Still Learning

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #4

2012-01-28T11:06:00.000-08:00

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, chapters 16-22:

"Because without the Mercerism experience we just have your word that you feel this empathy business, this shared, group thing" (209-210).

After our 1/23 class when Dr. Rodrigo shared that one reason we are reading this book is to think about empathy as we study new media, I have found myself pondering this idea even more. When I first wrote about empathy, I was thinking about whether digital networks can ever replicate the empathy drawn from physical proximity that underlies non-digital social networks. Dick wrote (see above quote) that empathy will always be the divider between human and android -- which makes me think about whether humans can ever find full empathy through digital connections. Does the inherent lack of empathy in something digital create a barrier to the conveyance of human empathy across digital channels? Dick's empathy box does generate human empathy across its technology -- is this something possible outside of science fiction?

As I explored digital empathy more, I came across this assignment from Enrique Allen at the Stanford Digital Design School on exploring the paradox of digital empathy. Allen defines empathy in the digital realm as linked to intimacy -- that close connections create empathy because people understand human desires and needs through intimacy, thus gaining empathy. He offers two ideas on intimacy to ponder:

"... intimacy in the digital realm is by nature a paradox. On the one hand, people use media to explore and gain intimacy (chat-rooms, second-life, facebook, we feel fine, skype) but on the other, media, by definition, is an indirect relationship between people. How are people bridging this gap? In what ways are people using media to gain intimacy with others?"
"Think about the identity of a person 40-50 years ago and someone today. In those days, an identity was about a physical person but today identity is increasingly becoming a pattern of digital information about a person. Does your digital self have a greater impact than your physical self? How does digital intimacy interact with digital identity?"

The idea of people becoming as much their digital identities as their physical ones leads to the idea that digital intimacy does create empathy across digital identities. This is something I definitely will be thinking about more. I am someone whose digital identity is very much smaller than my physical one, but I also know that I am not like many in this way. My digital identity is broad -- if you Google my name, you will see that I am all over the place online -- but it is shallow because it is 95% professional. Therefore, intimacy is not the goal of most of my digital interactions ... so if I want to explore this idea more, I have to remember that my own experience is not a great benchmark. I would say that when I look at what I see as important to my whole identity, 25% would be digital and 75% physical. I wonder how you would break down your total identity into digital and physical identities?

On a side note, a presentation for Allen's assignment was really neat for me to see because it quotes Marshall McLuhan ... my canonical book author!

“We become what we behold. We shape our tools & afterward our tools shape us.”
a medium is “any extension of the self”

I am now even more intrigued to read Understanding Media.

Lingua Fracta, chapters 5-8

"If this book can help persuade some in my discipline that technology is a more central concern than they previously thought, then I will consider it a success" (197).

The ideas of empathy and our ever-increasing digital identities only add more credence to Brooke's hope that one day technology will be seen for what it is: the main way we mediate our lives. As McLuhan writes, technology does indeed shape us -- we can allow that to happen unexamined or explore these ramifications.

References
Allen, Enrique. "Digital Design Thinking." E281: Media+Design. Stanford Design School. Web. 28 Jan. 2012. .

Brooke, Collin Gifford. Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. New Dimensions in Computers and Composition. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, In., 2009. Print.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1968. Print.

(Image from Left Coast Voices)

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #3

2012-01-24T16:30:00.000-08:00

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, chapters 11-15:
I am going to wait to comment on this novel for my next post when we have finished reading it all ... Today instead I would like to explore our next text ...

Lingua Fracta, chapters 1-4
I somehow reached my place in life as an English major and teacher without taking classical rhetoric. However, I am lucky because I am married to a Latin teacher who pulled right out of his files this when I asked him about the classical rhetoric canons. I hope you find it helpful too -- I keep mine in my Lingua Fracta book as my reference. My husband says the picture is of him at a younger age ...

I was struck by Brooke saying he was not going to wade into the debate over the definition of new media (xiii). I found this a bold move for someone writing about new media, and his explanation hooked me right in: a look at this definition would take away from what he really cares about, "the practices that these technologies enable and assist" (xiii). This focus on practice spoke right to me as a teacher because I could not imagine teaching without laptops in my classroom. Brooke captures my very thoughts: "Too often our discussions of technology center around 'making room' in our courses for it, at a time when the idea of writing is being transformed all around us. Rebuilding our discipline not just to cope but to contribute to such change seems to me the least of our obligations as writing teachers and researchers" (xix).

So I read these chapters very carefully because I knew the classical terms were new to me, and thus his new media replacements would be equally new. I have started to make a list of terms in my notes, but I do not want to repeat them here. Instead let's explore the idea of proairesis and end with a few more quotes that made me say, "Yes, that's it."

Proairesis -- yes, I looked this up too. The idea of action-driven suspense versus closure-seeking suspense can be seen in Star Trek:

Star Trek TNG, "Cause and Effect"

While you might want to watch the whole show (because of its hermeneutic effect!), just the first few minutes is enough to get you hooked wanting to know how the mystery is solved. Yet, Professor Felluga says something even more interesting -- because we know the main characters are not going to die, we actually are more driven by the action and wanting to see what comes than the mystery involving the lesser characters. Proairesis.

Because of hermeneutics, I want to know what is behind this closed door so I can satisfy the suspense. The object of the door (the text) is my goal.

Image from Pistaye Blog

Because of proairesis, I think about what more can happen as the day stretches to the sunshine horizon. The options within and created by the image (the practice of new media) is my goal.

Image from Computers.org

And now some quotes that I am still pondering:

"As we turn to the production of interfaces, of digital writing, we require a model capable of taking account of not simply the process leading up to a release, but the activity that follows as well" (38).
"I would argue that the technological, as a site of distribution within an ecology of invention, is important for moving from actual to virtual in our inventional practice" (81).
"To continue Quintilian's metaphor, we might argue that, just because there is more than one way to walk through a building, this does not make its arrangement (architecture) irrelevant ... The mistakes that each of these writers [Quintilian and Manovich] make is to presume that arrangement must be an all-or-nothing affair: Either a text is painstakingly ordered by its producer and passively consumed or new media is the 'confused heap' that Quintilian warns of ... the issue is not whether arrangement predates our textual encounters, but rather what practices we might develop with new media to make sense of them" (91-92).
Image from Timber Lake Christian Church

I now continue to walk my path through the ideas of Lingua Fracta, employing the practice of pattern between Brooke the author and myself the reader.

PS I have added alt-text to all of my images in the only way Blogger explains how to do it ... but it is not coming up for me. can you let me know if it comes up for you?

References
Brooke, Collin Gifford. Lingua Fracta: Towards a Rhetoric of New Media. New Dimensions in Computers and Composition. Ed. Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, In., 2009. Print.

Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1968. Print.

Felluga, Dino. "Lesson Plans for Narratology: Citizen Kane." Introductory Guide to Critical Theory. [31 Jan. 2011]. Purdue U. [24 Jan. 2012]. .

Reading, Thinking, and Reflecting #2

2012-01-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, Chapters 6-10
I am still enjoying reading this book. Dick has set up parallel story lines that I know must cross in significant ways as I finish the book, and I am curious how that will happen. A version of Rachael Rosen showing up at John's apartment was the first link, but now with the android faux police headquarters appearing, it seems certain that the idea of separating android from human will only tangle up more. I did wonder how the (as we were to discover) android police were able to run the bone density test so quickly on the victim in Rick's car; that test had been said to take a very long time at Rosen. Maybe androids are more adept at pinpointing other androids? Which is intriguing -- how the humans are worrying so much about correct identification, while the androids are either better at it or care less for accuracy.

One more point about DADoES: my husband is reading this along with me -- he told me when he saw the book that he had always wanted to read it because he loved Blade Runner. When I could not find a picture of the electric sheep for my last post, I asked him if there were electric animals in the movie, and he said not really. I therefore was waiting to see what he thought when he read how important they are to the book (I know the movie is loosely based only, but it is still intriguing for me to consider what they used and didn't): he was struck by how this element was removed to focus on the bounty hunter action. It got us talking about how Rick does not have a wife in the movie, and we thought about how he could be driven in his job just by his own desires versus the unhappy wife wanting a live animal.

Harrison Ford as Rick Decker in Blade Runner
Image from the Alt Film Guide

I do think though that the ambiguity of the live versus real animals adds a layer of complexity to the android versus human issue. If they cannot tell an electric cat from a live one, how can they possibly think they can do this with more developed technology for people androids?

New Media, Chapters 5-8
My reading of Gane and Beer did not link as much to DADoES this week as last, but I feel the connections will start again as I finish DADoES. So, what I want to focus on here are Gane and Beer's conclusions. First, let me lay out the concepts from this reading with quotes I feel connect these three in particular to the conclusions of the book:

Archive: "archives are no longer housed simply in buildings such as libraries and museums, but are now increasingly generated and maintained by lay users in virtual environments" (location 1893, paragraph 1)
Interactivity: "in spite of the almost ubiquitous presence of this concept in commentaries on new media it is not always clear what makes media interactive or what is meant by the term interactivity. Interactivity is a concept that tends to be used to bypass descriptions of the workings of media technologies" (location 1917, paragraph 1)
Simulation: "simulated media environments are now so ubiquitous that they are taken for granted rather than placed under critical scrutiny. There has also been a subtle shift in the focus on contemporary media theory, which now rarely looks at simulation simply in itself" (location 2252, paragraph 1)

Two things jump out at me from these passages. First is that these new media terms have become oft-used vocabulary without users feeling the need to explain them. The idea that this then hides what is being described by the terms versus describing is a fascinating oxymoron -- using a descriptor to thwart description. Second is the point that these terms, even as they are being used in such an undefined way, are shifting in their meanings through the development of new media theory. I love the term "zombie category" (location 2640, paragraph 2), and archive is a perfect example of how a term can fight off such conceptual death.

The concept of archive was one I played with this past summer in Productive Theory with Dr. Phelps because I was so intrigued by the reinvention of it through digital means. If you care to read my concept definition, here it is. The idea of an archive moving from a strictly controlled collection to a wide open accumulation is both scary and exciting -- scary because of the overload we all face when trying to navigate the accumulation and exciting because of the different stories being told. One of the things I do as a teacher in a laptop school is help students understand that every action they take online becomes part of their digital archive of themselves -- a digital archive others might use as well. We keep our students in private environments for schoolwork in lower and middle school, then we open them to public environments in upper school with the idea that they understand how to be a part of this larger world. However, they are already often a part of this larger world for their own uses much earlier than we bring them there, so the conversation is so important to have all along.

References
Beer, Nicholas Gane and David. New Media: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg, 2008. E-book.
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1968. Print.

My Story of ENGL 866

2012-01-15T12:42:00.001-08:00

My Goals for New Media Theory I: My study of Pottermore in Tracing Digital Cultures in summer 2012 is the most interesting work I have done thus far in my PhD studies, confirming my New Media emphasis choice. This degree focus plus my acceptance into DMAC 2012 led me directly to this class and these goals:

To gain a strong base in new media theory to found my DMAC project and future studies
To determine which language I want to use for my digital portfolio requirement and begin to learn this language (and maybe even start on my digital portfolio)
To determine my direction for my independent study post-DMAC -- this might be theoretical and it might be practical ... the wide scope of this class will show me all of the possibilities and allow me to explore enough to make an educated decision
Last but not least, to take a class with Dr. Roderigo, who is my independent study mentor for DMAC and post-DMAC!

(Click on the green sliver to the right to advance the slides -- it is an arrow cut off! -- and click on the gray exclamation points to read all of my text.)

Reading, Thinking, Reflecting #1

2012-01-10T06:28:00.000-08:00

(A note about many of my blog posts this semester: I have started my New Media Theory I class in my doctoral program at ODU with Dr. Shelley Rodrigo. Many of my posts will be reflections on the reading and work we are are doing. I will always note what reading I have done in case you want to find the texts yourselves. I am loving Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep!)

Chapters 1-5, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep
I am thinking about empathy right now. Empathy -- the connection to others that androids cannot feel. Rick's realization that he was caring for an android in the form of his electric sheep (42) really spun the idea of empathy for me. His job is to kill androids, yet he cares for a type of android at his home. I wonder if the name Wilbur Mercer is linked to anything. "A mercer (occupation) is a merchant or trader," to be m ercenary means working for money or gain or a soldier fighting in a foreign army. It seems weird that the person behind the empathy link that is created via the empathy box the would be named for either a trader or someone out for gain. The empathy box seems the opposite of that -- powered to bring people together.

I also wonder about the electric sheep. I was searching for images of the sheep as they appeared in Blade Runner (turns out they did not appear in the movie) and came across fractals instead ...

Electric Sheep & Fractal Universe

When I looked a little further, I saw that these fractal images (which most of us see via screensavers) are named from this book. While I have only read five chapters so far, this connection made sense to me, "The title mirrors the nature of the project: computers (androids) who have started running the screensaver begin rendering (dreaming) the fractal movies (sheep)." I can see from the conflict set up about the Nexus-6 brain and the need for bounty hunters of androids that the technology is growing beyond human control.

Which led me to some thoughts I had from our other reading ...

Chapters 1-4, New Media
"Castells theorizes the emergence of network society in terms of the transition from communal forms of existence, in which individuals are tied to others through strong social bonds that are often forged through physical proximity, to new forms of me-centered networks in which individuals position themselves to maximize their personal gains from others" (location 629, paragraph 1). I have read Gane and Beer before, and my reaction to this idea of network in my first reading was surprise at how negative this description is of the world of new media we live in. Now, rereading this after reading Sheeps, I see the direction networks are heading in a scarier way. In Sheeps, the characters are so lonely and hate living in mostly empty physical spaces. We today are pushing towards networks that forego physical space as well. Can we be as satisfied with these virtual bonds as we have been for millennia with physical bonds?

I actually have wondered about this before. I have thought I was in the minority as someone who does not find Facebook fun or energizing. I actually leave Facebook feeling drained. I have chalked this up to my natural introversion, but when I place time on Facebook next to time spent at a big party, Facebook is harder for me. I had never considered this an issue of a lack of physical bonds before, but it makes sense to me.

I also was struck by the way they discuss the concept of interface -- how we assume when we hear that word a sense of participation. But when you look closely at interface, particularly interface prior to user-generated content, you can see a control hiding behind it. Interface that gives the illusion of choice when there are really limited choices. This made me rethink the participatory culture studying I have done -- how there can be a layer of control involved and often hidden. It would be interesting to tease this out using actor-network theory maps -- look at all of the actors, even the ones hidden from first sight. Maybe the control can be found this way.

