June 9, 2013 · 2:04 pm

The Day When the Kids Ran the Show: Student-Generated Rubrics

There’s the school of thought that encourages teachers to turn over creation of a classroom rubric to students. I’ve known about that school, but have always regarded it as entirely too time-consuming: brainstorming? Discussion? Consensus? Couldn’t I just do that with other assignments? Better still, couldn’t I just use my trusty rubric and move around some of the categories if I was doing something different?

Chalk this one up to always learning (me as teacher as much as them as students).

We have about two weeks left in school and my students have been writing a series of processing papers (called Inquiry Papers) guided by their own questions as they read Frankenstein. I generally don’t grade them until the end; rather, I just look over the questions, give them completion credit, and make broad comments about themes I see across the papers. Now, though, it’s time to grade their best work. Thus, it also seemed an appropriate time to try out something new (I’ve been working on not rolling out too many new ideas, but instead being thoughtful about what the kids need at the time, what I need and ultimately by what is most important for them and what we’ve set out to do): student-generated rubrics!

I began by asking them to do a brain dump of the qualities for an Inquiry Paper that meets expectations. From there, they brainstormed all the skills one would need to be able to write such a paper, which then became criteria that was then grouped into categories. My directions to students were broad: after they’d done the brainstorm, they then had to figure out what it made sense to be evaluated on and they had to reach consensus. Thus, I was going to observe their process to make sure everyone was involved–no one could sit and watch. Then I pretended to busy myself doing something else, but I could hear them and make covert observations.

What did I see? First, the discussion of everything we’ve been working on skill wise: “the question has to be a HOTS-one” (from Bloom’s taxonomy); “I think the quality of the question is really important”; “yeah, but you better analyze it”; “no hit and run quotes”; “the analysis has to be thorough”; “I don’t think you should put a formula in there [re: number of paragraphs]; she doesn’t care about how many paragraphs you have, she cares more about what you have to say and how you say it” (I almost collapsed with joy on that one, btw), and on and on they went.

A student from each class volunteered to type up the rubric and we looked it over the next day for any revisions (there were few). Now, students have a few days to evaluate their papers against the rubric, pick their very best inquiry paper, make any necessary revisions, and submit that paper for a grade.

I know those papers will be of the best they’ll write all year. I just know it.

Next year, I’m going to start the year with this exercise: students will have a few analytical papers that we’ll read (and practice our close reading skills, for sure), then we’ll do the same process. Thus, they’ll know what is expected from the beginning, and what it looks like, in their own language, but we’ll also constantly revise the rubric (well, they will and I’ll use what we come up with) as they develop more mastery with the content and  become more sophisticated writers (I have to give credit to my co-worker who made this suggestion about how to extend this process).

The theory met the practice when they created the rubrics, and the result was, as usual, fantastic.

You just have to let them be great, and you just have to go along for the ride.

Here you go if you want to see for yourself English Rubric 4th block

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May 23, 2013 · 9:03 am

#lcotw: Literary Citizens of the World

I have amazing abilities. Being in two places simultaneously, however, is not one. With the start of my graduate summer class, I found myself having to choose (or, as it were, having it decided for me): the big kids won out.

That meant that after talking up Chimimanda Adichie’s visit to Harvard Square as our next big event, my younger kids would have to go on their own. She’s become something of our own celebrity: we watch her Ted Talk about the danger of a single story and use it as a guiding question throughout the year as we interrogate single stories about colonialism, and that then trickles into everything else as we check ourselves and our own single stories (when kids dip into stereotypes, someone will suggest they stop buying into the single story…it’s awesome).

I managed to make it to the reading early into the Q & A. The place was jammed, so I stood in the back, way past being able to see or hear anything, but there’s something comforting and powerful about spaces where we are all gathered to hear, read and think about books.

