Final Summer Institute Blog

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect with Summer Institute. If you read my first blog post from orientation you can see that I was actually nervous about the class! Now, with one day remaining, I can say with assurance that I am so grateful for this experience. It has singularly been the best professional development experience of which I have ever been a part. Perhaps the largest reason for this is my fellow SI-ers. Each and every person involved in Summer Institute this year possesses such a wealth of knowledge. Their willingness to share this knowledge, and their personal experiences, for the greater good of our group is what made SI so great. I can't even begin to wrap my mind around all that I am taking with me (thank God for my daybook!), let alone accurately communicate it all in one final blog post.

I've never been great at goodbyes. So, if my goodbye is lackluster, know that I am so thankful for you and your friendship, and I can't wait for our reunion!

Day 11 Reflection

How tightly do we hold on to what is ours? Among the first inductees into a child's vocabulary hall-of-fame is "mine". We live in a selfish world. Does that differ when participating in an intellectual community? Do we claim "mine" over our ideas and "makes" as educators and learners? What does this do to our intellectual community? When we share our thinking, don't we all benefit? This got me thinking, in what ways do I encourage and facilitate intellectual sharing among my students?

So I wanted to take inventory of ways in which I am planning on engaging my students in intellectual sharing and combating the "mine" mentality that is so ingrained in their fiber.

1. Reading circle discussions. Every Monday/Tuesday students will spend (roughly) the first 20 minutes meeting with their common reading groups to discuss various ideas surrounding their texts. Additionally, students will-following their weekly discussions-engage in person a Schoology discussion with their classmates. My hopes in doing this will be to allow students to see other students' thinking surrounding reading.

2. Tonya's demo today! I loved the collaborative and tactile nature of her cut and past revision strategy. What a great way to engage student writers in a dialogue with their readers. (I plan to post a digital copy of her demo to this blog post so anyone interested can adapt it for their own classrooms - I'm thinking senior project papers!)

3. Creating a real audience so students have a real purpose for writing. I am excited to jump on board with a TC First Year Writing partnership next year and initiate an inquiry into college readiness. I want to rattle students' thinking and encourage them to allow other ways of thinking about college readiness into their intellectual "mine" sphere.

I would LOVE to hear ways in which you break students' "mine" mentality through collaboration.

AND... Jenny made each of us this amazingly cute mini-daybook cover. How awesome is she?!

Day 10 Reflection

Wobble. No, I'm not talking about the dance that requires you to shake your bum while simultaneously doing some sort of dance-worthy gesture with your arms. I'm talking about wobbling in your thinking; the area in your thinking where you don't quite stand still because you're not sure if that's your intellectual wish.

As SI-ers we have wobbled so much on a vast array of issues. At times, I fought the wobbling for fear of where it may lead me. Now, as we approach the end of Summer Institute I am so grateful for the wobbling. The wobbling has lead me to step back from my teaching practices to question why I teach the way I do and whether or not my methods are my methods because they are familiar to me and easy to execute or are they my methods because they are best for my students.

At times I took intellectual thoughts that challenged my own to heart, thinking well, I can't receive that, it doesn't mesh with my teaching methods and philosophy. I got uncomfortable. Yet, in further thinking, I needed to get uncomfortable. I needed to be challenged. From that challenge came a rethinking and repurposing of my teaching convictions. I either was more firm in my stance of philosophy and methods or it caused me to question where I stood, wobble, and reposition myself in what is best for the students.

So, thank you to those who helped me wobble. I'm a better teacher because of your influence.

Day 9 Reflection

Since my inquiry revolves around rhetorical awareness I LOVED that today explore, in so many different ways, audience and purpose! To summarize our day, here is my Day in the Life storify project.

A Day in the Life at UNCC Writing Project Summer Institute 7/15

Day 8 Reflection

Some thinking surrounding Wendy's demo...

Do I have anything in common with someone who lives halfway around the world? If I say no, am I close minded? If I say yes, am I ignoring nuances of social, historical, cultural, generational context? Is there a correct answer?

