Writing for our Students

I recently got a new teaching position that puts me in contact with truly gifted students. I mean, they are scary smart. One student was able to detail for me the specific technological specs on Wednesday's iOS 5 down to how they rewrote the code (if this seems vague, it is because his discussion was over my head). At the same time, the student could not write a crisp and pithy sentence to save his life. I thought I was going to have to start charging gas money for traveling those convoluted, passive-voice-driven superhighways of syntax. The experience is part of a lesson I have been learning since I began this job: genius does not make one smart.

These gifted students suffer from one of the most heinous educational problems of our day: neglect based on ability, or conscientious neglect (I am not basing this term on any research, it is something I am trying to define). Conscientious neglect is the teacher who does not provide scaffolding or clearly-written instructions or criteria because his or her students are not low-performing.

I am struggling right now with figuring out how much direct instruction and scaffolding is needed to help my gifted students increase their ability to read. Yep, you read that. We received the results of our literacy test back from our coordinator and some of my students were below basic. Why? Well, let's detail some possibilities: it was a diagnostic, so they blew it off; the test was beneath them; the testing administrator and a data entry person may have entered some data incorrectly. Now, let me give you some reasons why the scores seem accurate: they are consistently low in nonfiction as opposed to fiction; they are struggling with finding main ideas in nonfiction, a fact mirrored in their writing; the curriculum provides for almost zero nonfiction in 4 years.

The curriculum is the biggest stumbling block. In four years, the extent of their nonfiction includes: works read for research (a.k.a. without teacher guidance), a handful of essays, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and Slouching towards Bethlehem. The irony here is that most programs for struggling readers swear by nonfiction for engaging and training their pupils.

On top of this pile lie assignments whose clarity is akin to the expressions of the Rapa Nui statues. There is enough detail to recognize human faces in those stern stone carvings, but to get more requires feats of invention and imagination, two things that students trying to follow instructions don't need muddying the waters. I mean, writing research papers on literature is hard enough without being unclear about the criteria.

As the National Day on Writing approaches, I encourage all of us to look at what we have written for our students. Are we modeling the care necessary to help our students succeed in class? Or are we being conscientious neglecters, overestimating or unfairly burdening our students' abilities to see into our minds and figure out what we want? I know I have some ways to go before finding that balance for my gifted students, but it is a journey, an examination, worth taking.

Using Prezi to teach Poetry

by Tara Seale

Prezi is similar to PowerPoint, but so much more. It is like putting an extra shot of espresso in your Starbuck's. The wide canvas, the zooming in and out, and the novelty make it an engaging tool for presenting new information to students.

Lisa Westbrook, a 9th grade English teacher at Bryant High School, is currently using Prezi to do just that. Recently, she created a Prezi to teach her students how to analyze poetry. Click on the image below to view Lisa's prezi.

Keeping the Webs Off - "Making Summer Count"

As a teacher of AP students, I have become intimately familiar with the annual struggle that is summer assignments. How much do I assign? How much do I respect the students' need for a break? How do I keep them learning while they wait to return in September (ok, this one might be a bit optimistically stated)?

The truth is that this choice is difficult. So, where do you draw the line?

First, we need to consider if the line is even necessary. Do students need activities to do over the summer? The purpose of such activities is to stop the gap that develops over the course of the summer. Keeping the academic side of the brain active is important, especially when students are going to be asked to college-level work upon their return. A recent study cited in an article from Utah's The Salt Lake Tribune shows that students lose an average of one month of learning over the summer. For students on an alternating day schedule, that is one-half of a marking period. For students on an everyday 7-period day, that is three-quarters of a marking period. For students on an everyday block schedule, that is an entire marking period. And some of my colleagues wonder why students don't take the final quarter seriously.

So, keeping students active academically in the summertime is important. How do we honor their lives as people, too? we provide them the choice of how to exercise their academic muscles. I am going to detail my summer assignment for AP English Language and Composition below. I am sharing this assignment to show how I respect students' time over the summer and still get them to practice good academic habits.