Because I am a compulsive reader, too, it was only because I was looking over the selection of new books that I saw one of my students, propped up between the bookshelves, watching the reading via remote screen. When I made my way over to her, she smiled, said she’d been there for the whole thing, that she was having a hard time hearing the reading given her location, but she was happy she’d come.

As the reading ended and people began streaming out, I heard several students joyfully calling to me: they’d arrived early and were front row (!), were a bit breathless about being in the same room with Adichie (who was lovely combinations of funny, thoughtful, brilliant), and as many waited to meet her, we had an informal confab, there in the aisles of the bookstore and talked about the experience, about asking her questions about Half a Yellow Sun, about being out late on a school night to attend a reading.

This is what it means to be a Literary Citizen of the World.

When I taught in the city, I would take kids with me everywhere: readings, plays, events that helped them broaden their understanding of what it means to be a person who thinks and reads broadly in this world. Often the events were free, and other times I managed to get us comp tickets, but those adventures around this city were some of the more memorable ones for how it helped kids think of themselves and the spaces where they could be in, while helping me love them even more.

During my sabbatical, though, it was simply too hard to devote any time other than to learning what was up, so the LCOTW was temporarily disbanded.

I resurrected it this year because I’m in the city again, and I have kids who like showing up for stuff: they’ve attended documentary screenings, conferences, plays, readings and other performances, and now they talk about those events with a confidence and nonchalance that is admirable: as a person who is in the world, you just go to stuff that is interesting and you open yourself up to learning something new, and you almost always do leave with some new perspective. I incentivize the program by requiring a thought letter (a reflection about one big idea they were left thinking about after attending the event), which is always a delight to read because they’re reflecting on what they’ve learned or are still thinking about. I tend to savor those letters because those are moments where, if they’re written well (and most usually are), I can hear their voices, their delights, their joys.

I don’t go to half the things I tell them about, but that’s okay. The movement just needs to be started and they take it from there. Once it is up and running, kids start submitting events for approval and go on their own with their friends. Every now and then, if my schedule permits and if it’s not past my bedtime, I might join them. Or, if I can even make an event for the last few minutes of time, just to be able to chat with them about moments when an author says something so profound that you write it down and carry it with you and want to tell others about it?! Yeah, in those moments, I’m just happy to be in the same space with them so we can all say were there when literacy really mattered (of course they won’t say it like that, because they are children and they’re not so meta, but this moment will be important for them, though, in ways big and small).

As two other students waved goodbye on their way to get ice cream (because one should get ice cream after such events, yes? I completely agreed), they said they were coming back next week for another reading, some author that I didn’t know, but they said it sounded interesting. Literary Citizens of the World now has a life of its own, which is my hope whenever I roll it out: students will understand that all of this wonderfulness is for all of us, and they can go, too.

As the year rushes to its end and I have to make peace with what is done and undone, I’ll carry this time, of the night we went to see Chimimanda Adichie give a reading of her new book and then we went looking for Frankenstein (a different story, but a great one, nonetheless), and we loved reading and all the commensurate delights opened to us.

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April 29, 2013 · 9:33 am

Teachers of Color, White Suburbs: Teaching in a PW Secondary School

When I began teaching, I only wanted to teach in urban schools. My Ed.M. affirmed that commitment: as part of an Urban Teaching cohort, I completed my student teaching in the city and remained there for much of the last 10 years.

Then, I left for my sabbatical in the suburbs (I’ve written about it in various capacities in this space, so I encourage you to do a search for the tags “sabbatical in the suburbs” if you’re curious) and have returned to an urban school, but it’s actually more “urban-lite” than those earlier urban experiences.

I have interacted with some young teachers of color recently who are debating applying for positions in the suburbs at predominantly white (PW) secondary schools. I strive for honesty and objectivity. Then, I realized it’s probably easier (for me, in this case) to work out that advice in a blog post and refer them to it when I can’t seem to get the words quite right.

