Just Me: Tales from A Teacher

Topics of Personal Importance

2011-12-15T19:07:00.003-05:00

My son Jackson, who is in kindergarten, is sitting at the table right now practicing writing on a dry erase board. The sentence he just came up with using invented spelling:

I fa and pee.
(I fart and pee.)

Boys.

Student Writing Samples

2011-12-04T21:55:00.001-05:00

Just stumbled across this and wanted to share. (It also doesn't hurt that by posting it here, I am sure to find it again when I need it.)

It's a large PDF of student writing samples across the grades. Not all genres are included, but it's still pretty awesome.

Spelling and Handwriting: Lessons from Best Practices

2011-11-08T15:22:00.003-05:00

Spelling
The book mentions Words Their Way as an effective spelling/phonics/word study program that is rooted in the current research about spelling. I love this program and have used it for the few years that I have been in schools, and I do notice success for most of my students using it. One of the biggest challenges in implementing the program, however, is finding a structure that works while differentiating to each child. Whole class spelling lessons where everyone is learning the same words - WAY EASIER. For me - not necessarily the kids. It's been a challenge to find ways to organize both the time and the materials to implement the Words Their Way program, or even a modified version of it, to such a diverse group of learners - I have students who are Emergent Spellers all the way up through the Derivational Relations stage of spelling.

Handwriting
I was shocked to learn that there is apparently a controversy about whether to teach cursive first when we start teaching handwriting. I'm not sure I can back this opinion up with reasons, and it might stem entirely from longstanding tradition deep in my veins and early school memories; but I think that's an AWFUL idea!

But here's my attempt at reasons. I'm thinking about how Jackson reverses his lowercase B and D. I'm also thinking about the close relationship between writing and reading - and in those early grades, forming letters in handwriting is a kinesthetic way of learning about the letters they are later going to be reading. Books, websites, all the things we want them to be reading in the primary grades (and even in most of life) are in print, not cursive.

I do, however, think cursive should still be taught. I also happen to think keyboarding should be taught. I realize that fitting both, or even either, of these things into our extremely crowded curriculum and days seems damn near impossible. Then again, we did it.

On the other hand, writing back then was less about content, meaning, writing-as-in-putting-cohesive-thoughts-on-paper. My parents still think I'm talking about penmanship when I talk about teaching writing.

As you can see, I go back and forth on the realities of teaching handwriting in school. My sixth graders are begging me to teach them cursive. I promised them some practice pages, but do I actually have time in the school day to teach cursive the way good old Mrs. Hrehocik taught it to me back in second grade? Is showing them how to make one letter a day enough?

Ah, it's all so overwhelming sometimes.

Quick Thoughts on What Makes an Effective Sentence

2011-11-08T15:03:00.005-05:00

I'm thinking about two things while I'm reading the chapter on building sentences as a writer.

The first is the six-word memoir idea that I keep seeing around. I know that some of these six word memoirs "technically" count as more than one sentence, but it's interesting to think about how much of a challenge it can be to pack content into only a few words, which is the goal of writing an effective sentence.

The second is the writing I had to endure during today's professional development from the Common Core math standards. Listen to this one:

"They bring two complementary abilities to bear on problems involving quantitative relationships: the ability to decontextualize - to abstract a given situation and represent it symbolically and manipulate the representing symbols as if they have a life of their own, without necessarily attending to their referents - and the ability to contextualize, to pause as needed during the manipulation process in order to probe into the referents for the symbols involved."

That sentence is a gem, isn't it? Anyone who wants to diagram it? ;)

Anyway, I liked this chapter as it made me think about how important it is to balance looking at the "big picture" - things like the writing process, or publishing pieces of writing; and also the parts that make up the whole - things like sentence fluency and variety. One thing I will say is I am going to try to focus on doing this in the context of their own writing. In the past, it seems like the kids haven't quite connected my grammar lessons to their own writing, and I think that's because I wasn't connecting it to it. (Although I will say, the entire Editing and Revising portion of the CMT is about editing and revising completely out of context - wouldn't it be better to show revision and editing on the piece they have to do for the prompt?)

Pretending I'm Not Scared

2011-11-05T12:29:00.004-04:00

This disgusting creature is what I realized was crawling on the wall behind me in the middle of a math demonstration.

I was alerted to this fact by the sudden outburst of 29 children screeching and jumping out of their chairs.

Did I mention my illogical fear of creepy crawlies? Look, I've already killed spiders and various other disgusting things in the classroom that were well over my 3 millimeter threshold of fear. All while pretending to be calm, of course.

This thing? I'm estimating he was about 3 inches long. No way was I attempting a whack at this thing, climbing over the Smartboard. What if I missed, but knocked it off, only to have it land on my head? I'd be quickly joining the ranks of the screaming and jumping kids.

Thank heavens I teach sixth grade. One of my boys got up, looked at the screaming crew (mostly girls) and struck it down in one blow. The girls were impressed, which he enjoyed.

5 minutes later, I was finally able to resume the math lesson. After of course, a mini-lecture on how not to react when you see a bug. "Good grief guys, have you never seen a bug before? What is there to be scared of?"

Finding Mentor Texts at Unlikely Moments

2011-11-01T11:40:00.002-04:00

Sunday, I wandered around the house with my phone, trying to get a bar of service so I could check the news. Finally, I managed to get some news stories to load.

And as I'm reading them trying to find out how long we're going to be stranded in darkness (Again!), I think, "Hey, this would be a great mentor text! Look at this interesting language! Descriptive words! Imagery! Similes!"

Thought I'd share.

This New York Times article.

"Not a light, mischievous form of frozen precipitation."

"...children whose costumes were obscured by winter coats as they lined up at the North Portico for a treat of cookies, M&Ms and dried fruit."

WSJ:

"snow-covered tree branches popped like firecrackers" (That is what it sounded like. Or gunfire. It was terrifying!)

Always nice to find good expository mentors!

Spaces, Places, & Tools for Learning

2011-11-01T10:55:00.003-04:00

Where do we learn? How do we make space, in physicality and time, for the types of learning we'd like to include in our classroom?

Sitting here in Panera, basking in the glow of their WiFi, I'm thinking about these questions. Jackson is sitting across from me, typing messages to my sister. They're generally very long and filled with many consonants and few spaces, sprinkled with the occasional words he knows how to spell and a few that T9 creatively correct for him. What's he learning about writing? What's he learning about life in this unexpected week of no school? And no electricity? Certainly this week is fodder for writing ideas. The warmest AND snowiest October on record. Halloween cancelled. The third week this year with no power. How to cook pancakes on a griddle on a coffee table in the living room, where the generator powers an outlet.

So many outside influences on what goes on in the classroom. Snow days, hurricanes, illness, family emergencies and issues, and of course, the ever looming MANDATES. Some days, all requirements and mandates of and for teaching leave me stranded on the couch at midnight, actually feeling the crush of stress as I desperately try to find something utterly stupid on TV to take my mind off the 8,498,949,358 things I'm supposed to have done, half of which are yet unfinished.

So, I really enjoyed this week's readings. They were very reflective of things I'm experiencing in the classroom currently. How to balance the high stakes of testing with the rest of the world of writing? I read Rankie-Shelton and Fu's article about Nancy, a teacher who seemed to find something that worked for her. Bringing in both the writing workshop model and an intensive period of test preparation, her writers managed to navigate the world of high stakes writing tests while still building a love of writing. It seemed to me that her class was able to make it through those 6 weeks of test prep and the test itself as a result of the writing community they had built up over time during the writing workshop - the trust they had in each other to share their writing and critique it, their resolve in working together to build their crafts. I found the article inspiring and saved it on my hard drive. ;)

From there to more specific and immediate concerns. The chapter on revision and evaluation in Best Practices was one of the best yet. I love the POWER mnemonic for the writing process and am totally stealing that. I've been struggling lately to get my kids to revise their writing at all, and have been modeling revising and focusing on revising for certain qualities of writing. Even so, I still have kids who will reread their papers, look back and forth through the pages, serious expressions on their faces, deep in thought, and then look up and say, "Nope, nothing needs changing. I'm done."

This was of course, before I realized that I would need to devote much, much, much more time in writing class to the teaching of revising that I had originally planned. I liked how MacArthur pointed out that in teaching revising, we continue to teach the craft of writing and it will apply in future writing. Usually by the time we get to the revision stage, especially of assigned writing, we all just want to be done with it.

(Side note: I just got Georgia Heard's The Revision Toolbox and I really love it. (Check out some sample lessons from it here. It's a PDF.) We cracked geodes in class last week as part of an anchor lesson on "cracking open our writing" and the kids loved it. And I've used some of the activities in there and the kids really enjoyed them. They seem to be starting to help - and funnily enough, I see it more when they are drafting something than when they are revising it.