Let me end by listing the key concepts Gane and Beer have laid out so far. It is not possible for me to capture all the layers of their definitions, but let me give the basics for each.

Network: "an infrastructure that connects computers to each other and to a range of external devices" (location 426, paragraph 1)
Information: "the question of how information is created and transmitted is more important than what information in itself might mean" (location 848, paragraph 1)
Interface: "an in-between or transitional device" (location 1242, paragraph 2)

And here is a black-faced Suffolk ewe (Dick 43). You decide if it is real or a machine ...

Image from the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association

References
Beer, Nicholas Gane and David. New Media: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg, 2008. E-book.
Dick, Philip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Del Rey, 1968. Print.

What It Is All About

2011-11-10T08:14:00.000-08:00

I have not been good about writing on my blog. But I am inspired to be here today by an email I received from a student who graduated last year and is now a freshman at a large university. She was in my AP English Lit class, and I showed them my blog every now and then -- trying to share that I think about them and learn from them an awful lot. Here is what she wrote to me:

"Hi Mrs. Nobles! I am in a writing class here called 'the future of writing' and we have a class blog where we are supposed to write in the blog 5 times about something relating to where writing is going, and how it is affected by technology. I know your blog has some topics about this, and what you do inside the classroom, so I was wondering what the link to your blog is so that I can get some ideas! I'm coming back home in a few weeks for thanksgiving and I'll definitely be making a pit-stop by FA to see everyone.Oh and also, I've gotten As on both of my english papers here, so I owe it to everything I learned in AP english!"

To see that my blog is a way that my students and I can continue to learn from each other is something I had never considered before. It might be one of the best reasons for blogging yet.

10 Things I Have Learned as an EduBlogger

2011-09-11T10:46:00.000-07:00

1. Reflection makes me a better teacher.
2. Making the time to come to my blog and write is always invigorating and rewarding.
3. Blogging will be sporadic unless you make yourself a blogging goal. I have to admit I have not made blogging regular in my life, despite having years of posts. I envy those bloggers who set weekly or even daily blogging goals. Imagine the reflection and growth they achieve ...
4. Sharing links to your posts in other forums (Twitter, Facebook, blogs you comment on) may feel like bragging, but instead it is inviting conversation.
5. My students are intrigued when they learn I blog about my teaching and therefore them. I think this helps them see that I really care about what I am asking them to do with me in class.
6. The first thing your students will do when they learn that you blog is go on your blog and look for mentions of themselves. They will laugh when they admit this to you.
7. An EduBlog is not a personal blog, but that does not mean it does not get personal (see my last post for evidence of that). You will need to decide for yourself, just as you do in your classroom, how personal you are comfortable going.
8. Link to other blogs and sites that you enjoy and learn from. The collaborative web is as much (if not more so) about who you link to as it is about who links to you.
9. Use visuals and videos and try to condense your writing (I fail regularly at this, but I know that people are more apt to read my and your posts when they are not scrolling down and down and down.)
back going back through your posts and seeing the history of yourself as a teacher is powerful and often surprising.

What have you learned as a blogger? [#11: ending with a question is always inviting to your readers :)]

Back to School

2011-09-05T07:27:00.000-07:00

School has fully started for me now -- both my teaching and my doctoral class. While I always mourn the loss of loose summer days, I am a teacher because I do still love the start of school. I have a few goals for this year:

1. Deepen the collaborative work I have done with the wonderful Katie Dredger at Virginia Tech. Katie and I have used a Ning to link preservice teachers with my AP English students as they study Othello (see post here about this work) . Katie and I are going to try to link her students and my freshmen this fall in a study of poetry. I already use a Wiki for my students' poetry work -- they post their own poetry, their favorite poems by other authors, and recordings of their poetry recitations. Having this new platform to experiment collaboratively with is very exciting for me (and leads to me next goal ...).

2. Develop students' understanding of collaborative learning through new media and technology. My freshmen this year used a few different technology tools in Middle School, and I hope to build on their experiences with an emphasis on linking to others through these tools. We have started this on their blogs, as they have been excited to receive comments from each other. (Maybe you will comment on a post too!) We will use these blogs as joint repositories for our ideas about short stories, and we will talk at the end about how they are a great study guide since there are so many ideas to test your own against. We will move to the Wiki later this fall where they will put their own work out there more directly for comment, and I am excited to have Katie's students as an audience for this work. That is still for me the major roadblock for taking full advantage of the collaborative learning potential of Web 2.0: finding an audience. Students lose steam when they are only interacting with their teachers online, but it can be very hard for teachers to find strong collaborative relationships to create audiences for their students. Yes, there are students out there who end up finding their own audiences, but that is rare, to be honest, in the world of everyone as a blogger, tweeter, and vlogger.

3. Dive deeper into my study of collaboration through social media platforms. I was able to write about my Ning work last spring in my doctoral class. I hope this fall, as I am taking Research Methodologies, to move into full research of this work. Once again, Katie and I hope to work together on this, with her mentoring me as I am new to "official academic research."

4. Stay clam and in the moment. My most important goal. My children are growing, my body is waiting for me to take care of it, my bookshelves are filling with future reads, my trees will drop leaves to be raked, apples will grow that need picking and canning into applesauce ... These are the things I want most to do as I also work on my professional goals above. I have made this goal many times in the past and, to be honest, not done very well achieving it. This school year is different though, and while I am not fully sure why, I think I know a big reason.

I spent this past summer for 6+ weeks in my first "summer doctoral institute." While I learned a ton and enjoyed it in many ways, I also truly wore myself out. My eyes were bloodshot from all of the reading, my legs were stiff from all of the sitting, and my brain was too full to take in anything new. Yes, doctoral students hold these ailments as badges of honor, and certainly going through these stresses does warrant congratulations. However, I do not want to live my life that way, and I went into this doctoral program with the self-promise that it would not consume me. I had no idea how I was going to make sure it didn't (I am no better than all of the doctoral students who have cone before me, so who I am to do it differently?), and I failed at it this summer. But it was not a total failure in the bigger sense of things. Instead, I have seen clearly where I do not want to end up, and I have seen how I got there.

So, I have been doing very well ever since stepping back and doing only what I can, trusting that what needs doing will get done. My biggest achievement has been not griping at my kids every morning as I get them ready for school but instead enjoying the time I am lucky enough to have with them since we go to school together and remain together until I walk them every morning to their classrooms. That is an amazing thing I get to do, and I know it will come to an end as they get older. Better enjoy every minute of this now.

I will be back to this blog throughout the year each time I find myself failing with my fourth goal ... because I know I will fail and regroup many times. Here's to 2011-2012!

Tracing Pottermore

2011-07-19T17:56:00.000-07:00

What happens when an actor desiring creative control tries to own the open spaces of participatory culture?

That is the research question I have written for Tracing Digital Cultures with Dr. Liza Potts. Dr. Potts told us as we started this class that we needed to find an event to track as it unfolded through social media. Well, since this was June 22nd and anyone who is even a remote Harry Potter fan knew what was happening on June 23rd, I chose the unveiling of Pottermore. I started out wanting to know how JK Rowling was going to enter into the world of participatory culture, a world she had clearly up to this point left to others such as her fan sites.

What happened has become much more intriguing. Pottermore itself is just not participatory. The fans were hoping the site would be a place where they could participate, but it isn't. Not yet anyway, and how much participation will ultimately be available is still a mystery.

So what did the fans do? They created a space where they COULD participate: #pottermore. This hashtag stream has been flying every day from before the announcement to now. But another intriguing thing has happened: the conversation has moved to be more about the final movie release than Pottermore because ... well ... nothing is happening on Pottermore.

Now comes the last intriguing piece that brings me to the formulation of my research question. The Pottermore staff created a Twitter account @Pottermore, validated by none other than JK Rowling herself (Side interesting thing: they did not validate themselves through Twitter. Clearly JK Rowling's approval is enough.). @Pottermore has used #pottermore for a grand total of three times -- to build excitement for the opening of Pottermore. Ever since opening day, @Pottermore has tweeted without any hashtag at all, their 184,762+ followers clearly making them feel like they got enough out of dabbling in participatory culture so they can now return to finding users rather than working with participants. #Pottermore is still an incredibly active place for Potter fans, but if they want anything from @Pottermore, they have to head to an online journal (it does not allow commenting, so blog is not the right term) where they can read information and see still pictures of Pottermore under construction.

So, as I have mapped all of this out using actor-network theory, I have come to an interesting answer to my question. What happens when an actor desiring creative control tries to own the open spaces of participatory culture? Yes, maybe Pottermore, its staff, and even JK Rowling (although she has made it pretty clear that she won't) will eventually participate in participatory culture. But for now, they seem to be using participatory culture to change eager participants into simple users.

Those Days After the AP Exam ...

2011-05-19T07:18:00.000-07:00

I got an idea years ago from another teacher (I wish I had kept his or her name so I could give credit here) for the best thing I do after my AP Lit students have taken the exam. We read Walt Whitman's poem "There Was a Child Went Forth." As juniors, they study Whitman, so we take a minute to review his major style traits (observations, listing, non-rhyming, no meter ...), then I set my students to writing their own versions of his poem looking back over their lives. Even my students who do not enjoy writing poetry enjoy this because the style is so non-threatening and they have something say because they are looking towards graduation and naturally looking back at what this milestone means. Here is the template I give them:

There was a child went forth every day,
And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

(Stanza 2: earliest memories)
… became part of this child.

(Stanza 3: mom and dad – plus other family members if you want)
… they became part of this child.

(Stanza 4: Lower School)
… became part of this child.

(Stanza 5: Middle School)
… became part of this child.

(Stanza 6: Upper School)
… became part of this child.

(Stanza 7: anything else – think individuals, outside school, local, global …)
… became part of this child

These became part of that child who went forth every day, and who
now goes, and will always go forth every day.

I then print their poems in colored font with some sort of picture -- whatever makes them look a little more published than their everyday writing. I attach these poems to a poem I write to the whole class of my year with them, and I give these gifts on our last day. I read them my poem aloud, which traces my memories of the whole year, and it is really a wonderful way to end and an easy way to give them all a gift to remember the class and high school by. Thank you to the teacher who suggested this so many years ago!

Why Do We Read?

2011-05-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

My 2011 APEs have given me a great year. Today, we reflected on why we read and books we value. Above (click to be able to read their stars) are the books they shared today for our final Book Celebration Day, and below are their final thoughts on the power of reading.

Books inspire us to do different ... life-changing ... things.
Books teach us who we want to be and who we do not want to be.
Books bring us to times when things weren't so difficult and when messages were still important but simpler.
Books help us understand and be able to cope with difficult situations we go through in life.
Books help us connect to other people.

As I said to my students today, their final bullet is a perfect one to end with. Literature connected me to my 2011 amazing APE readers, and I will miss them next year.

E-Poster: Connectivism and Emergent Learning

2011-04-25T16:01:00.000-07:00

Othello 2011 Performance

2011-03-14T07:50:00.001-07:00

Video streaming by Ustream

Bringing the World into Your Classroom

2011-02-23T16:15:00.000-08:00

I want to recommend a great resource: the Peace Corps for Educators website. On this site, you can find first-person accounts written by Peace Corps volunteers divided up by region of the world, a Peace Corps challenge game, and (my personal favorite) a speaker match program. I put in my request for a speaker who had been to Africa, and within 24 hours I had a list of people within my region to contact sent by the Peace Corps coordinator as well as an email from a former Peace Corps volunteer who wanted to speak to my students. My speaker is coming in two weeks, and I cannot wait to hear his story. He is talking to my seniors, so another great possible result of this is that, by hearing about the Peace Corps, one of them may decide to join themselves. Yes, they will learn about Africa and tie that to the literature we are reading; more importantly, they learn about their world and their possible futures. Thank you, Peace Corps!

Blog Assignment #5: Rhetorical Literacy

2011-02-23T16:14:00.000-08:00

Selber, Stuart A. "Rhetorical Literacy: Computers as Hypertext Media, Students as Reflective Producers of Technology." Multiliteracies for Digital Age. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. Print.

When I read Stuart Selber’s first chapter of Multiliteraries for a Digital Age, I was struck by his inclusion of “rhetorical literacy,” that is a literacy where students are “producers of technology” (25), as part of computer literacy. He acknowledged that scholarship on this literacy was in its earliest stages (26) – indeed, I saw him as prescient defining this literacy in 2004. A quick look into what was happening in 2004: Facebook was founded while “historians may well date the golden age of the blog from 2004—when Merriam-Webster.com's most searched-for definition was blog. How long can it last? Who knows?” (“10 Things We Learned About Blogs”). I was therefore curious to read what, by mere timing, was one of the earliest looks at user-generated technology and the way education should integrate the required skills.

In his rhetorical literacy chapter, Selber writes that the “broad shifts in audience, genre, and context that have helped to move this activity into the territory of writing and communication teachers” (139) mean English departments must learn what skills are needed for this type of writing and communication. “The audience for computer interfaces is no longer solely, or even primarily, other computer scientists … These changes have altered the ways interface designers must think about audiences …, genres …, and contexts … As should be evident, the competencies such new realities call for are largely rhetorical in nature” (142). English departments risk losing a voice in this new rhetoric if they do not become involved in understanding then teaching the necessary skills.

Selber defines four components of the rhetorical literacy: persuasion, deliberation, reflection, and social action. (147). This chapter is for educators because Selber connects his theory to praxis, offering lesson ideas for each of these categories. For example, he suggests students apply “classical, symbolist, and institutional perspectives on persuasion” (151) while analyzing an organ donation website. His lessons are geared to high school students and older based on the websites he suggests; however, his methods can be applied to websites more appropriate for younger students.

Selber’s chapter finishes with the creation of interfaces, a logical step after students practice being rhetorical users. “The research literature stresses that the creation of interfaces for hypertextual media frequently places increased demands on writers” (168), and Selber examines three metaphors for this new writing: “nonlinear text,” “modular nodes,” and “associative links”(168, 172, 176). Overall, by theorizing about human-computer interaction and applying his theories to classrooms, Selber shows educators how to help students become “reflective producers of technology” (182).

Works Cited

"10 Things We Learned About Blogs - TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com. Time, 19 Dec. 2004. Web. 21 Feb. 2011. .

Selber, Stuart A. "Reimagining Computer Literacy." Multiliteracies for Digital Age. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2004. Print.

Blog Assignment #4: Teaching Writing in the Space of Blackboard

2011-02-16T16:54:00.001-08:00

Davis, Evan, and Sarah Hardy. “Teaching Writing in the Space of Blackboard.” Computers & Composition Online (Spring 2003). 15 Feb. 2004 .