Why Teaching in the Suburbs is Beneficial:

  • You will never know your disciplinary content more than when you’re there; for lack of a better phrase, people know their s#$t. Seriously. They were probably English majors, or History majors at some fine institutions, they were “splendidly educated” (to quote Morrison), and they generally know how to communicate that knowledge to kids and colleagues; but don’t get starstruck. They are human just like you.
  • Your colleagues have probably been teaching for a while: thus, you can probably ask them anything, and for anything, and they’ll have some ideas about how to do it (or how not to do it), and, if they’re really awesome colleagues (like mine were), they’ll open some magical filing cabinet, or crack open a binder and give you a copy of something that’s useful, or not, but it’s something and when you’re scrambling for resources, something is everything
  • You get to be the teacher of color that, if you’re comfortable with it, can begin to help folks address their misunderstandings and stereotypes. They’ve offered you the job for some reason, and it’s usually more than a need to increase diversity: they’re usually not going to just roll the dice and pick a potential teacher that doesn’t have the teaching chops. Suburban schools just don’t make decisions like that; they’d rather leave the position open than hire someone that won’t be a good match for the school. That means you should speak up in meetings, you can offer insight, you can carve out a space for yourself within the school community if you want to. But don’t feel like you have to; there’s a difference.
  • You will understand aspects of excellent instruction and you can begin to/continue honing your practice. You’ll see a continuum of teaching excellence there (and you should see a range). Watch the teachers who kids rave about, the teachers whom your colleagues respect, and start tinkering with your own practice. Have conversations about what you see, ask questions, find answers…intellectualism often flourishes here.

And What’s Not So Great:

  • You’re probably going to be, if not the only (like I was), then at least one of a handful of people of color. That means that people will ask you stupid questions, both unintentionally (from students) and intentionally from faculty and staff. You have a choice about how you can respond: my reaction was usually to raise awareness with kids (because you might be the only Native American, Korean American, African American, etc. they might ever know that’s not on television or in the media), but not to preach. With adults, I tend to pick my battles: I feel like if schools are going to bring you out there, they shouldn’t expect you to be teaching everyone about YOUR PARTICULAR EXPERIENCE, which is your experience, and probably nothing like anyone else’s experience. But, you’re most likely going to have to do this. It’s going to be hard and exhausting and some days you’ll wonder if we all live in the same world, but it’s going to happen. Just know that.
  • You will regularly need to confirm and reaffirm your expertise, both for your students, for your colleagues and for yourself. I’m not saying teaching in the suburbs is like teaching in a country club or anything, but, if you’re used to teaching in an urban school, it’s a HUGE jump from that environment into a suburban one. The ways of delivering instruction are different, classroom management is different, expectations are different. And again, I’m not saying that teaching in the city is deficient, because it’s not; rather, it’s just…different. The difference is so dramatic, however, that if you don’t give yourself permission to get accustomed to it, you’ll think that you’re a fraud, that you’re never going to “get it,” and that you want to leave. Don’t. Leave, that is. And don’t stereotype threat yourself, because I think that can happen in teaching the same way it can happen with a standardized test (if you want to know more about stereotype threat, check out the brilliant Claude Steele’s work). Just keep swimming until you get some ideas about the lay of the land. Figure out who you can trust, look for allies, do more listening than speaking on occasion, also.
  • Kids of color are going to seek you out. You’re there for the kids, for all kids, yes, but, in all likelihood, the kids of color are also part of a small population, have sat in classes where teachers and peers have said crazy things and those kids have had to either correct, defend or be silenced, and they’re looking for understanding. They’re going to assume you can provide it for them. You will feel that you have to provide it. This feeling is both a good and bad aspect, because that also means you’ll be asked (either directly or indirectly) to advise clubs, go to meetings, speak up for them. I tended to do those things because kids need adults to be brave, even when I wasn’t feeling so brave. It’s amazing how fired up I can get when I remember that the kids need an advocate.
  • You will have to create your community. You might have other people of color that you can collaborate and commiserate with, but they might be in all different parts of the building. They’re probably either feeling like you’re going to feel, have felt that way, or have figured out how to make a life in this space (and, let’s be real: you should think of it as making a life, not surviving–at least after the first year). Invite them to hang out at lunch, or for coffee, or for some intentional time. Then, just bug out. You likely have a million other tasks on your to-do list, but add this one and you will reduce your sense of isolation.
  • You will be exhausted. Teaching is exhausting anyway, but the additional exhaustion you’re going to face from either deciding to speak up or say nothing can be overwhelming. If you teach texts that deal with race (i.e. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, say), you’re going to have days when you come home, don’t want to talk to anyone, find some outlet for your feelings, and process your rage, your feelings of hopelessness, your decision to teach there. You have to decide if you can handle it. Personally, that piece was the one I didn’t think about, but the exhaustion was more potent and played more into my decision to leave than I anticipated. Now, mind you, I still feel exhausted (see the post about race I wrote earlier), but I’m not doing the work alone. That matters.
  • You also have the right to say no: that this experience isn’t for you, regardless how much money that particular district has and is willing to throw at you. Your emotional health is invaluable, and no one is going to blame you if you choose you. Sure, some people will throw shade about you giving up such a great opportunity, but what’s great for them is not necessarily great for you; remember that great schools and kids exist everywhere. You just need to find the place that is best for you, or best at that moment, or however you choose to define it (because those places and terms aren’t necessarily fixed).