Anyway, I digress. So, those kids whose writing is perfect. I have a temptation to laugh when they say it because I'm so with them (as a non-planning, non-revising writer). I've been working on really breaking down the task of revision - starting with something so simple as "Reread it." So I liked the mention of think sheets for revising, with directions for the editor (whether its peer or self), and clear, explicit steps for how to revise. I think my kids are pretty good at making changes - but they have a really hard time finding what they should change and are constantly asking me. Of course, my goal is for them to be able to evaluate their own writing and decide what needs to be changed. I've been bringing in some criteria checklists for them after we read the book on Formative Assessment, and it seems to be helping somewhat. I think the evaluation questions they mention in the chapter will be helpful in directing them to a place that needs revision. I also love how peer response groups are used and while I constantly think about teaching my kids to revise each other's work, we haven't really gotten that deep into it yet. We're mostly at the peer-editing/proofreading stage of things.

Ok. So I just changed the order of two paragraphs in this blog, added a couple sentences and changed a word. Does that count as revising? Trying to practice what I preach. ;)

Accomplishment

2011-10-27T22:22:00.003-04:00

It's amazing what a sense of accomplishment laminating gives me.

Thank you, Scotch Thermal Laminator, for getting me through this time of never feeling like I am ever, ever, ever, going to have everything done that needs to be done.

Assessing Student Writing

2011-10-25T19:39:00.003-04:00

One of my big take-aways from Overmeyer's book, What Student Writing Teaches Us, is the use of student self-assessment. I sometimes wonder if we reduce student independence by over-using rubrics and criteria charts and "constructive feedback." I often find that once we finish a draft, students expect me to do all the revising and editing of their work. Moving students toward being able to look back over their work and assess their strengths and weaknesses is a big goal of mine and this book gave me some tools and ideas for doing so. I particularly like his criteria list for assessing writing - a tool he created after finding that the point-based rubric he had been using wasn't quite working as a tool for improving writing. Since we want our kids to focus on certain characteristics of writing rather than what points go where, this strikes me as a fantastic choice. I'm going to try it out with the drafts we're working on in class now and see how it goes.

Now onto what it is sticking in my craw after reading this. Grades. I hate grading writing, especially so early in the year when we've only barely scratched the surface of exploring the world of it. But in a short 9 weeks - especially the first one that includes at least one week of getting to know each other activities, I'm supposed to have enough grades to put together for a marking period grade. Overmeyer's suggestion that we can grade the trajectory toward a standard was enlightening - although it is at odds with a lot of the other information we tend to get as teachers about what grades should entail. Quite frankly, I don't even want to grade the first few pieces of writing - I'd prefer giving qualitative feedback in the form of identifying strengths to build on and areas to focus on. I have so many kids who have such low confidence in themselves as writers that it's tempting to just hand out As like they are candy so they can feel at least one success in writing. But then, if we move toward grading that trajectory, and including effort, grading becomes so much more subjective (which is already is, especially in writing). I mean, I know what Student A's best effort looks like, which might look nothing like Student B's best effort. But how do I justify that grade? And as Overmeyer points out, kids biggest complaint about grading is fairness. Is it fair?

Your thoughts?

The Writing Process & Drafting

2011-10-25T09:13:00.000-04:00

I was thinking about this after our last few classes and some of the discussion about what the writing process and what exactly that means for each of us. Obviously, there's no cut and dry process that works for everyone. I've said before I'm not much of a planner. I'm also not much of a reviser, which makes my writing process particularly short. ;)

But I liked this blog from Two Writing Teachers about using drafts in the classroom and what they mean, plus how they tie in with the writing notebook. Getting my head wrapped around the idea that the writer's notebook is kind of like a pre-writing/idea-gathering place was a big paradigm shift for me. We do all our drafts on loose paper now. It's been working for us pretty well actually. I also like that it shows the kids that not every single thing we write must go through the prewriting/drafting/revising/editing machine. Sometimes we just write to get words on paper. Sometimes we just write to think. Sometimes we pour out some garbage cause it feels good.

Drafting on separate paper is also good for us since it allows us to cut things up/move them around as we begin to think about what we would like our final published products to look like - adding in illustrations with captions, changing the format, etc.

I also prefer "First Best Draft" to "Sloppy Copy."

Just some random thoughts. ;)

The Writing Conference as an Essential Part of Assessment

2011-10-24T21:19:00.003-04:00

I have to admit I'm having such a hard time getting my kids to understand what conferences look like in the writing workshop. I still have the hapless hand-raisers who will sit there and stare into space while I'm conferring with another student. We've talked about it, and some days it works, but other days I just arrive at my first planned conference and before I know it, I have 5 or 6 hands in the air accompanied by the "zone-out" look - that look that tells me they are apparently going to do nothing else but raise their hand at me until I get there.

I'm wondering if having conferences at a specific location in our room - like the guided reading table - will change that. But I like the idea of moving around the room for conferences since they become learning experiences for those neighbors who listen in.

Anyway, as a result of this, I'm having a hard time building in the conference as assessment - with goal setting and record keeping because I feel like I'm bouncing all over the place.

Any suggestions for me?

While We're On that Topic

2011-10-24T20:56:00.002-04:00

Motivating Boy Writers - a great blog. I found this great piece (it's lengthy) on teaching boy writers via their blog - it's filled with interesting ideas, including the importance of using visual prompts as a path into writing for boys.

BOOK REVIEW: Boy Writers

2011-10-24T20:37:00.004-04:00

One of Ralph Fletcher's more academic works, this is definitely worth a read. He goes through all the statistics on boy writers - and time after time, girls are scoring significantly higher than boys on writing assessments. Calling this a "failure to thrive," he details potential reasons for this achievement gap and lays out practical ways of meeting the needs of our boy writers.

Choice

"I wanted to write a scary story but my teacher made me stop writing it. She said it might freak out the class." -4th grade boy, as quoted in Boy Writers (p. 41)

A way of raising the value of writing for all our writers, choice is essential in getting our male students to write. Fletcher goes on to point out that the testing frenzy has undermined the value of choice in writing for all students, but goes a step further and notes that boy's choices tend to be deterred even in classrooms that value student voice and choice in writing.

Violence

Monsters, aliens, hero stories, war stories, violence, drugs, military situations, injuries, hurting someone else, sports, dislike for school and/or teachers, four-wheelers, Captain Underpants, comics, physical challenges, destroying evil characters, video games. Just a few of the topics teachers mention their boys want to write about. All have a potential element of danger. In this post-Columbine world, I have to admit, I wondered how and when to draw the line in my own classroom.

Humor

I had two brothers and a son, so this chapter in the book comes as no surprise. Captain Underpants, Super Diaper Baby, Wimpy Kid, Walter the Farting Dog. The popularity of these books points to boys ever-lasting love affair with anything that has to do with butts and farts. Heaven knows my son thinks the funniest answer to any question is, "Buttcheek." Fletcher persuades his audience to allow boys humor in their writing, building it up as "voice," and taking things on a case-by-case basis as to when they go too far.

Handwriting

This is undeniably a huge part of boys too-often dislike of writing class. Handwriting can be such a laborious task for many of our boys that the physical act of getting letters on paper overrides their ability to actually focus on the content of their writing. I remember once reading that while we began teaching handwriting in kindergarten (or before!), boys are actually not physically ready for the fine motor act of handwriting until the age of 7 - much later than girls. This difference is apparent long after kindergarten - and I think as teachers we have a tendency to focus on the handwriting (after reading countless essays, it can get a little tricky.) rather than the content. Fletcher encourages teaching keyboarding and using technology to ease this, while continuing to focus on the strength's of our boys writing.

Language

"You suck." "That bike is nasty." Put-downs. Slang. All language commonly found in boys' writing. Fletcher encourages us to encourage their use of descriptive language and be flexible when allowing students to use slang in writing. I would say this goes to knowing who your audience is when writing someone.

One important part of this chapter. Fletcher notes that many of the boys he interviewed during the writing of the book strongly remembered criticism they received on their writing - even comments we may, as teachers, view as passing ones, or "constructive criticism." He points out the power of a positive comment, as a route for students continuing to build on their strengths. I would say this goes for all our students. It can be hard, at times, to find lots of positive in student writing samples when errors glare out at us - something in us hardwired to find the stuff that needs "fixed", perhaps. But a comment about a great lead, or incredible imagery, can take our boy writers a long way. Many students he interviewed remembered seemingly small positive comments given to them from past teachers - even years later.

Boy Writers is a thought-provoking book for anyone who has ever attempted to teach writing to a diverse class that includes boys with all different interests and abilities. He definitely gives us stuff to think about - something I think is maybe particularly interesting for elementary teachers - since so many of us are female.

Messiness

2011-10-04T22:07:00.003-04:00

I needed this today.

Today was a messy day. It's comforting to know I'm not the only one.

Launching writing workshop this year has been my most challenging experience in all of the subjects. I find this somewhat ironic since I spent all of last year teaching writing (and not math, science, or social studies) and am having the biggest challenge with it this year. I can't quite seem to hit my stride. Of course, it's different every year with different groups of kids. I have a lot of reluctant (putting it nicely) writers and it's been really hit or miss on whether we seem to get any sparks ignited for writing on any given day.

