A New Beginning

So, the short story is I’m out on medical leave for the rest of the school year. The long story, if you’re interested is on my personal blog here: boxofchocolates29 (the first two posts on that page).

Anyway, I’ve been going nuts because without teaching, I don’t know who I am. I don’t have any other types of hobbies, or creepy past times, or teams to play on. I don’t even really have friends who aren’t teachers. I know, right??? Who sets themselves up for failure like that??

So, after several days of no sleep (or nightly cat-naps), I came upon the “perfect” solution. I should take this time off for what it needs to be: independent teacher research!! Yes, I know that in the perfect world, I’d have great ideas, try them out in the class with my sweet high schoolers, and report the results — for better or worse. However, that’s not an option until I return to the classroom in August (with a spanking new smart-board, I do believe!!). My aim for now, then, is to comb through these crappy-assed Common Core standards with my for-better-or-worse fine-toothed apparatus, and figure them out!! What in the hell do they really mean? How will I know if I’m “teaching” to them, or just “assigning” them? If I delve into them, does that mean I’m embracing the standards as the godsend that NCTE and IRA are touting them as? Do I really have to drink that kool-aid?

I’m not sure of the answers to those questions, but I’ve been following some interesting conversations on Twitter, most notably from the Diane Ravitch/Steven Krashen camp versus the Carol Jago camp. I figure the “answers” are somewhere in the middle. But am I rolling over and playing dead if I’m trying to learn how incorporate these standards? I think I’d rather have my own set of lessons rather than let people in my district (or on the national stage for that matter) tell me what I’m supposed to be doing. Who says their way would be any better than mine???

 

So…with that in mind, I’m at the beginning of the Inquiry Circle (By the way, I got this pic from a guy talking about inquiry in Sunday School — DEFINITELY worth reading!!) Here’s what I’ve done this morning:

1. made preliminary notes in my daybook about what I want to do (yes, I’m still keeping a daybook during this time. It’s important, right?)

2. made a list of the resources I want to use  to teach  (these include Kelly Gallagher books, Deeper Reading and Write Like This; Image Grammar; using Short Texts — can’t remember the exact name; Marion Roach Smith’s memoir-writing book & resources from her website, especially her page about memoir as argument!!!; some video arguments from the Dylan Ratigan show on MSNBC; and a book I saw on NCTE’s website about testing –I’ll write more about that one after I read it.

3. created the last 20 pages in my daybook as a Handbook for: Writing, Reading, Grammar, and Independent Reading. All the pages are “assigned” and when I make some notes on them, I’ll upload some pics and details. This part sort of makes me smile because I’ve tried to do this for some time, and I never have “time” to play around with format or exactly what I want it to look like or how the students can use it effectively. To introduce it, I want the instruction to be inquiry based; however, I need the format so the process flows and the resources make sense to the students. For now, though, this is what I”m talking about: for the writing part, I have a page to decorate as a “title page”, the facing page is Common Core Standards for Writing; next page = Express & Reflect; Inform & Explain; Evaluate & Judge; Inquire & Explore; Analyze & Interpret; Take a Stand/Propose a Solution. These titles come straight from KG’s newest writing book; I left myself a note to have a mentor text glued in, a few notes about what this means, and a short handout for the bottom of the page for students to track when they’ve written like this. I think introducing these at the beginning of the semester will take care of the “journal prompt” problem so many kids have — when they don’t personally connect to a topic, but don’t have the guts to choose their own yet. Throughout the semester, then, I can have mini-lessons on the types of writing & have them write the Handbook reference page.

4. I’m thinking about using PSAs as the technology/speaking aspect to Common Core. There are a couple of local radio stations I think I can elicit help from in having the students’ work actually published there. I think it could work as argument, right?

5. And, I’ve restarted this blog to track my progress and my thinking. I figure that it’s a better place to just keep professional types of thinking without getting bogged down in the minutiae of my life right now.  Plus, I’m embarking on Year 3 of the Slice of Life Story Challenge over at TwoWritingTeachers using my BoxOfChocoates29 blog…so, my professional life definitely needs to be separated!

Now, what do I need from the people who read this blog??? Well, I need you to be participatory and feedbacky!! haha…I love making up words…What  did Lewis Carroll call them? Portmanteau??? But please, leave comments and questions and make me think. My feelings won’t be hurt — in fact, if I’m just sitting here all alone, I’m going to think I’m right about everything, so you owe it yourself to question me!!

Let the conversation begin!!

 

SI — Day 7 Reflection

Whew! Lots o’ learnin’ goin’ on today!! The two demos we had — Carrie S’s & Katie’s — helped me think more about digital learning and online spaces. In Carrie’s, I was thinking about what kind of persona I have in the different spaces I’m part of. For some, I’m more vocal (Twitter), but others (EC Ning), I’m more of a lurker. A taker-in-er, if you will. I do give my opinion about some topics on that site and ask questions and participate in the webinars, but for the most part, I’m just listening in digitally. Sort of like I do in face-to-face classes I take! I appreciated the link for the fake Facebook because, like I told Sally, I want to have my students create a page for those poor homonyms that they keep misinterpreting.