“As we ask our students more and more frequently to inhabit a virtual space, we would do well to investigate just what kind of space it is” (“Introduction”). Evan Davis and Sarah Hardy articulate a question I have struggled to articulate: What are these virtual communities?

As a user of online communities in my classroom, I have sought insight into the nature of these spaces. Davis and Hardy’s essay is not a research study; instead, as professors who use Blackboard, they explore how to define the metaphors created in these shared spaces. Their essay is grounded in practical experiences and deepened by extensive theory from Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Michel de Certeau. For the writing teacher who wants practical advice on using online communities and Blackboard specifically, the section “Tips on Teaching with Blackboard” is invaluable. However, this essay does much more – it achieves the "theory-practice orientation to the classroom" Len Unsworth calls for (6).

Davis and Hardy’s conclusions illuminate my Ning experiences (while Ning and Blackboard are different, they are comparable as online private classroom communities). First is the tension between the goal of open, visible learning and the unavoidable containment of the system. “In a process-based composition course, such visibility holds out the tantalizing possibility of self-reflection … [Students] can become aware of their own mental processes and of the social context in which they write, seeing themselves … as members of a larger group” (“Panopticon”). This is the goal I have for my students; in fact, on my ning’s front page, I wrote, “We are about to join [Othello’s] long literary history with our own ideas about Shakespeare's masterpiece … You will have blog topics that ask you to think about the play … [and] you will explore and react to classmates' blogs. In the end, you will have created together a web of thinking … Here we will be able to … learn from everyone's thoughts and insights.” However, the systems’ nature creates a false sense of venturing into the full conversation. “By setting off a discrete territory …, Blackboard lets us use the web without being overwhelmed by it, hugging the coast while priding ourselves for venturing into the ocean” (“Panopticon”).

In the end, Davis and Hardy conclude that Blackboard is a successful system for student learning. It “makes it easy to take the goals of a student-centered class one step further, … introducing peer response and … critique into every level of the composition process” (“Panopticon”). What a teacher-researcher must be aware of is how far, or not, the system allows students to go. Davis and Hardy assert that students must know how to engage in public collaboration. It is up to us as teachers to thoughtfully expand the limits of these online spaces, guiding our students into full participation with their collaborative world.

Works Cited

Unsworth, Len. Teaching Multiliteracies across the Curriculum: Changing Contexts of Text and Image in Classroom Practice. Philadelphia, PA: Open University Press, 2001. Print.

Days That Count

2011-02-13T06:11:00.000-08:00

I am teaching for the first time in many years the seniors who are not in AP English. I have worked a great deal in my head on what this kind of student needs -- the student who has had to take English every year of their schooling life but does not plan to study English in college. What can I offer them in this final year that will make English mean something to their interests and choices?

While I my curricular answers are for another post (here's one!), what I want to post today is simply this picture of the Valentines my seniors made for their first grade buddies. My students and I started this semester going over to the Lower School every Friday as our "class." We do whatever the teacher needs us to do with her students -- sometimes reading, sometimes dissecting owl pellets (really!), sometimes brainstorming word lists, but always talking and sharing. When I look at the care and fun my students put into these surprise Valentines for their newfound "buddies," I think maybe this is what matters: the chance to be with others through the written and spoken word.

Blog Assignment #3: What Do Professors Really Say About College Writing?

2011-02-13T05:44:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Brockman, Marcy Taylor, Melinda Kreth, and MaryAnn K. Crawford. "What Do Professors Really Say About College Writing?" English Journal 100.3 (2011): 75-81. Print.

After exploring social software in two posts, I wanted to learn what professors expect in student writing because of the debates (for good and ill) about writing skills and digital tools. What kind of writing skills should students have? The answer to this will allow me to focus on how social software can help my students develop the writing skills they need in college.

The four authors of this article completed an extensive research study of writing at Central Michigan University. They published their findings first in the January 2010 English Journal (“Helping Students Cross the Threshold: Implications from a University Writing Assessment” may be accessed with an NCTE login). The 2011 article that is the focus of this post delineates the findings of the study’s focus groups. These groups consisted of professors from “various disciplines, experience levels, and pedagogical views” (75) who met to discuss the kinds of writing and how much writing they assign, strengths and weaknesses they see, and their definitions of “’good’ writing” (75) in their disciplines.

What is nice about this study is the authors split their findings into two articles. Each article is more accessible for high school English teachers, due to the shorter length and singular focus. While many teachers would love to keep current of in-depth research studies, the demands on their time just do not always allow for such reading.

The authors’ goal if this article is “to promote not automatic acceptance of [the focus groups’ comments] but, instead, teacherly reflection, further assessment, and ongoing conversation about what our colleagues across disciplines say about student writing” (75). They present direct quotes from the groups in three areas: writing overall, “reading and managing sources” (77), and “learning to write” (79). Each of these sections, after presenting quotes without any commentary, follows up with a summary of the conversations. This structure achieves what the authors hoped – a springboard of quotes for further discussions plus reflection on writing overall.

Ultimately, as a high school English teacher, I take away from this article a clear idea of how to enhance students’ writing preparedness. First, assign writing tasks that require “complexity of thought” (76); next help students see research as a “variety of skills associated with managing sources” (78); and finally “combine the previously mentioned strategies with the right mindset toward writing, especially writing growth” (79). The authors do not offer ready-made assignments, something that might frustrate a teacher looking for next week’s lesson. However, I was left with enough information to feel empowered to revise my own writing instruction, which brings me back to the social software I have been exploring. I see social collaboration as an excellent tool to deepen writing instruction for the complexity that can come with interacting with many viewpoints, the shared integrating of research findings, and the constant inducement to write to engage your readers.

Pedagogical Tool Review

2011-02-09T18:00:00.000-08:00

Meet Google Tools

While there are many Web 2.0 pedagogical tools, I have found the most versatile to be Google Tools – tools that were not designed for education, but tools that have been refined right in step with how I use them in my classroom. While I use many Google Tools, let’s focus on the two I use most: Google Documents (more affectionately known as Google Docs) and Google Forms (a subset of Google Docs).

Overall, Google Tools allow anyone storage, email communication, and collaboration on the web. After setting up your Google account, you access Google Tools from any computer any time. While storage and email communication are tools many teachers use with their students, Google Tools’ collaboration is my most powerful reason for recommending Google in the English Studies classroom. And I do mean English Studies overall because these tools are equally valuable in all of the branches.

Before I go too far, let me bring readers new to Google on board. To use Google Tools, you set up a Gmail account. This is fast and free, and once you are inside your Gmail account, use the top toolbar to access Google Tools.

Google Docs in the Classroom

One of the first Google Tools created was Google Docs (tutorial). This tool has developed into a true powerhouse in the classroom – the main addition being synchronous editing. This means your students can write, revise, edit, and discuss the same document at the same time. Here are ways I use this collaboration:

Deepening reading preparation: I assign reading on a Google Doc. I require individual tasks that students record on the Google Doc leading into collaborative tasks with other members to help them summarize to ensure understanding then synthesize to deepen understanding. Here is an example of my students’ collaboratively preparing their reading of the Bhagavad-Gita.

Collaborative reading and analysis: I also use a Google Doc to read collaboratively in class. As we are reading, we complete either guided or spontaneous annotating using the commenting features. Readers therefore see others’ reading skills laid plain, and the group works to construct meaning. Here we collaboratively read Antigone.

Group writing: Finally, and possibly most simply, Google Docs are perfect for collaborative writing. My students compose scripts in groups. Each group starts a Google Doc, inviting the other members and me. They then compose together in and out of class, and I offer feedback at any time.

Google Forms: Feedback and Fun Incentive

One of the more recent Google Tools I have adopted is the Google Form (tutorial). These can be done anonymously, which I have found produces the most reflective responses. I use Google Forms for:

Feedback: At the end of a unit, I create a feedback Google Form. Here is one form along with feedback results. This kind of quick, anonymous feedback is essential for me to reflect on my planning and teaching.

Incentive: I also use a Google Form to spur students to engage with reading before they come to class. On this form, the questions are designed to show students what it means to engage with reading without a teacher’s direction. When reading is due, students start class with this survey. I project the percentage results immediately and give them the goal of the class getting 100% on each question. Then I reward them with brownies when they achieve 100% (they always do, even if it takes some longer to get this type of discussion rolling outside of class). This survey improves in-class discussions because of the increased preparation, while doing something I never knew how to do before: show students what it means to be a scholarly reader.

Why Not Something Else?

I have tried them all ... it seems anyway. While other tools can do similar things, I choose Google Tools over them all:

All in one place: This is critical for emphasizing with your students that these are not one-shot collaborations with little long-term consequence. All of the work is in one place, so the collaboration becomes an integral part of their new “notebook.”

Google is not just for school: This is also critical because students will see their own uses for these flexible tools, leading to greater buy-in for their use in the classroom.

Google is free: Don’t pay for something you can get for free.

A world full of help: While Google Tools are relatively simple, you also only have to Google (pun intended) the tool to find help. You will never be lost. You also probably can ask your students to help you because I bet one of your students has a Gmail and uses these tools already.

Don’t Just Trust Me

Back in 2006 when Google introduced these tools, they were already gathering praise: “In the short time that developers outside Google have been using GWT [Google Web Tools], it has garnered kudos for several of its technical hallmarks” (Goth 95). More recently, Google Apps for Education, a free bundled package for schools, is flourishing (Dessoff 62). Google Tools is now an education tool despite its broader beginnings: “Google also offers a Teacher Academy that gives 50 participants at a time hands on experience with Google’s products and other technologies in an intensive, and free, one-day program” (Dessoff 66). A search of Google Scholar comes up with 20,000 articles involving Google Docs and education. On the NCTE site, a search for Google Docs produces 46 articles exploring its use in the classroom. Join the fun!

Works Cited

Dessoff, Alan. "Google and Microsoft Go to School: The computing giants compete to provide powerful online applications to school districts--for free." District Administration 46.8 (2010): 61-66. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 9 Feb. 2011.

Goth, Greg. "The, Google Web Toolkit Shines a Light on Ajax Frameworks." IEEE Software 24.2 (2007): 94-98. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 9 Feb. 2011.

Blog Assignment #2: Digital Identity through Social Software

2011-02-01T03:58:00.000-08:00

Boon, Stuart, and Christine Sinclair. "A World I Don't Inhabit: Disquiet and Identity in Second Life and Facebook." Educational Media International 46.2 (2009): 99-110. Print.

I have been wondering about social media. I can be uncomfortable using it, and I notice this in classmates as we use social tools to mediate class. The nature of written chats was even a topic of our written chat – true group metacognition indeed.

Consequently, Stuart Boon and Christine Sinclair’s experiences with digital identity intrigue me. They offer personal reflection founded in psychology and technology studies, providing a glimpse into social software’s effects on users. Boon and Sinclair make clear their article “raises more questions than it answers and suggests that there is an urgent need to theorise online identity, the roles of academics and students, and the codes of practice in such environments” (99). As teachers and professionals who may choose to integrate social software into classrooms and work, exploring how technology affects users is important.

Boon and Sinclair’s goal is “to discover how the act of … ‘inhabiting’ digital selves … affects not only what a student learns in these new spaces but also what a student may become in the process” (101). The authors were in courses using Facebook and Second Life, and they support using technology for education. Thus their discomfort as users is notable.

They focus their analysis on in-common reactions and how theory grounds them. They identify a major concern: “[d]igital selves invariably lack the … verifiability of the real … [T]his might seem like stating the obvious, but what might not be obvious is the emotional effect that this realisation can have on the entire virtual experience. It can result in dissonance … between real-world experiences and experiences within a digital world or environment (e.g. see Land & Bayne, 2006). Facebook does little to overcome this problem and … Second Life does even less. In both …, the onus is on the individual to break down or correct this dissonance” (104). I found this particularly interesting, as my student, reflecting on our Ning, wrote, “When I [do] my journals, I just sort of write what came to mind, so a lot of ideas aren’t fully explained ... Then, someone will … comment and it’s just sort of startling. It’s not bad, maybe good that I’m getting used to it.” It is clearly up to her to reconcile her writing and the digital experience that comes with it. As teachers, we risk assuming our students, raised in this technological world, do not struggle with social software.

Boon and Sinclair do not say to avoid these tools. They see benefits far beyond course content: “the discomfort draws attention to unexamined aspects of presentation of self …, academic and social assumptions …, and even our moral stances” (109). Reconciling the dissonance with the benefits becomes our task as professionals, as Boon and Sinclair intentionally leave us poised to do our own research of social software.

Back on Ning

2011-01-30T07:54:00.000-08:00

So, I have moved back to Ning ...

Despite hearing from the Grou.ps head guy on my prior post about technology, I have not been able to get my front page reactivated. I also found last semester that grou.ps doesn't thread replies to conversations, and that just does not work as well as having replies linked to the original comment.

So, Pearson has accepted my Ning, and I am working under limited abilities. I still love the overall functionality of Ning better than anything else I have been able to find, but the limits to educational Nings are just frustrating. My latest question with Ning is why do I HAVE to approve all blog posts on a private, educational ning? I want students to read each others' posts and comment ... so I have found myself constantly checking if there are new posts to approve just to force a kind of natural flow. Sigh ...

On the upside, I have a wonderful new Virginia Tech graduate student, Meg Dixon, working with my students in the Ning, under the capable supervision of Katie Dredger. I am excited to be able, through my ODU program, to study and write about this collaborative work I have done with Virginia Tech for two years. I have found so many benefits to having my students branching out and working at a true college level with Tech's college mentors, and I am excited to really pin down what all is happening. One of the things I hope to research through this project is Google Sites as a possible alternative to Ning. if anyone has any input on this, I would love to hear it.

Blog Assignment #1: Case-Study of Social Software

2011-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

Minocha, Shailey. "A Case Study-Based Investigation of Students' Experiences with Social Software Tools." New Review of Hypermedia & Multimedia 15.3 (2009): 245-65. Print.

Teaching at a 1:1 laptop school, I have used “social software” extensively in my classroom. As Shailey Minocha writes, “the key aspect of a Web 2.0 or social software tool is that it involves wider participation in the creation of information which is shared” (245). Blogs, wikis, nings, Google Docs, Twitter – all are social software. Researchers and teachers are intrigued by how these creation opportunities can stimulate higher student engagement and learning, particularly with writing.