Ideas

2011-10-04T21:51:00.002-04:00

I think I like this idea. A lot. Maybe enough to make this my course final project plan.

Grading Secrets

2011-10-04T07:00:00.000-04:00

Throwing Ideas Around

2011-10-03T22:44:00.006-04:00

I can't really respond to Ladson-Billings 2006 article, "A Letter to Our Next President." It's too depressing.

I couldn't pick just one article. (How do you pick one without at least reading some of it? Then I have to keep going.) Lots of stuff in there. I have to marinate some of those ideas a little. Spoken language and writing. Voice. Rules. All strike me as a way of breaking down - or not building in the first place - barriers between students and writing.

Also, its making me think of all my students that frequently converse during academic group work in Spanish. I'm learning about their parallel literate lives. It's fascinating. I'm trying to figure out how to open that door, so to speak.

On a side note about dialect and voice and "proper" English, we should probably also include technological communication. It's a form of speaking/voice that's very different, with so many acronyms and slangs and vocabulary words - and it often trickles into "academic writing."

They remind me of something I was thinking about a while back.

Ok, have to think on it a little and wait for it. Maybe this is me planning.

Confession of a Harried Non-Planner

2011-10-03T21:51:00.011-04:00

I do not plan. Ok, maybe that's not true, entirely. But I do not plan on paper. I do not use graphic organizers. I do not outline or take notes before writing essays. Even written lesson planning is not my strong suit. Although I have been known to make a list or two.

I guess I would say I plan in my head, although I'm not sure that's any different than just thinking about stuff. I mentioned before that blogging suits me because I just start writing. But I pretty much do that with any writing. 2, 5, 25, 50 page papers - I just started writing. Research papers - I do loads and loads of reading. But no real planning. Then I wait for it to come. It. The impetus to write.

So, the chapter I picked this week from Best Practices is "Best Practices in Teaching Planning." I figured I might learn a thing or two.

First, I laughed out loud when the author wrote about the kid who says he can't write because he "doesn't know where the pencil sharpener is." I have a text-to-classroom connection for that one. ;)

I was particularly interested in the section on teaching strategies for planning a report. I was struck by how broken down and explicit it was. I was also struck by the discussion of the inquiry and prewriting phases of planning, and how lengthy they were! The idea of spending a writing class in a wheelchair in order to better write about someone with a disability? I can hardly imagine doing something like that in class, but it makes so much sense! If we want our kids to write with all their senses, about life's experiences and mistakes and wonderment, we have to give them time and space to explore the world. I've done the occasional "Let's go outside and write sensory details" thing, but what this chapter makes me think is that what I really need to do in my writing time is slow down.

I'm feeling rushed, and so I'm rushing them. I need to have this and that in the portfolios, and student work on the walls, and it's the beginning of the year so I have none of that, so HURRY UP AND WRITE SOMETHING KIDS!

Seriously, that's what I've been doing to them. Funny to have read this chapter tonight because today was probably the best writing session we've had yet. (Granted it was a short writing period.) A couple things were different. One, I decided that we needed to start writing with a meeting on the carpet. Then, we had a general conversation about writing and what we were thinking about it. We're supposed to write these "Life Plans," so that's my writing theme for the next couple weeks, but I'm trying to put a spin on it a little. We talked about how they've written them in the past. (They do this every year.)

Then I read them this quote, and asked them to talk about it:

"If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going." ~Wendell Barry

And finally, I read them George Ella Lyon's poem, Where I'm From. (Brian is probably cringing reading this, but I had never even heard of this poem until he mentioned how overused it was in some schools.) We talked about it, and about how parts of it made no sense to us and how we thought that was probably because it was something that was so personal to the author that we wouldn't necessarily get every detail but could get the overall vibe.

Then we all spent about 10 minutes on the carpet writing/sketching in our notebooks under the heading, "Where I'm From." I wrote too - the first time I've done it in front of them. It seemed pretty powerful, I have to say. I just haven't been able to get my #$%% together enough to do it. And then we shared, and laughed over our common memories of sibling torture and parental threats and tasty food and mischievous plots. And what I'm totally loving about that is that A, everyone was actually writing; B, everyone seemed pretty into it; C, it felt like a community of writers for the first time, with sharing and getting inspiration of each other; and D, this list is not only going to help us write this Copy/Change poem, but become a repository of ideas to go back to for writing.

Of course, at the time I was thinking, "Good God, that's all we got through today? We're so behind." But now, I'm thinking this was time very well spent.

A Bridge to Best Practices

2011-10-03T21:34:00.004-04:00

I've been so frustrated these past few weeks reading Best Practices in Writing Instruction. I feel like there such a gaping hole between what our curriculum requires of us and what we know to be best practices. Don't get me wrong, there are some things I like about our curriculum. It encourages the process of writing. Which is awesome. It encourages the analysis of various pieces of writing before trying it out on our own, and uses lots of modeling and the gradual release of responsibility. But it can be incredibly prescriptive and confining for my young writers. Our focus is on the five paragraph essay - for three grading periods out of the year. Then we move to the five paragraph persuasive essay for the final marking period. I have found it near impossible to find mentor texts outside of our curriculum book that we can use that follow the structure of what I'm trying to teach. Who writes 5 paragraph essays? Seriously, if you can find an awesome, poignant 5 paragraph intro-body-conclusion style essay in a magazine, newspaper, blog, etc - send it my way. 4, 6, or 7 paragraphs would work too.

Anyway, I think the big missing piece for me is the motivation piece. Almost my entire class detests writing. So first on my agenda, or maybe I should say next to about 43583 other things on my agenda, is getting my kids to enjoy writing. I think that comes with choice and voice in writing, which is hard to do within the 5-paragraph essay structure.

So I finally ordered Joann Portalupi and Ralph Fletcher's Nonfiction Craft Lessons. I think I should have ordered this book a long time ago. (Thank you Amazon!) I love love love love this book. It has copies of mentor texts in the back that I think I could weave into our curriculum, and sample mini-lessons that actually show the language used during the mini-lessons - something I really need right now. So many of the lessons completely align with our curriculum but have a little more zazz in them. (Did you know that Urban Dictionary actually includes the word zazz?)

I'm excited!

Rubric to Assess a Rubric

2011-09-29T22:11:00.000-04:00

I find this comical.

Puzzling Through

2011-09-24T15:50:00.003-04:00

So I have this one student who I've been puzzling over. He's a very kind, thoughtful, bright and articulate young man who has a learning disability. In conversations with him, he's got lots to say, and has a lot of knowledge on various things. But when it comes time for him to write, he struggles so much with literacy, that writing is sheer torture for him. I've been letting him copy sentences from the book he's pretending to read for the past week during writing workshop - something he started doing on his own. I figured it couldn't hurt while I figured out what in God's name I was going to do to help him. It's also allowed him to save face in class, something that is all-important to my sixth graders.

So I'm looking today at speech-to-text software as something we might use for him in writing. That counts as writing, right? I think it would be good for him to be able to verbalize something and then see it in front of him in writing, and I think it would free him from the constraints he puts on himself as far as spelling goes. Thoughts?

One More Thought: Changing The Writing Process

2011-09-19T21:35:00.003-04:00

One more thought about that 21st century article. It makes the point that technology changes the writing process. This is striking to me as I'm talking about the writing process this week. I admit I always feel disingenuous talking about this because it's one of those times I'm teaching the kids to do something I don't do.

I very rarely "prewrite." Usually I just start typing.

So I like the idea of looking at blogging as prewriting/publishing. But that sort of crushes our traditional notion of the writing process, doesn't it then.

We're supposed to, when we grade writing and include it in the portfolio, represent "all stages of the writing process," which is supposed to mean prewriting, outlines/graphic organizers, first draft, revised copy, and then final draft. It's a good point to make that if we're doing all our writing online and revising within a Word document, the draft/revising/editing part of the process looks very different and leaves a different artifact trail. Not that I really have to worry about this right now since I do not have enough computers in my room to have every kid working through the writing process on a computer.

That's something to think about.

On a kind of side note, I got this year's class blog up (www.kidblog.com - great classroom tool) and running. The kids loved blogging last year and I'm excited to have a whole year to work on it with my kids (as opposed to 3 months last year.)

Unleashing the Power of Writing in the 21st Century

2011-09-19T20:57:00.007-04:00

The first thing that Writing in the 21st Century makes me wonder is if we should ban writing so that kids might want to try it as a form of resistance. Kidding. Well, partly. I love the idea of writing as a subversive activity. (Although I can't fully agree with the article's ideas about reading being receptive and controlling while writing is about resistance. Plenty of reading is subversive as well.)

Last year when I told my parents I was teaching writing, they groaned and asked me questions about cursive. The idea of writing in school meant, to them, penmanship. I had to explain that I meant writing-as-in-getting-thoughts-onto-paper. The fact that composition is a "labor" is one that's still relevant today - I have kids in my class for who the physical act of making words on paper is so painful that it completely stunts the flow of ideas. I immediately turn to technology for kids like that. It can be such an unleashing force.

