Discussion Boards

I use the Turn It In discussion board with my students because I really like the way it threads. Our school's website offers a blog option, but it only allows responses to the main topic so students cannot easily show that they are responding to each other and not just my topic. I thought about setting up a class blog, but then the replies get threaded off individual pages. I have heard that threading is passe, but I still really value it for my classes. I have watched the depth of these discussions over the past three years, and I just cannot replicate them in another forum. The students are reading each others' ideas and thoughtfully reflecting and responding on them. This was brought home to me by a student who told me yesterday (just the third day of school) that this discussion board work was really neat and he really liked it.

Here is an excerpt. If you are familiar with my essential question ideas for this world lit course, this post was the way I got them started thinking about it. Their thoughts about thinking in general plus the personal way they apporach each other was more than I could have hoped for.

Topic #1: Why Do You Think? (And Do You?)
starts: August 25, 2008 at 12:01 AM ends: August 30, 2009 at 11:59 PM
Created by Susanne Nobles

"We've learned to speak and think in the epistemology of television, which is essentially filled with thought-terminating clichés ... There is a kind of war against self-reflection, self-criticism, and real introspection" (Whitehead).

I believe literature of all kinds, and specifically world literature, can create a culture of intellect and thought. Yet reading world literature requires “two competing [tasks]: an invitation to identify (‘This text is about you!’) and a warning against overidentifying (‘This text was never about you!’) … Far from being an excuse for passive reading, ‘This was never about you!’ calls students to attend to a material world that is not their own, which means caring enough ‘to learn it’ … Can Westerners’ confrontation of a foreign text result in genuine identification …?” (Eck 579, 582).

When was the last time you really thought about something? Be honest … what does real thought look and feel like? Okay, when was the last time you did that?

Response #6:
I actually am a fairly reflective person and fall into deep thought on a fairly regular basis. I'd say that the last time I fell into deep thought had to be over this past weekend when I was dealing with a difficult decision that I had to make. I also find myself thinking more and more about college and what I want to do where I want to go, and how those decisions will affect me during college and later on in life. I guess I never really stop thinking about that subject because I find my self often drifting off into my own little world of self reflection on the topic. I never really think about the same thing, but often times I get into deep existential and philosophical discussions with my life where I ponder things untill my head begins to swirl, and I begin to lose grasp on the topic that I am trying to understand. I usually get into real thought when I am not distracted by anything else, however I can keep on the same subject for several days "pausing" my thinking until the distractions are over. Usually it involves picking my brain appart, presenting counter points and arguments to points that I am trying to make, and it ends with analyzing why I am thinking and acting in a certain way and what the consequences of behaving like that are. It's actually all pretty exhausting. So yeah I guess I would still have to stand with saying that the last time I did that was this past weekend, because It definitely fit the description of what I just put down.

Reply #6.1 to Response #6:
I know the same feeling, and I know we have talked about some of those issues between ourselves, specifically last year. And I think that the feeling that you are losing yourself in the moment is all the more of a testimony to how deep your thinking. I feel that the harder and longer you ponder something, the more questions begin to form, and the harder you have to think. This might be why so many of us avoid hard reflecting, because we find it is to much work.

The Start of School

It has been so long since I have been on my blog that I had to sign in again. Blogger had forgotten me, as I am sure my Twitter network had too, and my Google Reader is about to explode. I have not turned on my laptop at home in over a week -- true statement. I have spent the last week and a half "back at work," which really means at an overnight leadership camp with students, in 4 days worth of meetings misnamed "teacher work week," capped off with a technology-free weekend of my own making when I spent it with my brother's and sister's families at Kings Dominion.

So how am I going to do this? In a blog posting way below, I set out a summer goal of keeping both my blog and Twitter active. That blog post is so far below because I succeeded mightily this summer, and I enjoyed it mightily too. I enjoyed most the reflection I have been able to do on my teaching through this blog, and the things I have learned from my Twitter network have only added to that.

But the irony is not lost on me. Now that I am actually back at work doing those things I reflected on all summer I can't do it all any more. How do you balance your time? What wisdom can we all share to help us be 21st century educators connected with our PLN and also be those people we were before our PLN, people with students and families and lives beyond our laptops? Or can I ask a more specific question -- should I feel so guilty because I am typing this while I am at work?

The First Day

School starts in just over a week, so I am working on my lesson plans. I never can get actual lesson planning done during what is mis-named the "work week" for teachers before school starts. After a few years, this reality finally sank in, and I aim to have all of my inital plans written prior to the work week so that I can stop being so stressed in all of those meetings.

Each time I revisit my initial plans, I find myself rethinking the first day. It is such an important day, one that I always wish I could make more interesting and interactive. I don't want to do something just because it is interactive but how can I get students to interact when they have not yet begun their studies of world lierature? Today though I came across this article, the answer to my hopes (see page 5). I plan to ask my students to discuss in small groups, "What is world literature?" And then to follow it up with, "What are good questions to ask about world literature?" This work plays right into the point I had hoped to make with them -- that world literature is not something new to them but there are still many unexamined areas to be discovered.

