Those Crucial First Minutes

I have always wanted my students to know I value every second of our time together. When they understand this, the issue of tardies usually disappears because they know they have to get to my class on time because I am starting and I will mark them tardy for missing something good. While this is certainly a nice benefit, the real reason I want them to know how much I value classtime is because I want THEM to value every minute we have together for learning and sharing. Just as writing alongside my students makes them care more about their own writing, caring about my time with them can make them care more. This is why lesson planning is so important -- I am showing my students that I will work just as hard as I am asking them to work, and we will have fun doing it together.

Yet in spite of this overriding goal, I struggle with how to start class right off without seeming abrupt. I want to say hello and how are you to my students -- I haven't seen many of them since the day before. But transitioning to the lesson can be stilted. I have a new idea for this coming year. Occasionally, I am going to play short YouTube vidoes as they are entering class. They do not have to settle and listen right away, but as the start of class approaches, I hope they start to pay attention. We may or may not discuss the video -- we'll see how it goes. What I hope to achieve is a small moment of music or video or art that connects to that day's lesson -- a moment when things go beyond the books in our hands. I have found so far this video for our first discussion day of East of Eden, this video for our work with Candide, and this video as we are starting Brave New World. The Steinbeck song is catchy enough that I may have to buy the CD!

How do we challenge readers?

I have been thinking quite a bit about this question ever since the 8th grade English teacher and I started trying to figure out why the texts we had been teaching for quite a bit of time seemed "too hard" for our current 8th graders. Had the students really changed, and if so, how could they have changed so quickly?

I started my thinking by charting the reading and interest levels of all of the texts we teach from 5th grade to 12th. I used Follet's Titlewave site, which gives both their own ratings as well as Accelerated Reader's ratings. I had talked with our librarian, so I knew to take it all with a grain of salt. But she said that if the ratings came close, we could count on them being pretty true to the reading skills and interests of a certain grade.

So what did I find? Our 8th grade problem was actually a 7th grade problem. The 7th grade curriculum has been in flux as we try to pin down what we really want it to be, and what has happened in this is that we unknowingly retained only the "easiest" reads. Our students are jumping from 5th/6th grade reading levels to 8th/upper grade levels -- so I sympathize with our 8th graders now, and I am spending some of my reading time this summer looking for the magic bullet work to add to 7th grade. One that is not too mature for a 7th grader content-wise, but one that does challenge them for reading. I have read some great books -- The Trial by Jen Bryant, The Legend of the Wandering King by Laura Gallego Garcia, and Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. But I have not found the right book just yet ... any ideas to share with me?

Let me end with my own class, AP English Literature. This exercise in studying our progression of texts was great for me personally beyond the good work we did as a department. I am now working to find a way to add William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying to my course to add one work that pushes my students to their reading limits. I know some of my students will work hard and yet stay a bit perplexed by a text of this level, but I know other students will find skills beyond anything they knew they had. I know I will have to work hard to teach this novel because I am no Faulkner expert in any way, and he is a tough nut to crack even for the experts. This novel will be a great challenge, and what a gift I can give my students and myself. Let's see the heights we can reach together.

My next book on my summer reading list is Faulkner's. So, from award-winning YA to Pulitzer-Prize-winning southern literature, I am having a great time.

The Inspiration of Shel Silverstein

I was cleaning out my son's room the other day and came across a book that had slipped behind others: Caroline Kennedy's A Family of Poems. My daughter, ever the questioner, said, "Mommy, what is that book? We have never read that one before." And thus started what has turned into three days of poetry. We have read the book at home, at the doctor's office, in the backyard ... We moved then into Shel Silverstein's Where the Sidewalk Ends, my all-time favorite book of poetry because of the hours I spent with it when I was younger. My kids seem interested, as interested as they are in reading any other book. They tend to love to be read to, so this is just another fun thing for them.

But for me it has been quite a few days. For as long as I can remember, I have loved to read and write poetry. This eventually became a love for teaching poetry too. But along the way of early years of lesson planning followed by years of small babies, I left poetry behind. What a wonder then for me to rediscover it now. When was the last time you sat down and read a poem just to read it? If you can say, "Oh yesterday," then lucky, lucky you. But if it has been even half as long for you as it was for me, then I wish you a moment with your Shel Silverstein, your kid-inspiring poet.

"It's Dark in Here" by Shel Silverstein

I am writing these poems

From inside a lion,

And it's rather dark in here.

So please excuse the handwriting

Which may not be too clear.

But this afternoon by the lion's cage

I'm afraid I got too near.

And I'm writing these lines

From inside a lion,

And it's rather dark in here.