I have done my own reflection after using Web 2.0 tools, from determining whether students reached curricular goals to asking them for their thoughts on the use of the software. However, I have not done formal research into the measurable efficacy of social software in the classroom; therefore I was extremely interested to read Minocha’s article. This article will be equally interesting for others using or studying Web 2.0 tools in classrooms. More importantly, it is also an excellent introduction to using these tools, so a novice teacher will gain much too.

Minocha and her colleagues carefully designed their research plan around empirical case studies. The article delineates their methods plus possible limitations; as a result, Minocha’s findings are credible and verifiable, thus highly instructive to readers. Teacher-scholars are Minocha’s particular audience because the study focused solely on schools.

Minocha and her colleagues had no preconceptions entering this study. This is clear when she presents her research goal: to study the “educational goals of using social software; benefits to the students; and the challenges they experience” (245). Minocha and her colleagues did find both benefits and challenges. They present these in narrative form along with a chart connecting possible solutions to each challenge (this chart is the main reason this article is so helpful for novice teachers because they can see possible pitfalls before they even begin).

Ultimately, this study found more positive results of using social software than negative. The negatives, such as ownership concerns and equal participation complaints, are ones the authors clearly feel, through their solutions chart, can be addressed. I would like to add that I have seen some of the negative concerns become a reality, such as students feeling like they are “being forced to comment” (257), and I agree with Minocha’s overall recommendations: “For a social software initiative, it is important that educators align the usage of the tool(s) to the learning outcomes of a course or programme. Next, it is important to explain to the students the rationale of the tool and how the tool will support their learning and skills development” (260-262). Careful planning is rewarded by benefits ranging from “engagement of students” to “inspirational learning” to a “sense of … ownership” (252-253). If my students are engaged and inspired by work they feel is truly theirs, I have helped to create true writers.

(Note to readers of my blog: I will be posting article and chapter reviews for the next few months as part of Dr. Kevin DePew's Pedagogy and Instructional Design class for the PhD program at Old Dominion University. I hope these give you some interesting reading to explore!)

Technology Tussle

2011-01-19T08:16:00.001-08:00

Here is my almost daily question: Why is technology so unreliable? Actually, a more accurate phrasing of that question would be: Why does technology not really do what it advertises it will do?

Here are my experiences just this week:

Grou.ps -- I moved to this site in August because I was really bothered by Ning becoming fee-based and I did not want to be an ad platform for Pearson (nothing personal against Pearson -- I just felt wrong becoming an ad place for them). Of course, Grou.ps is now following the money PLUS I have not been able to access any payment options for weeks on their site or been able to make my grou.ps public so I can see my front page again. Today, I cannot even access my grou.ps. No notice, just no grou.ps available. Can't wait for my class later today when we actually, surprise surprise, wanted to use our grou.ps to ... collaborate ...
Crocodoc -- I thought this would be a great alternative to Diigo (which could be a completely different bullet except I have not used Diigo in months because its annotation tools are SO unreliable). So, I get my class all set up, they start annotating, and we quickly have annotations scrolling for pages that are linked to sentences way, way above. No way to close comments or to respond to comments -- just one long list of comments that really are not visibly attached to anything ... so no collaborating on annotating with this collaborative annotation tool ...
Skype -- My professor is trying to use this for the audio portion of our class (because Adobe Connect's -- our conferencing software -- audio is apparently known to be problematic), and he has struggled for two weeks now because half the people cannot hear. It is never the same half of course. I feel so sorry for him because, as technology teacher myself, I know the headache of trying to troubleshoot on the spot. All he was trying to do was to communicate via the web ... what Skype promotes itself as ... hmmm ...

I love the ideas I have about how to teach better and more powerfully through the tools I can harness in my school's 1:1 laptop program. But if I had made a scorecard of hits and misses, I have to be honest that my misses column would be far, far longer. The hits make it all worth it (Google Docs -- thank you for changing to allow synchronous editing!!) ... so just thank you for allowing me to vent.

My Own Blogging Challenge

2011-01-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

While I *think* I signed up for the EduBlog Teacher Challenge, I am not sure where to go to get the challenges, but I have been inspired enough to challenge myself to return to my blog. My goal is to use this blog partly as my reflection for my Pedagogy and Instructional Design class this semester. I began a PhD program in English this past fall, and I think this current course will offer me many things to share on this blog with its focus on pedagogy and a book titled Multiliteracies.

The course starts tomorrow, and I have a few goals to achieve in it:

Write about my collaboration with fellow graduate student (she is at Virginia Tech and I am at ODU) Katie Dredger -- this will be our second year joining our classes together online to study Shakespeare specifically but reading and writing overall
Renew my commitment to Twitter so that I can rejuvenate my wonderful yet wonderfully dormant network
Develop one new unit plan that takes further advantage of the technology resources at my 1:1 laptop school

And of course ...

Write on this blog about it all

I joined this PhD program because of its focus on writing and rhetoric as well as new media. My ultimate goal, now that I have my feet wet after completing my first class, is to join my new studies with my current uses of technology. I think both will benefit.

My NCTE Gallery of Writing Submission

2010-05-21T06:35:00.000-07:00

Our students are beginning to submit to our Gallery of Writing: Fredericksburg Academy Writers. Here is my submission:

Marian

I've always been told I have her hands.
My grandmother's ring twirls around my pinky,
the swirl of diamonds arranged in her jaunty style,
a sweeping crescent surrounding a single stone,
nothing staid or common.

My size eight fingers,
monstrous to my teenage eyes,
earned my acceptance
because they were her large fingers.

I see her hand as I watch the ring,
pale whiteness shot through with the purple of age,
the ring glittering as if to say,
"I have life in me yet."

We believed the ring.

I watch her ring twirl, my ring now.
It is too small for my fourth finger,
the finger she wore it on.
I guess I don't have her hands
after all.

Thank you to all of the members of the EC Ning writing group who helped me to revise this poem.

Why do we read?

2010-05-13T09:38:00.001-07:00

My AP English Literature class spent today reflecting on our lives as readers. Above (click the map to see a larger image so you can actually read it!) is a map of all of their choices for books they value in their lives -- some could not choose just one, some chose books their parents read to them years and years ago, some chose books they read last year ... But in the end, this is what they all decided was the answer to, "Why do we read?"

Because we find ourselves in books
Because we escape ourselves in books
Because books, even when read alone, connect us to a larger community

In other words, books are both ours and everybody's, and that is their beauty. Thank you, APEs of 2010 -- I will miss you.

What Is Manhood?

2010-05-11T16:17:00.000-07:00

I have made my choice about the senior course I wrote about in the previous post: I am gearing it to works these boys will (I hope) find engaging so they find themselves reflected in an English classroom and maybe choose to read more on their own. Hence, my draft essential question as the title of this post: I am going to present this course as a study of manhood around the world with them acting as my guide. We will (I hope again!) constantly question whether what is shown as manhood is embraced or denied, positive or negative, understandable or opaque. Here is a draft outline of the course -- with VERY draft forms of questions I am considering. Much thanks to the many "boy readers" thread on the EC Ning for many of the titles I am including. I would love ideas for questions you might ask with the literature we are reading.

Summer reading: An American man takes to the world out of dissatisfaction ... Why? Do we see ourselves in him in any way?

Required and self-selected essays from Michael Crichton's Travels

September: Where do we begin in thinking about why the world matters to us and manhood?

Self-selected reading tied to an area of interest from one of Crichton's essays

October/November: The Middle East ... What is all of the conflict about?

Excerpts from the Koran
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
The Pride of Baghdad
Excerpts from The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation

December/January: South America ... (still working on a draft question)

Short Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

January/February: Africa ... How does literature reflect a country's men? Does it?

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah

March: India ... Where are we now?

Short stories from Jhumpa Lahiri's The Interpreter of Maladies
White Tiger by Aravind Adiga

April: What are we left understanding? What are we left wanting to know?

A second choice reading

What Is Our Goal?

2010-05-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

I have spent some time today thinking about next year. I am teaching for the first time our non-AP senior world literature course. Our core texts are: Things Fall Apart, A Thousand Splendid Suns, The Interpreter of Maladies, and The Master of Go. A blend of new and old with an eye towards different parts of the world. This course is shifting from one semester to the full year though, so there is plenty of room to grow it.

Which brought me to my question: What is my goal? Which brought me to my larger question: What is our goal as English teachers? More specifically (because that question can be answered in myriad ways): What is our goal for non-AP seniors in a required English class?

These students are not looking to be English majors. These students do not often write for fun, although I would venture to say that at least some read for fun. These students have traveled the traditional path of an introductory course, British lit, and American lit.

What should they do now?

I see two initial directions to choose between: a study of exemplary literature from different countries (The Master of Go and Things Fall Apart route) or a study of culturally-leaning yet more modern adaptations (A Thousand Splendid Suns route). Now since my course obviously has literature from both of these routes, I know it is not one or the other. But what emphasis should I have?

Oh, and did I mention that this course will be all boys?

What would you choose as your goal?

Exploring Genres

2010-05-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

I have been looking forward to this day with my freshmen for a week now: today is when we started our final unit in Introduction to Genres. In the past, I have ended the year with a free choice reading where I suggested they read genres they enjoyed over the year, but inevitably 90% of them chose the familiar novel. This year, I shifted my guidelines to try to encourage exploration of a less-familiar genre they discovered this year. So, we began with brainstorming:

Which genre have you enjoyed reading the most this year?
A. Rank them from 1 (most enjoyed) to 5 (enjoyed but not as much!):

Short Stories ("The Most Dangerous Game," "To Hell with Dying," "Bluestown," "Death by Landscape," "Singing My Sister Down," "Rules of the Game," "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge")
Drama ("Trifles," The Importance of Being Earnest, Antigone)
Poetry (see our poems here)
Nonfiction/Autobiographies ("On Being a Cripple," Night)
Novels (Frankenstein)

B. For your #1 choice, how often have you read something in this genre entirely of your own choice?

C. For your #2 choice, how often have you read something in this genre entirely of your own choice?

D. Final question: Of these two, which genre have you learned you enjoy but choose to read the least?

Then, I asked them to consider reading in this genre that they found they enjoyed but really had never chosen to read on their own. And this is why I love my students: they went along with my suggestion. Out of my ten students (I had only one of my classes today), only 1 chose novel, and he chose it because he rarely reads them. I teased him that I would make him read Twilight so he could really get caught up on the novel genre! Of the other students, 2 chose short stories, 3 chose poetry, and 4 chose nonfiction.

I am using a modified literature circle for this unit where they will meet in genre-similar groups to compare what they are reading (since they will be reading different representations of the genre) and tease out a deeper understanding of their chosen genres. My final goal for them is to understand not only their genre but to understand why that genre appeals to them -- what style techniques and topics are common.

I always want to give my students choice in their reading, but I also really want to push them into new territory so they grow as readers and thinkers an discover new loves. I do not always strike a great balance between these sometimes conflicting pressures, but I think I have struck a homerun with this one.

Random Thoughts

2010-04-19T16:35:00.000-07:00

I have been neglecting my blog lately. In fact, it has been so long since I have been here that it has become intimidating. What topic is possibly worthy of my first post in over a month? So, no topic it is. Here are some things drifting around my brain tonight:

Over 2 weeks off for snow was delightful -- free vacation! But it does actually have a longer term educational impact (shocker, I know). I am seeing it now with my AP English Lit class. I had to drop some assignments, and they were almost shell-shocked on Friday when they wrote a style analysis essay. Yes, evidently it had been even longer for them than the time since I have been to this blog.
Tied to this, spending time just talking is always good. That is what we did today when I handed back the essays. I was honest with them about three things: (1) no, these were not great essays, (2) I know they can write great essays, and (3) my goal was to help them regain their confidence not grade them. So, we talked about what they were feeling and thinking, and the result? They assigned themselves another essay on Thursday ... !! They really did.
Freshmen are really insightful. I love teaching freshmen -- always have -- but I had been forced to take a three year hiatus from my freshmen teaching. I am now in those halcyon days that come with 4th quarter freshmen, and I love how their minds work. If you have a minute, PLEASE read their theme posts on our class blog. There is little to nothing I need to say in class even as we are tackling Frankenstein. Very proud of them.
Planning using UbD is hard. Even for someone like me who really loves UbD ideas and is not even trying to complete all of those little spots in all of those planning sheets, it is hard. What is hardest for me is the doubt I have -- is this lesson worthy of UbD? Am I reaching towards an essential understanding right now, something more than this singular moment? Asking these questions has made me a better teacher absolutely, but I wonder about the sustainability of anyone going full force UbD. Or the confidence impact on a new teacher trying to go UbD. Don't have the answers in this post -- maybe you do and want to share?
Lynda Carter can really sing. I am a Wonder Woman girl -- she was my idol (and to be honest is still on my idol list -- who does not feel empowered by that woman??). Then I saw her in concert two nights ago, and thought to myself, "You slacker, you have only had one career. Lynda Carter has been Miss USA World, Wonder Woman, focused mom, and now international jazz sensation." Maybe UbD is easier to take than a Lynda Carter concert!

Blog Partners

2010-03-10T15:57:00.000-08:00

I heard a great idea at this year's NCTE conference in a session on teaching the Holocaust: blog partners. I decided to adapt it for my students study of Elie Wiesel's novel Night. You can read their blogs here, and here is my assignment sheet.

I asked my students to reflect a little on this new format for our blogging, and here is what one of them wrote: "Doing what we're doing now, with the interactive posting/commenting, is also a new way of doing things and, unlike some assignments using sites like this, you have to actually think about what you're posting." Another student wrote: "It helps me improve my knowledge on the material we are learning because when I write a blog post it allows me to test myself and to see what I do or don't know about the material."

This has always been one of my favorite works to teach, and now I think I have a blogging system that is equally strong.

The Millenials

2010-02-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

I think about the state of our world and economy pretty regularly. With my own two children just starting out in school and with myself and my husband both being teachers, I find lots of reasons to ponder what the future holds for both better and worse. Therefore, this passage struck a chord with me: a snapshot of how life has truly changed for this generation dubbed "millenials." Not changed because of technology or their helicopter parents or their commitment to community service ... but changed because the world has changed in all of the ways listed at the beginning of this sentence and more.

"What are youth doing rather than working? A great number of them are participating in an academic career, prolonging their academic career or planning their academic career. Currently, the higher education system is the refuge of the Millennial generation.