I think there are elements of the human condition that cross the multiple boundaries that exist between a mystery person halfway around the world and myself. Take, for example, love. I've experienced multiple variations of love: romantic, sibling, familial, friendship, self-love, even the loss or absence of love. Now, let's look at said mystery person. In some way, shape, or form, he-or she-experiences love. It might be a facet of the love I experience, or it might even simply be the absence of some sort of love. Either way, love holds a place, knowingly or not, in his/her life.

In consideration of theme, there has to be a marriage of these two ideas: universalization and contextualization. Certain elements of the human condition exist no matter who or where you are. A fuller understanding of said elements comes only when the elements can be more closely contextualized.

But, this is just what I believe. You may believe what you choose. And, in the end, we may find ourselves united by the human condition of belief.

Day 7 Reflection

Yesterday I experienced the classic student anxiety of public reading. We were handed an excerpt of a piece by Foucault and asked to read portions of the passage out loud to the rest of the class. I quickly counted the people who would read before me and then scanned the text to see if there were any words, names or phrase I might trip over.

Then I thought Is this what my students do?! I'd hate to be the cause of anxiety for them, or any anxiety, surrounding reading. My desire, for every student, is to encourage and foster a safe, comforting, welcoming reading environment. How do I engage students with reading in class while combating the same type of anxiety I felt?

Well...the SI resident experts prepared me for such questioning. Here's what we did. All SI-ers were handed a passage of difficult text; the assumption being that the text will be difficult for everyone in the room. We then took turns reading a line or two of the passage as the reading was passed from person to person. My anxiety melted because I wasn't the only person reading and I benefitted from others tackling words that peaked my concern. Then, together, we all picked one sentence and everyone read the same line in different dramatic representations. In doing so, my anxiety melted.

Today, I gleaned some interesting methods to help my own students avoid reading anxiety. Perhaps the extra confidence boost will even bleed over into their recreational reading. One can hope! :)

Day 6 Reflection

This morning began with Ashley's demo encompassing a variety of questions toward the ubiquitous nature of technology in our society. For your sanity, and, selfishly, mine, I will spare you my position on the balance of technology in our lives.

This afternoon, Jenny, our resident early childhood montessori guru, presented her demo on creative story telling. Wow! I am embarrassed to admit that my ignorance toward early childhood education led me to believe that there is more "babysitting" and less "educating". Jenny, I'm sorry. I write corrected. My eyes were completely opened even through just a glimpse into the your world. Children as young as 3 have creative minds a desire for expression.

One particular strategy Jenny shared was that of dictation. Essentially, her students (ages 3-6) receive a picture (which she pulls from National Geographic). As Jenny positions herself, on the child's dominant side, with paper and a highlighter, she asks the child what story he/she wants to tell based off of that picture. The child provides a sentence. Jenny repeats it back to the child before writing, and simultaneously sounding out, the sentence. When finished, Jenny repeats the sentence back to the child before prompting the child for more of the story.

So, how does dictation fit in with high school seniors? Well, I think it has its own deserved place. Kendra so wisely pointed out that writing is a social endeavor. (Take this blog, for example.) What if my students, perhaps after brainstorming on a particular prompt/topic/idea, dictate a paragraph or two to another student? In doing so, the student collaboratively creates a written piece. The scribe serves as a sounding board, and revision assistant, in helping the dictator to negotiate organization, clarity, content, grammar, conventions, and so much more. Additionally, the practice may help students overcome their fear of sharing their work, fear that it's "not good enough"; an idea that I cannot quite grasp its origins.

Perhaps we did, in fact, everything we need to know in (and before) kindergarten.


Jenny Formon teaches 3-6 year olds at Charlotte Montessori School in Dilworth. 

Day 5 Reflection

What are your thoughts toward socratic seminars? I'm a literary and intellectual junkie. Please don't mistake that declaration for a self-proclamation of my own intellect. I just thoroughly enjoy being immersed in intellectual discussion surrounding literature. Hence, I love socratic seminars. I've accepted this puts me in a small crowd, but hey, I like this crowd.