Why must we think?

I think this might become my essential question for my world literature/AP English Literature class. Why is thinking so important, and how does reading literature and studying authors and examining other cultures help us to become world citizens who think? An editorial in my local newspaper this morning brought it on: "'New Atheists': Englightened guides to perdition." It is an intriguing interview that is worth reading, if only for the fact that you might disagree with Chris Hedges's book I Don't Believe in Atheists. Here is a snippet, "We've learned to speak and think in the epistemology of television, which is essentially filled with thought-terminating cliches ... There is a kind of war against self-reflection, self-criticism, and real introspection." I believe literature of all kinds, and specifically the literature and themes my seniors study, can create a culture of intellect and thought. Self-reflecting and collaborating around the world through technology is one of the main ways of showing my students how real this thinking really is. Anyone want to become my class's partner as they study Brave New World, religious texts, Siddhartha, The Alchemist, Othello, Gilgamesh, The Metamorphosis, or Things Fall Apart?

Text Rationales

This blog, as I have discovered, is really a "Part 2" to the essential questions post below. I am working with my school's English department to get on record the reasons we teach each of the works we teach. We do not have lots of questions about our choice of books, but they do crop up. What has been the bigger need for the rationales is to help teachers new to teaching a class know why they are teaching a certain text. And this brings it right back to the essential questions -- every text we teach needs to build to those overriding questions. As I wrote a sample rationale for the department to see, this connection to the essential questions was immediately evident. I felt like I was writing paragraph one of an essay on how I build my class around my essential questions. I know I can be a curriculum geek, but I really love thinking about this stuff!

In case you are curious, here is my rationale for teaching Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. I look forward to any and all feedback.

Seniors open their study of world literature in AP English Literature with this British classic, a dystopian view of the world’s future. As the cornerstone of the course’s first theme, “Utopias and Dystopias,” Brave New World offers key understandings the students build upon throughout the thematic unit as well as throughout the year. First, as a work originally written in English, the novel is an excellent opening to in-depth style analysis, a core skill of the AP curriculum. Studying Huxley’s diction and mood leads students directly into understanding the thematic objectives of the work, particularly how Huxley creates a society he ultimately does not agree with. By studying the presented society through its citizens' eyes and the underlying narrative of Huxley’s own view of this society, students learn they must read with critical eyes or miss what an author is actually saying.

The novel poses two potential problems. First, the setting of the novel, future London, requires students to understand another culture. This problem is not too challenging though, as the culture is similar to the students’ own, and this is why the novel is a great entrance to the year. In later works, students are introduced to cultures that seem totally foreign, so they learn key skills for interpreting a culture through this more relatable work. The second potential problem is the sexual mores of the society Huxley creates. This is a mature book, one that is read only by seniors. These seniors must work to understand that Huxley is not promoting the values of his society; instead, he is condemning them. Through the careful reading required by the text, students can understand the mature themes in the context Huxley intends.

By studying Brave New World, our students are beginning their literary world travels by establishing two fundamental skills: careful reading and deciphering new cultures.

Essential Questions

I spent a great few hours on our last faculty workday of the year reflecting on this year and looking towards next as our division head asked us to define essential questions for each of our courses (based on Understanding by Design -- this book has landed in my life in quite a few ways this spring -- see posts below -- I guess I am meant to use it!). The most invigorating part of the afternoon for me was spending time talking about good teaching with my colleagues. That kind of conversation always seems to be the first to go when things get too busy during the school year because it seems less pressing than the upcoming deadlines of comments or grades or interims. But the irony of course is that this is THE MOST pressing part of education. Why give grades for a course that is not as well-designed for the students' learning as it can be? Why give grades for assessments that don't strive for any defined goal? What do those grades mean without the underpinning of good teaching?

I have worked mightily this year to develop my PLN with Web 2.0 tools, and I have found some great resources of teachers all over the world (follow great teachers CoolCatTeacher, Thespian70, or AngelaMaiers on Twitter or read Susan's blog on using tech well, J. Clark Evans's blog on melding teaching and tech, or Cruel Shoes about the big ideas of teaching). But talking face-to-face with the teachers in my own building cannot be replaced. To know that I am teaching with other great educators and that we are all trying to be the best we can be creates an energy that encourages me even more.

So, here are the essential questions our English department drafted for our core courses. These are all still in the working stages, so please help us revise if you have ideas.

Introduction to Genres (9th grade):

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

British Literature (10th grade):

• How can the written word change society?
• What is the "British literary tradition"? (first semester)
• How do these works challenge the traditions? (second semester)

American Literature (11th grade):

• Who am I as an American?
• How does the literature and an understanding of its chronology and themes show how we as a people came to be who we are today?

