We Need to Have Fun Too

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!

Finding the Gold

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."

Another View of Writing

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

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.

What Really Works

Last night, I participated in my third Elluminate PLP session with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach and Will Richardson. Sheryl and Will were working with us to explore the truism that it is not the tools or the content that matters for good teaching -- it is how we teach. The pedagogy. Hearing that was music to my ears because so often we teachers, in our day-to-day busy-ness, lose sight of this most important thing. So we do not talk about pedagogy enough -- and maybe we can never talk about it enough because there is always something new to learn.

And that is what Sheryl then helped us do. She asked us to think of the teaching strategies we use that are most effective at helping our students learn, and we shared them in the chat. While we only had time to explore a few, it got me thinking that this would be a very powerful activity for every teacher to do every now and then. So here is my list:

• Higher-order questioning: Using follow-up questions (even those as simple as, "Why?") to push my students to explain and dig deeper into their answers
• Student-to-student discussions: These can be done in a variety of ways (jigsaw, fishbowling, etc), but the one that has worked the best for me recently has been the online discussion board.
• Reflection: Asking at the end of a lesson, when a student gets an assignment back, at the end of a novel, whenever there is an end moment -- What did you learn? What might you still need to learn? Wha goals do you have?
• Portfolios: This is usually labeled as an assessment method, but I think it is equally a teaching strategy (and linked to "reflection" above). The process of looking over the year, pulling out moments to remember, and reflecting on those is a lifelong lesson.
• Writing with my students: They know you value something when you are willing to do it too, and you see so clearly what they are experiencing.

What are your best teaching strategies?

It's More Than Just Content

I have been thinking a lot about my "Ethics in Teaching" class lately and about teacher behavior -- not teacher behavior in the classroom but instead how teachers behave when not teaching yet still in places where students are. This blog is not about specific people or events (in fact, I do not think that would be ethical), but I do want to explore how we teach and instruct students outside the 45 minutes or however long we have them in class each day.

I know I am highly conscious of my actions during the school day -- what I say, more importantly how I say it, and what I do. In fact, at times I feel I am too conscious of this, that my consciousness ends up momentarily creating small walls between students and me. Being human and being natural is important for us as teachers so students see we are people they can relate to and learn from. But I also see or hear about or read about the other extreme in teachers -- how they seem to feel they can do or say anything around students, and students will know the right way to read/interpret/respond. I wonder what students take away from moments when they hear a teacher making fun of another teacher (or worse yet a student) or observe a teacher coming late regularly to class (and not because they have the prior class across campus) or have to laugh with the class again when a teacher is unprepared.

In our society today, so much human interaction is in your face, uncensored, anonymous, "I was just joking." I wonder how students learn to be strong, kind, and considerate people when so much of what they observe and experience is not. Family is the first and strongest part of this education, and schools can come next. Part of our school's technology initiative is focused on this -- helping students see they need to think about how they create their online footprint because it is a reflection of who they are as people. But I think a large part of my job, and the main ethical responsibility I have, is to be a model for students to learn from in day-to-day human interaction. In fact, I think what we do in those moments between formal teaching is what our students end up learning the most from, particularly the way we speak and interact with others.

So I suppose this leaves me wondering if I believe that as teachers we have a responsibility to be more ethical, more careful, more thoughtful. Yes, we will (and should because we are human) make mistakes, but we then must deal with those mistakes directly and correctly. Do you believe this?

A Quote

"While most kids’ uses of these technologies are 'friendship based', the more compelling shift is when their use is 'interest based' or when they connect with other kids or adults around the topics or ideas they are passionate to learn about." (from Will Richardson's blog)

So this seems to be where we as teachers come into play ... helping students see the power of the web on their minds and passions. Yes, many/most students use technology all of the time, but they still have more to learn that we can teach them (if we take the time to learn ...) even when they might know more technological applications than we do.

Coming to the end ...

