Can an Eighth Grader Make an Impact?

I see my students constantly composing: texts, notes to each other in class, silly sentences for grammar practice, lists of all varieties. I overhear the amusing and detailed things they tell each other, and I'm excited by their proficiency with words. But when they are asked to write for school, the work they turn in is generally less than stellar. There is a marked difference between their witty repartee in speaking and the dry delivery of their writing. Why is assigned student writing so often insipid, disinterested, and uninspired? In an article in the English Journal titled "Real-World Writing: Making Purpose and Audience Matter," Grant Wiggins says:

The point of writing is to have something to say and to make a difference in saying it. Rarely, however, is impact [emphasis added] the focus in writing instruction in English class. Rather, typical rubrics stress organization and mechanics; typical prompts are academic exercises of no genuine consequence; instruction typically makes the “process” formulaic rather than purposeful.

Thinking about some of the writing assignments I’ve given in the past, I recognize that my students felt that their writing didn’t exist outside of my classroom. They couldn’t understand any impact or genuine consequences that their writing might have. Could this dearth of imagination be the spark that student writing is missing? What could I do to ensure that impact – genuine consequence – exists in my classroom, writing workshops, and assessments?

Naming Audience

In an ideal world, every student piece would be published in a magazine or sent as a letter to the editor of the local newspaper. In the school world, this isn't always practical. It is still possible, however, to teach students to consider an audience as an integral part of every piece of writing. Students can’t really impact anyone with their writing if they don’t even know what audience they are writing for.

In her article "A Cure for Writer's Block: Writing for Real Audiences" from NWP's The Quarterly, Anne Rodier relates how she encourages her students to think about who might be the audience for the kind of writing they are doing. Who would care about what they have to say? As an example, in the classroom, students might write their memoir to share with a family member or a best friend. An argument might be directed to a parent or an organization. In the beginning, students often need help figuring out whom they could be writing to, but once they have someone or a group in mind, it often automatically determines the genre, form, and tone of what they are trying to write.

One additional thing that Rodier emphasizes is that even with genuine audiences, writers are still "employing craft," or in other words, writers are performing, or acting through writing, using a specifically chosen and crafted voice or persona to "tell the right story to the right person in the right way." When students are consciously considering how to reach not just any audience, but a specific audience, they are going to be more motivated to fine-tune their writing.

Informative pieces especially benefit from audience consideration. A student of mine who was writing an piece on violins remarked, “I am writing this for my cousin. She knows all about how to play a violin, but she doesn’t know how a violin is made. So, I am focusing on that.” It was interesting to see how naming an audience directed her research and her focus and made the paper come to life. She looked for something that her reader didn’t already know, a way to impact the reader, and because she did, she wrote a better paper.

Giving Choices

In my adult world, I generally choose what I want to write about. I’m often motivated to write about things I want to remember or change. When I compose a letter to my senator, it is because I have an issue to discuss that I feel strongly about. When I write in my journal, it is because I've had an experience that has touched or profoundly affected me in some way. I have a very defined purpose, so I feel (hope) that my writing will make an impact on the reader.

Students aren't always so lucky. Few of them would choose to write an argument or essay on their own. However, we can give back the power of impactful writing when we give them choice about what to write about. On TalksWithTeachers.com, Ruth Arseneault says that:

So, how do we give students choice? I think it has to go beyond a list of topics they can choose from. Students need to realize that they have choices when it comes to the way they write things as well. I have found that mentor text studies are very helpful for showing students that they can branch out beyond the five-paragraph essay and still write a powerful paper. Writers such as Rick Reilly, Leonard Pitts, and even athletes from The Players Tribune show my students that arguments don't have to follow a set structure. The claim can come at the end, or they can begin their arguments with a personal story -- and it can still work.

When we wrote memoirs earlier this year, we studied three strong mentor texts, "Chalk Face" by A. J. Jacobs, "Fish Cheeks" by Amy Tan, and "My Grandmother's Hair" by Cynthia Rylant. Each one described a single core memory (thanks, Disney!), but each had a very different style and approach.

