Bird Droppings November 10, 2026
When the Students Tell Us Whether It Is Working
I have been wandering back through some memories of teaching in Warner Robins in the mid-1970s. Funny how a conversation today can take me back fifty years and leave me thinking about something I am still trying to understand. I had encountered Foxfire in a bookstore in Pennsylvania a few years earlier. I bought Foxfire 2, and somewhere between reading it and working with a group of teenagers, I began wondering what would happen if I gave students more say in their learning.
I taught at a private school, working with teenagers who had learning disabilities. The school’s beginnings were personal. The principal had a son who was profoundly deaf, and she wanted educational opportunities for him that she had struggled to find. A mother saw a need and acted on it. That seems a pretty good place for a school to begin.
By the time I was there, I was trying my own version of what I understood from Foxfire. The students chose books they wanted to read. We worked on magazines. Their interests gave us somewhere to start, and we went from there. My reading scores went up tremendously. Looking back, I cannot assign every bit of that improvement to one decision or one approach. I do know that giving students a choice mattered. Reading became connected to something they wanted to do.
Another part of that experience struck me as I talked about it today. I had considerable freedom in that classroom. No one was continually coming in to evaluate whether I was following a prescribed sequence. As I remember it, much of my appraisal came down to what the principal’s son thought of the class. He was one of my students. That sounds a little corny when I say it aloud. Yet it leaves me with a question. What did that child experience in my classroom?
Since then, I have spent many years filling out paperwork, attending meetings, examining scores, and trying to explain what was happening with students. Those things can provide information. But I keep returning to the child sitting in the room. Did he find a reason to read? Did he find a reason to read? Was I paying enough attention to recognize it? I was learning to teach, and the students were giving me information every day. Their choices told me something. So did their interest, their frustration, and the work they were willing to take on. I had to decide what to do with what they showed me.
Years later, I began using the idea of the osmotic teacher—a teacher who facilitates and learns alongside students, who remains open to what comes into the room. I did not have that language in Warner Robins. I was beginning to experience something I would spend decades trying to name. Giving students choices also gave me responsibilities. I had to help them find their way into the reading. I had to notice where they struggled and consider what might help. Their interests were a beginning. Teaching still required thought, preparation, and a willingness to change direction.
Perhaps that is one reason Foxfire stayed with me. It gave me a way to think about the relationship between a student’s life and the work of a classroom. There was room for curiosity. There was room for the teacher to discover something, too.
As I look back across the years, I realize how much of my teaching has grown from those encounters. A student chooses a book. A story catches someone’s attention. Something happens that asks me to reconsider what I thought I knew. I am still reconsidering.
This morning, the tree I photograph every day stood against a sky that changes every day. I return with my camera, often to nearly the same spot, and still find something worth noticing. Familiarity does not mean I have seen everything. I wonder whether I could carry that same expectation into every classroom. Would it be better if, alongside asking how much material we covered, we took time to ask students what helped them learn and listened long enough to let their answers influence tomorrow? After all these years, I still have something to learn from their answers. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and please always give thanks, namaste.
My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird
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