Requirement 1: A Writer's Notebook

Students are asked to keep a notebook about their lives over the summer. They are asked to place one entry per week of the summer in the journal in any form they wish. They can write about what they are doing in any form from poetry to prose. These entries are used later in the first quarter to talk about different modes of writing.

Requirement 2: Rhetorical Note Cards

I provide students with a list of rhetorical terms and logical fallacies. Over the course of the summer, students are asked to define each term on a flashcard. Then, they must provide an example of each term from something they've read. This leads me to the final requirement.

Requirement 3: Reading

Student must read one age- and ability-appropriate fiction and nonfiction piece over the summer. I use part of the final weeks of the year (you know, the post-state-testing lull) to introduce incoming AP students to rhetorical analysis. Students must analyze both texts rhetorically and write a brief essay explaining the big differences in analysis of fictional and nonfictional texts. I provide the students with some options of fiction and nonfiction texts, but ultimately they decide what they read and then get approval for their choices. In this way, I can join them in their discovery of new texts through the recommendations they make.

All in all, students do the following over the summer:

1. Write one paper

2. Keep a journal with a minimum of nine entries

3. Read two books: one fiction, one nonfiction

4. Create some note cards

Thus far, that is the best I have devised in terms of respecting my students' lives over the summer while still getting them to practice their academic skills. What I would like to see happen is something like this summer assignment with one-on-one academic counseling for ALL students. According to the article from The Salt Lake Tribune, students from lower socioeconomic brackets "don’t catch up during the summer, and they lose more ground the next summer. Over time, that loss is cumulative, and it’s really hurting [them]."

Imagine if teachers were given eleven months of pay instead of ten. The extra month would account for an every other week open academic "camp" for students whose families cannot afford to send them. AP students, those with the most academic ability, are being given an advantage that would really help lower-income students; however, they would need guidance and an accountability system to ensure that they show up. After all, schools are failing lower-income students everyday, why should they believe that a summer program would actually help them?

These are just some ideas about how to address the summer gap. I am going to get my hands on a copy of that report from The Salt Lake Tribune and see what they have to say. In the mean time, here is the electronic copy.

What ways do you stimulate student learning over the summer? Do you believe there should even be summer assignments? Would you support summer assignments with direct instruction for all students?

McCombs, J. Sloan, C. H. Augustine, H. L. Schwartz, S. J. Bodilly, B. McInnis, D. S. Lichter and A. Brown Cross. Making summer count: How summer programs can boost children's learning. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2011. http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG1120. Also available in print form.

The iPad 2

by Tara Seale
My school district recently purchased an iPad 2 for my classroom. Up until now, I was not sure how I could engage students using only one iPad in my classroom, and like most educators, I believe technology is only worth spending money on if it can engage multiple students, so I was not too excited about the first iPad. That has all changed with the iPad 2.
Why? The original iPad had great apps, and it served as a great experience for one student, but for an entire class to view an app and all of its features, a student, a group of students, or a teacher would have to demonstrate the product produced with the app under a document camera, which would produce blurry images, be difficult to see, and lack engagement. Not really worth the money.

The current version of the iPad has changed the blurry images into clear images which can be viewed using an adapter for a tv screen or an overhead projector. You need an Apple Digital AV Adapter for $39 if you are using an HDMI port or an HDTV monitor. I am not quite as lucky to have those options, and I doubt many classroom teachers have those options, but the $29 Apple VGA adapter works well with classroom overhead projectors. In my classroom, I run the VGA cable through the ELMO to my Smartboard, but you do not need an ELMO or a Smartboard, the ipad will connect straight to the projector with an adapter.

The apps a teacher can use with students for presentations are numerous. Teachers and students can present information to the rest of the students in the class in a variety of engaging apps. If you are interested in exploring apps to use in a high school classroom, check out the following links: iPads in Schools, best free apps for education, and Cybrary Man's website with numerous links to articles and iPad apps.

I took the photo at a the Hot Springs Institute for Technology conference Schools Without Walls iPad workshop. At the workshop, teachers used the app Puppet Pals to create puppet shows to tell the stories of famous legends. To show the audience the puppet shows, teachers placed the iPad 2 on the dock which has a port for a VGA adapter, as shown in the photo. The adapter is connected to the the LCD cable which projected the puppet show onto the screen for all to see and hear.