After the students submitted their own work, I asked them about the choices they made. One student said, “I didn’t realize that a memoir could be about an object. I chose to write about my blanket that I’ve had since I was a baby. Writing about it was actually fun, because it brought back so many memories. I chose to organize it [chronologically], but I could have done it by place, too.”

Another student said, “I hadn’t thought about how short a core memory could be. I thought I had to choose something really amazing or life changing. Reading "Chalk Face" helped me see that I could choose something kind of everyday and quick to write about that was just important to me. So, I chose to write about when my brother and I slid down our stairs on a big piece of cardboard. The whole story took about five minutes, but it’s something I will never forget.” These student reflections demonstrate that the choice of how to write was just as vital as the choice of what to write when it came to engagement.

Performing Writing

In the past year, I read an essay in front of a packed crowd, presented at UCTE, gave talks, taught lessons, and led discussions. All of these involved writing that eventually had a live audience of real people. When we make time for students to present their writing, we allow them to experience the genuine consequences of writing. Some of the many things I've tried in my classes are writing circles, debates, Socratic seminars, poetry slams, occasional papers, pecha kuchas, and even just the everyday sharing of quick writes with the rest of the class. Students had to present writing in some fashion in each of these -- from formal to informal -- and that expectation made all the difference.

An example of this  happened last year when our grade level team worked together to have our students write job descriptions, resumes and applications for jobs as Santa’s elves. Some students were employers and others were the prospective employees. Tension and stakes were high for both parties, and students were highly motivated to write a great resume or detailed and concise job description because 1) other students were going to hear them read it and evaluate it (and them), and 2) they wanted the best elf job/worker (everyone wanted to make candy canes, no one wanted to clean up after the reindeer).

Part of this exercise included a job interview. Both interviewers and interviewees had an authentic experience as they wrestled with what questions to ask and what answers to give. Although no one was really getting a job at the North Pole, having a continual audience for everything they did made the assignment matter to the students. One student said, “This was one of my favorite things from last year. I worked hard on it because I knew that people in my class were going to see what I did. I don’t care as much when it’s just for the teacher. I guess I should, but I don’t.”

I also had my students debate each other as part of our argument unit. Watch below to see what two students had to say about the experience. Obviously, the opportunity to hear others and be heard themselves made them feel like they were making an impact with what they had to say.

Reaching Conclusions

In "Real Voices for Real Audiences" from The Quarterly, Joan Kernan Cone writes that student writers will always "play it safe" -- writing as little as possible, with as little voice as possible, and "writing not for an interested reader but for a mistake finder" until they have a reason not to.

I’ve found that giving students choice, finding an audience, and offering performance opportunities allows student writing to have impact – the impetus that students need to open their writing hearts and minds to us. If we don’t want to keep reading student writing that we know isn’t the best that our students can do, it is our imperative to help students find the impact their voices, thoughts, and stories could have on the world.

Authentic and Audience Friendly Writing Assessment Resources
"Authentic Writing: What It Means and How to Do It." – Brian Sztabnik	Great examples of authentic, performance based writing assessments from nine different teachers from kindergarten to AP literature
"The Learning Network" section of The New York Times	An exhaustive list of writing activities, mini-lessons, and assessments that promote authentic, audience-based classroom experiences

Growing the Growth Mindset

A colleague posted this on a site I frequent. I think it's a great idea to introduce the idea of "productive struggle" in class.

I think I'll use this with my students during the first week of school, after we do our getting to know you activities.

My New Room -- Yikes!!!!

So after the district finally approved my hire yesterday (the people at the school kept telling me it was not approved, but then the VP remembered that he had sent the request using another email--turns out it was approved immediately the day I was hired), I finally got to look at my room. In a word -- scary.
The teacher who quit suddenly last week left a bit of a mess. Understatement of the day. Here's what I have to work with:

Yes, that is a laptop cart (the laptops are scattered all over the room), and I have an overhead projector and an ELMO and a really nice stand for large paper pads. There are also all kinds of strange things in the room - a step ladder, a music stand, two fans, a space heater, and...boxes and boxes of curling irons, hairspray, and nail polish (I guess the former teacher did hair and nails as as a flex (student chosen reward) time activity)? I also have so much junk piled everywhere that I'm a little afraid of what to do with it. It's not entirely her fault as the custodians have dumped this room in and out this year. Supposedly the former teacher is coming at 3 o'clock today to take out her stuff -- whatever of all this stuff her stuff is. One thing that I don't like is that she has covered some of the walls with large strips of paper, which is torn and looks pretty tacky. That will have to come down ASAP -- so that step ladder will come in handy.
On a more positive note, I had a mostly good experience with the faculty meeting yesterday. It turns out that I am not a member of the ELA team,  but instead I team with the foreign language department. The old ESL teacher never met with anyone because she had a class to teach at the high school, so...I will see how this goes. Wish me luck!!

A Whole New World

I haven't posted anything about this yet, but I wasn't hired back at UCAS at the end of the year. I was teaching part-time there, and they kind of rearranged the schedule so that I wasn't on it anymore. It was a bittersweet parting. I had a lot of good experiences and fun there -- loved the students and staff -- but it wasn't handled very well.
I've spent an entire stressful summer looking for a new job. I even briefly accepted a position in SLC, but I came to my senses before I signed the contract -- that 50 minute commute would have killed me. I gave up a very nice contract, but I figured I would get another offer. Well, two months and many interviews later and only a week before school starts, I had despaired of getting a job this year. I confided this to the BHW last week, mentioning what a hit this has taken on my self esteem, and he said, "I'm pretty sure that you'll have a position sooner than you think."
So...on Tuesday I went for an interview at Lakeridge Junior High for an ESL teacher. I haven't taught junior high since I student taught, and I don't have an ESL endorsement. During the interview, I was talking about some of the ways I've tried to create a sense of community and rapport in the classroom, and one the of interviewers said, "When you talk about your students, your face just lights up." I guess that means that they thought I had what they wanted, because they called today to offer me the job. I am beyond stoked. I am thrilled, humbled, and feel very blessed. I am going to work like crazy for those kids!!
This will be a challenge for me, but I think I am up for it. I am excited for the new change and for the chance to work for the local school district. I will have access to a lot more professional development resources, etc., than I ever had working for a charter school.
Well, enough about me. I immediately went on the EC Ning and started looking for resources, and found this site: Larry Ferlazzo's Website of the Day. He has a book on Amazon, too, which I ended up ordering after emailing him back and forth for a bit.

This is Water . . . This is Life

I think I needed to watch this today.

No Rich Kid Left Behind

This is a disturbing article, but in my my personal experience, it is oh so spot on.

APRIL 27, 2013, 6:15 PM

No Rich Child Left Behind

By SEAN F. REARDON

Here’s a fact that may not surprise you: the children of the rich perform better in school, on average, than children from middle-class or poor families. Students growing up in richer families have better grades and higher standardized test scores, on average, than poorer students; they also have higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities and school leadership positions, higher graduation rates and higher rates of college enrollment and completion.

Whether you think it deeply unjust, lamentable but inevitable, or obvious and unproblematic, this is hardly news. It is true in most societies and has been true in the United States for at least as long as we have thought to ask the question and had sufficient data to verify the answer.

What is news is that in the United States over the last few decades these differences in educational success between high- and lower-income students have grown substantially.

One way to see this is to look at the scores of rich and poor students on standardized math and reading tests over the last 50 years. When I did this using information from a dozen large national studies conducted between 1960 and 2010, I found that the rich-poor gap in test scores is about 40 percent larger now than it was 30 years ago.

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000.

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

The same pattern is evident in other, more tangible, measures of educational success, like college completion. In a study similar to mine, Martha J. Bailey and Susan M. Dynarski, economists at the University of Michigan, found that the proportion of students from upper-income families who earn a bachelor’s degree has increased by 18 percentage points over a 20-year period, while the completion rate of poor students has grown by only 4 points.

In a more recent study, my graduate students and I found that 15 percent of high-income students from the high school class of 2004 enrolled in a highly selective college or university, while fewer than 5 percent of middle-income and 2 percent of low-income students did.