Verdict: I do not regret my sabbatical one bit. For me, the positives were invaluable and while I did have to address those deltas, my teaching practice is much stronger for it. I realized how effective of a teacher I can be–and the teacher I strive to be every single day–after that time in the ‘burbs. But I have no desire to go back. I think that being the only Black woman on faculty was too difficult for me to deal with; I had that experience when I went to college and that was hard enough. I’ve no desire to relive that time. Rather, I’ve taken the good lessons from teaching in the ‘burbs and found a school that’s more diverse, that has excellent colleagues in their own right and provides me with the peace of mind that I need to keep teaching.

That was my choice, though, and my move to and from came after I’d been teaching for a while. I’m not fresh out of graduate school and itching for a job. I offer these reflections after some time spent in both contexts, in hopes that they begin to generate more ideas about what to consider when making what was, for me, a difficult decision.

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April 25, 2013 · 1:33 am

PLCs of Care & Concern

I teach in a community where something awful has happened. While I don’t think any of us ever expect such terrible events, the ones that occurred over the last week and that continue to play out have set us off kilter in ways that we are only beginning to acknowledge: the starts at sirens, the feelings of helplessness as we sit awash in the incessant news, the difficulty concentrating…

On Monday, a colleague I don’t know very well was sitting on the wall outside the school. We greeted each other and she hugged me. And I didn’t pull away, significant for me because I tend to shy away from physical contact–I’m just prickly that way. A few minutes later, I think someone grabbed my hand or my shoulder, another colleague, sort of as an acknowledgement that we were both…present, maybe? Here? Together? Yes. The day went like that: people pausing, to say hello, to make eye contact, to linger in spaces where others were making copies, buying coffee, gathering their mail. 

Creating spaces to be together. And oftentimes there wasn’t even any discussion of those events; rather, they were more about check-ins and confirmations that we were all here, breathing, being, moving forward, or even standing still, but we were here, there…together.

Many of us are in professional learning communities that are tasked with improving our practice, a goal that is admirable and necessary. This week, though, I think my PLC grew much bigger and took on an additional task for which I’m grateful: my PLC expanded to include many more faculty members I know in passing, have wanted to know but time limited those interactions, have sprinted by their floors but not really stopped.

Until the week when everything stopped for us and we’ve had to think about how to put it together again. 

And the spring is terrible, too, because by this point one realizes that the end of the year is coming much faster than imagined and one has to make some difficult decisions about curriculum. I tend to get so caught up in those matters that I lose contact with the colleagues that I don’t see every day, and I’m often distracted while interacting with the ones I do see on the daily. 