I should say I love socratic seminars when I am a student. Not so much when I'm the teacher and, therefore, the facilitator. I get overwhelmed; tracking responses, grading participation, posing discussion questions, anxiety toward lulls, fear of constant redirecting...it gets to be too much!

Does my overwhelmed sensation stem from over thinking? After Sally's use of socratic seminar when looking through "On Studies" by Sir Francis Bacon, I realize the greatness of such a tool stems from its simplicity. The "work" shouldn't rest on me, but rather the group's thinking.

My love for socratic seminars has been rejuvenated, on both ends of the spectrum: student and teacher.

So...now I ask...for what "big ideas" or texts have you used the socratic seminar in your class? Do you require prior preparation? What type of follow-up activities do you require?

Am I over thinking again?! Ah! Okay...I'm done. YOU speak....

Day 4 Reflection

Happy Monday! Today I decided to keep a running log of reflections throughout day 4 of our Writing Project Summer Institute. Enjoy, sweet friends....

"Writing into the Day"

Steve Fulton provided the following prompt for our "Writing into the Day" activity this morning.

Revision is hope. We live our "one, wild and precious life," as Mary Oliver calls it, only once, but we get to reconsider it dozens of times along the way. We can change our clothes, hair, interests, friends, and mates, if necessary. We can change careers and neighborhoods. We can change our minds and beliefs. We can even change identities, especially as we write about ourselves in a memoir.

Revision is like the layers of soil in Italian vineyards, like the layers of ancient civilizations beneath modern cities, like the layers of DNA in the oldest variety of grape, grafted by vintners over centuries into new varieties of grape, always in pursuit of the finest wine. 

Revision is a second, third, fourth, even a twentieth chance.

We can revise our life. We can revise our teaching. We can revise the way we operate in the world. Think about revision in the largest sense, of imagining things as if they could be otherwise, as Maxine Greene says. 

Revision is forgiveness.

Katherine Bomer - Writing a Life.

And...I wanted to share my thoughts on this...

I love this! So often my students are fearful of writing because they feel as though whatever students say, write, type becomes set in concrete the minute their words are formed. As educators, what have we done to shape this thinking? How do we reverse this way of thought and erase the fear? What can I do? How do I create an environment that doesn't promote this fear but rather engages students in a safe, fear-free, forgiving writing environment? In order to promote lifelong, recreational readers and writers educators must create an environment that fosters a safe place to read and write.

I'm eager to hear how educators create this kind of environment in the classroom. I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Mary Ellen's demo on "Re-seeing and Repurposing Texts"

As a way of processing and summarizing texts students work with, how cool would it be to have students-individually or in groups-to repurpose big ideas within the text in visual, creative ways. For example: piktocharts, infographics.

Another great idea she had was having students tweet a text. Having students practice summarizing by having to decide what are the big ideas they need to convey as well as incorporate technology they already use all the time seems like such a fun activity. Check out this tweeting summarization of good ole' Abe's Gettysburg Address:

How cool is that?

I'd love to do this activity with my students as a "tweeting-out-of-the-day" / ticket out technique. Possible after reading various acts of Macbeth? Maybe summarizing Shakespeare's sonnets to gauge for comprehension? How would you incorporate tweeting texts into your classroom and curriculum? Have you used it before? How can you use tweeting or technology as a revision tool? I'm so, so curious...

Revising

We had a discussion and workshop today focused on various ideas regarding revision. There were a few quotes addressing revision from Cindy Urbanski that I wanted to share.

"Revision is reseeing your writing, page by page, paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence, word by word, with you audience in mind." 

[my loose paraphrasing] Revising = Reseeing. Just because you revise doesn't mean that it's better. Sometimes revising isn't about making a better alternative, but reseeing and, therefore, rethinking your work can sometimes [I'm summoning some of Nick's response as well] solidify the original. Wrestling with, and keeping, the original may, in itself, be the best part of revising. 

[again, my loose paraphrasing] Revising toward something, a real audience with a real purpose, gives students more direction and, in turn, may make writing easier. 