"One would think that this generation would become embittered and start blaming those that preceded them for making decisions that have disrupted their progression toward their life goals. As is customary with this generation, they remain optimistic about their futures, focusing on entrepreneurial pursuits, improving their knowledge base and camping out with Mom & Dad a little longer. They're also getting an early start on raising a family, sometimes even prior to marriage. By time-shifting their desire for kids with their desire for a career, they are creating an extended-family reality that hasn't existed in American society since the depression." (from YPulse, "Portrait of Millenials")

What will our world become when these highly educated (let's hope our education system is up to the task of their extended stays) and differently committed (family coming before the career? who would have thought ...) can truly join in?

Rereading

2010-02-06T10:04:00.000-08:00

I went to a great presentation on the power of rereading given by Tom Liam Lynch at NCTE this past fall. I am now in the midst of a rereading autobiography project with my freshmen. They and I all chose favorites to reread -- I gave them just about a month to do the rereading while we were studying poetry in class. Now they are writing their first drafts of their rereading autobiographies based on the essays in Rereadings edited by Anne Fadiman. This project has been good for a few reasons:

We are trying to incorporate more free choice reading in our 6-12 curriculum overall, and this is a different way to do so. We like to offer variety in the singular threads (free choice reading, portfolios) that move from 6th to 12th grades so students stay engaged.
The majority of the students, when I polled them after they had read their books, said they loved rereading and I should definitely have next year's freshmen reread, and some even thanked me for giving the assignment because it helped them remember why they liked to read (that is success enough alone!).
A very small number of students said they did not think I should do this project again because they do not like rereading. I was very intrigued by this because I cannot remember a time in my life when I did not like to reread. Yes, there are books I will never reread, but I have never disliked it period. These students, as freshmen, have a strong opinion that they just do not reread. I have asked them to explore this in their autobiographies, and I am intrigued to learn more about what is behind this.
A few students, who liked the idea of rereading, said that they picked books that were too recent -- they remembered everything about them so the rereading was arduous rather than fun. This is great feedback for me to help guide future classes in their choices should I do this project again

I hope their autobiographies turn out as thoughtful as I think they will be based on the brainstorming discussion we have had. That will be the true test of this whole project!

Wrapping Things Up

2010-02-03T16:03:00.000-08:00

We have been having quite some snow for Virginia, and for a state that closes schools for a dusting, that means snow days. While I enjoy a surprise day off, it does wreak havoc on my lessons. So, last Friday, I had my poetry party with one section of freshmen, but alas, snow hit Monday and school was closed ... do I scrap the party for the other class to move on with the "real" work?

I was on the horns of a dilemma. We are reading Understanding by Design as a school, and I worried that my favorite poetry party was really not important -- that it was fun but that's it. Turns out this was a good worry for me to have because it made me think about why I love this day so much and why I was going to still have the party.

As the final day of our study of the poetry genre (I do not only study poetry in isolation by the way -- that is a topic for another post!), I bring in food and drink, and we spend the first part of class clicking through everyone's favorite original poems on our class wiki anthology. I project each student's poem, and they read it aloud. Then, as they are printing out their favorite poems for our bulletin board plus submitting poems to our school literary magazine, I play each of their recorded recitations.

The silence and attention that a group of freshmen give when their peers are reciting poetry, even when pumped with sugar from the donut holes I provided, is amazing and wonderful and every reason in the world to have this party. The reciters get practice, without me needing to call it this or grade it, on public speaking, and the class as a whole gets poetry rained down on them: poems their peers wrote, poems they themselves wrote, poems their peers love, poems they love, live readings, recorded skilled recitations. One of my students said it simply in her final reflective email: "I liked the poetry party and listening to what other people wrote."

Is my party UbD worthy? Turns out, it is. My students and I get to be with poetry in an informal and embracing way, and we end up celebrating our love of this oft-maligned genre. Another student wrote, "I learned that I really like writing poetry and will enjoy writing it in the future." My party will go on.

Not Quite Real Time Collaboration

2010-01-12T16:58:00.000-08:00

I have started my students back on Diigo in the past week. We are working on poetry now, and I set up a wiki having learned from my last experience that Diigo gets wiggy on slower websites. Wikispaces, with its emphasis on collaboration, seems to be able to handle the extra layer of Diigo well.

However, all problems are not solved. My students can do great work when they have time outside of class to add Diigo comments and highlights. They did this for Gwendolyn Brooks's poem "We Real Cool" -- see their ideas here. Today I began class by having them read the comments on the poem, then they had to write a blog post about the poem incorporating something they learned from a classmates' comment. By the time we were ready to discuss, they had the poem pretty well dissected in their own minds. They shared the best ideas they had read, and I asked them if they felt they had a good grasp of what Brooks was trying to say. They did, so we next listened to her read her poem then read this interview with her. They were really impressed with themselves to learn that they had thought about all of the things Brooks herself had thought about. Neat.

But then things broke down. My next plan with Diigo which was to tackle another poem applying what we had learned about line breaks from Brooks. I planned to record their ideas on the poem using Diigo, and this is the wall I hit. As they were sharing ideas, my highlighter would work only half the time; comments sometimes appeared therefore and sometimes not. I ended up using markers on my dry erase board (which doubles as my projection screen) to do the highlighting just so I could stop hindering the forward flow of the discussion. Not quite what I had envisioned with using this tool.

My students were very patient with me as I struggled through this, but it ended up provoking comments from them on their experiences with Diigo. Turns out that most of them have these same problems repeatedly. They find Diigo therefore frustrating, and while they are obviously persevering and getting the out of class work done using it, it is not at all what I had thought was happening when I saw all of their homework done. I talked to them about how I love what Diigo can help us do -- how seeing each others' comments earlier in class had really informed their individual interpretations. Because they are kind people, they nodded and could see what I meant, but I am not sure the frustrations are not winning out in their minds. To be honest, they are starting to for me. An entire poetry discussion was derailed by trying to make Diigo work.

My wonderful tech resource Susan Morgan has done research for me into these issues, and what she has learned has left me feeling a little hopeless about solving them. Evidently, Diigo can be messed up by random settings on individual laptops. So, what could be stopping my highlights from always appearing is probably not the same problem that is stopping one of my students from seeing any of his comments. I am glad that Diigo seems to be a secure program, but I cannot troubleshoot individual blocks. I do not know enough, for starters, but who has the time for that?

What to do? Is this technology not the right answer for this work? Am I trying to fit a square peg into a round hole for the sake of technology here? I do not want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but I struggle with using Diigo only as an out-of-class tool when what I really want is a real-time, immediate collaboration tool. Something I thought Diigo could be ...

Next Installment on Diigo

2009-11-23T06:01:00.000-08:00

I have been delaying writing this post because I had hoped to be able to work things out and have more to offer. But I haven't, and as a result, I have temporarily suspended my students' Diigo work until I have time to get to the bottom of the issues.

Our work started out well. We read in class a section of Antigone, and that night, they annotated spots where they saw characters developing moral dilemmas (these dilemmas are our entry point into the play -- we will eventually write compare/contrast essays on modern moral dilemmas and what we can learn from ancient dilemmas -- more on that later!). Here is an example of one of their comment threads (with their typos and all!) on this quote from Antigone to Ismene, "Yes, I'll do my duty to my brother -- / and your as well, if you're not prepared to. / I won't be caught betraying him."

Erin on 2009-11-17

Intro to Genres 09-10

I believe that this is an example of a moral delima, Antigone is going against what they king has said in order to honor her brother. She also puts her sister Ismene in a moral delima, Ismene doesnt want to tell anyone that her sister plans on diobeying the king, but her sister says that if she doesnt tell the people that she will hate her even more. Ismene is the one that is faced with the true moral delima, whether to protect her sister, or tell the king.
Alex on 2009-11-18
Intro to Genres 09-10

Indeed, the moral dilema here is paying respects to Antigone's brother and being stoned, or leaving him to be eaten by birds in the desert. If he was not buried then according to Greek customs he would not be able to cross over into the underworld and have to wander Earth for the remainder of time, the greatest dishonor.

This is only one example of many where they read each other's ideas and built their own thoughts on them. I was thrilled. We started class the next day just skimming the play -- I asked them to notice who had a moral dilemma so far just by looking at where the annotations were. They could SEE that every character so far had some kind of dilemma. We were on a roll ...

Then came that day's work. They were to annotate for character development after our in-class reading. I intended to use these character annotations the next day when they got into acting companies to perform the parts we had read so far -- they would have insight into the characters right there on the play itself. But the wheels came off, and I have not figured out how to get them back on. I was getting email after email as the group manager telling me annotations were being put on, but I could not see them. I got to my first class, and I learned none of them could see them either, even their own annotations. Out of 25 students, only four of them had annotations that could be seen. They were anxious because this was their homework -- I was at least able to assure them that I could tell from the email notices they had done what they were to do.

My tech director, Susan Carter Morgan, and I have been trying to get to the bottom of the issue. Here is what we think we know:

The Antigone website I chose is a page that loads slowly, so this might be why it is glitchy. Note to self for future: be sure the site we are working on is fast without Diigo since Diigo does add another layer.
Diigo itself seems to be having problems. Susan has Twitter friends who have commented on having annotations disappear this past week. Susan and I have both emailed Diigo directly (in fact, I think Susan has emailed them more than once), but we have gotten no response. I am disappointed by this because if there is not strong customer service, we end up with an insolvable problem.

On the bright side, my history colleague did not have these issues last week. She was able to complete a really neat cross-curricular test with the students using Diigo. They had been learning about Greek culture plus studying primary texts. She told them their test would be annotating for Greek culture on a primary source document. When they got to class, they learned that the primary source was the section of Antigone I had read with them the day before. They made very insightful comments, and even better, all of their comments appeared right away. This was the same day my Diigo group had become totally non-functioning, so she was very relieved hers still worked. Here is an example of one of their cultural connections:

Isabel on 2009-11-18

FAworldhistory9

This is an indirect example of the social inequality of Athenian life. Women did not have a large role in Athenian life outside of the home. Ismene does not know of what is going on in the outside world because her place is in the home, away from the news of the city. Because women were not valued no one has a priority to tell women what is going on.

Great thinking! The history teacher had put the play section onto her class's wiki, so she was not working from the same slow-loading page I was. This could be a great answer for how to use text you really want to use (I like the translation of Antigone that is on this slow page the best) but not have to use the slow page.

So, my students and I will finish reading Antigone without annotating, and that is fine. I hope to be able to truly know what all is going wrong by January when we start our next genre: poetry. Collaborative annotating of poetry has such possibilities! So, I am not giving up, and I will keep you posted.

NCTE 2009

2009-11-22T16:52:00.000-08:00

While there is more that I learned at NCTE than I can possibly share in a blog post, here is what is going through my mind as I am back at home and should be in bed. No particular order ...

If you have not read Clyde Edgerton, do. Then have your students read his work. Laugh and see the honesty of humanity all in one place. Thank you Yvonne Mason for introducing me to both the man and his writing.
Still pondering: Why do boys stop reading? Maybe it is because they have learned to hear the question, "Are you reading?" as "Are you reading fiction?" Maybe they are reading more than we know, but they are reading things we do not "count" as reading?
Philadelphia has done a remarkable thing with their convention center -- to see a beautiful and modern convention center fit inside an old train depot was breathtaking. Kudos to this urban wisdom.
Great idea from B38: Rediscovering ourselves as readers. Ask students to bring in the last book they truly enjoyed reading (no matter how long ago they read the book). On one day in class, all start rereading these personal favorites. Give the class and you time to finish the rereading out of class then discuss (together, in essays, ...) what each reader learned about themselves as a reader -- how this book marks a moment in their lives as readers. Let them rediscover why they like to read then take that enthusiasm into their reading with you.
(I twittered this one, so move along if you follow my tweets ...) Have students pair up throughout a text. For each chunk of reading, they switch roles: one posts quotes they find particularly noteworthy; the other responds to the quotes. Gives variety to reading responses through both alternating roles and immediate collaboration. Great way to use blogs/nings/discussion boards.
Everyone deserves an "open destiny." "Even fictional characters deserve to have hope." (Emma Walton Hamilton)
Still pondering: Can being more careful with the semantics of how we talk about grammar help us to better define the learning we hope to engender in our students? Think about the progression underlying these three terms: GRAMMAR --> USAGE --> RHETORIC
Great presentation on comedy from G38: A paraphrase of Chris Rock ... Comedy deals with things we would be uncomfortable with if we weren't laughing. Still pondering how to craft my dream elective, "Why don't we ever read anything happy?"
Did you know Art Spiegelman drew Garbage Pail Kid trading cards??
Paused for a long time on this one from Kelly Gallagher (my best memory of a quote): "Kids see reading today as a means to taking a test." Ninth graders have had NCLB in their lives since third grade ... what does that mean they make of their education?
Why do some people put the work into sending in a presentation proposal then not prepare a full presentation? Nothing was more of a downer than reading about a presentation and getting excited by what it would have to offer to find that it was over 25 minutes into the session block and I had missed out on the first half of other sessions. Thank you to each presenter who worked hard to craft an engaging and informative session (@tomliamlynch was a perfect example).
If you have any doubts (which I have had at times), Twitter is truly a relationship builder. I have attended the past two NCTE conferences without any colleagues, and this year I was able to attend with both an actual school colleague (Jennifer Clark Evans) and my Twitter network of colleagues. To meet in person the written voices I have learned so much from (@readinator, @ydmason, @klbz, @msstewart, @englishcomp, @iMrsF, and almost @nooccar ... I am sure I am missing someone) was something my Web 2.0 work offered that the convention could never have done all on its own.

Off to bed to make it through the next two and a half days before Thanksgiving. This weekend was a perfect pre-Thanksgiving celebration for me.

Starting with Diigo

2009-11-13T06:08:00.000-08:00

The time has come ... my freshmen and I are venturing onto Diigo next week. I am excited for the sharing of annotations that Diigo allows. Last year's freshmen English teacher used Diigo to great success with the students' poetry studies. Having just focused on annotating The Importance of Being Earnest, I think my students will see pretty quickly the additional layer Diigo adds to their active reading and thinking.

What I am most curious about is how they decide to involve themselves in the sharing. I plan to have them do guided annotations at first where they find connections between our in-class discussions of moral dilemmas and what we have read of Antigone. What I will tell them is that if they get on to Diigo first, they have wide open choices for what to highlight and comment on. As more and more of them highlight, the options for new connections will diminish, so those who come on later will need to respond thoughtfully to an exisiting comment -- adding something of value to the class's accumulating ideas. I think it will be really neat the next day in class to have a compiled set of connections to jump right into. In prior years, we had to spend class time sharing them and marking others' ideas in our own texts -- how nice to be able to skip this step and start right into what we have made together.

