The Village Approach

Every month, I write a little column for a newsletter that my district sends out. This month’s is called, “The Village Approach.”

The Village Approach works like this: I sit down with a student and put a colored card in front of her. If she’s working on letter sounds, she’ll see a letter of the alphabet along with a corresponding picture on that card. Let’s say the letter is, “B.” The student will trace the uppercase B, then the lowercase b, and say, “B.” She will point to the picture of the bear, and say, “Bear.” Finally, she will point to the last B and say, “Buh.”

Twenty-six times – the letters all out of order – it takes about five minutes to complete a set.

It’s tedious work. I’ve been practicing this approach since before winter break. So far, I have yet to work with a student and not had to wipe tears from my eyes when, through an incredible amount of effort I can only compare to giving birth, or completing the last leg of a marathon, a student gets all the letters.

I was a middle school teacher before I started working in the Ypsilanti Community Schools. I love teaching middle school. I love that I have the opportunity to be with these kids as they are becoming painfully and joyfully aware that the world is not black and white; that we walk and live and bloom in the grey, where it is murky, but where the colors are most vibrant.

I taught, “ELA,” though that title gets on my nerves. I’d prefer to call it English, Literature, or even Language Arts seems better, but that’s a story for another day. My lessons focused on the standards, sure, but their foundation was created on my belief that the stories we read in class made a difference in our lives. They help shape us, and they help us see the world differently. They help us see each other differently. Stories help us understand who we are, and what we can do. I wrote my lesson plans on this belief, and this was the only way I knew how to teach.

Last year though, I left teaching because I am also a writer, and for years I’d been preparing myself – reading, writing, going to graduate school – to write books. Last year, it became heartbreakingly clear that I cannot teach full-time and write. It was one of those black and white turned grey moments where I had to stand very still, make a decision, and hope that the colors that had grown so dull would turn bright again.

Being at Perry and YIES has been a perfect situation. I have the space in my head and heart to write, as well as the time, and not only do I (sort of) get to keep my hand in teaching, I get to learn more about how children learn. Plus, I wrote a book! So in lots of ways, I am in the best of both worlds.

Except sometimes, when I’m doing Literacy Support work, I miss the exploratory, adventuresome feeling of standing alongside a student while he’s reading a story like The Hobbit, The Wednesday Wars, or, Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Now, with the new reading law, I’m reading stories to kids less and less, and I feel more like Puff the Magic Dragon, sadly taking After the Fall, The Legend of Rock, Paper, Scissors, and Tough Boris into my cave. These days, I’m anxiously aware of the work there is in literacy, and I miss the play and imagination in it.

However, with most situations, it is the children that teach me the greatest lesson. They show me stories are everywhere waiting to be explored – if I care to pay attention.

Every week a little boy asks where the “X” is while we are doing the Village Approach and practicing the sounds each letter makes. There’s a picture of an x-ray on the card, and we spend a little time talking about the skeleton he sees.

“Will I be scared when I see it?” he asks, touching the pile of cards as though he’s testing whether he can stand the heat of a hot stove.

“I don’t know,” I reply. “Will you be afraid?”

He thinks for a minute, then concludes, “I know the sound ‘x’ makes. I’ll say the sound.”

“That sounds like a good plan,” I say. And it is. Naming what it is we are afraid of gives that thing less power. Maybe, it allows that thing to be more than scary – maybe something else takes shape when the light from the x-ray machine flicks on.

Another boy jumps for joy when Y shows up.

“There’s a yo-yo in Minecraft!” he says pounding on the picture of the yo-yo next to all the y’s. “It has diamonds on it!”

He goes on to explain to me how one earns a yo-yo with diamonds on it while playing Minecraft. He tells me what the yo-yo looks like, and his eyes sparkle as he describes this thing.

“So tell me,” I ask when I think there might be a break in his reverie, “what letter is this again?”

“Y!” the boy exclaims.

“And what sound does it make?”

“Yuh, yuh, YUH!” he shouts, jumping up and down.

That letter is forever his because he’s found a story to go with the sound it makes. We need both in education – stories, and the skills to read and write and tell those stories.

I’m relatively new to Michigan, and the word “village” has sort of haunted me since my family and I moved. It pops up when I pick my daughters up from school – are they fitting in? Are their teachers challenging them? Am I being a supportive parent? The word saunters alongside me when I run errands, go to church, stand by the dance studio or alongside the soccer field, waiting for and watching my girls. Do I look approachable? Do I look like someone who wants to make friends? Will I fit in here?

And village follows me to work. It sits next to me while little hands hold pages and heads bow towards words. It skips alongside me when a student asks if I can “find the book with Max and the monsters” (Where the Wild Things Are). Village welcomes me into Ypsilanti each morning, as I drive towards the rising sun, and then past the skate park across from YIES, and village points to the giant “hope” sign in blue letters across from Perry, reminding of why I am doing what I am doing.

It was scary and sad when I made the decision to leave teaching so I could have more time to write. In many ways, I felt like I lost part of myself. But YIES and Perry have taught me that villages are places where we find out more about ourselves; that we are not lost, that there is simply more to learn.

We don’t have to be scared when we know X is coming, waiting to illuminate what’s inside, because we know its sound, and we are ready to see what these bones can do. We are ready to see what we are made of.

We are safe in this village, learning to turn what we know into stories that sparkle like diamonds.