National Board Requirements: Rigorous and Rewarding

by Tara Seale
Recently, I completed my last national board requirement: the ELA Adolescence and Young Adulthood Assessment. What a relief!
The portfolio alone is daunting, and after the stress of mailing it off, I still faced the final assessment at the assessment center.
If you are wondering if you should attempt National Board, as a first year candidate, I would like to provide advice. I am in my sixth year of teaching, and this is the first year in which I feel like I am prepared to tackle the demands of National Board and also have a chance of passing. I realize that you can sign up for National Boards before your sixth year of teaching, and I wish the best to those teachers, but I could not have completed all parts of the portfolio. I do not want to sound too disparaging, but if you have less than five or six years teaching experience, this process is intimidating and stressful. With that said, attempting national boards has not only been one of the most demanding experiences of my teaching career, it has also been one of the most insightful.
Because I had one of the best reviewers possible, Delynne West, an elementary music teacher in my school district, I soon realized, thanks to her commentary, that I was a descriptive writer and not an analytical writer. Describing what I hoped to achieve and how I hoped to achieve it is just part of the National Board process, but not the most important part. National Board focuses on the student, and not what the teacher is doing.
As a frequent blogger, I write out descriptive examples of lesson plans and activities, and National Board assessors are somewhat interested in what I plan to attempt in the classroom, but mostly they are concerned with how it impacts students. I might have the greatest idea ever, but if it lacks rationale and if I cannot explain student impact, then it is irrelevant.
My greatest challenge in completing my National Board Portfolio was overcoming my descriptive writing and delving into the reasons I do what I do in the classroom. It is not enough that I believe that I know what I am doing, I still have to explain my decisions to people who have an interest in the achievements of my students: administrators, other teachers, parents, national board assessors, and of course, myself.
It is that process that has shaped me and forced me to continue to grow, challenge, and expect more from my students as I grow, challenge, and expect more from myself.
If you had asked me in February how I felt about National Boards, I probably would have asked you how I could escape the process without owing money back to my state, but just like my students who at mid-year always act like I am expecting too much out of them, I acquiesced and found a way to continue, believe, and succeed.
Most of us, teachers and students alike, need to be pushed to be the person, the inspiration, and the leader we can be. National Boards is definitely the institution that has pushed me to that next level.
So now that I have completed this process and I have the long wait until November to see if I have attained the standards to become a National Board Certified Teacher, I want to commiserate with the other teachers who are waiting with me, but I also want to celebrate the teachers who have attained National Board. You have achieved an award that affirms you are a hardworking teacher, and most importantly, your students know that you teach with your heart; therefore, you serve as an inspiration to other teachers to work through this rigorous and rewarding process.

Enough Already

The great philosopher/education advocate Neil Postman is fond of quoting Marshall McLuhan's famous phrase "the message is the medium." The case of Natalie Munroe ties directly to this concept. Ms. Munroe is the teacher who has lately been under attack for a blog that had some *ahem* controversial statements on it. Some people love her; they taut her as the newest voice in educational truth. Others hate her; they believe she represents all that is wrong with the modern educational system: the teachers. With any luck, these polarized and myopic views will fall aside and Ms. Munroe will become a representative of what freedom truly means.

In Experience and Education, John Dewey had the following to say about the nature of freedom:

"The only freedom that is of any importance is freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worthwhile."

This is particularly apt in the case of Ms. Munroe. If you click the title of this post, you will be taken to a website that had coverage of the story last week. Notice the clever removal from context of the phrases in the second paragraph. If these phrases were located near names or even highly intricate descriptions of students, I might understand. As it is, they were written in a way that preserved student anonymity; thus, no one's rights were violated. What really rankles people, especially those who left the inane comments below the story, is that this teacher would have the temerity to speak about the frustrations of her classroom in a public forum (yes, the internet is a public space; however, that is an issue for a whole different post).