Here are some things that have seemed important as I have gotten ready for all of this:

I am working with the freshman science and history teachers to get the students on Diigo. The science teacher a few weeks ago got them all to set up their accounts, and they have been sharing bookmarks. The history teacher then had them join her class group (more on that below) and do an annotation together in class this week. Therefore, when my classes go onto Diigo next week, the students should be able to use it right away. As a laptop school, this is the biggest hurdle we have found we need to negotiate -- the time it takes to get students logged onto and acclimated to a new Web tool. By sharing this over three courses, we have accomplished two things: no one of our classes has to bear the whole brunt of time needed to get familiar with the program and the students see right away that this is a tool they will truly use and not an "add on."
We have decided not to use the educator's account but instead to set up private Diigo groups. Knowing we want our students to use Diigo on their own ultimately, we did not want to limit what they do now to an ed account. However, we did not want them open to every Diigo user. So, we each have class groups they join, and they are learning to categorize their comments and bookmarks accordingly.
Our remaining issue is what to do with separate sections of our courses. We know that having all the students across different sections share their annotations is a wonderful, collaborative thing. However, we also know this sometimes will produce too many annotations for the students to truly use. They will just tune out as a result. Our history teacher came up with a great solution. She has all of her students still in the same history group, but when she wants the annotations limited, she has them annotate different web versions of the document. For example, they are starting with Aristotle's Poetics, so she found two websites that had similar translations for her two classes to annotate. What is really neat about this is that at any time, she can have the one class visit the other's site and see their annotations and compare them.

I will be back on here to let you know how all of this goes in reality!

Annotating and Victorian England: Unlikely Bedfellows

2009-10-25T17:26:00.000-07:00

My freshmen and I have started The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde. My main goal for our study is to work with students on thoughtful annotations. So many students underline everything or nothing as they read, and I remember feeling as a student that I was never sure I was marking the "right" things. So, the students' "test" on this play will be a master copy of the play itself -- one with all of their annotations. Here is the assignment sheet:

Your Master Copy of The Importance of Being Earnest

Annotating a text is one of the most important skills to have to study literature. Authors do it to their own writing to make notes for themselves, directors do it when they are preparing a play for their actors, and scholars do it when they are studying a text for their dissertations. So, now you will take on the role of author, director, and scholar and create your own master copy of The Importance of Being Earnest.

The Assignment: Fully annotate your copy of the play to show the depth of your understanding of the text itself as well as of the historical context of the text.

The Method: You will use the technical annotation skills available on your laptop. Let’s review how to do each of these: colored fonts, highlighting, hyperlinks within the document as well as to the Internet, and comments. The most important thing to remember is that for every highlighted passage, you must have an explanatory comment.

The Guidelines: To help me read your annotations, please use the corresponding colors to highlight the text to indicate which item you are doing.

1. At least 5 explanations* of how your knowledge of the historical background of Victorian England explains an aspect in the text

* 3 of these examples must be hyperlinked to corresponding websites as well as commented on.

2. At least 3 explanations of Wilde’s jokes about society

3. At least 5 explanations of aspects of the play discussed in class (not including the next question)

4. An explanation of the meaning of the title to the play as a whole

5. An explanation of your favorite part of the play (that is, explain what is happening and why you like this part so much)

Total: at least 15 annotated passages throughout the play

My school is in the midst of a year-long professional development focus on Understanding By Design. My personal goal is to review my assessments with an eye for truly asking students to DO what I hope they have learned. This assignment is one of my efforts at that. It seems to be working so far -- on our first day of reading, the students were making historical connections because they got the humor (here is a great site for research on Victorian England -- we used this before beginning the play). Tomorrow's homework will be for them to complete their first official annotation. Here is an example:

LADY BRACKNELL. [Pencil and note-book in hand.] I feel bound to tell you that you are not down on my list of
eligible young men, although I have the same list as the dear Duchess of Bolton has. We work together, in fact.
However, I am quite ready to enter your name, should your answers be what a really affectionate mother requires.
Do you smoke? SLN1

SLN1The mothers kept a list of all the eligible men that can marry there daughters. They ask questions to find out what the men are like.

For the next step, students will go live with their annotations using Diigo. Wish them luck!

The Power (and Challenge) of Reflection

2009-10-24T11:01:00.000-07:00

Last winter, I set myself the goal of having my students do more regular reflection. I cannot say I achieved this last year, but I think I have made some pretty good steps this year. I have pushed both my freshmen and my seniors to do more reflection, and what I see in their comfort level with the process is telling.

First, here are some of the reflective activities we have done:

When my freshmen received their short story texts back, we focused specifically on the test essay. I made sure to write a comment on each essay as I was grading that told them something they did well. They reviewed my comments then went to their blogs and wrote about what they feel they do well on test essays. Their homework was then to read their classmates' blogs to learn more about good test essay writing. They sent me an email telling me what they learned from their classmates.
My freshmen have also begun a document called "My Writing." In here, they record their strengths and areas for improvement. We will use this chart all year to keep doing what we do well and to keep improving. For their end-of-year portfolio, this chart will be a great way for them to track their writing trends for the year.
My seniors completed a Google survey where they told me what they enjoyed most about our first thematic unit and what they learned the most from. Great feedback for me and for them.
My seniors began the second quarter by pulling out two of their essays from first quarter. They reread my comments then set two goals for their writing for this quarter. They are in the midst of writing an essay right now, so these goals will have both an immediate application and a future one.

What I learned watching two groups who are four years apart is that reflection is a practiced skill. Many of my freshmen struggled with thinking about how to do what they did on this test essay on future essays -- the idea of transferring learning intentionally did not come naturally for many. My seniors on the other hand jumped right into their reflective work and really pushed themselves to think both backwards and forwards. I think some of this is because we (including me) do not ask students to reflect enough, so freshmen have less experience. I also think reflection is a skill requiring abstract thought, something some freshmen are cognitively still approaching.

This renews my goal of reflection in my class. If I can help students become more reflective thinkers, I have helped them gain a skill that goes far beyond my classroom. The power to reflect is the power to change your own life.

Pushing Through

2009-09-23T16:09:00.000-07:00

So the fifth week of school has done me in. I feel flat. I feel like every day should definitely be Friday. My body is saying, "This is for real? Summer is done??"

I can only imagine how my students are feeling if I feel this way about a job I love. Note to self:

Be gentle with them. Maybe even be gentle with yourself.
Do what you can to make class interactive to wake us all back up.
Remember this too shall pass.

Anyone else feeling it? Anyone have wisdom to share?

Real Life Authors

2009-09-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

I am really excited (a dorky teacher level of excitement) about the next week with my freshmen and their study of short stories. Our course, Introduction to Genres, focuses on two essential questions:

What do we learn from the "masters" about how to write well?
How can you use these tools to make your own writing "masterful"?

With each genre, we read "masterful" examples then the students write their own, using the techniques they have seen in action. Our first genre study is the short story. I wanted to put the connections I have developed through Twitter and the English Companion ning to work to push my students' writing even further this year. Enter: two real live authors.

I learned about Australian author Margo Lanagan's thought-provoking story "Singing My Sister Down" when I put out a request on Twitter about stories people taught that their students loved. Come to find out, Margo Lanagan has her own blog ... and my students are blogging ... so two plus two equals four! My students are reading her story this weekend, and we will discuss it tomorrow. Then we will look at her blog together with their homework being to write to her -- to comment on her blog like they hope people comment on theirs. I hope some of them are proud of enough of their own blog posts about her story to share the link with her and invite her to comment. Writers sharing their blogs ... perfect.

Then later in the week, my students will participate in a Skype call with author Clyde Edgerton. This is a contact I made through an EC ning friend Yvonne Mason. Yvonne shared with me that she knew Clyde Edgerton and offered to contact him on my behalf. Clyde graciously accepted my invite to talk to my students about how he crafts short stories. My students will have read one story by him and talked about what they see in his writing style. They will also have completed a first draft of their own stories and be ready for revision tips from him. Writers talking together about how they write ... perfect.

Yes, I am excited to a silly degree ... I hope my students are at least half as excited :)

Thinking (Both Mine and Theirs)

2009-09-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

Without my planning this, I focused on thinking with both of my classes today. It turned out to be an interesting pairing of lessons for me -- seeing the emphasis on independent thought I ask of ninth graders and that which I ask of seniors.

My ninth graders are just getting deep into our study of short stories, and I am pushing them to use their blog posts to explore how the authors use short story techniques. (Please read and comment on their blogs here if you have time -- they are enjoying sharing their ideas.) This is a new thing for me -- to make their reading reflections more than just, "What did you think of the story?," and instead, "What do you think this author is doing with his/her writing and why?" To prepare them for their assignment tonight (to study how Alice Walker shifts traditional plot structure in "To Hell With Dying"), we spent much of the period today looking at the climax and resolution of "The Most Dangerous Game." One student read aloud the ending, which was a subtle use of rereading with them, and the others had pen in hand marking the clues that led them to be able to say, "This story has a clear resolution." I am trying hard this year to be more overt about reading strategies with my students (thanks to I Read I But I Don't Get It), and today's small exploration into this area was great for my students and me. I can already see in those blog posts that have been done tonight how they processed the shifting of plot we discussed happening in "Game" and how they are transferring this understanding to a new and very different story.

The very next period, my AP students spent the class pushing themselves to overtly use the rereading strategy and reflect on how much it helps them. At this stage, I am trying to remind them that careful reading is an obligation so that they slow down and really engage like I know they can. We spent much of the period visiting and revisiting this quote (from an NCTE presentation I went to three years ago): "Confusion represents an advanced stage of understanding." They moved from seeing this as a paradox to understanding that if they come to class thinking they have "gotten it all" in a reading, then they have probably not actually engaged with that reading. We talked about the realistic pressures of rereading -- how they cannot read every assignment three times in full. Instead, they can reread sections that strike them multiple times so that then, as a class, we will all be experts in pieces so we can see a much deeper whole.

My freshmen and my seniors ended up doing the same thing today -- slowing themselves down to let their minds truly think. Great day.

We Need to Have Fun Too

2009-08-23T16:58:00.000-07:00

I am someone who can work alone for hours. Part of this is because I tend toward perfectionism and do not always stop when I could stop, and part is simply because I don't get fidgety easily. But a larger part is that I am an introvert -- I find large crowds daunting, and I have to work consciously and with effort to feel capable at general conversation. I do not mean to make myself out as a freak -- I just know I am someone who would more often than not choose to be by myself in my classroom planning or grading than out and about with others.

So, I set myself a goal last year: take my lunch every day to our student commons and eat with the teacher who had commons duty that period. I was successful with actually doing this probably half the time, but I measure a much greater success in what I gained from these casual lunches. I ended up playing my flute in our school's first-ever pit band because of lunch one day with the drama teacher. I discovered a powerful read in Aldous Huxley's Perennial Philosophy because of a lunch with a substitute teacher. I discovered things about my colleagues that I never knew because I let myself be discovered too.

Now comes the opening of this school year. Our school as a whole seems to have set an unstated goal of collegiality. We have had a happy hour, a faculty luncheon, a gathering at the Upper School Head's house, and tomorrow is team building. And I am so energized by all of this. I am looking forward to the school year not just because I love to teach but because I really like my colleagues too. In fact, I am in a small way sad that the students will show up Tuesday because I know this will drive us at least somewhat back into our individual classrooms.

So I have renewed my goal from last year and will bring my lunch to the commons again. I will do all I can to stay in touch with my colleagues. In the end, even we as teachers need to have fun at school -- fun with our students of course, but also fun as professional adults with other professional adults. Now comes remembering to reread this blog when I am mired deep in grading in October!

Literature Circles

2009-08-13T17:29:00.000-07:00

I have used literature circles for many years. My students always enjoy them, and I get better each time with setting up the process so they truly engage with their books. I particularly enjoy doing this with my ninth graders when I have them write their own tests as a group. I was given the opportunity in college to write a final for a class rather than take one. I was petitioning to take my final early, and the professor offered me this instead. As I wrote that final, I realized how smart the professor was about assessments. I had to really know my stuff in order to create a final I thought he would deem worthy -- the writing of the test probably took me longer than the hours I would have been in the exam room taking his final. It was a powerful lesson for me, and my ninth graders have benefited from it. They are always amazed when I tell them they will write their own tests. The discussions the groups end up having as they decide which questions to ask are always the best of the whole lit circle process. I know they know their stuff when I see strong tests.

This summer I had another chance to really learn something by doing it. A colleague of mine set up an online literature circle in our school's ning to work through the first five chapters of Understanding by Design, our assigned faculty summer reading. I was glad to have a structure set for me because I knew that meant I would get the reading done, so I signed on. Well, if you have any doubts about the efficacy and power of the literature circle process, banish them now. As I worked through a lit circle role for each chapter, I saw the beauty of the lit circle pedagogy in action. It is reading strategies come alive -- when I read a chapter knowing I was, say, the connector, I read specifically for that goal. I ended up remembering far more with this focus than I ever do just reading something to read. I had a scaffolding to pin my reading on and to give me a road map through what is some dense reading a times (trust me on this one if you have not read UbD). I also knew I did not have to worry about every detail because I had my lit circle partners focusing on the other aspects. I knew I would learn from them, so I could learn at this first stage better because I was more focused. Then the discussions we had helped me pull everything together -- I looked back at the book, I remembered things I had forgotten, I learned things I had never thought about ...

While I knew in my mind that literature circles were a good thing, to participate in one gave me so much more insight into why they work so well. Once again, I am reminded that DOING something is the most powerful way to learn. A great reminder particularly as I begin a new year with my students ... can I get them to DO more in their learning?

What Are Your Thoughts?

2009-07-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

I am on the horns of a dilemma ... Frankenstein or A Lesson Before Dying for the final text of ninth grade? I am seeking a challenging text that prepares students for the rigorous reading levels of British Literature in sophomore year but also one that grabs ninth graders deeply. Here are my thoughts ...

The reading level of Frankenstein is more challenging overall with its vocabulary and sentence structure. Is this a good thing? Is the reading level of Frankenstein appropriate for ninth grade?
The historical background of A Lesson Before Dying seems like it would be more challenging to ninth grade students -- one can read Frankenstein separate from its historical time period much more readily. Yet, the history embedded in A Lesson ... is so vital to our nation's history. Does teaching this book become more of a history lesson than a literature one?
In A Lesson ..., is the sex and the use of the f--- word one time appropriate for ninth grade? I was surprised by this content. How do you handle it?