Not this week. I’ve heard from my former colleagues over email, text, phone, whose first questions are about how I’m doing, what I’m doing to be okay, that they’re thinking about me, that they’re sorry for what happened, that they’re here. I feel their virtual hugs and support, and I lean in to them, understanding that another reason why we teach is that we join a community of others that encourage us, rely on us, need us as much as we need them, and that in times of joy and difficulty, we need to turn to that community for support. 

I’m just so grateful, in this moment, for the support.

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March 21, 2013 · 9:15 pm

Conversations with Student Writers

When my students submit a draft, I ask them to give me some areas of particular growth that they’d like my feedback on. Here, a couple of my comments in response to a student:

After reading her draft: I would like to see your writing become more sophisticated. I think one place to start is with sentence variety and sentence length. You have lots of choppy sentences that are just…boring. From this draft, I can tell you can write. Now, you have to push your limits. Go.

She asked, “Can you detect my voice in my essay?” [Side note: what a brilliant, BRILLIANT question from such a young writer. My heart, my smile…VOICE?! Remind me to write about what Keith Gilyard said about voice that made everything crystal clear-ish to me about that].

Me: It’s there, hidden underneath some dry language. You actually have a voice that is quite poetic. You’ll develop it this term. It will be fun.

Indeed, it will be–and is–fun. I needed a reminder of the joy I have working with my students. March attempts to wring it from me as it marches forth (ha), but there is such joy in this work…

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March 14, 2013 · 5:21 pm

Night School (or, crying at my desk)…

It’s a rookie move to sit crying at your desk WHILE THE KIDS ARE WORKING AWAY, isn’t it? I’m supposed to excuse myself to run to the bathroom, or step outside and slump down in a ball of messiness, but…today, it all happened too fast. My students are at work independently doing some standardized testing preparation for next week’s high-stakes affair, and I—diligent multi-tasker that I am—use that time to check my school email.

There’s a reply from a student who’s asked me to write a recommendation for her for a summer program that has a strong social justice component. This student, who is that one amazing kid we are fortunate to teach at least once in a lifetime, knows this proposed program is quite similar to the one she did last year. Might you do something more academic, I ask? You know, build out your resume and learn some new academic stuff. I’ve no doubt you’d be even more amazing in those summer programs.

Her reply is that she knows she should do something more academic, but she pays for everything in school (afterschool activities add up) and…this is the part that got me…maybe she could take a night school class.

Night school? You are 15 years old, can address issues of privilege and power better than most adults, write a dream piece of analysis, have a voice that is poetic and brilliant and memorable…and you know you should do something like go to night school because there’s no way to think about programs otherwise.

Tears. Leaking. I’m looking away from them—or trying to look but I keep looking at the email and it’s blurred because I feel so incredibly helpless at that moment–staring away from the kids who are diligently writing because they take everything so seriously, and I am crying. At 10:30 a.m., after we return from a fire drill and are re-starting after our disruption, I’m catching up on housekeeping, and I’m crying.

Because WHEN, for the love of all we do as educators, do the good kids get to win?! I’ve been thinking about this article from Slate for a few days now.

She’s one of those kids. She’s White, low-income, over-involved in school, but can’t dare to think of an opportunity that’s offered by the local colleges and universities, or others across the country, because she needs the money. I hate it when I am reminded that young people have to deal with grown-up problems. I hate that in this friggin’ school district that spends nearly 30K per child (!) that we can’t give her enough—or her peers who are equally well-deserving and eager and will change the world, I’m quite certain, if we JUST LET THEM—can’t think creatively enough to consider allocating funds for stipends, or making other things free. I hate that they have to make decisions that will mean something, ultimately, and will impact them, unfortunately, and so much of these decisions are predicated on factors they cannot control, cannot change, cannot surmount.