Day 3 Reflection

We had our first demo presenters share with our group today. Wow! I am left with so much to think about. Joshanai prompted us to dive into memoir instruction; what makes a memoir a memoir and identifying themes in the genre. Kendra got us all thinking-with our student hats on-about what makes good writing. My mind is still reeling from her presentation.

Recently I have been "wobbling" with the concept of rhetorical awareness. I want to guide students toward "good writing" without dictating it through explicit commands or directive rubrics. Rather, I want to encourage "good writing" through engaging students in a conversation that allows them to inquire for themselves as to what makes "good writing" as it is specific to the situation at hand.

My plan is to adapt Kendra's plan for my own students' first writing workshop (which will take place every Friday). I want to begin a discussion around rhetorical awareness by having my students experience this activity. This is how it worked:

1. Students spent five minutes listing rules for "good writing" in their daybook. Their list can contain rules they were taught or simply what they believe makes for good writing.

2. Meanwhile Kendra passed out notecards with names on them. Once finished with daybooks, students formed groups based on the commonalities between their notecard name; authors, movie producers, music artists, cartoonists, journalists. (I may be wrong with the exact nature of each group, so if you remember forgive me!)

3. Within our groups (notecard names were now set aside) we collectively decided on the top five (yes, they were ranked) rules for good writing.

4. Once our rules were decided upon and recorded, we reviewed and categorized-best to worst-eight various pieces (all from different genres) based on our rules for good writing.

5. Finally, we reconvened with the class as a whole to share our rules and rankings of text.

Please don't assume I want students to toss everything they know about writing out the window. I simply want them to see that good writing is relative to different people and for different situations, audiences, purposes. This awareness of when technicality matters or when and creativity is most important is a greater service to my students than a well formatted rubric.

I do have some reservations...

Are students ready to have this discussion?
Are students prepared, mature enough, to question writing and the evaluation of writing?
Will beginning this discussion-by way of this activity-ultimately lead to a greater sense of rhetorical awareness?
Will I constantly be challenged when actually evaluating and grading student writing?

Please, share your thoughts.

A digital, and more complete, version of Kendra's presentation will be forthcoming. 

July 2, Day Two Reflection

Day 2!

We began day two by writing into the day. Simply, writing into the day is a time for students to respond to a prompt, quote, song, video, or otherwise by writing. The great part is there is no limitation. For example, when I responded to today's video, I began at point A and ended up somewhere around W. 

Today we watched Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talk titled "The Danger of One Story". Adichie's entire talk completely grabbed my attention, however there is one such part of her story that especially halted me. Adichie said:

I recently spoke at a university where a student told me that it was such a shame that Nigerian men were physical abusers like the father character in my novel. I told him that I had just read a novel called American Psycho--and that it was such a shame that young americans were serial murderers.

How sad is it when we don't take the time to hear and learn someone's entire story or all of his stories? As Adichie shows, the result is narrowed judgement; Mexicans are all illegal labor workers, Africans are AIDS-ridden, poverty-stricken beings waiting for the white man to save them, Asians are people confined to strict, conservative tradition.

Adichie's message made me aware that as a teacher, and portal for my students to the world, I need to be more aware of ensuring I provide opportunities for students to hear all stories and not just one.

Also, some great resources I've discovered for digital media and storytelling that you must check-out:

Storify and a sample of what you can create with this bad boy
Screencast-O-Matic which essentially lets you take a video of what you are currently doing on your screen. A great tool for how-to tutorial for various digital tools you may want students to use OR a tool for flipped classrooms.
Kinetic Text an alternative tool to text based presentations (powerpoint?

 

July 1, Day One Reflection

Day one of the Writing Project's Summer Institute is nearly complete. The experience, even in its infancy, proved to be valuable not only in exploring my history as a writer, especially a writer in this digital age, but also as a teacher more aware of the needs of my students and (everyone's favorite) applicable strategies!

However, the most substantial revelations came out of our time spent exploring our "inquiry questions";  a topic or big idea concerning the teaching of writing that we wish to delve into further. I referred to my inquiry question in my initial blog post, but I reworked it into the following statement:

I'm interested in exploring and preparing high school students to have an appropriate, relevant and worldly rhetorical awareness.

