After a weekend of visiting with old friends, a trip to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and ripping out the bushes in front of my house to make way for new plants, I was feeling a bit behind in homework. I managed to pull it all together in time for class this morning though. One of the first things Dr. A mentioned in his lecture was a test he would be giving today that would count for 50% of our grade. Before anyone began hyperventilating, he grinned and let us know it was his idea of a joke. I have done this to my own students before. It's good to keep a sense of humor as both a teacher and student.
We didn't get as much time to paint today and spent more time discussing our latest class reading, Kathleen Walsh-Piper's Image to Word. My table realized as we talked how important it is to make meaning out of the things we see. The act of writing and the act of viewing art or anything require you to slow down and ponder. Ponder does not get used much in our cultural vocabulary anymore. I am not calling for our entire life to slow down, but I think it is really valuable to carve out time to understand yourself through something like writing or painting.
Which means enough reflection, and time for me to create.

A teacher's summer

Two weeks into my second class (Creativity in Teaching Composition) of the summer, I'm realizing how little time there is to just think during the school year. After my two hour class each day, I come home to eat a relaxed lunch and maybe watch a TED talk or an Anthony Bourdain episode. I almost enjoy doing my homework for my class (partly because half of it involves painting abstract art) since the homework is to practice my own personal writing. There are a couple of texts we use in the course, and there is plenty of guidance so you can't spend much time experiencing writer's block. Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones is THE book you need if you have ever considered putting pen to paper. All of this self-reflection on my writing and teaching writing got me to thinking about my students (past and present) for at least the zillionth time this summer. For having "time off" from school, this certainly isn't feeling very much like time off...

A teacher friend turned me on to the website and app, Good Reads. It is brilliant for those who love to read and I can't help but think of ways I could use this in the classroom. Some of the reviews out there on the website are so well written and I can definitely see students responding strongly to what others are saying. I am determined to include more student-selected reading this coming school year and I feel like this might be a tool to help me accomplish that. After our second month reading The Count of Monte Cristo last year, I still think it is important to have common knowledge in our culture into books by authors like Alexandre Dumas... BUT it is important that my students find something that catches their imaginations too. 

This is the time of the summer when I start to loose my previous year's feeling of desperation and regain hope for what my students and I can do in the coming year. I am so excited at this moment about getting back to my classroom and reading and writing. 

Here is a video my classmates and I created in our Literacy course at OU - Enjoy!

Literacy Readings

Citations:
Allington, R.L. & Gabriel, R.E. (2012). Six elements for every child. Reading: The Core Skill 69(6), 10-15.
Allyn, P. (2012). Taming the wild text. Reading: The Core Skill 69(6). 16-21.
Grandin, T. (1997). Thinking the way animals do. Western Horseman. 140-145.
Phillips, A.M. (2012). Nonfiction curriculum enhanced reading skills, study finds. The New York Times.

Summary:
Richard Allington and Rachael Gabriel list six elements they say every child needs at school every day. Their six elements are: student selected reading materials, reading accurately, reading understandable texts, reading personally meaningful materials, talking with peers about reading and writing, listening to fluent adults read aloud.
Pam Allyn list ten strategies to encourage reading amongst her students. The ten strategies are: don't judge the reader, offer a variety of materials, provide time for dialogue, give readers a tool kit, let readers read at comfort level, allow students to discuss books deeply, value browsing and re-reading, build stamina, teach students to curate their own reading lives, remember that joy matters.
Anna Phillips writes about a studies findings that students who were taught from a "Core Knowledge" program scored better on standardized tests than students who were taught from a "balanced literacy" program. Balanced literacy involved more student choice. The students were evaluated in kindergarten through second grade. Several teachers spoke in favor of balanced literacy.
Temple Grandin is a professor in the department of animal science who has autism. She wrote about "Thinking the Way Animals Do" because autism causes her to share characteristics with how animals see the world. She focuses on thinking images instead of words and what that means for both humans and animals.

Commentary:
The last print article embedded in the packet Dr. Baines gave at the end of class provides a real life example of how current educational policy struggles to adopt the simple, effective, and positive elements Allington, Gabriel, and Allyn would like to see implemented in most classes. In the article, the Core Knowledge program is "based on the theory that children raised reading storybooks will lack the necessary background and vocabulary to understand history and science texts" (Phillips). It chooses for the student what they should read, instead of encouraging any sort of reading, as Pam Allyn proposes.
Temple Grandin's article, while about animals' thought processes, tied in neatly to these other articles. If we pay attention the way she describes peoples' different ways of thinking, then we have to be mindful that programs that turn from storybooks may actually be turning from students that need that sort of engagement.

Most Interesting Sentence:
Instead, despite good intentions, educators often make decisions about instruction that compromise or supplant the kind of experiences all children need to become engaged, successful readers. - Richard Allington and Rachael Gabriel

A poem I have written for my graduate class:


The Long Breath

Lost in thought
Wordlessly; continued into the streetlight
Jagged edges because of notes that stuck out
Like black keys and a long expanse of ivory.

Wordlessly, they continued outside
Jarring her serenity
Like black keys and a long expanse of ivory -
A large block to weigh the whole thing down.