The historical narrative of the teaching of writing is fascinating, its movement through the progressive era into the current theory of process writing and writer's workshop. How unfortunate that standardized testing came along and ruined it just when it was getting good. I wonder sometimes how many potential authors dreams are destroyed by the soul-crushing agony of having to learn the five-paragraph expository essay - and nothing else - for years.

And then computers and the Internet - with all its possibilities for subversion - rises as a platform for writing just as tests are narrowing it in the classroom. I love how the article describes writing as almost its own entity yearning for freedom from boundaries and authority. Outside of schools, outside of tests, outside of five-paragraph essays (can you tell I hate them?) - people are writing. Arising from the need for communication and expression. Less talking, maybe, at Model Railroading clubs or Shriner meetings or all those other social clubs where people used to get together. (And wear weird clothes.) Now, people can group up on the Internet, and writing becomes the primary modality for communicating.

I cannot say enough times how completely awesome the story about the kids who used the Internet as a platform to get 30,000 people to screw around with the AP test is.

And then the million dollar question - how can we channel all this for a purpose more worthy? (Can we?) Students who know how to compose and organize and know how to use the audience provided by the Internet? How can we help them connect those skills toward the big issues, toward making the world a better place?

I don't know the answer to that and it's something I've thought about a lot. I think "The Internet" is still figuring that out, in a way. The election, in 2008 - Obama's campaign brilliantly used technology to connect and move people. But it fizzled out, or at least it seems that way. How to keep people going? Organizing on the internet seems to destroy the hierarchies traditional to most organizations, at least at the grassroots level. Do organizations and issue-based action require a leader?

I think of that group Anonymous, which publicly states that there's not really any hierarchy of leadership, and they manage to organize and take action. They're quite the enigma though, so I'm not quite sure how they work. But they fascinate me.

Really what will probably happen is that the kids will figure out the answers to these questions first.

Signs of Success

2011-09-17T11:45:00.003-04:00

My kids are practically fighting over who gets to be in our classroom library. We must be doing something right.

Sweet Summer

2011-06-23T20:24:00.001-04:00

Spare Time? My June Reading List

2011-06-20T19:54:00.004-04:00

What am I going to do with all this spare time?

Although I suspect it will be in shorter supply that it now seems, I just ordered about nine million books from Amazon. (My favorite store in the world)

Two guilty pleasures to start: the 11th Sookie Stackhouse book and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.

A handful of books to satisfy my YA lit obsession: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, The Unnameables, As Long as the River Flows, Jacqueline Woodson's Miracle's Boys, Gardiner's Stone Fox, Theodore Taylor's The Cay, Bruchac's The Arrow over the Door and Geronimo, and Where the Red Fern Grows.

Picture books: Birmingham, 1963; Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge; Freedom Summer; Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves; Growing Up in Coal Country; and Middle Passage: White Ships/Black Cargo.

My "Grown-Up" Choices: Invisible Man, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story, The Legacy of a Freedom School and Angela Johnson's The First Part Last.

And the professional ones: A Broken Flute: The Native Experience in Books for Children (been meaning to get this one forever!), Nancy Atwell's Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons, Still Learning to Read: Teaching Students in Grades 3-6, and The Next Step in Guided Reading: Focused Assessments and Targeted Lessons.

I can't wait for the UPS man. I'm like a kid on Christmas morning when I hear that truck in my driveway.

Beginnings, Endings, and Farewells

2011-06-19T19:42:00.003-04:00

For me, it's the hardest part of teaching.

We had a frenzied Friday, with sixth grade graduation at 10 a.m. Handing out yearbooks and collecting the straggler's money took up until about 9:30. Somewhere around 9:55, as I was frantically stuffing report cards that the computer refused to print until the last minute into envelopes, we realized we were missing one of the student's promotion certificates.

"Go ask Mrs. D to print another! (Since my printer has been broken for the last month.) Then sprint to the offices and get it signed! Ok, how fast can you all line up in alphabetical order by last name! We're late!" (In case you're wondering, not very fast.)

Ok, we made it. Somebody tells me, "Ms. M, you have to open the ceremony." (What! Didn't anyone else think about my paralyzing fear of public speaking!)

It runs smoothly and I get too caught up in being proud of the students sitting in the front rows to think about all the other people behind them. I make stuff up and steal lines from the 45 graduations I've been to in the past few years.

Hugs, photographs, goodbyes. Packing up the room with the handful of students who stuck around after graduation. Dealing with last minute nonsense of students deciding to sign each other's shirts with inappropriate content. Carrying stuff out to my car.

And then the drive home, and the music, and the more than 30 seconds to sit down makes me realize how sad I am, and the tears fall. What will become of them all? And I'm surprised that I'm sad. I've only been with these kids for 3 months. But I guess if you spend most of your waking moments with people. They're so funny and smart and unsure of themselves and yet confident. They drove me nuts and made me laugh and gave me a few gray hairs. And then, they're just off. And for most, if not all of them, I'll never know what comes next.

"In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work.

It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years."

~Jacques Barzun

Reliable Sources.

2011-05-03T10:52:00.002-04:00

Wiki has some policies that I find odd.

For one, it strikes me as rather ironic that the Wiki, a pinnacle of Web 2.0 itself, doesn't allow reputable blogs on which published articles have been based.

Have you looked at their reliable sources page?

Primary sources are essentially out. (Strange. I get the no original research stuff (to a point), but there are a lot of instances where secondary sources are crap.)

"Questionable sources are those with a poor reputation for fact-checking."

Seems like that's quite a lot of our media sources?

Around The Campfire

2011-05-01T15:43:00.002-04:00

Been interested in school design and how it influences learning for some time. Here's a shot of part of our local school's library, much of it a remnant of its inception as an "open school."

First T-Ball Game

2011-04-30T15:37:00.002-04:00

There is probably nothing funnier than watching a bunch of 5-year-olds try to play T-ball for the first time. Highlights:
"No, no, run the other way!"
"You missed a base!"
3 runners on 3rd base, all at the same time.
"Throw it to first!" "What's first?"

"But the ball has dirt on it."

Things We Cannot Forget

2011-04-30T07:27:00.000-04:00

Where to Begin?

2011-04-29T16:10:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wonder if there isn't so much nonsense going on in the education world that I just had to take a break from writing about it. It's hard to write about it, coming into it with my perspective, without the writing building the ire.

I saw the other day that Pearson (the for-profit education giant) and the Gates Foundation are teaming up to design (and of course, sell) curricula based on the new Common Core standards. The Gates Foundation (a nonprofit, one of the "reformers" crowd) has given a $3 million grant to develop this curriculum, which of course makes me wonder why in God's name the biggest education company in the world needs any outside money to invest in what will end up being another huge money-maker for them.

I can't help but imagine what I could do with 3 million dollars!

"More research is needed."

2011-04-28T19:34:00.000-04:00

"We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven't devised means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows."

~Warren Bennis

Who Will Be Left?

2011-04-28T18:35:00.004-04:00

An excellent quote from a post over at Bridging Differences:

If we drive out those who are motivated by social norms, who will teach? How can we hope to have a stable education profession if we lose those who want to make education their career knowing full well that they will never get rich?

Read the whole thing.

Time

2011-04-28T18:03:00.003-04:00

I can't believe how long ago already it was that I last wrote. Amazing how the hustle and bustle takes you away from things you love, but simply can't find time for.

My son is almost 5 now, starting kindergarten in the fall. I'm still long-term subbing it in the hopes of finding something permanent for the upcoming school year. I've got my students blogging over at KidBlog, which is working out fabulously, once we worked past a few minor kinks. The gravity of some of their writing is pretty awe-inspiring.

And ah, sweet spring has returned.

Boys.

2011-02-08T21:43:00.001-05:00

18 boys. 18 boys and 10 girls. Sometimes I think those boys were on a mission to drive me insane. Other times, I thanked god (and my mom) for my two brothers. (Who had long ago accustomed me to the symphony of farts, burps, and other inane humor that is so attractive to the 10-ish year old boy.)

I gave my fifth graders cool, empty notebooks at the beginning of the year. Wanting to distinguish them from our writing class notebooks (which were to be for class notes and such), I called them their writer's journals. They were for whatever they wanted - to explore themselves as writers. My only rule was really that it needed to have writing in it. (Illustrations to accompany writing, yes; all illustration and no writing, no.)

The motivation behind this was really two-fold. One, I needed something for my early finishers to work on that didn't involve much work on my part. Two, I wanted room to try to fit in the kinds of writing that weren't in the plan for the year (as a long-term sub, I was trying to follow the plan for the most part).

At various times throughout the year, these notebooks got my kids in some degree of trouble. Reading Ralph Fletcher's Boy Writers now, it's all coming screeching back through my memory with the kind of clarity that only ever seems to appear in retrospect. One boy's (very incredible) comic, depicting some kind of violence and/or guns; albeit with animal characters and a legit plotline. Mostly stories and comics that involved violence.

