Repurposing K-W-L: From Ideas to Implementation

Engage in reflection, gain self-awareness, and pinpoint an area you want to develop further.

G. FAITH LITTLE
Initiative Director, 21st Century Learning

Our personal and professional lives collided during the distance learning, work from home reality these past months. We’ve lost some spaces to breath and decompress. The drive between our classroom and our own front door has been replaced, if we’re lucky, with a one-minute walk from desk to couch. If we’re even luckier, perhaps we can get in a 20-minute walk before we take care of our personal responsibilities, including managing distance learning for our own children. Gone are train rides home when we could people watch and listen to playlists or podcasts, shifting our focus out of problem-solving, answering and asking questions, grading and planning.

Perhaps you, like me, have searched for ways to create more space, and you’ve added a new practice or two to your routine, like taking scheduled walks, meditating before class, keeping a journal, or adding breathwork before dinner. Maybe the ideas you’ve uncovered don’t seem to integrate into your professional life. Sure, they’re great if you have all the time and space to engage in them, but let’s be honest — there seems to be even less time for that elusive self-care now that work days stretch from dawn until well past dark. Reading article after article on how to manage stress may have resulted in a lot of ideas, but little implementation. That’s normal. We all need support to take our next steps, and starting with the smallest thing could make the biggest difference.

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K - W - L

As we move deeper into the year, we might look to practices that feel more authentic to our teaching selves. Using a familiar tool can provide a valuable structure, bridging the best of our personal pursuits with our professional realities. We may be familiar with K-W-L (Know - Want to Know - Learned), a reading strategy which serves as a self-propelling guide for students as they read through a text. Students begin by charting everything they know about a topic in the K column. They move on to generating questions about what they want to know about the topic. During and after reading, students document what they have learned. 
We can chart what we know, want to know, and have learned about anything at all, including our own professional development and the self-care habits we need to keep going strong. This process draws on our own prior knowledge, sets a purpose for our routines, reveals obstacles, and documents our progress, giving us the opportunity to both plan for our success and to celebrate steps we take along the way.

Below is my K-W-L example, which is focused on collaboration, because that is an area I want to develop in my professional life during 2021. My “texts” are a combination of reading and action. In one case, I was having trouble maintaining my boundaries with colleagues. I read an article that felt more personal in nature than professional, but when I took action to make self-care a priority, (#7 in the article) I found myself carrying over some practices into my professional life. I began to honor my own feelings instead of pushing them aside in deference to others. My feelings were signaling when my boundaries were crossed, and I could then address that within myself and with my colleagues.

Identifying your how

What it seems we have more than enough of is access to ideas on what to do, like this idea about using a K-W-L in a new way, but we’re short on the how. My how emerged out of my needs and came out in three steps:

• Identify what to focus on: At first, I was frustrated that even though I thought we had clearly articulated and agreed upon expectations at the close of staff meetings, we weren’t following through on them. My frustration turned to anger as I began to imagine others purposefully ignoring our agreements because collaborating felt too slow to them. While I was compassionate as to why they might be compelled to skip permission in favor of asking forgiveness later, I did not subscribe to that method of working together. I felt stuck.

 

• List what I want to learn more about: I trusted collaboration was more fruitful than working alone, but collaborating was becoming painful as I felt disrespected and ignored at the end of the day. I needed to articulate what I already knew or believed about collaboration and what I wanted to learn so collaboration might work for all parties involved, not just one or the other. I wanted to learn more about what to do when my boundaries were crossed. How could I maintain my boundaries without cutting off collaboration?

 

• Circle back: As I tried out a few ideas that emerged from my bit of research, I looked for connections between what I learned and my areas for growth. I asked myself what worked and what questions emerged and what I wanted to research next. They were baby steps since time was short, but I wasn’t stuck any longer.

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Simple supports

Even when we know the how, we also need support. Support can come in many different forms. Consider a few of the following simple ways to create support for yourself:

• Be your own coach by setting an appointment to revisit your learning or thinking. Keep it positive. When you notice you’re starting to judge yourself harshly, remember to simply be curious. Ask yourself, “What happened? What do I want to do next?” Write it out, draw it in your sketchbook, paint, or make a video. Look for ways to explore more and judge less.

 

• Send a note to your future self. Treat yourself like you would your closest friends and drop a line of encouragement. You know what gets you down and what lifts you up. When you’ve determined what you want to try, like prioritizing exercise on most mornings, at that moment write yourself a note to read in a week or in a month. Be as encouraging to yourself as you would be to a friend. Put the note somewhere you know you will find it, either as a surprise or because you calendar an appointment to go look for it.

 

• Ask a friend. Look for support from your community. Consider asking a friend to mail you the letter you wrote to yourself or text you an encouraging quote every Monday morning or to meet up for a virtual happy hour to share what obstacles have come up (because they always do) and commiserate. 

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• Paper your walls. Take a marker or crayon and write down the words that encourage you. Short quotes, one word reminders, or visual representations of what you’re working toward go on the page and then up on the wall near your desk, in the bathroom, hallway, or on the fridge. Have fun hiding them in drawers so they surprise you with positive reinforcement.

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Using a K-W-L structure is one way to engage in reflection, gain self-awareness, and pinpoint an area you want to develop further. Returning to the "L" column can help you feel a sense of accomplishment, or at least identify a new place to begin work. Whether you want to chart about any of the hundreds of self-care options out there or you want to chart your progress toward specific teaching goals, by using K-W-L as a way to drive inquiry, we can uncover some answers, more questions, and plenty of celebration on the small and large steps we are taking as we continue adjusting to the next normal.
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