Empower Students By Publishing their Words (in 20 Seconds or Less)!
by Carly Spina
Originally posted at Moving Beyond for Multilingual Learners.
Help your students recognize how powerful and wonderful their words are! When I was a third grade teacher, we created a classroom space that they were completely in charge of. We called it our Inspiration Wall. Anytime we were reading a book or an article, or listened to great music, or heard a quote from a video- the students were able to call out "WOW! Those words moved me. Let's put it on our Inspiration Wall!" It was so cool to have them become aware of words that carry power for them and make them feel a certain way.
I realized after a few weeks that their words were missing from our Inspiration Wall. While it's great to be moved by others (authors, celebrities, athletes, civil rights leaders, etc.), I wanted them to see that their words were just as powerful and just as valuable as the words of their heroes!
I started to listen more intentionally for their great "quotables" throughout the day. I would say "WOW! What you said was so cool! Let's add that to our Inspiration Wall!" and after a few days, the kids would call each other out for their power statements. Sometimes it was just a funny joke, sometimes it was a deeper thought or reflection, or sometimes it was something that reflected a really cool moment.
We'd pause, I'd pull up Canva, and I'd throw their words and first names into a graphic. When I first started to do this, I'd just print out one copy. One day a student asked if I could print an additional copy to take home. That night I received a text message from a mother who was so overjoyed to have their child's words published into a graphic. She told me she was going to buy a frame for it! So from them on, I'd print TWO copies each time (one for us, one for their family). Kids would be so proud to see their work published.
The cool thing is it only took 20 seconds total. Canva has tons of free templates. You might even ask the kids for their input on color and design. Try it out and keep me posted! Check out a few samples below!
See the interview with Carly Spina Below
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[Sarah] Hi, I'd like to welcome Carly Spina. Carly, hello, how are you? And tell us about yourself.
[Carly] Hi, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited. So I am a multilingual education specialist with the Illinois Resource Center. We are a nonprofit that provides professional learning experiences to educators and leaders across the state of Illinois and beyond. In addition to that, or prior to that I was an EL teacher, a bilingual classroom teacher and a district-wide multilingual instructional coach from pre-K through eighth grade, supporting eight schools three different program models including co-teaching push in, pullout, kind of everything under the sun across I think, 65 different language groups. So, yeah, so I'm super excited to be here.
[Sarah] Oh, Carly, we're so happy that you've contributed to Confianza and we're going to ask you a little bit about the work that you're currently doing and some of the upcoming work that we're going to be able to share with you. And I just want to thank you again. I think hearing your background, we have so much in common the different roles that we've had and now working with schools, but kind of outside of schools and working with many schools at once. You have recently written a book called "Moving Beyond" for Multilingual Learners. Can you tell us about what inspired you to write this and what we can expect when we read it?
[Carly] Yes, yes. So I originally wrote this book and I almost called it Moving Beyond Visuals because I felt like that was always the blanket statement for any time we were asking questions about, you know really ways to empower our students and really provide strong, high quality instruction. That was always like, just add visuals. So I was like, okay, well what else? So the book really came from me trying to push myself and stretch myself as a practitioner and through kind of all the lenses of serving multilingual learners. So there is all of the chapters in the book start with Beyond something. So I have a chapter on family engagement and that chapter is called 'Beyond the Newsletter'. So the whole basis of the book is pushing ourselves beyond, you know the practices that we and have inherited in our schools. Pushing ourselves beyond narratives that people like to tell, either about who we are or who our students or families are. And just continuing to push ourselves beyond, like what can we do next to improve our practice as educators and leaders?
[Sarah] It's important to update our practice. I like what you said about inheriting things and updating 'cause you kind of like, when we're working with students who are not proficient in English yet are on that journey it might be easy for teachers, educators of all types principals, coaches, whomever, instructional aids cafeteria staff, office staff to just try to use visuals and gestures. You know, in the chapter, one of the things I liked is in the chapter of "Beyond Visuals", you talk about the power of students being really setting an intention in reading and then you use a framework where the students reflect and then act. And you're really, from what I can see, you know really center the teachers, but also it sounds like really empowering the teachers, really promoting the teachers to do this practice with their students. So can you talk about that and why and that what that process is that you recommend and and what impact you've seen it have with students?
[Carly] Yes, yes.
[Sarah] And teachers.
[Carly] So anytime I can center the students and really developing their own, like, you know, I almost hate to use the word empowerment because I'm not giving the kids any power. They already have that empower. I'm just encouraging them to harness it and see how they can, you know, kind of be the drivers. Because again, so many times, even if we, you know no matter what age level our students are I think sometimes we kind of get into routines of doing the work for the students instead of, you know putting them in the driver's seat. So whether the students are reading or doing math or doing science, I really want them to say, okay what is this that I'm about to learn? Why am I going to learn it? How is this going to help me throughout my day or throughout this lesson?
So we always did that within our reading block. I would say, okay what are you really hoping to get out of this time here? What are your intentions for this time here? And then how are you going to take it, you know kind of beyond, what are your next steps for learning? And helping our students really see themselves in that learning. So like, our students are always, you know they're working just like all of us adults are we're always working on our identities. And so students are developing their identities as you know, as content learners, as languagers, as scholars. But I want students to see themselves as scientists and as readers and as authors and as all of these things. They are our next, you know, our change agents. And so I want students to see themselves in those spaces and have them, you know kind of take their words and, you know light them up and let them shine.