These widening disparities are not confined to academic outcomes: new research by the Harvard political scientist Robert D. Putnam and his colleagues shows that the rich-poor gaps in student participation in sports, extracurricular activities, volunteer work and church attendance have grown sharply as well.

In San Francisco this week, more than 14,000 educators and education scholars have gathered for the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. The theme this year is familiar: Can schools provide children a way out of poverty?

We are still talking about this despite decades of clucking about the crisis in American education and wave after wave of school reform.Whatever we’ve been doing in our schools, it hasn’t reduced educational inequality between children from upper- and lower-income families.

Part of knowing what we should do about this is understanding how and why these educational disparities are growing. For the past few years, alongside other scholars, I have been digging into historical data to understand just that. The results of this research don’t always match received wisdom or playground folklore.

The most potent development over the past three decades is that the test scores of children from high-income families have increased very rapidly. Before 1980, affluent students had little advantage over middle-class students in academic performance; most of the socioeconomic disparity in academics was between the middle class and the poor. But the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor. Just as the incomes of the affluent have grown much more rapidly than those of the middle class over the last few decades, so, too, have most of the gains in educational success accrued to the children of the rich.

Before we can figure out what’s happening here, let’s dispel a few myths.

The income gap in academic achievement is not growing because the test scores of poor students are dropping or because our schools are in decline. In fact, average test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the so-called Nation’s Report Card, have been rising — substantially in math and very slowly in reading — since the 1970s. The average 9-year-old today has math skills equal to those her parents had at age 11, a two-year improvement in a single generation. The gains are not as large in reading and they are not as large for older students, but there is no evidence that average test scores have declined over the last three decades for any age or economic group.

The widening income disparity in academic achievement is not a result of widening racial gaps in achievement, either. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, and Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites have been narrowing slowly over the last two decades, trends that actually keep the yawning gap between higher- and lower-income students from getting even wider. If we look at the test scores of white students only, we find the same growing gap between high- and low-income children as we see in the population as a whole.

It may seem counterintuitive, but schools don’t seem to produce much of the disparity in test scores between high- and low-income students. We know this because children from rich and poor families score very differently on school readiness tests when they enter kindergarten, and this gap grows by less than 10 percent between kindergarten and high school. There is some evidence that achievement gaps between high- and low-income students actually narrow during the nine-month school year, but they widen again in the summer months.

That isn’t to say that there aren’t important differences in quality between schools serving low- and high-income students — there certainly are — but they appear to do less to reinforce the trends than conventional wisdom would have us believe.

If not the usual suspects, what’s going on? It boils down to this: The academic gap is widening because rich students are increasingly entering kindergarten much better prepared to succeed in school than middle-class students. This difference in preparation persists through elementary and high school.

My research suggests that one part of the explanation for this is rising income inequality. As you may have heard, the incomes of the rich have grown faster over the last 30 years than the incomes of the middle class and the poor. Money helps families provide cognitively stimulating experiences for their young children because it provides more stable home environments, more time for parents to read to their children, access to higher-quality child care and preschool and — in places like New York City, where 4-year-old children take tests to determine entry into gifted and talented programs — access to preschool test preparation tutors or the time to serve as tutors themselves.

But rising income inequality explains, at best, half of the increase in the rich-poor academic achievement gap. It’s not just that the rich have more money than they used to, it’s that they are using it differently. This is where things get really interesting.

High-income families are increasingly focusing their resources — their money, time and knowledge of what it takes to be successful in school — on their children’s cognitive development and educational success. They are doing this because educational success is much more important than it used to be, even for the rich.

With a college degree insufficient to ensure a high-income job, or even a job as a barista, parents are now investing more time and money in their children’s cognitive development from the earliest ages. It may seem self-evident that parents with more resources are able to invest more — more of both money and of what Mr. Putnam calls “‘Goodnight Moon’ time” — in their children’s development. But even though middle-class and poor families are also increasing the time and money they invest in their children, they are not doing so as quickly or as deeply as the rich.