It's trickier than I thought, figuring out ways to help my boy writers grow without them getting sent to the guidance counselor.

The Costs of Turnaround

2010-02-14T09:46:00.004-05:00

Ed Week has an article out worth a read: "Private Sector Competes for Share of Stimulus Pie."

It talks about consulting firms and "turnaround experts" that are now working with school districts for Race to the Top.

I guess I'm just skeptical about spending money on outsiders who don't know local conditions. I'm also skeptical because as far as I know, there's a serious lack of research on effective turnarounds.

Some of the firm's names Ed Week listed rang a bell.

The one that jumped out at me most was Alvarez & Marsal, who are making quite a buck dismantling Lehman Brothers when they're not saving schools. These are the same folks that were down in New Orleans, hired just before Katrina struck, actually. They've also worked in St. Louis and NYC. For a lot of these groups, the results seemed at best, mixed (for a pretty high price tag). Especially considering a lot of these firms get no-bid contracts with questionable "expertise."

Morality

2010-02-13T15:08:00.006-05:00

This morning, I read the story about the 73-year-old man who stole $600 each from 3 banks, because he was trying to keep his family in their home, and couldn't afford their mortgage.

No gun, no violence. He walked in, passed the teller a note demanding the money, and walked out. Later, he told detectives he intended upon paying them back.

Now he's in jail, bail set at $22,500.

That's what happens when you rob banks, said Tampa police spokeswoman Andrea Davis. No matter who you are.

I thought about that old moral dilemma about the man who needs a certain medicine for his dying wife. He asks the pharmacist who tells him he could get the medicine, but for a very high price that the man cannot afford. So the man breaks into the pharmacy and steals the medicine to save his wife. The moral question then is, was the man right or wrong?

I remember reading one time, where I can't recall, someone who rightly pointed out that maybe we're asking the wrong question, that we should focus not on the man, but on the system. Indeed, in what world is it okay to put a price on someone's life, where only those who can pay are deserving? That's not just or moral. Of course, it's also not just an imaginary situation.

I suppose I'm struggling today with how to teach (if it's even possible to do so) morality to children in a society that appears to stop at the second level of Kohlberg's three levels of morality, the law-and-order phase of conventional morality. Now, I don't know how this 73-year-old man's case will resolve, but perhaps this is the beauty of a jury system. Juries are meant to decide, impartially, whether someone is guilty or not guilty, on the very basis of facts and law. In reality though, juries are really only the sum of their human parts, and I would think it impossible for a group of human beings not to take into consideration the circumstances and these higher moral questions.

Finally, I think there's a certain great irony to the fact that two of the banks he robbed were Bank of America branches. The Bank of America that took billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars (an exact sum is surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, hard to pin down) because of shady practices so they could pay execs insane amounts of money. And it would appear no one will be going to jail for this.

Hard to reconcile those two stories. That's what happens when you rob banks, as the lady says. And apparently, that's also what happens when the banks rob you.

Wealth

2010-02-06T09:21:00.001-05:00

Advanced?

2010-02-03T04:26:00.000-05:00

There's a new documentary coming out that looks quite fascinating, exploring the issues surrounding AP classes in high schools.

Most of my thinking about schools centers on elementary school practices, reforms and possibilities, of course, that's my chosen field. But sometimes my mind wanders to what could be done to reform high schools, and in many ways, I think it's a much more challenging prospect. The fragmented nature of high schools, from daily schedules to certification processes for high school teachers are so entrenched that instituting things like integrated curricula, project based learning, and so on seems much harder.

I've been watching my stepsister finish out her senior year of high school, and from my view, it seems not much has changed since my own high school days. She still stays up late answering the questions at the end of the chapter, memorizes vocabulary that is rarely used outside of textbooks, and writing papers on something for which I have to stretch my mind to see the utility of. In some ways, things are even worse - whether from difference in time or geography (she attends high school in an affluent Connecticut suburb, I attended a not-quite-as-affluent Western Pa suburb 10 years ago). The emphasis seems much greater on things like AP courses (motivated by weighted grades and college credit, not actual learning!), the SATs and college app process (it is the norm for these 16 and 17-year-olds to have tutors/prep classes/admission advisors that cost in the thousands), and attending prestigious private universities (State school? Ew.).

Throughout my professional experience, I've seen nine-year-olds so anxious over taking a test (which I thought failed to actually measure anything meaningful) that he couldn't function. I've seen four-year-olds so anxious about making a mistake in reading (Yes! Reading at 4!), she'd end up crying.

All this is summed up by a quote from the documentary's trailer, "Our students are pressured to perform...they're not necessarily pressured to learn, especially learn deeply and conceptually."

When I was in high school, my senior year I signed up to take 3 AP classes: psych, bio, and English. At the beginning of the year, I switched from AP English to "regular" "academic English." The AP teacher had a reputation for being deadly boring, frequently compared to Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller. I didn't think I could handle that for a year, so my best friend and I switched into 9th period English with one of the most awesome teachers I ever had.

He was a little crazy. Animated, enthusiastic, and demanding. I think he was one of those teachers you either love or hate. Or maybe both, as I didn't realize till later how wonderful he was. Because of that class, The Canterbury Tales remains on my list of treasured favorites. Many people tell me I'm insane when I say that.

My two brothers took him after me as well. My youngest brother also switched from AP to "academic" after I shared my infinite wisdom with him. ;)

My other brother, however, was already slated to be in this teacher's class. He had never considered himself a reader. (Despite the fact that he could name every bug, animal or plant we encountered in the woods after poring over nature manuals.) After taking that English class, Beowulf became one of his favorites. I've never met anyone else who loved Beowulf - though I'm sure you're out there. But for my brother, having a teacher who encouraged and helped him to access (among other things) literature like that: ancient, epic, thick and often difficult...changed his view of himself as a reader.

I don't know what grade he got in the class, or what grade I did for that matter. But I do know that a B in that class (aka 3.0) meant much more than an A (aka 4.8) in the AP class.

Prescriptive Grammar and Crapspeak

2010-02-02T08:40:00.006-05:00

I had this discussion with a literacy professor of mine some time ago, and a recent article on the new language arts standards got me thinking about it again. Grammar. How to teach it. Why to teach it. And when to break the rules.

When I was student teaching, the kids were learning about predicates. It struck me that I hadn't even heard the phrases "simple predicate" or "complete predicate" since my own days in school. I ended up giving myself a quick refresher on the lingo of grammarians.

Now don't get me wrong. Improper (of lack of!) punctuation really bothers me, as do adults who mix up they're/their/there. I'm a little more forgiving in elementary school, obviously, that's what they're there for.

I think that some grammatical rules should be taught explicitly. But I prefer to teach grammar as much as possible through writing. If that means my students never learn the word predicate, is that so terrible?

Funny - when I mention teaching writing to my parents, they always, always thinking I'm talking about either the actual act of writing (printing/cursive) or grammar & spelling. I have to explain that I mean writing-as-in-putting-cohesive-thoughts-on-paper. That's interesting to me.

Anyway, I digress.

So. My big question. At what point is it acceptable to teach kids to break the rules? What if a piece of writing sacrifices conventional grammar at places for a stronger sense of voice?

This is not okay: using emoticons or Internet slang (PDF) in academic papers and appeals! I would cry if someone handed me a paper with "LOL" in it. A friend of mine calls this type of language use "crap-speak." Now, I'm not big on the acronyms, but I can understand the use of them for something like text messaging (especially while driving, apparently also known as "TWD"). I can even kind of see using them in online conversations, where the pace of discussion is often rapid, so the use of abbreviations becomes an attempt at maintaining a tempo that resembles actually speaking to the person. But this kind of slang should never make it into formal papers, college applications, and so on.

(Side note. I do use emoticons and either LOL/haha because I think it's a way of alleviating the communication problems that arise from not being able to see body language or hear voice tone. Sometimes the only way to identify teasing or sarcasm is from the presence of a winking emoticon. Also, if someone says something hilarious, I want them to know I'm laughing! And yes, people do fake laugh online - just as they do in person.)

So is the problem that kids aren't learning grammar and spelling at all? Must we resort to sentence diagramming again? (Which was always kind of fun in a brain-teaser kind of way, but which didn't really teach me anything lasting or meaningful about writing.)

Or is it that they aren't being taught when it's okay to use Internet slang, or when to use formal vs. less formal language? A kind of code switching, or something like it. It also strikes me that anyone using "LOL!!!" or "cuz" in a letter to a college appeal board has little concept of audience. Thinking about my own writing, I switch styles all the time. I think (hope?) most adults do this almost without thinking about it. I think this is why it's important to encourage breadth in the type of writing students do - letters to the editor, to politicians, to friends; book reports vs. reviews, journalistic writing, poetry writing, blogging and on and on. Then you build in the opportunity to discuss why (or if) it's okay to use slang in a letter to a friend but not to the President.

I was going to end this post with a dare to diagram some of Sarah Palin's sentences, but it appears someone has beaten me to it.