World Literature (12th grade, including AP English Lit):

• Who am I as a citizen of the world?
• How does the literature and an understanding of the geography and culture from which it came expand your world view?

I look forward to hearing your ideas, combining my real-life colleagues with my virtual ones.

Who Are These College Students?

Working in a college-preparatory independent school, one that also has a 1:1 laptop program, I think a lot about what it means to really prepare a student for college in the 21st century. It certainly is not the same as it was when I was being prepared by my teachers for college. My tech coordintaor shared this resource with me, and if you have 15 or 30 minutes of free time (ha! at the end of the year?? okay, just take a break from all of that grading ...), please spend it here. These are videos from the Faculty Academy run each year by the University of Mary Washington. The videos I found most intriguing as an English teacher in a laptop classroom are "Teaching Writing to First Year Students" and "Instructional Technology and First Year Students."

Reflections on Ending the Year

I have my last day with my AP Lit students today -- always bittersweet. I have spent the last week pushing them to reflect and reflect some more -- to process their life in high school as best they can before they head off to college. They have written short letters about their favorite readings so teachers next year can use the letters to spark extra interest in their new students. They have written poems about their memories (modeled on Walt Whitman's "There Was a Child Went Forth") from their whole life, and one of my favorite moments today is when I give them back to them -- printed in color with a pretty layout of course but, more importantly, attached to a poem I wrote about their class this year and each of them. Finally, they have written letters to their future selves that they will find in their mailboxes one day in the coming years ... (truth be told: I always mail last year's packets on the day the current seniors start their packets just so I don't forget, but I don't need to give away all my secrets to them ...).

And I am now heading into my own summer where I hope to achieve at least a part of the reflection I have asked my students to do. Elaine Plybon wrote so truthfully about the reality of a teacher's summer, so I wonder what I will have actually achieved by summer's end. But I have spent this school year really thinking about my teaching, something the luxury of years of old lessons at my fingertips has allowed me not to always do. And reflection is to me the single most important piece of being a good teacher. None of us are perfect, and no lesson is perfect, no matter how well it goes. We ask our students to learn and grow, and we must do the same.

So, here are my goals for my reflection this summer:

• I will revisit lesson planning by reading Understanding by Design
• I will figure out how to add The Rime of the Ancient Mariner to my AP class to add some reading level challenge that I think is lacking
• I will read 2 novels about other cultures (still deciding what these are!)
• I will research the writing approach, 6 Traits of Writing
• I will keep my blog current and keep up with everyone on Twitter

Now that I have written them down, I have to do them! What are your reflection goals for the summer?

Collaborating Across Educational Borders

My mind is still spinning from an amazing morning I had yesterday. I met with an education professor from the University of Mary Washington, Dr. Wendy Atwell-Vassey. She specializes in the teaching of high school English, and I had contacted her to see if I could make some connections between my school and college. One aspect of my school's mission is to prepare students for college, yet even though I have taught upper school English at this school for 14 years, I had never talked to a college professor about just what it meant to be prepared for college English and writing.

Why we don't make those connections across this educational divide is a blog for another day. Instead, I just want to encourage every teacher to reach out and ask. That is all I did. I contacted Wendy with an email asking her if she would be willing to meet with me to explore ways I could work with her and/or her students. She was immediately enthusiastic about meeting with me, but not just for me to learn from her. She had ideas for things she could learn from me. I have to admit that I was surprised (and delighted!) by this. Me, a high school teacher? How could I offer something to a college professor?

We talked for an hour and a half. Our conversation ranged from curriculum design to great books to read about teaching to the expectations of college professors in literature and writing to how pre-service teachers could learn from my students to how a small school like mine could be a great place to affect positive change. I am now researching "Understanding By Design," a planning method that seems to take the best of the many ideas I learned in college and my masters program and combine them, and the "Six Traits of Writing," something that might help our writing program find a cohesive focus from K to 12. Wendy is awaiting receving essays my students are writing this week so that she can learn from them to add to her research on composition and education. She is also excited to work with my students next spring with her pre-service teachers.

Wendy and I could have kept teaching effectively and enthusiastically without these ideas we generated. But we have built a bridge together, one that will help high school students be the best prepared for college that they can be and one that will help future teachers become the best teachers they can be.

So, make the call or send the email. I hope you find someone as excited to work with you as I did. If you are on the high school side, I recommend you start with an education professor who specializes in your content area. They are already thinking about teaching and learning, so they will be, as a group, the most receptive. If you are on the college side, just call a teacher. It does not have to be a department chair -- any teacher who is teaching something you are interested in will be happy that you called them because it validates what they do (yes, we as teachers teach because we gain validation in more intangible ways, but it sure is nice when someone "higher up" validates us too!). They may say no to working with you, but you will have given them that validation -- and they will probably recommend someone who will say yes.