I received the following feedback in response to my statement.

• How do they use that to meld the content and character of what they have to say?

Perhaps I'm misunderstanding this question, but I believe that is the very essence of rhetorical awareness: understanding how to meld the content and character of their writing that best suits both their purpose and audience. How to best model this still eludes me. This is something I hope to explore further for both our time inquiring as well as during my demo. Stay tuned!

• How do we determine what is relevant and appropriate?

I believe that this is part of the challenge in preparing rhetorically aware students. Of course we can model a "relevant and appropriate" business letter, literary analysis, argumentative or persuasive essay. However, isn't it our task-as educators-to prepare students for to effectively tackle any writing task appropriately without our modeling and coaching. An awareness of audience and purpose in our absence, regardless of task, seems, to me, important to establish.

• How do you narrow down the "worldly" rhetorical options? How "worldly" do you want to get?

In my mind, when I wrote "worldly", I intended to communicate a preparedness for any potentially arising situation in the near future, post graduation; college, job, gap year, etc.

Takeaways from Kelly Gallagher's Readicide

So as part of my inquiry process alongside my participation in the Writing Project I read Readicide by Kelly Gallagher.  The book is a quick read with a lot of great, tried and true methods to engage students, excitedly so, in challenging yet relevant reading. Here are my notes, I will try to keep them brief. 

Introduction: 

Sometimes, as an English teacher, I struggle with what my true goal for students is by the end of the course. In math, students should be able to effectively utilize certain formulas to solve difficult problem sets. In science it may be to understand various life styles. In English it should be to create lifelong readers and effective, skilled writers.  

Chapter 1:

Reinforcement of backwards design. Having a good test in existence at the start of a unit or novel study. Therefore, as you go through the unit or novel, as a teacher you facilitate the style of thinking students will be evaluated in by  asking those same good questions WHILE reading. 

Frequently question yourself as an educator and the philosophy of the school to determine if philosophically and practically we are following. Gallagher provided some good questions to consider...

What do we mean when we say our school values reading? 

Why is it that the higher the grade level, the higher the chances that students are turned off to reading?

Is our treatment of struggling readers helping to lift them out of the remedial reading track? Or are the same student mired in remedial classes year after year? Is our treatment working?

Is the percentage of students who love reading dwindling? What is our school doing to contribute to this phenomenon?

Are our students doing enough recreational reading? If not, why not? What can we do to change the downward trend?

Are we giving our students the kinds of reading experiences that lead them to be "expert citizens"?

Chapter 2:

Love this strategy!

Give students difficult passages or editorials that highlight corresponding ideas with a main text/novel and have them highlight anything that confuses them. Once students read/highlight they collaborate with other students within a group to work through their rough spots. 

Value and study the classics, but make it a point-in efforts to develop passionate lifelong readers-to, as a school,a put good books in front of students. Make this a school priority.  

Making it a priority and SCHEDULING sustained silent reading (SSR) into class time. Some research from Stephen Krashen to support the investment in SSR:

In 38 of 41 studies, students given free voluntary reading (FVR) time did as well as or better in reading comprehension tests than students given traditional skill-based reading instruction. 

The longer FVR is practices, the more consistent the results.

Reading as a leisure activity is the best predictor of comprehensions, vocabulary, and reading speed. Kids who do the most recreational reading become the best readers. 

Readings is too complex to learn one rule at a time. 

Love this strategy!

Article-of-the-week activity for students. Essentially, Gallagher distributes an article to each of his students on Monday. (You can access the articles on his website, www.kellygallagher.org ) Sometimes the articles correlate with big ideas in class, sometimes they have nothing to do with the bigger scheme in class other than they are interesting topics. Alongside the article the directions to student are as follows:

1. Demonstrate evidence if close reading.

2. Highlight your confusion.

3. Answer the two questions at the bottom of the pages (What is the author's purpose? Who is the intended audience?)

4. Write a 1+ page reflection in your writer's notebook (day book). 

My idea is the reflections can be checked alongside other day book checks or day book defenses. * I'd love to get my entire English department on board with this, as Gallagher did, and, in that way, the responsibility for choosing an article can be shared among teachers. Just a thought. 