Image of the Day

2009-12-24T08:39:00.003-05:00

A & P Coffee, Santa Claus. 1958.

From George Eastman House's Flickr Photostream.

Fury

2009-10-22T20:54:00.005-04:00

I get a news alert daily that rounds up stories for me that mention Arne Duncan. I get preemptively irritated upon seeing it arrive in my mailbox. And for good reason.

Ugh.

For a guy who's spent, well, zero time as a student in a teacher ed program and zero time as a teacher - the amount of teacher bashing he engages in is mind-bogglingly amazing.

There's always a year's worth of irony in any given speech Duncan gives.

Now the fact is that states, districts, and the federal government are also culpable for the persistence of weak teacher preparation programs. Most states routinely approve teacher education programs, and licensing exams typically measure basic skills and subject matter knowledge with paper-and-pencil tests without any real-world assessment of classroom readiness.

Somehow he seems to miss the fact that these tests he's criticizing, these standardized tests, (that, I might add most of us taking them recognize as essentially meaningless) - are no different than the tests he loves so much for our students. And! The solution! Link up those student test scores to teacher ed programs! Except in this case, these tests are apparently not "paper-and-pencil tests," but "student achievement data."

Guided Math?

2009-10-11T10:28:00.001-04:00

I'm having such an interesting experience in teaching math. My favorite things to teach are usually literacy and social studies but I'm actually really getting into math because it's such a challenge for me to break things down the right way for the kids and to figure out, when they're not getting it - why.

So October is fractions, decimals and probability in my school so I started with fractions. First day, parts of a whole - pizzas, naturally - went fine. Second day - parts of a set. We did an activity where everybody got up and we made fractions based on how many out of the class were wearing blue...and so on. I think the kids are getting it - I have them do a couple problems at the end of the lesson and turn them in so I can take a look. I did this because I found that questioning - which I was doing, to see how they were conceptualizing the numerator, denominator, and concept of a fraction in general - doesn't give me a good enough sense of what each individual is thinking - in a class of 30. It gets me part of the way, but not the whole way. So I take a look at the problems and while I think in general we've got it, I decide to give parts of a set another day.

I’m trying to come up with a way to see how they’re thinking individually, so I decide I’m going to have each of them design a worksheet on parts of a set. We discuss as a class how to do that and then they get started. My plan is to then pair them up, have them do each other’s and have them do some peer teaching – I’m going to make the pairs so that a strong student is with a weaker one. So I bring the worksheets home with me for the weekend – they’re not finished yet – and it’s SO interesting to look at them and see where they’re getting mixed up.

In the course of this, a new problem arises. How can I meet the needs of all these students who are in very different places in their understanding of fractions?

It occurred to me during the course of this lesson that we don’t have the strong instructional framework for teaching math that we do for literacy. While we have recommended best practices for teaching math, such as the use of manipulatives, writing and questioning to build students’ mathematical thinking, we are without the strong management structure we have for literacy – the reader’s workshop model which integrates whole class, individual and small or guided group work. I need a way to get time to meet with students individually or in small groups during math as we do in literacy.

So. “Guided math.”

I know what I want to address during “guided math,” and that each group’s instruction would depend on their needs. What I don’t know is what the rest of the class could be engaged in while I’m meeting with small groups of students. A worksheet would likely keep them quiet, but would they be actively learning? Manipulative work often becomes noisy and needed “refereeing.” I need a happy medium that used both my students’ and my time efficiently. Not only that, but I can’t spend much more time on parts of a set, as the district pacing guide requires that we get through all of fractions, decimals, and probability within the month. Not much room for error!

So that’s where I’m at. I’m turning this over in my head all weekend. I'm waiting for that stroke of genius to strike. ;)

Blog Changes.

2009-10-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

I'm student teaching now. In an urban, "failing" elementary school. I have 30 students in the fourth grade. In a few weeks, I'll switch to kindergarten. Interesting experience, thus far.

Theory + Reality = Chaos.

So, I'm changing the blog up a bit. I'll be writing about my experiences, or policy decisions being made, or problems I'm having, or whatever strikes my fancy.

Cheers.

Pedagogy vs. Content

2009-08-01T09:39:00.004-04:00

Something I've noticed as I've progressed through graduate study is a difference between secondary teachers and elementary teachers. This observation is by no means statistically sound, or drawn from a necessarily representative sample, but here it is, nonetheless. When asked why they went into teaching, elementary teachers responses often revolve around themes of loving teaching, children, learning. Secondary teachers often revolve around a love of whatever subject they are teaching.

Not that this is necessarily related, but I also am of the belief that secondary schools are the most in need of change.

So I suppose it's not terribly surprising that the Indiana Superintendent, a former science teacher himself, is of the view that content is more important than pedagogy. Nevermind that the research shows he's terribly wrong. But I can, and I bet most people can, remember teachers who loved teaching, and those who only loved their subjects. Which ones were intriguing, fascinating, enthralling? And which were insufferable bores?

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-07-08T06:30:00.001-04:00

From Flickr User playingwithbrushes.

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-07-07T07:05:00.000-04:00

From Flickr User fd.

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-07-06T11:30:00.000-04:00

From Flickr User ucumari.

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-07-05T08:29:00.000-04:00

From Flickr User Michael Heiss.

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-07-03T09:25:00.000-04:00

From Flickr User Monroe Dragonfly.

What Makes a Good Teacher?

2009-07-03T08:15:00.003-04:00

In discussions of merit pay, teacher quality and assessment, I generally ask those I'm arguing with this question: Think of your Great Teachers - those handful of teachers who really made a difference, the ones you can usually count on one hand. What made them so great? Can you even explain it fully? And if you can, how do you quantify that on a massive scale?

I gave a presentation on this topic about a week ago or so to one of my graduate classes. To get started, the class brainstormed what makes a good teacher. On the various lists, composed by pre-service teachers and veteran teachers, elementary and secondary teachers, were characteristics like honesty, hopefulness, dedication, intelligence, patience, and so on. Things like "knowledgeable, engaging and inquisitive, aware of student knowledge, interests & abilities." I should add that nowhere did anyone mention "raises student test scores."

On the flip side, it's a tad difficult to decide what we want from teachers when we don't all agree on the purpose of education. Is it to impart content knowledge? Build character? Nourish development? Nurture lifelong learners? Inevitably, at the end of these types of lists, I say, "All of the above."

So I find myself irked when Cowboy Duncan comes along to vilify the teachers unions for opposing merit pay. Yes, yes, we know. Teachers unions are destroying education. Protecting the "status quo." Mmmhmm. Now, I don't exempt the unions from criticism. But it's been what, half a year now? And we keep hearing the same story. Merit pay good. Teacher unions bad. He pats himself on the back for the Chicago Teacher Performance Pay Plan. One good thing about that plan: it incorporates peer reviews, from what I've read. How they do it, I'm not entirely sure. Bad thing: it's centered around test gains.

So how about this, Arne. Instead of repeating yourself ad nauseum, tell me what this merit plan looks like in your mind. The research is out there. The problems with value-added models of teacher assessment (using gains in student test scores) are well-documented. Viable alternatives are also well-documented. What do you see as the purpose of teacher assessment? Is it only as a means to determine pay? Or tenure? Quality teacher assessments actually lead to better teachers. In the meantime, until we get some details, I'm not all that thrilled about the idea of merit pay either. (Don't get me wrong. I'd love to make more money. And I think I'll be a pretty good teacher. But in terms of the grand scheme of things, I remain unconvinced it's a good idea.)

From the article:

Duncan pointedly advocated using student test score data to assess teacher effectiveness. "It's time we all admit that just as our testing system is deeply flawed, so is our teacher evaluation system."

Am I the only one who laughed out loud at that? So the answer to this is to use our deeply flawed testing system to fix our deeply flawed evaluation system?

I finished Educating Esmé: Diary of a Teacher's First Year yesterday. One entry in particular struck me, for it highlighted the utter absurdity of this system.

"At this point Rowisha turned around and started pounding B.B. with both fists until he fell to the floor, right there in the hall. It reminded me of when Twanette was beaten in front of me....B.B. shrived and whined. She screamed about his behavior and gang involvement and how she's-not-even-going-to-think-about-it-I'll-just-have-your-ass-hauled-into-juvenile-next-time-you-do-any-such-bullshit. I pulled her off B.B. She stormed off, disappearing around a corner. B.B. was hysterical, so I picked him up and hugged him and kissed him on the forehead and stroked the top of his head and told him it was going to be alright. Then Rowisha came back and hollered, "Don't baby this son of a bitch, his stupid ass doesn't deserve it, " and punched him once more. I still tried to help him get it together. In ten minutes he was going to have the Iowa Standardized Test of Basic Skills administered to him."

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-07-02T11:24:00.000-04:00

From Flickr User lepiaf.gio.

Wow. Keep this Woman Away from Children. And Education.

2009-07-02T09:44:00.004-04:00

Cynthia Davis. Unbelievable.

