Jacqueline Woodson

In my education classes, we read the book Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.  On Monday night I was fortunate to hear her speak about her life and her writing.  In her talk, she talked a lot about school and education.  In discussing her own experience, she mentioned that many of her teachers recognized her passion for writing, even though she struggled with it.  This stood out to me because it got me thinking about the importance of understanding our students' passions.  Even though Woodson had a hard time writing, she clearly became a successful author and that was partly due to her teachers encouraging her to pursue her interest.  Woodson said teachers should do more asking and less telling.  She suggests that on the first day of class, teachers should ask their students questions like: What do you love to do? What is your preferred gender pronoun? I thought these were great suggestions because it sets an open and welcoming tone and creates a student-centered classroom.

Another part of Woodson's talk that stood out to me was her reflection on what we have students read in school.  She mentioned how in school we often don't read books to our students that have sad endings.  She said reading books with sad endings leaves students thinking and teaches them empathy, which is extremely important.  Also, she said how students need "windows and mirrors in books."  It's important to have students see themselves in what they are reading, but this isn't often the case for poor children, for example. Additionally, she said middle school and high school students should still read picture books! I definitely plan to use picture books in my classroom because I learned in my Literacy class that practicing visual literacy leads to close-reading skills.  Creating/reading graphic novels is a good strategy I learned in my class.  Jacqueline really got me thinking about my future pedagogy.