The economists Richard J. Murnane and Greg J. Duncan report that from 1972 to 2006 high-income families increased the amount they spent on enrichment activities for their children by 150 percent, while the spending of low-income families grew by 57 percent over the same time period. Likewise, the amount of time parents spend with their children has grown twice as fast since 1975 among college-educated parents as it has among less-educated parents. The economists Garey Ramey and Valerie A. Ramey of the University of California, San Diego, call this escalation of early childhood investment “the rug rat race,” a phrase that nicely captures the growing perception that early childhood experiences are central to winning a lifelong educational and economic competition.

It’s not clear what we should do about all this. Partly that’s because much of our public conversation about education is focused on the wrong culprits: we blame failing schools and the behavior of the poor for trends that are really the result of deepening income inequality and the behavior of the rich.

We’re also slow to understand what’s happening, I think, because the nature of the problem — a growing educational gap between the rich and the middle class — is unfamiliar. After all, for much of the last 50 years our national conversation about educational inequality has focused almost exclusively on strategies for reducing inequalities between the educational successes of the poor and the middle class, and it has relied on programs aimed at the poor, like Head Start and Title I.

We’ve barely given a thought to what the rich were doing. With the exception of our continuing discussion about whether the rising costs of higher education are pricing the middle class out of college, we don’t have much practice talking about what economists call “upper-tail inequality” in education, much less success at reducing it.

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile.

We need to start talking about this. Strangely, the rapid growth in the rich-poor educational gap provides a ray of hope: if the relationship between family income and educational success can change this rapidly, then it is not an immutable, inevitable pattern. What changed once can change again. Policy choices matter more than we have recently been taught to think.

So how can we move toward a society in which educational success is not so strongly linked to family background? Maybe we should take a lesson from the rich and invest much more heavily as a society in our children’s educational opportunities from the day they are born. Investments in early-childhood education pay very high societal dividends. That means investing in developing high-quality child care and preschool that is available to poor and middle-class children. It also means recruiting and training a cadre of skilled preschool teachers and child care providers. These are not new ideas, but we have to stop talking about how expensive and difficult they are to implement and just get on with it.

But we need to do much more than expand and improve preschool and child care. There is a lot of discussion these days about investing in teachers and “improving teacher quality,” but improving the quality of our parenting and of our children’s earliest environments may be even more important. Let’s invest in parents so they can better invest in their children.

This means finding ways of helping parents become better teachers themselves. This might include strategies to support working families so that they can read to their children more often.. It also means expanding programs like the Nurse-Family Partnership that have proved to be effective at helping single parents educate their children; but we also need to pay for research to develop new resources for single parents.

It might also mean greater business and government support for maternity and paternity leave and day care so that the middle class and the poor can get some of the educational benefits that the early academic intervention of the rich provides their children. Fundamentally, it means rethinking our still-persistent notion that educational problems should be solved by schools alone.

The more we do to ensure that all children have similar cognitively stimulating early childhood experiences, the less we will have to worry about failing schools. This in turn will enable us to let our schools focus on teaching the skills — how to solve complex problems, how to think critically and how to collaborate — essential to a growing economy and a lively democracy.

Sean F. Reardon is a professor of education and sociology at Stanford.

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Pretty Good is Not Good Enough

I think I'll share this with my students today:

Writing with the Kids

Here is some writing I did in front of my students, with my students, in my classes yesterday a la Kelly Gallagher. We brainstormed about the tastes of our childhood, and then I quickly wrote a paragraph about one of mine from my list. Then it was their turn, and they wrote while I edited and revised my original paragraphs. Here are the edited versions--I wish I'd kept the originals!

Lemons with Salt:

Just looking at this is making my mouth water.

I’ve always been a real hoarder—just of things that are very important. So it comes as no surprise that I’ve kept every book I ever owned. Occasionally I go back through those old books, and when I do, I often find brown stains and a gritty substance between the pages. Rather than reducing the book’s value in my eyes, this residue always make me smile. I know what it means—someone (that would be me) ate a lemon with salt and got a little too excited, spilling some of that salty, sour goodness out onto the page for someone else to find years later. Today I can’t eat lemons with salt—it really wreaks havoc with your tooth enamel, but thanks to the stains, I’ll always have the memories of those lazy days spent reading my precious books and enjoying an escape from the everyday world of my small-town existence.


