When I started teaching sixth grade language arts many years ago, I would encourage my students to listen to the little voice in their heads that would speak to them as they initially revised their writing - that little voice that said: "What does that mean? That doesn't make sense. Is that spelled wrong? I need a comma there. This is good!"
Then, to make their conversations more concrete, they moved to drawing nondescript faces on the chalkboard so they had someone looking back at them, and they could imagine having a real conversation. As my students got more comfortable with their imaginary "revising partners", we discussed how that little voice in our head can help us pay attention to what is important in our reading as well.
Well, as you can imagine, sixth graders are very creative and have wonderful ideas! Someone suggested during one of our class discussions that we should name that little voice in our head. Several names were tossed out in a breath of suggestions and one of those was 'Smedley'. The students kind of laughed and then someone commented "I like that!" The class agreed and Smedley was born!
As I reflect on that day and try to remember more clearly the students I had that year, I wish I had had the presence of mind to take note of who made the suggestion. Twenty-four years of teaching have passed, and Smedley has followed me from school to school, class to class, student to student...in fact, if I did the math correctly, I would estimate over 1000 students have been introduced to and had conversations with Smedley.
Smedley has become the voice of reason, confusion, enlightenment. Smedley is our (and my) Aha!
I have learned a lot from Smedley, and it will be here that I will share what I continue to learn from my Smedley Connections.