My students and I have been working for the last few days on bringing together the different texts we have read for our "Search for Self" theme, and it has reminded me about the ebb and flow of a unit. As we were starting on these readings, I had a few bad days in a row, feeling like the students were not focusing how I wanted them to as they read to prepare for class, then feeling like I had to make adjustments for this lack in our classwork. I really thought they were missing things. And they were, but now that we are making connections across the texts and talking about what those connections mean, they are doing amazing things. They clearly know the texts overall, and they are very engaged in seeing how they link together.

So what does this mean? First, it reminds me of the learning proces -- learning starts out slow because those early stages can be hard. As teachers, we have a duty to try to show our students WHY they might enjoy this new learning, but I know I rarely grab every student as I try to do this. And even those who are excited have to step into new ideas and new skills. These new steps are actually better if they are slower because there is more learning going on.

This also reminds me how much we all want what we learn to make sense. My students' excitement as they begin to see for themselves (and not just hear from me) how these texts and the ideas we have been discussing fit together shows human nature. This reminds me to always move a unit to this level as best I can. In the end, I suppose getting to this level answers that old, old question, "Why are we learning this?"

Finally, I am also reminded of what it means to challenge our students to be more than they are, to push them to push themselves. When my students weren't reading well (or at all for some of them) at the opening of this unit, it wasn't just because they weren't necessarily excited. They are also humans with a lot on their plates and making choices. What I hope to impress upon them is that a choice that shortchanges your intellectual growth should not be made lightly. Yes, we all have to cut corners at times, but I hope to help them see that some corners should be more protected than others. On the practical side of this, I work hard to make sure students can't coast by without ever reading -- even if it means stopping a discussion and making them responsible on their own for the material. (I teach seniors this year and can do this much more readily then I could when I taught freshmen who were at different stages in their growth as learners.) But for the larger picture, maybe seeing how it all fits together in the end will help them want the next time to start their hard work earlier so they can get more out of their learning in the end.

And in the end, that is what matters -- that I have not only helped my students learn new things about my subject area and their worlds but also about themselves as learners.

Thinking, Thinking, Thinking!

I just had to share the presentation one of my students just did about the Torah. (See post below for an explanation of these presentations.) Joe structured his whole presentation around questions he had about the Torah, and he did this beautifully. He began with the questions, told us we would return to them, walked us through all of his findings (so great because we knew we was exploring stuff that he, and therefore we, really wanted to know), then at the end he had us return to his questions and discuss in groups what we had learned. So really what he did was what I have tried to do all year -- present our studies based around essential questions, use technology to explore things we are truly intrigued about, and bring it all together to discover what we've learned and what we can do with that knowledge. I am just so proud of him.

Here is what he created: a document for us to use for notes and thinking plus a website to explore. (And if you listen to the audio file, yes, those are two of our Jewish students Joe recorded reciting a Hebrew prayer. He also brought in one of the student's actual Torah.)

Writing Reflection

I have been struggling lately with having time to do everything I want to do in a single class period. It is really hard to read good ideas and want to try them all -- I feel like I am doing my students a disservice if I read a great idea and can't use it. On the bright side of this dilemma, not having time to do something this week turned out for the best this time because the activity was much more effective later.

I had planned to email back a set of essays, show an example essay, then have the students set goals for themselves for future essays. On the day I was to do this all, I ended up only having time to give back the essays. Two days later, I ended up with some time, and I had them open their essays again and reread my comments. This was really effective because they already knew their grades so were now reading the comments without that pressure in their minds. We then read together an essay one student in the class had written. Since they had just looked again at their own essay, they ended up talking spontaneously about what they liked in the example essay and how they had not thought about doing that in their own essay. When I told them that I wanted them to now set goals for themselves of things they wanted to try in their writing based on my comments on their essays and/or what they saw this one student essay doing, they got down to work right away. Their goals were really thoughtful, but ultimately just reflecting on how they had written something and how someone else had tackled the same thing was a powerful moment.

I am going to work hard to remember what I learned most from this -- separating writing reflection from the grade is crucial. I try to do this by emailing back the writing with my comments before I give them the rubrics with their grades, but their minds are still on, "What did I get?" Returning to the writing after the grade has been known and passed on in their minds was an even better method that running out of time taught me.