At the climax of Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead, Howard Roark dynamites the Cortlandt Housing Project because other men warped his design. In his speech before the jury at his trial, he gives voice to Rand's philosophy saying that the creator's vision is his representation of truth. Essentially, the manipulation of Roark's original plan is tantamount to the construction of a physical lie, something that is an affront to all free, truth-loving people everywhere. Many high-level academics and most of the "mob" that is the general public want justice. In the end, they see the validity of Roark's position and acquit him. Then, as now, the general public does not wish to allow the truth to exist, but it continues to try and work its way to the surface.

Were Ms. Munroe's statements bitter? Yes. Were Ms. Munroe's statements true? If experience holds true, then yes. Should she have published them in the public eye? Yes.

Reformers from Michelle Rhee to that one lady at every school board meeting have ideas about how to fix public education. They have magic bullets galore, giant magazines of silver panaceas that rip through the windows and walls of our classrooms, destroying more than they create. The children get hurt, proper teaching gets sidelined, and generations are lost in the cross-fire. Then, these reformers turn to teachers with a pointed finger, wagging it in their faces until it accidentally fires which usually happens when one of them opens his or her mouth.

The awful truth is that people do not want to be confronted with the nasty human complexity of public schooling. The dialectic of freedom becomes a monologue of oppression, both of mind and spirit. Are there problem students? Yes. Do they affect classrooms and good teaching? Everyday. What Ms. Munroe is guilty of, if anything, is having the guts to exercise her rights as a person to pursue liberty on the behalf of others. She opened up a channel of communication between her classroom (a traditionally cloistered place) and the community.

So, let them charge after her. Let them wag their loaded fingers in her face. Let them do what they will. Ms. Munroe should stand tall, proud of the dialectic she has begun. As a citizen of these United States, regardless of the digital nature of the discourse, she has a right to free speech. She has that freedom and she has shown that she will utilize it. The message is in the medium: freedom comes from the writing, from the ubiquity and accessibility of the blog. Let us not forget, as teachers, that we have a voice just like Ms. Munroe. The best support we can offer her is the use of them.

Do WE Make a Difference? - Happiness as a Goal of Education

I apologize if this post smells of mothballs. I am utilizing some skills I had packed away.

ὅτε ἥμην νήπιος, ἐλάλουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐφρόνουν ὡς νήπιος, ἐλογιζόμην ὡς νήπιος· ὅτε γέγονα ἀνήρ, κατήργηκα τὰ τοῦ νηπίου.

The passage above is 1 Corinthians 13:11. One of my party tricks comes from the B.A. I have in Classical Studies, specifically Ancient Greek. Yes, I spent time earning that degree. The thing is, there is something liberating in translating a passage of Greek (says the ultimate Nerd). As I translated this one, I felt something familiar stir in me: a sense of discovery. Every time I translate a passage, I discover something unexpected. Consider my translation of the verse from Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth:

"When I was still a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I reasoned as a child: When I became a man, I nullified those childish things."

ἐφρόνουν means to care thoughtfully about something, hence understood. Meanwhile, ἐλογιζόμην means to reason out, like an argument. Both words represent thought of one kind or another, but both are present in the man as a child. Essentially, taken together, they equal the curiosity of the child, the sense of wonder children have innately wired to their perceptions of the world. As Willingham (2009) points out, people are very curious, but they are not naturally great thinkers. This is, of course, where schools come in, interceding and unintentionally severing the sense of wonder.

In a recent blog post (click the title of this post to read it), Jim Burke alludes to Hesse's Siddhartha, referencing how people must become their own teachers take "what wisdom will help us make sense of the world and find our place and purpose in that world." The heart of the post considers whether or not what teachers do makes a difference. People seek Truth about how to be happy, sending their nets into murkier and murkier waters only to come back with unrecognizable fish. The question of difference-making does revolve around whether or not the students we teach go on to successful and healthy lives, but I think happiness is perhaps something that is not readily added to that list. In large part, that is probably because nobody really knows what happiness , or "subjective well-being," is.