Jarring her out of serenity
He walked slowly toward the exit,
The large block weighs the whole thing down.
James took a deep breath.

I am having trouble with the sound file link. Please let me know if it works for you. Thanks!
A link to my online sound file

Finding a Definition of Technology...

Kevin Kelly talks through his thoughts on technology's history, how it should be viewed, and how it has a role in who we are as human beings. As he took the listeners from his year without technology bike-riding across America to the plea that "we have a moral obligation to invent technology", I was struck by his description of technology. His descriptions created the idea that technology is a living organism, almost outside of our control as humans. In his words, "technology never really dies. " A page from a late 1800 Montgomery Ward catalog supports this theory since all of the tools on the page are still in production today.

He wanted to elevate it to a place in the scientific classification as the seventh kingdom. The idea that something humans created stepping outside of human control has fed science fiction for years. If I stop to think about it abstractly, it makes me wary of these tools. However, when I am faced with a new tool, I am engrossed in the possibilities it provides.

His question was "what does technology want?' My question is "what does technology want from my students?" According to Kelly's logic, it wants them to explore every avenue of its chance, possibility, opportunity, etc. In this scenario, I can guide students and redirect them as they tackle these possibilities. This is a topic to revist later...I need to mull it over some more...

Using a Blog as a Teacher

When the school year began and the mug on my desk was still full of newly sharpened pencils, I discovered that my students could all set up accounts with Google through our school. Possibilities kept spilling from my mind as I bounced ideas off my resourceful librarians.
I created a mini-unit specifically for blogging about the book my classes were reading at the time, The Count of Monte Cristo. My objectives for the students included deeper understanding of the complicated plot, nicely composed responses to student written questions, and greater familiarity with the process of blogging itself. Some students responded to the lessons with enthusiasm, while several seemed reluctant to "play" with this available technology. Since there were a few students in each class that did not have reliable internet access at home or had not returned their permission slip to create a Google account, I put them into pairs. I had hoped for more student buy-in, but these digital natives did not turn into digital citizens automatically.
Because of my experiences with the blogs earlier in the year, I have not revisited a way for my students to use them successfully. The two biggest obstacles I found included lack of access to the technology, both at school and at the students' homes and the students' hesitation in experimenting with something new.
In my ideal world, the blogs would be an ideal place to start a constructive "back channel" venue for them to question class lectures, post their thoughts that come in the middle of a lesson, learn more about themselves as composers, and deepen their connections to our lessons in class. I am looking forward to finding out if next year's sophomores will be more likely to write a blog post than the kids I have this year.
Since student blogging is still something I am working out as a teacher, the most effective use of blogging as a teacher comes from the information I see on other blogs. There are so many relevant ideas for me to find when I need help adding to my units of study. Most of the time I search for school-related information, I find a blog entry or two (or twenty) to read. NCTE also links to several noteworthy blogs in their weekly email called Inbox.
I will keep reading those ideas and searching for the best practices to include blogging in my students' academic lives.

Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Thanks to one of my classes this semester, I read an article by Garret Keizer in Harper's Magazine September 2011 edition called "The Re-Education of an American Teacher". The idea I couldn't shake came from the end of the article when he references the Romans eventual defeat of Carthage, where they discovered sacrifices of children to Moloch. Is my classroom sacrificing these kids to Moloch, the Pearson standardized testing god? I hope not! So the question then becomes, what do I do to support my students in the best possible way? Our school has certain texts that we teach to the sophomores, but I wonder if they wouldn't be better served by taking away one of those texts and just spending time looking for books they would enjoy reading... I'll keep you updated on my thoughts.

Welcome to my first blog!

I love to teach English. This blog is designed to explore deep meaningful questions, such as "What is the meaning of a high school student?" and "Is it possible to use an Xbox Connect in my classroom to see my students learn more?"

So my first post is a rough introduction to me:

First, you need to know that I believe literature is deeply meaningful, wildly fascinating, and the window to our souls. As a subject to be taught in schools, it has both practical and cultural significance. Reading and writing well can make anyone a powerful communicator. The better you become at expressing yourself, whether in a memo to your company's employees or a research report for a scientific study, the better you become at the career you have chosen.

    More importantly, though, literature helps us find meaning. As a curious species, we are on a constant quest for answers to every kind of question, from soul searching to obtuse inquiries. Where do people turn when they want to find out the meaning of life? They turn to a book. Where do people go when they want to find out who Bella will choose in New Moon? They go to a book. Even if people access the answer online, they are still navigating the written word to do so. My passion is literature and I hope to help spark that fire in students.

    Secondly, I see teaching as a critical profession. There is so much to be gained in a classroom if students and parents are willing and ready to go after it. My colleagues are some of the brightest, most dedicated people I know. We work long hours to perfect lessons, help students who did not understand in class, and organize extra-curricular activities. Summers are not so much time off as they are an opportunity to breathe after a vigorous school year, take workshops with Collegeboard's Advanced Placement program or Folger Library (among many others), and finally get to read the stack of novels that went unfinished during the school year. I have a vision for what teaching and schools could be and I hope to express that with the assistance of my studies as a master of English Education student.