Feel a Change Comin' On

Our place in the schedule - Write to Learn Conference 2016
Osage Beach, Missouri

In the last weekend of February, the University of Missouri in connection with other literacy organizations such as the International Literacy Association and the Missouri Writer’s Project, host their annual Write to Learn Conference in Osage Beach, Missouri.   I have enjoyed the conference in the past, but this year I felt compelled to submit a proposal to be a speaker.  I asked my sister, also a teacher, to join me.  Which was an even better choice than I realized at the time.   Here is the response we received:

“Congratulations!  Your proposal, “Reading, Writing, and Thinking in the Intervention Classroom,” has been accepted for presentation at the Feb. 25-27, 2016 Write to Learn Conference, to be held at the Tan-Tar-A Resort in Osage Beach, Missouri.

We once again broke our record for the number of proposals submitted this year (131!), and were unfortunately only able to accept about a third of those for presentation.  That your proposal was selected should be viewed as a distinct honor and a reflection on the quality of the proposal.”

That was in October, so I spent the next few months plotting which element of the Strategic Reading process I would present about.   I settled on the process of helping students identify and diagnose their own confusion as they read.  Our session had 80 educators in attendance.   The need to figure out how to help struggling adolescent readers is high.  At the close of the presentation, we had many teachers asking for more information and several who gave us excellent feedback, expressing how urgently they need and want support in this area.

All that to say, that I am getting a sense of a shift in the focus of my work.  I love working with students and have found a classroom full of striving readers with huge chips on their shoulders to be the place to figure out if the limited research available really applies to urban students.  It has also been a good place to adjust and blend strategies, both instructional and learning, together into a limited time frame, with limited resources, to attempt to get the maximum growth for students.  I don’t really ever want to be completely out of the classroom because this is where the real stuff happens.  Teaching also allows me to be authentic when coaching, mentoring, and training other teachers.  

I still need to be challenged in additional ways.  I would like the next step to be a doctorate, not for the purpose of being called Dr. Cooper (weird), but for the opportunity to do my own research with collegiate support.  My family can not absorb that right now.  I am needed at home in ways I hadn't anticipated.  We have had a string of serious personal obstacles at a time when my babies (now 15 and 16) need support preparing for college.  So I feel the need to find a path that challenges me, helps others, and doesn't take away from my family. How can I share what I know and keep learning while maintaining stability for my kids? That is no small question.

Emily (16), Ashley (26), and Sam (14) - St.Louis, Mo., 2015
International Literacy Conference

This was my thought process when I decided to start presenting at conferences.  Now with one successful experience under my belt, I have realized I may have something to offer new and experienced teachers who want desperately to support adolescent readers in developing essential literacy skills.  I want to work with other professionals who believe that literacy in the 21st century is a civil right and a social justice issue.   This conference, and hopefully future conference experiences, is educating me as well.  The questions from teachers show me that there is a gap in research and literature for secondary literacy intervention.   By the end of March 2016, I hope to have a blog up that addresses this need. I am not a professor, author, or professional researcher, but I am an experienced teacher and leader who is in the trenches every day. I am having success working out some of the kinks. I also hope that the blog, conferences presentations and maybe a few published articles will one day fuel my future research...when my children don’t need me so much.  

When I was in high school, I predicted that by the time I turned 30, I would be a mom of three boys and an author of at least one book.  I thought that I would write stories about my whacked out childhood.  It is both comical and amazing how different and better things turn out if you keep the path wide and the mind open.  I couldn’t have realized that I would use my childhood and my curiosity to help teenagers with many of the same obstacles I overcame, including being a non-reader.   I probably will still get to put those writing dreams in place, but in 1988, I didn’t imagine the options I would have.  I missed 30 by a dozen plus years,  and my children are two girls and a boy (THANK GOD), but I am letting God dream for me these days, because my dreams were a bit limited.