to be working, and then kept going to refill your coffee mug and taken your book along to the kitchen?
2. Have you ever been too engrossed in what you were reading to bother fixing yourself dinner and instead eaten vegetarian hot dogs wrapped in tortillas for the second time in a week?
3. Have you ever wished that you had a reason to read under the covers in secrecy and done it anyway, perhaps using one of those silly travel book lights that someone gave you for Christmas years ago and for which there really isn’t a proper use besides this?