Katie’s demo gave me more resources to help my students think about research. I think I’d like to pair this with my research proposal activity that I did last semester. My students had to give a 3 minute pitch for their topic, and the class voted via PollEverywhere whether the team presenting had done enough “pre-search” to move forward. The sites that Katie showed would definitely provide a good resource about sociological issues that many of my students were interested in.

I found that I was most fascinated by Lil’s presentation on grammar in context. Grammar and poetry are my “bad” areas, and I never feel like I give either of them enoug space in my instruction. My English Ed graduate project was on the topic of grammar, but I don’t think I had enough guidance to narrow it down to a manageable I’ve-got-this sort of study. If, however, I’d have had some of Lil’s strategies, I’m sure that the study would have gone better, but I’d also have actually learned something. I wonder if she’s published other strategies or ideas that I could read about and incorporate? Need to look that up!

Anyway, I’m working on a short time frame here….No power at my house & limited Internet access at Barnes & Noble (I’m at my favorite one this time, though!!). Trying to get my video done for the Day in the Life for today. I had to start over sort of when I found out that both Jessie and I were Storifiying the day! Oops! ((crossing fingers that Mac’s battery holds out while I’m working….the two smelly guys hogging the electrical outlets don’t look like they’re into sharing anything except something only medication could clear up!)).

 

Inquiry Ramblings….

So…I’m sitting here in a (mostly) quiet corner of my (not) favorite Barnes & Noble (the one NOT in Hickory!!). As of now, I have six tabs open in Firefox and two journals open –one on the (too small) table, the other on the chair beside me. I’m not sure what to think yet about my inquiry. In fact, I’m not particularly sure I’ve even settled on a topic–not truly. (Which is obviously why I have so many tabs open!!)

At first, I wanted to investigate writer’s workshop. Then I became very interested in digital writing. And THEN, I became intrigued with creative nonfiction after an especially Ah-ha moment during SI last week (we were talking about poetry & responding to it being overwhelming & Lil says, fairly innocently, “Why? Is all writing not creative?” And I just have to say: “Why Lil??? Why do you have to make me do this hard thinking work??? haha…)

Anyway, so I’ve already said in class that Common Core pushes nonfiction…and the state writing test (for the last year) will require my students to write to a prompt either definition or cause/effect. So I know I need to incorporate more NF in class. I’m wiling to do that. I read a ton of NF –just not as much as Fiction, however. But my students don’t. And I have to teach them to write it (NF). But they can’t write what they don’t read, right?

So, I thought that I’d just jot a few quotes down here–maybe add a few pics– to show my journey of what I’m thinking. For this particular entry, I’m focusing on the creative nonfiction aspect of my inquiry(ies).

First of all, this screencast is from a live webinar I’m “listening” to on the EC Ning site. Some teachers are talking about how to pair classic texts with young adult lit, and the conversation is drifting to Common Core Standards:

“How much ‘creativity’ is acceptable before it’s not nonfiction” just resonates with me for some reason. In one of the articles I’m reading, (The Place of Creative Writing in Composition Studies, by Douglas Hesse) Hesse reiterates this idea through this quote: “Content with growing on its own terms, creative writing in all but rare cases performs no service role, aspires to no across the curriculum infiltration of chemistry or sociology,  and worries little about assessment….The corporate university values creative writing precisely as it produces figures of freedom for the business-oriented, skilled laborers of the captive new class that it trains. We are thus figureheads, beings of leisure, of no real use at all….” (32-33). I think this is why there’s so much emphasis on NF in CCS — creative writing is seen as “lazy” and only for the people who don’t work (didn’t some famous 19th century author say something similar?)

Anyway, for the purposes of this post, I storified “teaching creative nonfiction” and “creative nonfiction” — I just wanted some links that I could go back and read later, when I feel like I have a little more time:

Teaching Creative Nonfiction on Storify

There are several videos that I want to watch…and there’s one SlideShare that has several different kinds of creative nonfiction examples from real world writing. For now, though, I’m changing my definition of “creative writing” — there’s a “story” in just about everything we compose, right? So most, if not all, writing/composing is a creation that our minds thought up or we personally have experienced. Rashid talked about it in his demo today (7/12) that even historical events have story elements, Jessie showed it in her poetry demo (7/8) by trying to get us to tell the story of our mission statement, and I certainly tried to emphasis that when I demoed the Storify site. We’re surrounded by story: characters, events, themes, settings, conflict, etc.

The trick’s going to be whether I can convince my students that an “essay” is just a story in a different form. Maybe I can show them my Harry Potter essay that I wrote for a local contest (even though I flipping lost!). What’s the story in that piece?

(elements of my creative nonfiction ramblings most days!)

