Dr. Seuss-Style

I subscribe to a writer whose inspirational posts I find rewarding and thoughtful. Last week, James Clear posted an article about Dr. Seuss' writing strategy called The Weird Strategy Dr. Seuss Used to Create his Greatest Work. It's about the bet Dr. Seuss made to write a children's book using only 50 different words and how there is great creative value in limitations and restrictions. That best-selling book of course was Green Eggs and Ham. Over a few days, I found myself thinking about the implications of this idea on the lives of teachers. We have time restrictions galore, but I wondered how--in a world of more, more, more--we could use material/physical restrictions to maximize our teaching creativity.

In my younger years, I used to move a lot. I've lived in various cities in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and I even spent a year in Las Vegas. One thing you learn from moving so much is to use the experience to condense and refocus. In particular, my move to Las Vegas was a filtering experience. I moved with only a van-full of personal possessions. It was an opportunity to really whittle down the nonessentials and determine what it was that I really needed to keep with me. (Luckily, I wasn't attached to any big pieces of furniture. I could not make that move with only a van-full of items now.) The experience of "cleaning house" was liberating, and I felt open to a world of new learning experiences and possibilities. It also helped me recall some valuable memories that were buried under piles of the mundane.

I had a similar experience a few years ago when I changed classrooms. I took the time to filter through materials and focus on what to keep and what to get rid of. Getting rid of the clutter helped me regain my focus and course correct my teaching.  I had boxes of materials for projects that I hadn't done since my second year teaching--Gone! I had old lessons plans from classes I would never teach again--Trashed! I even found a crate full of student papers that I couldn't bear to throw away because they had worked so hard--those kids have since graduated!

Let's face it, teachers are packrats. We keep student work, we print off possible lessons, we get great ideas but never see them through. We get free materials (or can't resist shopping at back-to-school prices) and think we'll eventually find a use for them. We have lessons or strategies that we've used for a long time without seeing the same positive results we may have initially experienced, but we can't bear to get rid of them. We hoard; we're hoarders. And it's all of these things pressing down on us that keep us from being creative. They are distractions and the best thing we can do is scale down to eliminate them.

Winter break is the perfect time for a mini scale down. Challenge yourself: get rid of half of the stuff in your classroom that is not being used right now. What, half??? Yes, half. Filter it out, keep the exceptional, and scrap the rest. Give yourself a chance to get creative. Or, if that doesn't work for you because you just can't bear the thought of throwing things away (hoarder! it takes one to know one) then pick one thing--lesson, material, whatever--and figure out a way to use it the first week you come back from break. Better yet, make a list of all the things you haven't used, and figure out how to use them, one per week. If they are just sitting there--and this goes for ideas, too--then they're taking up space. Get rid of the clutter and find the creativity. Use it or lose it.

If a masterwork of children's literature is the result of limiting oneself to writing with only 50 different words, imagine what you can do by scaling down your classroom clutter. In the process of selecting the best materials, strategies, and lessons from the results of years of collecting, you might just find--or create!-a teaching gem.

Start with What YOU Want

When I decided to take a year off to write, there were so many things I didn't know. I didn't know about publishing or editing or how to create (and stick to!) a writing schedule. And even though I've read thousands of books in my lifetime, I didn't really know how to write an educational book. So what did I do? I read... and read... and read some more.

I read more about the self-publishing and independent writing business than I thought was possible. I tracked down every blog and self-publishing manual, I sifted through extensive comments, I scanned hundreds, if not thousands, or articles online, and I bought several eBooks about related topics. The more I read, the more the life of a self-published writer appealed to me, and the more confident about my decision I felt.

Due to all of that reading, I've gleaned lots of tidbits, tricks, and useful advice. One such piece of advice (I can't remember exactly where it came from, but it has stuck with me) is this: WRITE THE BOOK YOU WANT TO READ. Simple, but it set the focus for my first stage of writing. The premise behind this advice is that we are more excited, more invested, and ultimately better at doing what we want to do, as opposed to what we think we have to do.

Instead of trying to make my first book a lofty tome of academia and research, I kept it simple. For the most part, I knew my audience would recognize the validity of teaching strategies and best practices I used, so I didn't need to bonk them over the head once again with the research that backed it up. I didn't let my book get bogged down in other people's research or work. I kept it simple, more like a "how-to" with respects to using a particular piece of software to do great things in the classroom.

It was exactly the book I would want to read- immediate, results-oriented, show me how to do it, give me great ideas, and then get out of my way and let me make it real.

It all started with that simple piece of advice: Write the book you want to read. I thought- brilliant! Then I thought- as I filter everything that passes through my brain- how does this apply to teaching?

Simple- TEACH THE CLASS YOU WANT TO TAKE.

Once again, the premise is that you'll be more excited, more invested, and ultimately better at creating a class that you yourself would want to take. Now, you need to modify the audience, so that your second graders aren't analyzing Shakespeare or making potato guns. Maybe imagine yourself at the age your students are and figure out what you would've liked at that age, how you would've liked it presented, and how you could've shown what you know.

There are many external restrictions and guidelines to follow for what we teach and when (and perhaps also how). However, one thing that I noticed in my own teaching is that I was often handcuffed by the way I thought I should be teaching based on my past experiences as a student. I'm telling you right now: if you throw those out the window and open up to the possibilities of what could be, you'll end up much happier in the long run- and your students will get a better teacher, which will help them learn more... well, you can see where this is going.

TEACH THE CLASS YOUWANT TO TAKE... and your students will want to take it, too.