Cheddar Cheese: (this one didn't really get edited) 

Where are the saltine crackers?

Of all the foods we used to have at my mother’s house, there are probably none with as much emotional baggage as plain old cheddar cheese. My mom used to buy it in great hunks cut directly from the even larger hunk the butcher kept in the front case. She didn’t know that there were any other kinds of cheese. American? Never even knew that existed until I went to college. Parmesan? Mozzarella? Gouda? Nope. Everything from pizza to spaghetti was topped with good old yellow cheddar. We even cut pieces from it to nibble on like hairless rodents as we vegetated in front of the TV. So, to me, cheese will always be cheddar, the more the better, and skip everything else.

Hmmm...I think I'll pass....

Pecan Sandies:
As someone who teaches about memories and writing, I am fully aware that some people say that food memories are some of the strongest. If this really is the case, then I should probably stay far, far, away from pecan sandies. Pecan sandies aren’t as common now as they once were, but for you who are uninitiated, they are strange, hard, tasteless little cookies made by those infamous Keebler elves. At some point in my hazy elementary years, I came down with a severe case of strep throat. My parents didn’t believe in doctors, mainly because we didn’t have medical insurance, so they didn’t take me in to see one until I was nearly done for. By that time, I could barely open my mouth, and I was mildly delirious with a high fever. The doctor stood about ten feet away as he looked at my throat, which by now was as white as cotton. It didn’t take him long to diagnose strep. He sent me home with an antibiotic. My sweet mom thought food made everything better, so on the way home, as she filled the prescription, she purchased a box of pecan sandies. For reasons only known to my seven or eight year old self, I ate several and then promptly threw up. That was the last food I had for several days, as I was relegated to laying in bed and drooling into a cup for the next 48 hours. All I kept thinking about was the terrible taste of those pecan sandies, both going down and coming up. To this day, I shudder when I see that ubiquitous yellow package sitting on a grocery shelf. I’m old enough now to know that food can make you feel better, but not when you are too sick to enjoy it. So, when my own kids are sick, I bring them books and video games instead of food, and we all stay much happier.

Reflections on My Sixth Year

In exactly one week, I will finish my sixth year of teaching. In some ways this has been a great year; in some, the worst ever. I've had to deal with seizures (my own!) seventy-two hour EEGs, and shoulder surgery. I've been more scatterbrained than I ever remember being in my life. I've dealt with reluctant learners, one of whom was my own child. I've occasionally felt like I was doing a great job teaching and often felt like I was the worst teacher in the world.

I think it's probably time for a major overhaul of my curriculum to get me out of my doldrums. We recently read Write Like This by Kelly Gallagher for the CUWP book group, and it really got me thinking about what I'm having my students write and why. I loved what Kelly said in the book about a fantasy meeting with a former student years from now:

"Excitedly, she blurts out: 'Oh, it is so good to see you! I was hoping to run into you some day so that I can tell you that I am still writing essays that analyze the author's use of tone. I  keep a Tone Journal at home, and I apply that skill you taught me twenty years ago in the tenth grade to everything I read today! Let's have lunch some day so I can share all the essays I have written recognizing the author's tone found in all the books I have read since high school graduation."

Instead, he says he'd rather hear about the blog they're writing, or the letter they've sent to every member of congress about some issue.

Anyway, I am going to redo my curriculum so that we're doing a lot more real world writing. For example, this year I had my students write sonnets. Dumb idea. It was painful for them to do and painful for me to read.

One of my goals for this summer (and hopefully to continue through the school year next year) is to read and USE one professional book a month. Actually, maybe I'll try for two a month over the summer. I have quite a few that look like they'd be very helpful if I actually read them. Ha.

Anyway, I have one more week with this particular crop of kids, and I hope they've taken away at least one useful thing from my class this year. They did do spectacularly well on their end of level tests, and that seems to be all that our school really worries about as far as whether I'm a good teacher or not. For myself, I'd like to think the bar is a bit higher.