I would love to hear everyone's thoughts and even other titles to achieve my goal if you have them.

Stopping and Taking Stock

2009-06-30T16:37:00.000-07:00

My wonderful English colleagues in the Upper School, Susan Carter Morgan and Jennifer Clark Evans, and I created a portfolio to submit for the NCTE Media Literacy Award. We worked on it both F2F and collaboratively online, and this wiki is our proud product. I do not know if we will win (and really even what winning this award means ...), but we all decided as we were working that just to have created this portfolio was worth it. It is empowering to stop for a minute and see what great things you and your colleagues have done. There is always more to do, indeed. But for today, pause and pat yourself on the back for what you have accomplished. It is worth it.

Summer ...

2009-06-23T07:56:00.000-07:00

I am in my third week of summer, and here is my first visit to my blog. This is probably a good thing overall, although not so good for my blog's currency. I blogged quite a bit last summer -- in fact, last summer got my blog and I cemented in a good relationship with each other! This summer though has started differently. I have a deeper set of connections on Twitter (snobles) plus love spending time on the English Companion ning (many of my Twitter connections came from this ning). I am also trying to visit my school's new private ning as much as I can -- we are trying to get it off the ground. My online life has spread in new ways, competing with this blog.

This article on the possible demise of blogging got me back here. I started this blog for me. I was a journal writer growing up but had not written in my journal for too many years. My blog has become my teacher's journal. The fact that others can read it, maybe learn from it, and definitely teach me things in their comments is an added bonus. But I can see that if I had started this blog with the hope of being famous in the blogsphere, I would not still be here. The blogosphere is too diffuse for that. I would also not still be here if I did not have readers who write back to me -- the idea that someone might just be waiting for a new post reminds me to write. I am curious to see where the world of blogs is heading, and I am glad I have this one. I am a better teacher by reflecting, and this blog is my tangible reminder to do that.

So, what have my early weeks of summer entailed?

READING -- I am plowing through books like I have not in a long time. Both personal choices and professional ones are grabbing me, and I find myself already worrying if there will be enough time this summer to read everything I want to read! I am trying to keep my LibraryThing library up to date.
Getting better versed with Diigo as both a social bookmarking site and a powerful annotating tool. Steve Shann is one person who inspires me to keep blogging, and per his request, I will be sure to write about what I do with Diigo and my 9th graders next year.
Working in my yard. One VERY rainy spring later, and our blackberry vines are full, my first tomato literally fell off its vine ready to eat, and we found even more places to plant flowers.
Being with my kids and my husband. This is the first summer in many that my husband is not away for a month directing the Virginia Governor's Latin Academy, and the rest of us family couldn't be happier. We swim, walk, bike, garden, read, laugh ...

I read about a saying Suzy Welch lives by -- 10-10-10. She says she makes decisions by thinking about what will matter most in 10 minutes, in 10 months, and in 10 years. I can't think of a better way to regain perspective on life and what matters most. I am off to pack a picnic right now to meet my kids and husband at a local park for an outdoor lunch concert. I think I know this will matter!

Issuu

2009-06-04T11:33:00.000-07:00

Maybe I am one of the last to discover this neat site, but I am now pondering all of the possibilities. Issuu lets you upload documents to be published online in a great visual magazine format. You then can create different libraries and share the publications -- I am envisioning a class library with all of the online documents we read. Here is an example:

Open publication - Free publishing - More english

Favorite Short Stories

2009-05-27T05:34:00.001-07:00

I asked my irreplaceable Twitter community of English teachers: if you could only teach one short story, what story would it be? Now, being English teachers, some of them actually chose two and three stories (who can narrow literature down to just one favorite?), but here is their list:

"Nineteen Fifty-Five" and "Araby" (@readinator)
"The Story of an Hour," "Scarlet Ibis," and "The Yellow Wallpaper" (@suzieswimz)
"The Yellow Wallpaper" and "The Lottery" (@nicolemurr4)
"The No-Talent Kid" (@pjhiggins)
"The Scarlet Ibis" and "The Most Dangerous Game" (@jmiscavish)
"The Speckled Band" and "The Rocking Horse Winner" (@andyleefisher)

Two of my favorites are "To Hell with Dying" and "Bluestown" by Geoffrey Becker (the short story that became part of a novel).

What is your and your students' favorite story?

Ning Wisdom from Students

2009-05-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

As my year winds down, I have turned to my students for final reflections. Two chose to think about their experiences with our ning work on Othello. As the actual users of the ning, their responses are invaluable. If it didn't work, they lived through it. If it did, they learned from it. As teachers, we can hope new tools and teaching techniques change our classrooms; our students are the ones who tell us if they did.

Cara wrote, "The Othello character group [that we did on the ning] ... REALLY helped in understanding the text. I felt super-knowledgeable about my character in a way that didn't come from my teacher or a book, but a peer and myself."

There is it -- the evidence that student-directed learning does happen and that it is more powerful in both the depth of the learning achieved by and the confidence instilled in our students.

Neil wrote, "Whatever you do, do not overdo online tools in place of discussion. Class discussion is still king; this is coming from a teenage kid. The best discussion ends up taking place in class, whether everyone responds or not. On an online forum where everyone is required to answer, the temptation is to read only the posts you are required to comment on. In class, you can’t really filter out someone speaking."

Neil's words are a great reminder to us that Web 2.0 tools are tools we add to our teaching kits not that replace everything we have ever done. Yes, many students write more in the online forum than they speak in class, but face-to-face discussions are important too. This is my main goal for my Web 2.0 integration next year: to link the out-of-class online work closely and thoughtfully to our in-class work. I tried to do this as much as a could this year in a few ways:

starting class by having everyone return to the discussion thread, read a new part they had not read, and comment on it
choosing a few posts to project to the class as discussion prompts
having the students review a discussion thread, noting something new they have learned or a question they have, then sharing these and discussing them

I saw time and again that connecting students' out-of-class thinking with their in-class work validates both and deepens their learning. Even those students who are more hesitant to speak out in class did so much more when they could base it on the online work -- they had a chance to get their ideas together and thus had more confidence. Students see that the online work is not just an "add-on" -- it is integral to their overall learning.

I want to end with Neil's reference to being required to participate. This to me is the eternal rub ... we want our students to be excited learners not because they have to be. We hope they see these tools as things they can use in their own lives to further their engagement in our world. Will Richardson would have all learning be self-driven in this way.

However, I have found I do need to require participation, at the start ... and to be honest, sometimes all the way through. I will continue to develop my use of these tools to be as student-driven as I can, but I also know my students do not always LOVE to be online outside of class time. So, thus I require responses. I try to make this requirement as open as I can -- 3 responses of any sort (new posts, comments, whatever) for homework or 15 responses of any sort by the end of our work with a text. This is a pickle I will continue to chew on [:)] -- the power of online tools to increase student-driven learning while also not being what every student always wants to do.

Why Do We Read?

2009-05-13T10:49:00.001-07:00

Today was my third to last day with my AP English Lit students. Bittersweet times. I have one goal for them as we come to the end of our time together: to be readers and writers in the world beyond my classroom. Today we explored reading. Using Steven Shann's wonderful work about literature and values, my class and I brought in books we value - books from any age in our lives that have stayed with us for any number of reasons. We shared our books, making a map of literature in our lives. My students then answered, "Why do we read?" Their responses show me that my students, as a cross-section of our world, are thoughtful, seek what is good and right, want to grow and learn, and will keep reading -- not just for me, but for their world. I am not surprised, and I am very proud. Here are their words ...

Evan wrote, "I can truthfully say that I am not an avid reader and I don’t know if I ever will be, but some of the books I have read, such as Bringing Down the House or Miracle in the Andes or Into Thin Air, have truly changed my life. Reading these people's life experiences has helped me realize who I am and what aspects of life I should or shouldn’t follow. I believe this is why people read. What I think is unbelievable is that in today’s world, people are always trying to create ways to make things easier and able to be done with minimal effort, but for some reason most humans such as myself will pass on the chance to see a 2hr movie to read a 400 page book that may take a few weeks. I wish I had the answer to why this is."

Cara wrote, "I think we read to lean ... We learn about facts of other places and cultures of course, but I think that what we are really learning is about how much more there is to the world beside our selves."

Griffin wrote, "We read because it is something we want to do. Reading fulfills something that we are want. It is that simple."

Greg wrote, "If you know a book is nowhere like your life (A Million Little Pieces for example) it gives new perspective."

Maggie wrote, "I think we read to gain more out of life. Being able to read the experiences or fictional stories of others takes us to places we would never dream of. We all have our individual sense of who we are and we will go in one direction with our lives, but by reading, we're able to experience and imagine our life as someone else. It could either make us happy with the life we currently have or drive us to make a change and do something else."

Carmen wrote, "Reading is one of the most powerful things in the world. It’s how we communicate and it’s how we learn ... It would be nearly impossible for the world today to operate without it ... It just makes me really happy…so that’s why I read."

Emily Z wrote, "I think that we read to understand something that we didn’t before. I think that along with reading, we understand ourselves better. We put ourselves in the situations, we challenge ourselves to think about what we would do if we were the characters, and as the character grows, I think we are able to grow with them."

Carley wrote, "We read to learn, feel inspired, and connect. We read to understand. We read to know. We read to laugh, cry, and love. We read to identify with characters, make them our friends, and learn from their mistakes ... We read for the impact it makes upon our lives. We read to discover lessons we would otherwise have to learn the hard way ... We read because it makes time worthwhile, and most importantly, we read because we love it."

Nate wrote, "If we can search for a book’s truth and depth AND enjoy the author's hard work, we gain insight from another person’s perspective…that’s why we read. That way we’re always learning and always moving forward."

Jamie wrote, "Currently I read to better myself; however back in the day, reading meant being with my family right before bedtime. I have tons of memories of being with them that I could never replace."

Carlyn wrote, "To be able to experience anything imaginable"

Raleigh wrote, "We read for fun. We read to go places we cannot go within an hour or a day, however long we decide to read. We read to exercise our imaginations and stimulate our minds. We read because we want to. We read because we want to see life from another place or time. We read to think and expand our own knowledge. We read because it is beautiful..."

Emily G wrote, "We read to escape ... We read to learn ... We read to relate ... We read to think."

Joe wrote, "I think people read to experience things we otherwise can't, and to confer with others about their feelings to something in a book. Unlike movies, books are personal, reading a book is like writing a journal. You feel a new you building itself as you read about events you have never confronted in your own life."

Nicholas wrote, "We read in order to escape the realities that surround us and escape the stresses of the world."

Britnae wrote, "It validates what you are feeling. I think this is nearly an exact quote from somewhere I forgot, but there's nothing more thrilling than opening a book and finding the author wrote something that you thought only you had felt before. I tells us that it's okay to be crazy, or dissatisfied, or goofy, or intellectual ... books are like meeting new people."

Carole wrote, "I wanted to go into a new world, I wanted to meet new people. I would pretend that the characters I read and liked were my friends and would talk to them. The more books I read the more friends I got, the more places I knew."

Landon wrote, "We read to escape."

Walker wrote, "If I want to be a warrior battling against the forces of evil, a spy infiltrating enemy headquarters, or a gentleman in the British Aristocracy, I read. It allows me to almost leave my corporeal body and mentally journey into another world. It allows me to meet thousands of new friends, and travel to thousands of new countries and worlds."

Neil wrote, "Reading is a kind of experience you can keep forever; you can hold onto something forever from a good book, and eventually you end up with a mind full of wisdom to share with people around you."

My Goals (answering Will and Sheryl)

2009-05-01T09:02:00.000-07:00

Six Months Out ...

to refine my PLN (not meaning shrink it necessarily -- meaning find what is most powerful for me and making the time for that)
to develop my English teaching network as I reenter the classroom
to get my head around what we as a school hope to achieve with the 9th grade and link that to the curricular goals of my department so both sets of goals flourish in tandem

Three Years Out ...

to have collaboration be a regular and routine part of my teaching for me and my students
to have writing be challenging and authentic for me and my students
to create a classroom environment where students explore and create with me and beyond me

Writing Expanding with the 21st Century

2009-04-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

I am reading Maja Wilson's Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment. I started it to be in the English Companion ning's book group, but I have to say I was completely outclassed by the nine pages of comments written the very first two days. Realizing I couldn't possibly keep up with that (in case we ever wondered if we English teachers can write, the answer is "yes" and "yes, a lot!"), I have been reading along at my own pace and have stumbled across two ideas that have me thinking not about rubrics but about how my students' worlds are changing.

"The disconnect between the writing we honor in our own literary lives and the writing we encourage from students is illustrated by our approach to teaching research and expository writing versus the research and expository writing we actually read" (38).

I think I now understand comments my seniors made when they were writing their academic articles. I reworked this assignment because I wanted to make this research paper more authentic to link to the collaborative ning work the students did to build up to the writing. As the due date drew near, I asked my students how the writing was going (something I do if only to see how many work on their final revisions before the last night!), and more than one student said some version of, "This is harder to write than I thought it would be." I then worried about how their final papers would turn out, but that turned out to be an unfounded fear. Then I read Wilson's words above. Now I wonder if maybe I achieved my goal with this paper even more than I had hoped. I structured this paper around the research-based writing scholars do who are debating Shakespeare. I tried to say every day in class, "You are joining the conversation," so my students would see that what they had to say was valuable. We looked closely at academic journal articles to see HOW they are written. In the end, maybe they found this hard because it was not a traditional research paper -- instead, maybe they really felt like they had something to say and they wanted to say it well. I know in the end that their articles were indeed something I would choose to read.

"Literature has broadened because the events of the last century could not be contained by the old forms; new ideas, conflicts, and discoveries have forced new vehicles for expression" (39).

This then makes me ponder how I can revamp other writing assignments to be writing my students and I want to read. We have a very strong writing curriculum at my school, and we as a department think often about how to make writing meaningful for our students. Wilson's words crystallize for me how the collaborative and open world of the web can help us to help our students write writing we and they want to read even more.

Jhumpa Lahiri

2009-04-08T10:35:00.000-07:00

A change in my school's daily schedule decreased the number of class meetings we have in a year. While I tried mightily all year to trim and condense, I still arrived here, a month before the AP exam, with not enough class meetings to "finish." Deciding to cut texts/authors is very hard for me. What if they are never given a TS Eliot poem in the future and I cut mine? What if Kafka was going to be the spark for that one student?