I'm with Colbert:

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Tip/Wag - Cynthia Davis & Fox News

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Jeff Goldblum

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-07-01T10:22:00.001-04:00

From Flickr User macieklew.

Image of the Day: Summer Vacation

2009-06-30T13:19:00.003-04:00

From Flickr user madmetal.

College is not for everyone.

2009-06-30T08:27:00.005-04:00

Louisiana is on its way to approving a new curricular track for high school students, a bill intended to stem the high dropout rate in the state. Critics say the bill lowers standards in the state at a time when we are trying to "raise them."

“They don’t see any relevance in reading Beowulf and Chaucer and trigonometry,” state Sen. Bob Kostelka, a Republican sponsor, said of those students.

My brother went to college for two years, mostly because that was "what he was supposed to do," found it wasn't for him, and left. It weighs on him still, because we live in a society that looks down on people who don't get that piece of paper. It's the same mentality that has resulted in him thinking he's not all that smart, which is, of course, ridiculous.

I'm a big proponent of Howard Gardner's retooling of the notion of intelligence, which has been, and mostly still is - especially in schools - centered on linguistic and mathematical intelligence. Gardner broadened that to musical smarts, spatial smarts, naturalistic smarts, and so on.

So my brother, like many kids who didn't excel in math (which is really a reflection of the terrible way in which math is taught - fodder for a whole other post), or even in reading - has come out of school and gone into life with the pervasive sense that he "wasn't good at school," and therefore, not that smart. Myself, I did well in math and literacy, and had a very different experience.

But he can build things. Beautiful things. I remember he designed and built this beautiful shelf when he was in high school. I could never do that. He can look at things and see how they fit - spatial intelligence - a skill which I am sorely lacking. He's brilliant about nature, can identify nearly, if not every, bug in the backyard, leaving me asking him, "How the hell did you know that?" He's the one who taught me which side of the trees moss grows on, how to use it for navigation, how fossils form, and more. I wonder sometimes what a different curricular track, like the one in LA, would have done for him. Not that he's not doing well - he is. But for kids like him. Who really need school not to be so centered on math and literacy - or at least need to learn them in the context of pursuing their own interests, loves, and talents. Ironically, the one story he really loved in all of high school English was Beowulf.

Do we really want everyone in the nation to go to college? Nevermind that I don't really believe that college is job preparation, at least not for the vast majority of programs of study.

We continue to build up this sense that college is the only path, yet we really need people, at least economically speaking, to pursue other paths.

From NYTimes:

If the goal is to earn a living, then, maybe it isn’t really true that 18-year-olds need to be imparted with a sense of panic about getting into college (though they certainly need to learn). Some people are hustled off to college, then to the cubicle, against their own inclinations and natural bents, when they would rather be learning to build things or fix things. One shop teacher suggested to me that “in schools, we create artificial learning environments for our children that they know to be contrived and undeserving of their full attention and engagement. Without the opportunity to learn through the hands, the world remains abstract and distant, and the passions for learning will not be engaged.”
A gifted young person who chooses to become a mechanic rather than to accumulate academic credentials is viewed as eccentric, if not self-destructive. There is a pervasive anxiety among parents that there is only one track to success for their children. It runs through a series of gates controlled by prestigious institutions. Further, there is wide use of drugs to medicate boys, especially, against their natural tendency toward action, the better to “keep things on track.” I taught briefly in a public high school and would have loved to have set up a Ritalin fogger in my classroom. It is a rare person, male or female, who is naturally inclined to sit still for 17 years in school, and then indefinitely at work.
The trades suffer from low prestige, and I believe this is based on a simple mistake. Because the work is dirty, many people assume it is also stupid.

Definitely not stupid work. Did I mention he's also a whiz with cars? I can barely change my oil. But I did good on those ol' reading and math tests!

Work Harder.

2009-06-13T16:36:00.009-04:00

I do love when journalists who apparently know little to nothing about education and have little inclination to remedy that weigh in on the ails of the educational system in this country.

In this charming article from The Economist, we hear again what is fast becoming a tedious argument.

Kids must work harder. Longer. Faster.

The opener:

AMERICANS like to think of themselves as martyrs to work. They delight in telling stories about their punishing hours, snatched holidays and ever-intrusive BlackBerrys. At this time of the year they marvel at the laziness of their European cousins, particularly the French. Did you know that the French take the whole of August off to recover from their 35-hour work weeks? Have you heard that they are so addicted to their holidays that they leave the sick to die and the dead to moulder?

There is an element of exaggeration in this, of course, and not just about French burial habits; studies show that Americans are less Stakhanovite than they think. Still, the average American gets only four weeks of paid leave a year compared with seven for the French and eight for the Germans. In Paris many shops simply close down for August; in Washington, where the weather is sweltering, they remain open, some for 24 hours a day.

Perhaps we run in different circles, but generally when vacation time/maternity leave/paid time off in international contexts comes up in my circles, we lament not the laziness of the French but the insane frenzy of life here. A year maternity leave. Paid maternity leave! Yes, those crazy French.

Anyway, the article then goes into how the only place Americans are lazy is in childhood, how children should instead be working 40+ hour weeks, 52 weeks a year. And longer if necessary! Damnit we'll work them to the bone till they learn!!! Nevermind that there are things outside of school worth learning. It's not the system that might need rethought, it's these damn kids today. They just don't work hard enough. Let's give them another 57 worksheets.

Hat tip to Wonkette, who nailed it.

Image of the Day

2009-06-13T16:27:00.003-04:00

From Wikimedia Commons' Featured Images.

Image of the Day

2009-05-23T15:39:00.002-04:00

Photo from Mountains in the Sea 2004. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration; Dr. Les Watling, Chief Scientist, University of Maine.

"Search 3.0"

2009-05-17T14:03:00.002-04:00

The much talked about new search engine, WolframAlpha, went live this weekend. It's worth a look. It's a different type of searching, the details of which I won't bother with here as you can read about them all over the web.

Anyway, it's definitely useful in the classroom, in research, and when you're looking for a straight answer. It's best for cold hard facts, so getting used to the types of search queries that work might take a bit. It's a little more picky about search terms. After you've tried out a few searches, check out the examples of searches that work well on WA - there's a visual gallery as well as examples by topic.

Google is set to launch the Labs version of Google Squared later this month. Similar yet different, the release is likely timed to steal some of the thunder of WA, which was getting much hype as the latest Google-Killer (right). Guess that's the beauty of competition working for us, eh? Anyway, two new tools for the kit. Great for students and research uses as we don't have to weed through all the junk results Google can sometimes spit out.

Image of the Day

2009-05-12T05:30:00.002-04:00

Awesome.

From Flickr User Arno & Louise. (Creative Commons Licensed.)

Memo to The Economist.

2009-05-09T15:15:00.000-04:00

"IT IS hard to find anybody with a bad word to say about Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s young education secretary."

Look harder.

Where This is Going...

2009-05-05T07:17:00.002-04:00

Obviously, this blog started as a class assignment and grew into something else. I think I'm going to broaden the focus beyond educational technology into the bigger world of education - so that I can touch on all my interests in education - technology, literature, history, etc - but especially educational policy. Then I won't wonder how many non-ed-tech posts I can get away with on a blog with this title.

So. Those changes to come.

Image of the Day

2009-05-01T07:51:00.000-04:00

"Artist's View of Exoplanet Orbiting the Star HD 189733." Image from ESA, NASA, M. Kornmesser (ESA/Hubble), and STScI.

Image of the Day

2009-04-25T10:49:00.005-04:00

Sonke Johnson, Operation Deep Scope 2005 Expedition: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration.

Image of the Day

2009-04-24T06:49:00.002-04:00

Photo courtesy of USDA NRCS.

The Problem with National Standards.

2009-04-23T12:30:00.003-04:00

Duncan wants national curricular standards, to avoid the patchwork of state and local standards schools work on now. Theoretically, I think this is a good idea. Practically, it gets a lot tricker.

Because everyone wants a piece of the pie. Article in HuffPo proposes "national ecological literacy standards." I don't particularly oppose this idea, but look: how many different areas of learning can we get into here? Theoretically, I think kids should learn about reading and writing and American history and world history and world religions and anthropology and sociology and technology and math and ecology and biology and...

You see where I'm going with this.

This has always been the problem with focusing on content in the curriculum. Again, I'm not saying the goal of education isn't partly for kids to learn the content. But a lot of it has to be skills. Because...simply...we can't cover it all. Humanly impossible.

E.D. Hirsch, proponent of cultural literacy, has long been an advocate of the content-specific curriculum. Skills are learned in the process, but he has laid out, in much of his Core Knowledge curriculum, the content knowledge he thinks is essential for students to learn - the theory behind this being that students and people in general need a certain level of common knowledge to communicate, read, grow. Like a foundation. Which, again, theoretically - I agree with.

But take a look at what he specifies as what should be included. See anything missing? I do. Lots. So how do you decide? How do you determine what's important and what's not? (I have thoughts on the answer to that question. But I'll refrain for now.)