Chapter 3:

Love this strategy!

When reading Shakespeare, provide students with a passage from anywhere in a play, particularly one that highlights an idea or advice that transcends time period and establishes relevancy with today. Have students read and translate the advice/ideas line for line into their own, modern language. In doing so, students can be invested in the text from early on.

Other strategies I love!

Topic Floods

A way to augment a text. Provide students with a variety of written material covering a wide spectrum of opinions on a topic covered in the text. I doing so, students color code various arguments throughout the texts to see what ides on the topic exist. Great starter to a whole class discussion!

50/50 approach. Essentially 50% of what students read is academic and the other 50% is recreational. 

Three ingredients to building a reader:

1. They must have interesting books to read. 

2. They must have time to read inside of school. 

3. They must have a place to read their books. 

Chapter 4:

Big Chunk/Little Chunk philosophy with reading

Assign students a big chunk to read (maybe a chapter or two). This "big chunk" of reading allows students to enter that "zone" of reading, where they are captivated by the text and can read for a longer, uninterrupted duration. The "little chunk" is a portion of that bigger reading assignment that hones in on an idea or requires the student to analyze the author's particular writing techniques, a character's motives or another important part of the text. 

Tasks while close reading the "little chunk":

1. Read with a pencil in hand, and annotate the text. 

2. Look for patterns in the things you've noticed about the text-repetitions, contradictions, similarities. 

3. Ask questions about the patterns you've noticed-especially "how" and "why."

I love the idea of an ongoing, year-long chart tracking what good readers do. I will be using this idea this coming school year. As you read and analyze text, make note of students doing things that "good readers due". By tracking these techniques and skills, students can reference-specifically struggling students- these strategies throughout the year. 

If you've made it this far, thank you for bearing with me! I hope you found someone relevant and useful. 

Orientation

Before I left the house, I told my husband, "I'm nervous." Why? I'm not entirely sure. I have been in school since I was three; first as the student, now as the teacher. For an undetermined reason I had butterflies. However, much more than nervousness, I held excitement.

For my first five years as an educator I was simply trying to survive. The school's environment was chaotic and I didn't have the time or energy to grow as a professional. I was ordered to conform to certain expectations and quickly reprimanded if I stepped out of bounds. Under the stacks of paperwork and standardized tests, creativity was stifled and teachers were quickly burning out. 

Then the stars aligned in my favor, and I found myself teaching eleventh grade English at the Community School of Davidson. I am surrounded by truly talented professionals who put children first and value the relationships of teachers, students, administrators, parents, and the true community in which this magical school resides. I fell in love with teaching again. For the first time I feel supported and equipped to grow professionally.

I heard about the Writing Project from several colleagues at CSD. For some time I have been struggling with developing a theoretically based strong and exciting writing curriculum that worked in my classroom. This is what led me to the Writing Project.

Then, yesterday, orientation. The activities that we walked through together made me so excited to teach! I felt like a sponge, trying to write down every captivating method and idea that was shared. Most importantly, I was able to pinpoint my focus for growth over the coming three weeks in July. My inquiry questions are:

How do I get students excited about the writing? 

How do I get students to care about what they are writing?

I know there is no cookie-cutter answer to these questions, but I am expectant that many answers will reveal themselves in my journey to find them. My journey starts with two books: 

Teaching Writing That Matters: Tools and Projects That Motivate Adolescent Writers by Chris W. Gallagher and Amy Lee

and

Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What You Can Do About It by Kelly Gallagher

The second book is, obviously, more geared toward reading. In a way, inspiring reading is part of my focus. Writers gain the most insight into developing their craft by reading. If I can ignite a passion to read in my students, I hope to also see a greater respect for the craft of skillful writing. 

In the coming weeks, as I read these two books, I'll periodically share any fun finds that help me in navigating my inquiry questions. Hopefully I find things you, too, can use and be inspired by.