But with the brick wall I found myself faced with, I could not pretend I could go without dropping Kafka's The Metamorphosis. I just did not have the four days I know I need (at minimum) to do the text justice as an introduction to our Cultural Identity and Isolation theme. So, I punted and ended up making a homerun (sorry for the mixed sports metaphor). I had my students read two stories by Jhumpa Lahiri.

I read her collection Interpreter of Maladies in the fall and loved it. So a few weeks ago, I thought, "Well, she certainly introduces culture and the struggles that come along with it, and her stories are shorter than Kafka. Let's give it a whirl."

What an amazing two days of whirl. My students were fascinated from the start because Lahiri is a living, breathing writer (listen to her in this NPR interview). They said, "She makes us think we could do this too -- she is not Sophocles writing milennia ago." Then her stories delivered. I let them choose between "When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" and "Mrs. Sen's," and they spent the next class period discussing their story with a partner who read the other story. The window into lives defined by culture was paradigm-changing for them. Her style was even more than this -- they read quotes by her and struggled with how to articulate the power they felt running under her words. We worked hard that day and loved it.

So if you can, add Lahiri into your curriculum. Even just two stories. But more importantly, I was reminded again of the spread of literature I can and should show my students. They really liked Sophocles last week, and they loved Lahiri this week. They know where writing came from and where it is today. They can join the conversation.

Finding the Gold

2009-03-30T15:24:00.000-07:00

Today my blog is a celebration is teaching, learning, and students.

I am reading my seniors last formal research papers of the year. As I read, I am making a list to show my classes of the "gold nuggets" of writing I have found in their papers. I am so proud of their writing. I can see their work on literary analysis coming through with their use of our literary vocabulary. I can see their confidence as thinkers from our collaborative work and essential questions coming through in their unique and exploratory tones and ideas. I can see their understanding that they really do need evidence for their ideas, and more than that, their ease with finding and interacting with such evidence. These seniors have had great teachers before me who brought them to a place where I could just put on some polish, and I just want to share here some examples to show how well they are prepared to be enthusiastic thinkers, valuable contributors, thoughtful speakers, and powerful writers as they move from us to their larger worlds:

"Emilia may not be the smartest, the most noble, or the best leader, but she makes tremendous growth and ends the play with a staggering act of bravery."
"All of that aside, we see that Iago is coming up with various plausible motives for his actions but that the actual actions show no real connection to any individual motive."
"In the middle of the play our reader senses are prickled by Emilia’s seemingly motivated actions to please her husband."
"Through Desdemona’s kind and generous pillar of friendship, Emilia, used to asking and receiving so little from both mistress and master alike, has grown into a strong, angry woman, more aligned with the truth than with any husband."
"Othello fends off invaders from allies, Desdemona fends off her father’s disapproval of her union with the general; Othello wears armor to protect himself physically, Desdemona wears an ability to speak her mind to protect herself from being walked on; Othello has the full attention of his followers (minus one unusually cunning Iago), Desdemona commands the attention of the Duke’s court."
"Emilia's flowing syntax, full of thought, quickly deteriorates into curt statements as she seemingly arbitrarily turns to Iago in her judgment. This shift reflects the haste with which her decision is made."

Seminars Without Me

2009-03-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

I have always had my AP Lit students tackle our final novel, Things Fall Apart, in seminar groups. My purpose is to show them as well as I can that they are truly ready to do this kind of thing on their own -- that they can read and read well and that they have great ideas and can create interpretations without a "teacher answer key." They do lit circles, independent readings, and class presentations of new works throughout high school, so this is the last of many times they have been handed the reins -- and I hope to make it a great final one to remember.

Some years though have gone better than others. It is a hard time to get seniors to put in 100%, and some students just have chosen to not engage. So each year, I tweak and revise the unit based on the feedback I gathered from my prior class and my own observations. This year, my goal is to include this kind of reflection DURING the two weeks of their seminar meetings. This ties to my goal below of working in more time for reflection -- and I'd like to see how regular reflection of their own habits affect my students' work and engagement.

I plan to begin with a suggestion by Carol Jago in With Rigor for All: letting them know I will be silently observing each group, noting things to share at the end of class but that I won't talk until then. I will use these final class comments to reinforce positive behaviors I saw in the groups -- encouraging quieter members to talk, supporting an idea with a great textual reference, etc. But in the middle, I will flip it. Rather than ending with my reflection, I will have them email me how they feel they themselves did in that seminar. I hope my final reflections will help them see how to then reflect on themselves thoroughly.

In the end, if my seniors leave me as even slightier adept at self-reflection, then my class will have served their lives well.

What Do Students Think about Nings?

2009-03-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

I am wrapping up my first use of a ning with my classes, and from my perspective, it was a great success.

All of the students participated not only with what they had to do for their own work but also with commenting on other students' posts.
The ning became a part of our in-class work as well as out-of-class collaboration because the students and I referenced it in our discussions, I projected parts of it to get class started, and I set up in-class cooperative learning activities on it.
The group of college students training to be teachers who joined the ning pushed my students out of their comfort zones, thus making them think even more.

I wanted my students' perspective to add to mine, and I wanted them to have a chance to reflect on the whole experience (see my reflective struggles below!) So I asked them three questions:

What did you like about using the ning? What could be improved?
Do you like the idea of using a ning for one text or would it you like to use it for all year (instead of TurnIt In for discussions, the website for docs, individual notes …)?
How do you feel about expressing yourself to others on the web (our NJ collaborators, doing things like this overall that are open to strangers)?

Their responses were overwhelming positive. All of them enjoyed the ning, and the most often cited reason was seeing others' ideas and being able to ponder ideas more slowly because they were written down and could be returned to. They truly "got" that sharing ideas makes their own ideas that much stronger. One wrote, "I really liked the fact that just because of what the ning is and how it works we were sort of forced to see other people's thoughts on things. By that I mean, for example, through the character groups I got to really see the opinions of others, and their support for them, of such a complex character as Iago. I think it really helped me to develop my own opinions much stronger."

Half of the class wants to use the ning for the whole year, while the other half recognizes that even the most exciting things can be overused. They made an excellent point though that by using the ning earlier in the year, they will be fully versed in all it can do and then get more out of the work on Othello. One wrote, "The only improvement I would recommend is to use it more so we are used to it before we get into a major book discussion because then it is hard to think that there is a source there for you." So I plan to start the ning at the opening of the year and use it for the online discussions I used TurnItIn.com for and some other work. I am going to focus on not overusing it before I get to Othello in January, so I will ask my students to reflect throughout the first semester about the ning. Maybe I will find them asking me to use it even more.

Finally, I wanted to know their thoughts about interacting with people on the web, but not in their accustomed social way. Nancy Devine got me thinking about this when she polled her students and discovered an overwhelming fear of being "out there" on the Internet. Our society has focused so much on Internet safety that it seems to be hurting our students' views of what learning and growing they can do with Web 2.0 tools. I teach at a laptop school, so I thought my students answers would be a great counterpoint to Nancy's students because mine have had technology underpinning their whole high school career. Here is what mine say: all but two are confident and comfortable sharing their ideas on the web. What seems to be at the root of this is they feel they have something worthwhile to say and they seem to understand that this type of academic conversation is different than giving your email to a stranger. So what is the difference and how can we bring more students to a place of comfort with such sharing? Maybe you read that question and think, "I don't think they have to share on the web," but I have seen such growth in my students and more importantly in myself through my own collaborations that I have to disagree. The web is a way to help our students learn even more and even more deeply. We need to make sure this door is open to every student.

Here are some ideas I have:

regular use of technology is the first step and of course the step that creates our "digital divide" -- by using the technology regularly for more than just social networking (what students do on their own), it becomes a more natural and less fearful place of learning
the next step is slowly opening the Web 2.0 door for them -- my students knew that the people in our ning had been invited there by me -- they knew there were none of the much-discussed-child-stalkers in there -- the more we can offer of these experiences, the more students will learn of their value and seek them on their own

In the end, my students' work in and thoughts on our class ning have proven to me that technology used thoughtfully, purposefully, and creatively makes for better learning.

Reflection

2009-03-09T05:30:00.000-07:00

"Although reflection is often the first thing to go when teachers run out of time on a project or a unit, activities that prompt students to look back at what they've learned and accomplished isn't just busywork or an unnecessary step, educational experts say. In fact, encouraging students to pause and think about what they're learning and why it's relevant to their lives is a critical piece, according to Katie Charner-Laird, a principal at Lincoln-Eliot School, in Newton, Massachusetts" (Suzi Boss, High Tech Reflection Strategies Make Learning Stick).

Oh, how many class periods have I taught when my plans for a five-minute final reflection disappeared because a discussion is still going or an activity taking longer ... It is such a hard balance to maintain. I do not want to cut off students when they are engaged in the learning, but I also do really believe that the reflection is what cements the learning. I have larger reflective work set into my curriculum -- personal reflection on the semester exam, reflective letters in final portfolios. I hereby reaffirm my commitment to making the small moments of reflection a priority!

Another View of Writing

2009-03-04T16:03:00.000-08:00

A colleague of mine shared this blog post from the Writing Teacher with me. It is all about how history can be taught through the eyes and skills of creative writing. Here is a blurb in case you don't have time to read the whole post:

My first year I taught English, history, science, and two periods of physical education. I was completely unqualified to teach science and physical education, but I did have a minor in history. What I had to do then was figure out how to make history interesting.

All my life I had read historical novels. Every Christmas and birthday my parents bought me books, mostly historical fiction about young girls who lived in times past. I loved these stories. History was stories—stories with real people, not just key figures. History was stories with real time periods, not just dates. History was stories with exciting action, not just names of events. How could I make these stories happen in my classroom? By involving the students in reading and writing activities that put them in those times, those places. By telling them that the study of history should be the study of well-told stories, and of reading and writing well-told stories.

And that’s what I did. I taught history as if it were a literature class. The textbook became a launching pad for research into what really happened, who was really there, and who the participants were. I wanted more for my students than sound bites.

So we researched and we wrote. We wrote letters from one historical character to another, even across time zones. We wrote editorials and obituaries. We wrote speeches to be given at award ceremonies and thank-you speeches for the awards. We drew storyboards for the movies we wanted to make and then wrote about them. We wrote poetry.

And my students said: “When we become the characters and write as if we were those people, we learn so much more than if we were just reading about them.”

I, as an English teacher and fellow literature lover, would LOVE a class like this. But I would like to get the opinion of someone who teaches history and was not an English major. Does this type of approach -- and more specifically this type of writing -- have a place in a history class? Can it meet writing goals you have? Or can it be blended with other writing? In the end, as a history teacher, what goals do you have for your students as writers and for what you hope they gain by writing? I am in the midst of a great discussion with my history colleagues about writing across the disciplines, so I really look forward to your responses to add to our conversations.

Creating Great Writers

2009-03-01T18:23:00.000-08:00

If your students are writing as much as you can grade, they're not writing enough to learn. If your students are writing enough to learn, you can't possibly grade it --

a paraphrase of Lief Fearn, Interactions

I have been thinking a lot about teaching writing, assessing writing, encouraging writing, stifling writing, and being buried under piles of the very same writing. In the end, what is it that makes our students strong writers but more importantly excited writers? It just might be a precarious balance of ...

assigning frequent writing that is at times on required topics and in required genres to push students out of comfort zones but is just as frequently, if not more so, on topics of students' choice in genres they feel fit the purpose the best

giving feedback that focuses on style and voice not grammar and mechanics while also expecting your students to write grammatically (and teaching them how to do so)

assigning regular writing and being sure that writing receives feedback (whether it is your feedback or peer feedback or the writer's self-reflection) within the week

focusing on specific writing skills through short, directed assignments (great introduction writing practice can mean just writing an introduction) yet expecting your students to write developed pieces the most -- specific skill development is necessary to write, but skill development in isolation does not equal strong and thoughtful writing

writing with your students even while you are also balancing the commenting and grading of your other class's papers that came in last week

I think there should be a national requirement that English teachers teach one less class than a typical load and use that "free" period for writing conferences, draft feedback, and grading. Yes, this will mean needing more teachers because each teacher will have a smaller student load (do not make the class sizes even bigger to "remedy" this -- that is subterfuge). Otherwise, teachers have to go into survival mode, knowing they cannot possibly work with the frequent writing of 150 students, and have their classes do less and less writing. The teacher does not like this choice, but what more can they do? And in the end, the students end up writing, and therefore growing and learning, less.

Why Literature Matters

2009-02-27T17:13:00.000-08:00

"It is difficult to get the news from poems,

yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there."

William Carlos Williams

Williams reminds me again about why I believe there is power in literature, even texts from centuries ago. Some authors have their fingers squarely on the pulse of humanity. Williams would probably be sorely confused to hear he was commenting on the preponderance of Internet skimming, but his wisdom gives us much to think about in this world of Web 2.0 overload. As much as I know skimming is a skill we all need (I went to college pre-web-2.0 days and still had to rely on skimming for those 1000 poli sci pages I was to read every week!), slowing down to ponder and connect is what feeds our minds and souls. I hope, by the end of my time with my students, that they have found something in their lives they enjoy reading enough to slow down and live by and through and with ...

Joining the Conversation

2009-02-15T15:41:00.001-08:00

I have reworked my students' final research project on Othello to link more closely with what they will be expected to do in college and in any proposal or paper they have to write for their careers. I want them to see that anything they write is joining a conversation already happening, and that their goal is to listen to the conversation and offer a new voice. Having worked through the play using our ning, I wanted the paper to be a natural continuance of this conversation. In this way, research is done with the goal of responding back to it, whether through agreement and further examination or disagreement and formulation of new ideas. Here is what I have for the assignment sheet. My students start this in a few days, so I am looking forward to seeing what they do with the work. They have an amazing way of always doing even more than I hope.

How Is It Going?

2009-02-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

I had my class reflect on their work in our Othello ning today. For homework last night, they had no set work to do in the ning; instead they were to explore what has been going on and comment where they were moved to do so. To start class today, I had them send me an email that began, "I noticed ..." They could finish with things they learned about the play, their classmates, the ning, whatever had struck them.

Here is what one student wrote: "I noticed...that I LOVE the Ning! It’s been really helpful because I’ve been able to see other’s thoughts. I liked that I was able to compare the different paraphrasing people did of Iago’s speech, it helped me get a strong understanding of what he was saying by looking at all points of view. Also, in my character discussion group of Desdemona, I find the Ning very helpful. I really like that we can just throw an idea on there and then let others add on to it or find evidence to support it. It’s a great way for us all to be able to work together without getting confusing."

Wow. I want to hug her. I want to jump up and down. I want to hope that my other students are feeling at least a part of what she feels.