Digital Storytelling - Possibilities?

I went to a conference on digital storytelling recently, and this video was suggested as a possible writing prompt for students. I think this would work in well with a narrative unit at the beginning of the year tied in with Sherman Alexie and Tim O'Brien selections.

I am ______________
Don't judge me before you know me.

A New Post at Last!!!

Created by Knewton and Column Five Media

It's amazing and kind of sad what a few seizures and a shoulder injury can do to your productivity. I feel like I've been sort of sliding along this year, just doing, and not really reflecting or motivating myself or my students, sadly.

Well, I just watched an hour long webcast about Flipping a Classroom that has made me think and got me excited about teaching again. I think there are a lot of things I can do with this. I think it would really help my students if they were writing in the classroom with me there to help them and doing some of the more mundane things at home. So...I am giving my first flip assignment today.

Flipping a classroom is when you move direct instruction and other things that don't require student interaction into the "homework" time and move the homework into class time, so the teacher can be the expert in the room and interact with the students and see how they are doing. It reminds me of what Penny Kittle talks about in Write Beside Them.

New Year Goals

I was going to list my goals here, but then I saw this little gem:

Now I guess I'll just work on them in secret. Of course, they involve writing and reading--because what else is there in life?

You Are What You Read - My Bookprint

My good friend, Clix, on the EC Ning encouraged me to do this on the Scholastic Site, so I did it. It's pretty hard to narrow a lifetime of reading down to five books, but this is the list I came up with:

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."

We all have a time when we will have the choice to stand up and do the right and the hard thing. Will we do it? Can we do it? And when we do it, can we choose the right people to stand beside us?

Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl

"Our generation is realistic, for we have come to know man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

I read this when I want to remember why I am here.

The Hiding Place
Corrie Ten Boom

"Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him....Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness....And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on His. When He tells us to love our enemies, He gives along with the command, the love itself."

I need these words every day of my life.

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

"Whenever they's a fight so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Whenever they's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there . . . . I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad an'--I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry an' they know supper's ready. An' when our folks eat the stuff they raise an' live in the houses they build--why, I'll be there.

Everyone is my brother, and I am my brother's keeper.

The Giver
Lois Lowry

"For the first time, he heard something that he knew to be music. He heard people singing. Behind him, across vast distances of space and time, from the place he had left, he thought he heard music too. But perhaps, it was only an echo."

I re-read this book again immediately after I first read it, and then I got up at 5 o'clock in the morning and took a two hour walk to think about it. It disturbed me, it shook me, it made me think. Even with all the painful memories I have -- particularly the death of my infant son -- I would never want to give up my memories -- they are just too precious.

Animoto - Civil Disobedience

Okay, this is my second try at Animoto. I am going to use this as part of my unit on American Transcendentalism - Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. This is obviously what I'm going to use to introduce Thoreau.

In the past I've just had the kids listen to the song while I showed the lyrics. I'm hoping that the combination of selected lyrics, pictures, and quotes in the movie with the music will make it a more meaningful experience.

Creating my own Mentor Text

Drawing on the superb example of Penny Kittle, here is an alternate point of view piece. (This is the story of my son's piñata breaking injury episode from the point of view of the piñata.)

The Short, Brief Life of a Cub Scout Piñata
(alternate point of view)

by Denée Tyler

-->
My life began simply enough as a pile of paper pulp in a factory somewhere in Mexico. One day the craftsman took the pulp, wet it down, formed it around a mold, covered it with crepe paper, and voila, I came into being, a small blue boy with a strange-looking blue cap and a garish smile. I hung with several hundred of my brothers as I dried and contemplated my purpose in life.

Before I was able to complete my meditations, I was abruptly packed into a close, dark box with others of my kind. There wasn’t enough room to speak and scarcely air to breathe, and we really thought that this was the end.

Just when I had given up all hope, the box was opened, and several pimply young men wearing shirts that said “Macey’s Groceries” pulled all of us out and hung us crookedly from a flimsy string. I had to endure the staring, pointing, and jeering of many until a large, jovial man abruptly pulled me down from my precarious perch and said, “This would be perfect for our Blue and Gold Banquet.” Then, to complete the insult, he summarily stuffed me with tootsie rolls. Of all the candy in the world . . .