Image of the Day

2009-04-21T12:59:00.000-04:00

"Star Cluster NGC 2074 in the Large Magellanic Cloud." Image from NASA, ESA, and M. Livio (STScI).

Why CEOs Shouldn't Run Education.

2009-04-20T15:18:00.002-04:00

It almost pains me now to read interviews from Arne Duncan. Seriously, I cringe at generally somewhere around the second sentence. If not earlier.

So not all that surprising from the latest. But one part jumped out at me in particular.

In response to the question, "Regular folks don't get the distinction between certified teachers and qualified teachers - why the teachers' union wouldn't let Einstein teach physics to high school students because he wasn't certified," Duncan responded, "Isn't all that matters that our children learn? That teachers give students knowledge?[emphasis mine]"

A couple of things that made my blood boil here. One, the question is a total red herring. (For many reasons.) Two, the answer reflects a complete lack of understanding about how children learn and what makes a great [i.e. "qualified"] teacher. As it happens, I just finished reading a study, Effects of Teachers' Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching on Student Achievement from Hill, Rowan & Ball that shows that the most significant predictor of student achievement isn't teacher's knowledge of mathematical content, but their knowledge of the pedagogy of teaching math - as they put it, "mathematical knowledge for teaching." In other words, we have to know not just what we're going to teach, but how to do it.

Which brings me to my next point. "...teachers give students knowledge..." Mr. Duncan. Tabula Rasa is so 17th century.

Perhaps it's not all that surprising that Duncan likens education to Pavlovian experiments. Students = Dogs? Sure. Why not.

I Hate Internet Explorer.

2009-04-20T15:17:00.002-04:00

It totally destroys my web design.

UPDATE: Apparently I'm not the only one.

Image of the Day

2009-04-14T06:55:00.000-04:00

Finger coral reef in the lagoon at Kure Atoll State Wildlife Refuge in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument.

Photo by Claire Fackler, National Marine Sanctuaries Media Library.

Image of the Day

2009-04-13T14:49:00.003-04:00

"Hubble Snaps a Splendid Planetary Nebula." From NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team.

World Digital Library

2009-04-12T10:42:00.001-04:00

Keeping my eyes peeled for this one.

Only on a Mac

2009-04-11T19:33:00.002-04:00

Lately, I've been thinking I'd like to teach fifth grade. This is a big change from my 20-some-year-long ambition of being a kindergarten teacher. I like the content better - you can do more. (But I'd be happy anywhere.)

There are a couple things in the Connecticut curriculum for fifth grade that I haven't been all that excited about teaching.

Exhibit A, "Energy Transfer and Transformations," ...sound is a form of energy that is produced by the vibration of objects and is transmitted by the vibration of air and objects...

I've never been able to think of ways that were really exciting or cool to teach this.

But check this out.

Image of the Day

2009-04-11T12:36:00.004-04:00

Switching it up a little today. Played around with Photoshop to do this one.

Photographs, clockwise from top right: Point-source water pollution, Unknown location
National Park Service, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore from EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office; Dredge Discharge Pipe from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; An oiled swan, one of many wildlife victims of the April 7th oil spill in Swanson Creek. Image by Mary Hollinger, from NOAA's Photo Library; Junk cars in Illinois River, Peoria, Illinois, Image by Romy Myszka of USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service from EPA's Great Lakes National Program Office; and Hole in the Ozone Layer Over Antarctica, Image by NASA, from the GRIN database.

And the quote? From T.S. Eliot's Little Gidding...

I left out the last line of the stanza on purpose.

What I Don't Like about PBWiki

2009-04-11T12:20:00.002-04:00

Anyone who has ever edited a Wiki on Wikipedia has had to learn "Wiki-code." Not html, not WYSIWYG, it's is own...thing.

So PB Wiki is better for use in classrooms because it does use WYSIWYG. (Among other reasons.)

But is it really all that difficult to allow more than one contributor to edit a page at the same time? The very nature of collaborative writing and Wiki's sort of demands it, no?

But no. Only one person at a time. Nevermind that I can be in the middle of writing something only to find out that someone has "stolen the lock" from me and that I can no longer save my entry.

I fail to see the point of that feature.

Image of the Day

2009-04-10T08:09:00.000-04:00

Niagara Falls, circa 1853-1860.

From the Library of Congress, America's First Look into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1839-1864 Collection.

?

2009-04-09T18:30:00.000-04:00

7 days a week? Lunacy.

Image of the Day

2009-04-09T12:26:00.001-04:00

Image from NASA's GRIN (Great Images in NASA) database.

Virtual Schools?

2009-04-09T12:01:00.003-04:00

So, I hadn't even heard of this. There's a charter school in Chicago, the "Chicago Virtual Charter School," that is literally entirely web-based.

The article is rather glowing, but I have to say, my first reaction is quite mixed. On the one hand, it's a pretty incredible use of technology. On the other hand, I have a not-so-glowing gut reaction to it.

Your thoughts?

Free Stuff.

2009-04-07T19:01:00.000-04:00

Who doesn't love free documentaries.

New Life.

2009-04-07T15:53:00.000-04:00

Life.com is finally up. I've been waiting for this one.

Terms of use allow for printing single copies for personal, noncommercial use. Presumably that includes educational purposes, yes? Can you tell I love copyright law?

It would have been really incredible if they had licensed everything under a Creative Commons license. ;)

Line in the Sand.

2009-04-07T14:50:00.000-04:00

There's just something that pains me about seeing the word "literature" just below a photograph of a hand held computer/screen.

"It tells us that printed books, the most important artifacts of human civilization, are going to join newspapers and magazines on the road to obsolescence."

Please no. Call me a Luddite if you must. But I refuse to give up my dusty shelves overflowing with books.

Image of the Day

2009-04-01T07:24:00.003-04:00

From Flickr User gautamnguitar, Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.0 Generic License.

Image of the Day

2009-03-31T07:19:00.000-04:00

Pacific Ring of Fire 2004 Expedition. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration; Dr. Bob Embley, NOAA PMEL, Chief Scientist.

2 + 2 = 5

2009-03-27T20:57:00.002-04:00

An article on how technology can not just impede on education, but bring it to a full stop.

Kids still need to learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and so on - BEFORE they pick up the calculators! If we start giving them calculators from age 5 on, they're not doing anything but going through the motions - learning which buttons to push. There's no active construction of mathematical knowledge going on there. We all should know that: I purposely use calculators because it makes my life easier. And I pay for it too - after years of having technology do it for me? I'm a lot slower at simple mathematical operations than I used to be.

Imagine if this was the only way we ever had done math: how would we ever continue to advance mathematical knowledge?

Image of the Day: Signs of Spring

2009-03-24T08:16:00.003-04:00

Image by Flickr User Muffet, Licensed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 Generic.

Image of the Day

2009-03-23T16:00:00.000-04:00

Kelley Elliot, Hidden Ocean 2005 Expedition: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration.

Expect the Unexpected.

2009-03-23T15:03:00.002-04:00

Oy! My little one's been sick and I've gotten buried under work as a result. Thinking I'm finally making my way out.

Lots to talk about! Education speeches, some stories from local schools, and more. Hoping to get up and running again this week. Thanks for sticking around!

In the meantime...Twitter. I tried to get into it but it's not catching on for me just yet. Not sure why yet. Lack of a functional cell phone? Too time consuming? Maybe just because I'm long-winded and 140 characters is awfully constricting. But some interesting uses of it nonetheless: Job searching. Police keeping people updated on local crimes. And the coolest: Getting a peek inside brain surgery.

Image of the Day

2009-03-20T14:03:00.003-04:00

"San Diego County Wildfires." From Flickr User slworking2. (Creative Commons Licensed.)

Image of the Day

2009-03-18T14:21:00.003-04:00

Image from Ailsa Craig. CC Attribution 2.0 License.

Image of the Day

2009-03-17T13:31:00.000-04:00

Anacapa Island Lighthouse. Photo by Robert Schwemmer, National Marine Sanctuaries Media Library.

Image of the Day

2009-03-16T06:36:00.003-04:00

Swimsuit layout from the 1932 Ladies' Home Journal.

From the George Eastman House's Photostream on the Commons.

Image of the Day

2009-03-15T08:29:00.003-04:00

Image from the Biblioteca de Arte-Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian's photostream on Flickr Commons.

Image of the Day

2009-03-14T09:19:00.002-04:00

Refugee Camp in Chad. Photo by Flickr User mknobil. (Creative Commons Licensed.)

Image of the Day

2009-03-12T14:52:00.004-04:00

K.D. Swan, from USDA's Forest Service Photos Historic Photos Collection. Logging Truck, August '47.

Image of the Day

2009-03-11T09:30:00.001-04:00

From Flickr User Kingfal. (Creative Commons Licensed.)

Image of the Day

2009-03-10T13:02:00.002-04:00

"Echoes of History." From Flickr User Rickydavid. (Creative Commons Licensed.)

Kids Today.

2009-03-09T10:35:00.000-04:00