That is, until they do…surmount them, that is. I remind myself that I was one of those kids, smart and poor, who benefitted from reading the Fiske Guide to Colleges, dog-earing some pages about schools I couldn’t necessarily place on a map with any good accuracy, and who said yes when others suggested I leave my hometown, major in English and American Studies, hire me back for summer after summer and not mind while I read my way through the days. Make no mistake. It’s been incredibly hard and I’ve wanted to quit, but I didn’t. But I also didn’t understand—until now, when I am faced with students who are trying to essentially make a way the best they can—that one little decision can change everything, and how precarious the path is that we ask them to traverse, largely unaided and uninformed.

Everything.

Usually, I am overcome by moments of intense emotion—teaching does that to you—before I get myself together and think of what I am able to do with these moments, and I cannot anticipate when or where they will occur. That’s what happened today, as the students worked and as I slowly (but silently—maybe I’m not so much of a rookie after all) fell apart and put myself back together again. I’m reminded that the local college has an extension school that is taught by the best professors and that high school students from here can go free. She’s going to come chat next week, I hope, and we can think about that as an option. I’m sure we’ll consider other options, as well, as we sit down, research, talk, hope, do…

And I won’t cry, but I’ll hope really hard, put my head back down, and get to work to think of how we can make decisions—or pressure those in the power to make the bigger decisions—to envision how to create equity for these brilliant, brilliant children that are going to change the world.

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March 8, 2013 · 12:52 am

Are We Tackling Race, Or is Race Tackling Me?

In the last three days, I forked over nearly $20 for chips and salsa at the overpriced market across the street from school without batting an eye, consumed half of that purchase before giving my dogs a half-a#@ed walk and throwing myself into bed, nearly the rest of the other half of the chips and salsa and a Grasshopper Sundae (size small, but that makes no difference at all) the following day, kept a 6:30 pm bedtime, and prayed to whoever runs the universe that tomorrow is a snow day.

My poor eating habits and sudden onset exhaustion are directly correlated to introducing issues of race in the classroom this week. Such an endeavor utterly wears me out–like so much so I will probably sleep all weekend to recover a bit of myself–and now, today, I realize why people just choose to avoid teaching race.

Cause to really do it, to go all in, particularly as a Black woman teaching mostly white kids, means I have to steel myself for the ignorance–because they really DO NOT know–while reminding myself not to react too viscerally (particularly hard today when one innocently remarked that he didn’t know why Black folks had problems with one picture of a lawn jockey that smacked of racist tropes) and to occupy the stance and the mantra: raise awareness, but don’t preach, as English educator Bruce Penniman suggested in his book.

Real talk. To even raise awareness is incredibly challenging, largely because if one is perpetually in the position of Colonizer, why should that person even care about the Colonized?!?

Therein comes the theory. Oh post colonial theory, you are both a conduit and a curse because when you give kids a different way to read a text and they start to think about what voices have been left out of the conversation and what that means?!? Get ready for the mishegas that follows. You can’t prepare yourself for it, actually. You will be bowled over (silently, of course, as you bite your lip to keep from reacting) at their comments about skin tone (and why and how people of color can be so many different…colors?!?), as they repeat the stereotypes as they try to present their views, as they make their classmates of color attempt to make the floor open up beneath their seats so they can stop having this conversation. You will step into the conversation gingerly, but confidently, as you give them the language to talk about what they’ve internalized for years and what they believe to be true. 

There’s a moment, sorta like in the Matrix, where I hear a bunch of students’ voices transposed over my own, another that’s not my own yelling you better right this ship, KP, and I step out of the room to gulp some air that feels incredibly stale and repeat 100 times, as fast as I can, itsworthititsworhtititsworthit.

I thank the universe again for a White male student teacher who isn’t afraid to speak truth and own his privilege and who spells me while I have a minor meltdown because this is so hard and why do I have to do this, all I wanted to do was give them a different lens for reading a text. I didn’t think THIS was going to open up so many doors that I knew were going to open but…all…on the same day?!