The verse from 1 Corinthians comes from the famous "Love" chapter; if anything makes people happy, it has to be love. Right? Well, coincidentally, the chapter contains another verse discussing how love helps us to "know as we are known." One of my thinking role models is Parker Palmer who wrote a book entitled To Know as We Are Known. One of the chapters is called "Knowing is Loving." OK. So Love, that which makes people happy, is knowing. Knowing what? Anything, says Palmer, as long as it is a knowledge that springs from love. Seems a little circular? Let me explain.

Quoting Dostoevsky, Palmer says that a knowledge that comes from love can be a "harsh and beautiful thing." He says that knowledge from love "may require us to change, even sacrifice, for the sake of what we know...If we want a knowledge that will rebind our broken world, we must reach for that deeper passion" (p. 9). He explains that "deeper passion" as "a bond of awesome responsibility as well as transforming joy; it will call us to involvement, mutuality, accountability" (p. 9).

So, I must whip a classroom full of thirty-five young minds into the fever pitch of a church revival over the greatness of Shakespeare. I can just see it now... Nope, just a pep rally.

In seriousness, Palmer does make a fantastic point when it comes to involvement, mutuality, and accountability; a point that Nel Noddings validates in Happiness and Education. She writes, "education for happiness must include education for unhappiness as well" (p. 36, emphasis from the original). Noddings makes the argument that, from the care theory perspective, students must understand both in order to make a happy life because happiness and suffering are always together. Essentially, without understanding what one has to offer, the other only provides a shadow of itself: hollow happiness or sham suffering.

I think she is right. As a rule, adolescents do not know what happiness is because they do not appreciate their unhappiness. Some may, given the family struggles stemming from the recession of recent years. Still others may not have ever felt true suffering and thus cannot understand true happiness. They find their great moment of joy in meaningless pursuits, chasing frivolity after frivolity, making fewer and fewer wise decisions. In essence, they never become "men" and throw away their childish understandings. When I was a child, I understood and reasoned as a child; anyone who spends time with children will tell you that childish understandings and reasoning are cute.

Childish reasoning is cute because it is innocent. They have "faith, hope, and love" in abundance: faith in their families, hope in their developing understanding of the future, and love for just about anything. Just the other day, my son, a fan of the Disney movie Cars, told me, unprompted, that the car he was holding was Lightning McQueen and that he loves him. At first, I was amazed and warmed by the sentiment; then, I felt embarrassed. Suddenly I had scene after scene of me as a child placing inordinate value on toys and video games flashing before my eyes. As a man, I was embarrassed by the things I loved as a child. I mean, who values a video game featuring pixelated Italian plumbers jumping on all sorts of creatures to save a princess. I certainly did; however, there are so many more things in my life that have so much more concrete value.

So, knowing is love. Love is harsh and beautiful, but also patient, kind. I think that is where we, the public school teachers, come in and make our great difference. We live out love and knowing through our faith and hope in our students. We incorporate Noddings's idea of educating for both happiness and suffering when we ask students to read books like Night and articles about modern-day genocides and then ask students what they mean. When not everyone in our AP and Honors classes gets an A, we teach about suffering and the value of hard work. We seek to understand knowing because we love 150+ kids from other peoples' homes unconditionally and we challenge them to love us back every day. That is the difference we make. That is the lesson on happiness we have to offer.

In Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet, the title character offers the following about teaching:

"The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness. If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind."

That is what we as English teachers do best. That is what we should encourage all teachers to do best. We don't feed students knowledge like Grape Nuts, telling them they need more fiber so they should suck it up. We pick out a story, we guide them along its meandering pages, and we help them to see the reflection of themselves in the revelatory light of its ending. We are truly "offering something to children that should increase their lifelong happiness...Some things, even in schools, should be offered as gifts - no strings, no tests attached." We do this easily when we remember, as we get up way too early, as we drive hazily to our schools, as we look at our diminishing paychecks, as we feel the crush of more and more students, that we are rising to go to a building, to talk to kids, to teach them about literature, to talk about a book of all things, to help them see the potential for faith, hope, love, and happiness in each of their lives.

As we turn the corner into a new semester, or as we have turned the corner, I hope you'll keep this happiness in mind (it is a long way to Spring Break).