 

SI — Reflection Day 4

Oh, man…are we really like half way finished? I’m sad! But there I go….not living in the “now”! I have to stop that…

Today, though, was probably one of the most important for me. And, it was because of Jessie’s poetry! Because poetry is  so “hard,” it’s difficult for me to write or think about responding to. And sometimes my students give me writing that I have no idea how to start helping them, but I think I have a basis to come from in the revision process.   But during our discussion this morning, I realized that ALL writing is creative, not just poetry. And it’s the language/titles/labels that I (well not just me, I guess) give to different types of writing that continues this cycle of one type of writing is more or less creative than another, so then the writers of that particular genre are labeled as more or less creative, and then how in the world can my students enter that world (or me, for that matter)? I mean….I’m not creative (“You must be mistaken. I can’t be a wizard. I’m just…Harry.” — from Harry Potter & the Sorceror’s Stone).

The mini-sessions were very informative and a wonderful way to get a ton of info at one time. I like how we could join in or not, but the community that we have become respected each other’s need to consume or create! Lacy’s part on writing workshop really helped me visualize a new way to see writing workshop, so I’m excited about planning that out.

And, I adored the Gallery Walk….and there were so many different ways that we expressed our writing histories. I’m wondering what my students would do with this? I do think it was very important to have this “performance” piece now, rather than wait until the end of the institute next week.

 

SI — Day 1 Reflection

I think I’m going to have to reflect as I go along during the day rather than wait until the end — I lose what I was going to say!!

Despite feeling overwhelmed by the fast-pace of the writing times, and my realization that I HATE writing about my negative writing history, I think today was phenomenal. One major find for me today during the “visualize” portion of the writing history, was my tendency to want to “dress up” my writing — to make it fancy or polished so who ever I’m writing for will like it (UGGHHHH…I sound like a FaceBook ad!!)

I don’t think this is a bad thing necessarily…just something I need to keep in mind when I get blocked again during this Summer Institute. My writing doesn’t have to be perfect (dressed up) when I first start….or when I finish. That’s what revising is all about! 😉

 

Digital Writing

I’ve pretty much decided to demo something about digital writing. Unfortunately, I’m still pretty muddled about the particulars. One of my teacher-goals this year was to be more deliberate in using technology, and in that, I’ve totally succeeded. My students have blogged, created videos (photo-stories), used back-channeling  in Edmodo and WallWisher, uploaded assignments, responded to polls and quick surveys, created animated avatars (Voki), used Glogster and Prezi, and embedded videos and pictures.

Here is their WallWisher page for Dante’s Inferno vokis…http://www.wallwisher.com/embed/yapVpbmECT  ((Sorry–WordPress doesn’t do too much Flash video…but the link will go to the page))  And here is an example of our use of backchanneling using WallWisher: http://www.wallwisher.com/embed/englishIIresearch ((If you read this and try the links, you may get a message saying that there’s a “Glitch in the System” — just refresh, and it will eventually hiccup into the right spot!!))

So, that’s sort of the problem with all the digital media I’ve used this school year: the tech is not reliable enough at school for programs to work correctly every day. Most days, we’re hit or miss, which causes no end to frustration, and makes me play my favorite song:

((The audio here flakes in and out, so here are the “lyrics”……))

Why do you love me? Why do you need me? ALways and forever We met in a chat room Now our love can fully bloom Sure the world wide web is great But you you make me salvivate Yes I love technology But not as much as you you see But I still love technology Always and forever Our love is like a flock of doves Flying up to Heaven above Always and forever Always and forever.

And, to be quite honest, I’m not exactly sure what they learned…or were supposed to learn. Did I just waste their time? Should I have had them finish reading Night and write a book review?  Does it matter that they knew about Dante’s Inferno? How did those Vokis make them any more literate??

Anyway, as a last project, my sophomores created digital book trailers for one of the books they read this semester. While I didn’t go through the entire lesson the way I think I should have (due to time running out), I think it was a worthwhile venture, and, whether my students learned anything other than how to create a slideshow/video/photostory, I learned a lot about how to equate digital writing processes and “normal” writing processes. I think this is the part I’d like to explore with the group in July…but, like I said, I haven’t formed the “right” and meaningful questions yet.

Interestingly enough, while I was thinking about this tonight and surfing some digital writing sites, I found a teachers’ blog–Bud the Teacher–– who talked about his blogging process and how he wanted to approach blogging with his students. This post may not interest anyone else, but I just needed it for my own records…I like his idea of explicitly detailing what kinds of “things” go into a blog…how to comment…how to connect with a reader/audience….how to link to other ideas–these are areas that I wanted my students to do as well—I tend to be the kind of blogger who LOVES to link to news articles, websites, and media (Can you tell???). I told my students that it was in those connections that they could make their writing come alive–their voice would shine–and their message would be a thousand times stronger! Some of them caught on, and others struggled just to remember their password each day!!! heeheee…..Kids are silly sometimes!