[Sarah] Ah, that's so beautiful. So the whole idea of not saying that students don't have power and I think I agree, you know, empower is a tricky word. It's not empowering them or giving them the power. You want to ignite that within them. Yes?
[Carly] Yes, exactly, exactly.
[Sarah] How have teachers responded to that process and that approach that you have?
[Carly] You know, I think overall it has been received very well. I think teachers are ready to, you know, see what kids can come up with. I think again, there's also a group that is like, you know what? I have to make sure though that, you know I am providing the instruction and I'm doing, like, you know I'm setting the stage for all of this to kind of come about. And we can absolutely set the stage, but at, you know at the same time, we do have to kind of like set the stage and then walk away and let the kids do the shining.
[Sarah] So if I'm hearing you correctly, it sounds like kind of get out of the student's way kind of release some control from more of a student or rather teacher-centered classroom to student-centered which we say it on paper about what does it really mean? What does it look like? It sounds to me like there's a shift that needs to happen with like really beliefs. Is that right?
[Carly] Yes, yes, yes. And kind of uprooting some of the, you know some of the practices that we have inherited. I always talk a lot about like language that we have inherited too. The language that kind of floats around the hallway and the teacher's lounge about students that we serve when they're not with us what are we saying about them? Always just again, kind of reflecting on those things and like, what are the, you know habits that we have as instructors? What are the linguistic habits that we have as colleagues? Like what are we saying about students and even families? And just, yeah, always kind of taking stock of those things doing some reflection and then doing some action so that we can kind of continue to push ourselves beyond.
[Sarah] It's a wonderful cycle, inquiry cycle that you're describing. So it's an intentionality. And when you talk about students already have the power when you talk about putting students in the driver's seat I know that we're excited to really cross publish some of the blogs that you've published on your side, Carly and one of the ones that's accompanying this interview for folks that haven't read it yet, is going to be about publishing students' words. Can you tell us about that approach and yeah kind of put it all together for us. How does that all work? And what is the power in that?
[Carly] Yes, so this originally started because my students had an inspiration wall and this was a room or a space in our room where the students had full control over. So they decided what went up on the wall, they decided where it went on the wall, what the wall looked like, where the wall was. And we really wanted to try to provide like a capture system for all the things that inspire them. So again, sometimes it's people maybe their own family members or people they see out in the world. So civil rights leaders or authors or musicians or music artists, all these different people that they have studied or that they've heard about on their own and kind of inviting, you know all of those things that kind of keep us uplifted and capturing it and displaying it. But then after a while, like we would be reading something and the students would say like, whoa like this line from this song really moved me. Let's put that on the wall. Or like, wow, this, this moment from Michelle Obama's speech really empowered me. I really want to put her words up on the wall.
But then after a while I started to realize that I didn't have any of the students words on our inspiration wall and I really wanted them to see their words up there alongside the words of their heroes. And so, you know our students always have these really cool mic drop moments that happen throughout the day, every single day. And so I was like, I really need to capture that. And so a student had said something and I said, whoa like let's capture that. So instead of, you know, writing it on like a post-it, I said, I really want to capture that and really make it look, you know, glamorous just as glamorous as Michelle Obama's words. And so I just put it on like a graphic that's like from a, you know a free kind of a website where you can have like these templates already made. And so I took 20 seconds to type it out into a graphic that was all pre-made. And then I printed it and it went up on the inspiration wall. And then it was so cool because students started to see how their words could inspire themselves and each other and me and it, we became really cool because then after a while the students would say, like, Celeste that was really cool. I want her words up on the wall. 'Cause that really inspired me. That got me fired up. So it had them kind of tuning into each other and, you know all the gifts that they share with each other to encourage and uplift each other. It was really, it was really neat.
[Sarah] It's so powerful to level the playing field, right? I'm hearing like power relations and mutual mutuosity. It isn't just people that are in books, you know, it's publishing students' words. Having them be owners of not just their own learning but also their inspiration of others. I love that. The mic drop. Mic drop moments. Document it. Archive it. Celebrate it. Great advice from you, Carly. I'm really excited for people in our network to learn about that method and to try that out in their classrooms and also to check out your book because it's a juicy one. There's a lot in here folks. It's called, again, "Moving Beyond for Multilingual Learners". So definitely pick that up. And Carly, what kind of things can people expect when they start following you on social media as well?
[Carly] So, I love sharing resources of tools that are kind of already made because we're all busy and we don't have time to do all the things. And you know, if we have tools like we should share them with each other. So I do love to share a lot of templates that teachers can just print and use right away, or even like go to file and make a copy and make even better because, you know, everyone, we need to like make sure that whatever the tool is or the resources it kind of fits in within our system and our students. So I love sharing just tips and tools and strategies but I love sharing the work of other people 'cause I learned so much from my professional learning network. So I love kind of collecting all these different pieces from other people and putting those online as well. So yeah, a little bit of everything.
[Sarah] Fantastic. Well be sure to check out Carly's work and also check out her current blogs some upcoming blogs that we're going to be collaborating on. Right, Carly and then some classics that she's written. One around the role of home language and integrating heritage language in the classroom. And another one around the power of community partnerships. Bringing the community, bringing the what's outside the school, inside the school taking advantage of that for families and for students. Well, Carly, it's just been a joy to talk with you. Thank you so much for sharing all of your knowledge and putting it in a nice digestible format for us to take advantage of as well as all the things that you're continuously doing online. We really thank you so much and we're so glad that you're here with us.
[Carly] Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
[Sarah] Thanks Carly.
[Carly] Bye.
[Sarah] Bye.