I’ve become increasingly more agile at talking about issues of power, race, privilege, equity with non-POC students, while positioning myself as a person who cares about my students and one who also considers it critically important that they understand–or at least wake up for a moment–why we live in a world that isn’t fair for everyone because others have particular rights and privileges that are unearned, closely protected, and unwilling to relinquish.

But all those thoughts go through my mind, as I stand in the hallway gulping (or am I gasping?) air, sipping water, getting myself together, reminding myself not to take it personally. Of course, I’m lying. I can’t help but take it personally. They are my students. On my watch. I have complete confidence that some of them might just run the world some day. I need to make sure they’re paying attention and actually doing some good in the world. 

This work with postcolonial lit theory is merely a crack in the door as we confront these big ideas and issues, and debate Okonkwo’s inflexibility, and question if Dolce and Gabbana bears any responsibility for sending their racist earrings down the spring 2012 runway. But I do know that they’re becoming more aware–and again, it’s incremental progress, but, in issues such as this, it’s best to take progress where one can find it–and questioning what single story/master narrative it is that they’ve been consuming for years and why we need counternarratives. 

I did sit at my desk for a good thirty minutes after my last writing conference today:  immobilized because it takes so much out of me mentally to talk about these issues. I do know that if more of us were talking about this stuff, then I could share the load and not feel so wrung out at the sheer amount of work required simply to raise awareness. I cannot even begin to fathom, at this moment, the next necessary steps that will help them continue making connections between these ideas and texts and what’s to come.

There it is. I used to be so skeptical–disbelieving is probably a better word–when people would tell me that they didn’t really “teach race” in their classrooms, thinking that they didn’t do it because they didn’t want to do it. I think, now, that there’s some truth in that. How do you initiate these conversations knowing that they will require far more of you as a teacher than drafting an essay assignment? That you’re going to probably feel wiped out as a result of those conversations for at least the next week? That you’re going to replay myriad comments and interactions for weeks to come? 

It can wear you out. It’s certainly worn me out.

 

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February 18, 2013 · 10:56 am

Yes, and?

I’m at the point in February where I have to make peace with my plans for the weeklong recess: my to-do list is unbalanced with too many have-to dos and not enough get-to dos. The upshot is that I get to deal with my list while in the sticks of North Carolina, where I’ll have spotty Internet access and can begin to wean myself off Facebook. I schedule this break intentionally every year and I realize I’m usually so frazzled for the first couple of days that I tend to miss the beauty of being somewhere else.

Not this year. Yes, I have stuff to do. I’m goal-oriented, so there’s no doubt I’ll get those tasks accomplished, but I’m going to remind myself that I will NEVER be in the world of done and that I need to slow it down. I’ll go into the nearby small towns, do some leisurely reading at the book store, pick up some gifts for my niece and nephews, some new yarn for yet another project I probably won’t finish…I will enjoy my time.

Oh, and I have to grade the latest set of papers from my students. Rookie move, assigning a paper that was due the day before break. But, they needed the practice…

Crazily (?) enough, I’m most looking forward to embracing a way of responding to student writing that I learned about after attending an NCTE presentation by Katherine Bomer in November. She suggested that rather than entering into a conversation with a piece of student writing by seeing what’s wrong, that instead we start saying yes, and? Yes, you’re making this point…and what else might you add to help the reader understand why it matters, for example.

I tend to be relatively encouraging with young writers, but, there are times when I know I’m too brusque, or too vague (imagine that), or too caught up in my own writing that I can potentially shut out a writer. And working with adolescent writers is difficult, particularly if they think they aren’t great writers in the first place. 

Yes, and? allows me to check myself. So, when I’m writing a comment in the margin via Google docs (the way I respond to most drafts now), I’m more likely to write yes, and? rather than something less inviting. Yes, and? is an invitation, as it were, to say more, to expand on ideas, to illuminate relevance. To keep writing. That’s the ultimate goal, actually. 