The man took me to a place called a “cultural hall.” This was obviously a cruel misuse of the name, as there was no culture in sight. Instead, a rope was tied around my neck, the rope was thrown over a basketball standard, and I was raised and lowered over a group of rather unscrupulous looking eight-, nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds in blindfolds. I could only continue to smile my vapid, painted-on smile as these same children proceeded to hit me all about the head and body with a four-foot length of PVC pipe. Oh, the cruelty of man to man!

I endured their blows for at least a half an hour while the parents and leaders of these little heathens stood around the circle and cheered them on. Despite the fact that I was only made of paper, I held firm and determined not to let them break me. Even as a piece of my foot and a part of my sweet, sugary innards fell, I remained strong.

Unfortunately, once the small torturers lost interest, the adults around the circle took over. A brawny man, who professed to be the parent of one of the yapping children, declared that he would finish me off. He took hold of the PVC pipe and gave a mighty swing.

I could feel the force of the blow coming, and although I tried to brace myself, my strength was spent at last. I could only stare and smile in amazement as my neck separated from my head, and my blue-clad body dropped on the savage crowd below. They fell on my sad remains like a flock of ravening vultures, snarling and grabbing with abandon and extreme bad manners.

But what was this? Could it be? As I gasped out my last, I felt the glory of sweet revenge. As the deathblow was struck, the PVC object of my pain broke in two, and the severed end flew forth like the arrow of justice and took out two of my tormentors. One was merely grazed, but the other, one Caleb Tyler, received the force of the pipe full on in the middle of his forehead, causing a huge ruckus, raising an enormous goose egg, and resulting in a trip to the emergency room. And thus, my glorious end is a lesson to all who would meddle with . . . Cub Scout piñatas!

Secondary Language Arts Textbook Evaluation

I've been asked to serve on the Secondary Language Arts Textbook Evaluation board for the next session. I will be up in Salt Lake on October 19th and possibly 20th doing this. I'm hoping it will be a good networking opportunity for me, and since it's something that I've never done before--I'm also hoping that it will be fun and educational at the same time. Has anyone ever done this before? What can I expect from the experience?

At Last!!!

So, I mentioned in a previous post that I had submitted an article for publication. At the time, the editors indicated that they would be getting back in touch with me mid-August. Not so. I finally got an email back today saying that they were recommending my article for inclusion in the Utah English Journal, but they would like me to make a few changes to it. I am pretty excited about it, but it's going to be a bit of work to do the editing, as I only have five days to do it. (I get the feeling that somebody somewhere procrastinated a bit.)

Mrs. Tyler Takes a Plunge

I did something completely out of character for me this week. I've been getting emails from the leaders of CUWP urging us to submit to the Utah English Journal for publication. Normally I would be too shy, but I decided to give it a try. I've submitted a paper detailing how I combine Sherman Alexie and memoir to start off my American Literature class. I won't find out for about a week or so if they have accepted my paper or not. Whew. I am actually nervous about it. It's like sending a baby out into the cold cruel world.

First-Time Yearbook Teacher Has Success!

As some of you may know, I took on my school's yearbook class this year in addition to teaching my other classes. It has been both a fun and frustrating experience. I know I've learned a lot--probably more than my students, actually!

Anyway, our yearbook is almost finished (we just have one more file that a senior editor needs to upload on Monday), and I am experiencing a great feeling of accomplishment and pride for my little staff. Our theme was Technically Speaking, and we really took that theme and ran with it. Here's our cover--it looks like a computer hybrid between a Mac and a PC:

The actual cover looks way cooler than this--this is just a small file drawing of it.

Our pages themselves look like internet sites, except for our first and last pages, which look like a computer desktop and the infamous "blue screen of death."  Here are some examples (if you click on them you can see a larger version, I think):

It's been a ton of fun making UCAS themed near copies of various websites. (I hope you recognize Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, and Youtube.)