This week, I will be visiting with the OEBs, the group of English teachers with whom I started my career as a teacher nearly 20 years ago. What does OEB stand for? I’ll give you the first two words and let you (depending on your high school English experience) figure out the third one: Old English B…. It was a name they adopted when one of them heard a younger English teacher using it as a term of derision towards them in the lunch room. They wear it proudly and definitely represent old school English teachers who believe in the orderliness of grammar and the precision of literature.

For four years, I was one of them, standing over my students with textbook in hand as we read Romeo and Juliet and Great Expectations. I wasn’t as strong a believer in grammar and experimented with writing workshop approaches including sentence combining and journaling. And, by my third and fourth years, I had begun to let my “freak” flag fly, putting up a Peter Gabriel poster, allowing students to use song lyrics as part of the poetry unit, and incorporating music and film as part of the course. Luckily, these were pre-NCLB days when a teacher really could close her door and do what she wanted to a large extent.

When I moved to middle school, the old school approach really seemed out of place, and once I read Nancy Atwell’s book In the Middle, I made some serious changes. For several years, I ran reading workshops in my 7th grade reading class, reserving three days a week for in-class silent reading and journaling. When my OEB buddies complain about the young teachers who try these methods, their biggest concern is over rigor and assessment. Indeed, while running a workshop where students read most of the time seems pretty easy, in order to be effective, there must be a strong underlying structure of classroom management. More importantly, however, the teacher must be actively involved in the reading lives of her students. I was constantly reading myself, working through the shelves of the school library, so I knew which books to recommend to whom. I always seemed to have a reading journal open in my lap, responding to students’ ideas and pushing them to think critically about what they were reading. It was tough work, but those days when it clicked and for 30 minutes my room was full of readers, sprawled on the floor or leaning on desktops, books open, minds engaged, I was glad to do it.

Part of the point of this reminiscence is that I am starting to think about my fall course for elementary school teachers. I get two credits this semester and want to give my students a very personal, exploratory experience of instructional technology. I was considering taking a game approach but now am framing it as a journey. We’ll do some preparation (setting up accounts) then locate helpful resources then head to places like AV Alley and Spreadsheet Street and Podcast Peninsula to learn about technology and see how it can fit in our classrooms. I have taught some version of this class for several years now and just like my English teaching experience, I have moved from a traditional course to a more open ended workshop.