Finishing the Year with Google Docs

The best part of the new developments in technology is how they can make okay plans I have done in the past much, much better. I am hoping this is the case with my AP English Lit students' final novel study: Things Fall Apart. I have always had them tackle this novel in seminar groups where they prepared discussion ideas ahead of time then discussed the reading in small groups with me as a resource not their teacher. It has gone fine and even very well -- but the discussions ended in the class. I am hoping Google Docs will expand my classroom outside of the 45 minutes that happen in the four walls of my room.

I started by changing around the discussion prep work (see this here), incoporating sharing and reflecting on the group's Google doc before coming to class. Students have to, for example, add a question they have about the reading to the Google doc for the first seminar. For the second seminar, they have to reflect on the discussion their group had and note on the Google Doc the most important themes and issues they see thus far in the novel. In class, the Google Doc will allow all of the students to be clued in to their books and the discussion rather than typing furiously away taking notes (see seminar guidelines here).

Overall, Web 2.0 tools have given me class time I never had before -- the students' own time at home alone yet still connected with each other in web-based discussions. Individual literature reflections have become full-blown discussions before class even happens (using the Turn It In discussion board). I hope Google Docs can become yet another venue for this independent yet collaborative thinking my students have been doing. It just so happens that I really don't need to be guiding every aspect of their discussions -- they do just fine, if not even better, playing with the ideas on their own.

Pushing Inquiry Further

My students' work with the inquiry frame for Oedipus Rex (see post below) worked well enough that I decided to push it further as we start our final theme for the year: cultural identity and isolation. Doing something twice always means the second time is better, so I knew I had little to lose.

We began exploring this final theme on Friday just by looking into what the individual words "cultural," "identity," and "isolation" meant. This produced great ideas -- particularly the point that you can be be isolated even within the culture that creates much of your identity. We discussed literary examples to explore it more, and it was neat to see them play with familiar characters in a new way. I ended this part of the discussion by having them define what we would need to look at in our upcoming readings to help define this theme. On their own, they said we would need to define first the culture then define how the characters were placed in relation to this culture. From there, we could explore.

They defined my unit plan. On their own. This inquiry stuff works.

I ended class with the following question to introduce Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis: How do our everyday cultures (that is our families, jobs, friends, classes -- those things we experience every day) affect who we are and who we aren't? I told them that we were starting small with this exploration -- with a story that rarely even left a single home. We will the build on this by reading Things Fall Apart, starting as outsiders to the culture that is at the foundation of the novel.

Framing with Inquiry

One of the most worthwhile things I never find enough time to do is read about teaching methods. This takes me back to my undergrad and grad days where I had to write out formal lessons plans and try out new strategies. This forced experimentation always showed me how well things worked in ways I had not anticipated. So, a blurb about an inquiry-based approach to literature in the Council Chronicle has my mind working again as I think about WHY I teach a lesson the way I do. After years of teaching, I can often lose the original idea behind a tried and true lesson.

Today I made the inquiry-based approach the overt guide for our discussion of Oedipus Rex. We had looked at two questions before beginning -- "What if your search for self leads you to something you do not want to know?" and "Do our actions determine our fate?" -- and then moved on to reading the play in class and playing around with the character of Oedipus in nightly on-line discussions. Typical literature discussion stuff.

So I dragged out the questions again as the start to our class today, saying that now it was time to see what Oedipus could teach us about the answers -- my inquiry frame. Our discussions ranged from the strong characters of Sophocles's writing to the ancient Greeks' view of fate to the views of fate we have. This class tends to be quiet, so it was not the liveliest discussion ever -- but it was real. The students talked about how, as much as they want control, they like to think there is some fate in their lives -- that things happen for reasons. This led to their college decisions (which have all come in as of April 1 -- a coincidence or fate that I had this discussion today?!) and whether some of the difficult news they had heard had a role in a larger plan. Not all students saw it this way, and the give and take with this was impressive. They were not trying to convince everyone of their views -- just playing around with ideas. I ended class by having them write down their thoughts on fate and choice and life, and the keys did not stop tapping for a full five minutes. I don't know what they each specifically wrote, but I know they were intrigued and connected.

An old method proves effective again. I am now going to try to be more overt all year with my world literature themes -- phrasing them with the questions that have always lurked under why I grouped the particular set of books together in the first place. Going back to our roots as students of teaching often uncovers great things.