Thus, I like this way of interacting with their writing, a way of responding that is both validating and encouraging for students, and  a reminder for me to keep the doors open for the writing improvement that inevitably happens if you just keep working on improvement…yes, I’m interested in what you have to say and the myriad ways you might say it. 

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February 10, 2013 · 12:29 pm

Taking Them As They Are…

Once the first semester ended in mid-January, I had exactly a weekend to turn around and start teaching the same couse to a new group of sophomores.

After reminding myself about the need to just keep breathing, I also had to remind myself that the new kids who entered my classroom, filled with a mixture of excitement, anxiety and dread (thanks to their predecessors who told everyone they knew about how hard the class was, how much they learned but mostly, too, how glad they were that the class, for them, was OVER), were just that: new kids.

That’s why summers are so great when we teach: we end the year more than exhausted, but we have the summer to forget how difficult it is to break in a new crop of students. We forget that we have to teach them procedures, that there are days when it feels like we’re caught so deep in the muck that a thesis statement is as foreign to them as learning…I don’t know…insert something that’s difficult; that there were plenty of days when discord tiptoed around the edges of the classroom, threatening to overtake whatever it was that was supposed to be happening at any given moment.

Instead, as we laze (ha!) through summer, we instead replace those real memories with fond ones of kids who hung around and wanted to share their poetry (that was actually good), the reflections wherein students waxed about how much they learned, the thank you notes that parents and students were nice enough to write.

Revisionism is a beautiful thing, particularly when related to teaching. And it’s not, necessarily, a horrible thing, because it enables us to hold dear to the various meanings of success we see in our classrooms over the course of a term. And it probably enables us to muster the courage to come back in the fall.

Let me repeat that, though: over the course of a term. It does not happen overnight.

And so, this George Washington quote–this fantastic quote that Jim Burke uses to begin a chapter in his incredibly useful book What’s the Big Idea–resonates with me now more than ever, particularly as I begin to grade the first papers from new kids in a new term.

“Well, we must take them as they are and make them into the soldiers we need them to be.” 

Thank goodness for an unexpected snow day, that allows me to read through the papers with more leisure than I am usually permitted. I had to remind myself, again and again, that these were new students, that they had not been privy to the writing workshops, the practice, the expectations that we are all writers, with important things to say and that good writing takes time. Thus, their theses statements would not be as well developed, their language not as sophisticated, their analysis not as through and interesting, their voices still clanking along in essay voice.

Yet.

And that’s okay.

For now.

More than anything, I think I’ve finally reached the point where, after giving fond farewells to the old kids, I can open the door to the new students and be excited about who they will become, the powerful readers and writers I know they can be.

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January 20, 2013 · 11:17 pm

The Bitter End

I hate when a semester ends. It’s really the day of reckoning: you realize you didn’t get some (many, all, whatevs) of the stuff you wanted to teach done and you reach the point where the kids you have come to love over the course of the semester are getting on your nerves asking about extra credit and other ways to boost their grades. I also think I tend to get annoyed because it’s easier than being sad.

In two weeks, I say goodbye to about 70 kids and say hello to about 60ish new ones. Yup, I teach the exact same class all over again. A blessing and a curse, that one, as I’ve worked out many of the kinks with this crop of kids. I tell them that they’ve paid it forward and that the spring sophomores will thank them for it. That comment merely elicited some eye rolls. I don’t think you want to be a martyr when you’re fifteen…

I do think there’s something to be said about reaching the point with students that–as their teacher and fellow learner–you know them relatively well and they need to move on, and you know that they’re NOT coming up to the fifth floor to see you if they don’t have to, and that those conversations in the margins, the ones about books and about literary puns and about the kid who writes poetry about a summer spent with his brother, and the hashtag they use to tweet about your class (#dparkz) and I get…sad. 

I hate the end, even if I’ll be so delirious grading exams and prepping for the next term that I can’t even breathe. I hate the end, as bitter as it is. I hate the end.

 

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