The best thing about teaching is finding ideas from other teachers that help you make your own ideas finally click.

Fall Rundown

In the spirit of Dana Huff, here is what is on my plate for the fall. It is great knowing what my fellow bloggers are up to, and here is my list:

• Teaching 2 sections of AP English Literature and Composition with a focus on world literature
• Director of College Counseling
• Student Government advisor, including heading up our new Leadership Camp this weekend. Two days of leadership talk and work -- I am excited to see how our student leaders delve further into what leadership is.
• English Department Coordinator (main department focus: getting our consensus curriculum maps finalized)
• Co-chair of our 10-year accreditation visit
• "Overseer" of our school's first curriculum guide which is at the printer as I type -- I can't wait to see it next week and hand it to the faculty. I am still unsure about what my Head of School has in mind for my role to keep it current and improving ... stay tuned.
• My 4 1/2 year old daughter will be attending preschool 5 mornings a week -- she is VERY excited. They have requested that we send in a computer headset for her, so she is a techie in making I guess.
• My 2 1/2 year old son joins his sister in preschool this year -- and according to him it is about time. 2 mornings a week.
• A member of Will/Cheryl's PLP with 5 other FA teachers as well as teachers from around the world
• Thursday night yoga classes
• Running three mornings a week with a new mom -- she is balancing her run with feeding and clothing herself and her son all before 7:00 AM. Amazing.
• Attending NCTE in November as a member of the Commission on Composition. The theme this year is "Shift Happens" -- perfect.

I go back to work this Sunday with Leadership Camp -- it will be a great year.

Textual Analysis and Wordle

My AP English students and I start our year of close reading with diction analysis. With diction being one of the more concrete techniques authors use, it is a relatively simple way to jumpstart my students' brains into higher level style analysis. Even my concrete readers can underline vivid words and talk about their connotations. My colleague who teaches junior year English also focuses on diction in the second semester, so I can build on her good work. I am therefore able to start the year with a high-level technique that does not make my students feel they are in over their heads -- I have not found many more better starting points for learning.

We use the first page of Brave New World as our initial practice. Before my students actually begin reading the novel, I have them underline all descriptive words on the first page only (a great grammar moment as we discuss how, while adjectives and adverbs are by nature descriptive, nouns and verbs can be too). Then, by projecting the first page (here is the whole novel on-line -- the first page is the first 3 paragraphs) on a Word document, we mark it up and see the descriptive dissonance Huxley creates through his diction. The "fertilizing room" is cold, most sterile, and nearly dead. Through his word choice, Huxley has created a window into the metanarrative of his novel. We don't yet know WHY he does not like the society he is creating, but now my students can start reading as knowledgeable readers and not be lulled into thinking Huxley is presenting his own utopia. Oh the discussions that follow.

Wordle has entered my life now though, and look at what I can do to cap off this lesson:

The word "light" is one of the biggest. How does this fit with the bleak, cold atmosphere we have just discussed Huxley creating? Maybe my students will see through this visual tool how Huxley is layering words to build both sides of his message that life is being created here, life that maybe is still very important despite this society saying otherwise ...

I set as one of my goals last year to use more visuals in my classes. I tend not to be a visual learner, but I know many of my students are. Wordle is a great tool for this. Here is more about how to use Wordle with literary analysis (this NCTE blog has lots of great tech stuff if you have time to scroll through it). I am imagining that later in this novel I will have the students create Wordle maps of their own chosen passages and talk about what they discover about Huxley's message though his chosen words. Stay tuned for lots of Brave New World maps to show up in the Wordle Gallery ...

Henry Ford and Literature and the World

I have just returned from a tech-free, two-week vacation, so sorry for the length of time between posts. My mind is humming now though after some great reading and rereading of books. I tackled Understanding by Design for the first time (one of my summer goals from below -- I am about done with all of my goals if you can believe that), and I am just about done with rereading East of Eden, one of my AP Lit students' summer reads. Lots of great ideas from UbD of course, but those will have to wait for a later post. As for E of E, I have read this book many times before, yet I learned once again the worth of rereading (I was honestly thinking I could rely on my memory for one more year before tackling this LONG novel again ...).

I discovered Henry Ford has a recurring role in the opening of my world literature class. Odd ...

When my students and I study Brave New World as our first in-class novel, we of course talk about Ford. We use this great short article as a comparison to the novel. If you teach this novel, I highly recommend taking just 15 minutes to have your students read this article after they have read about 4 chapters of BNW and write down connections between the two. There are so many, and the students can see so clearly the impact Ford had on Huxley and his thinking. Students are struck by how this automatization and mass production was truly revolutionary -- enough so that an author predicted a whole future on it and a future that is not so far-fetched in 2008.

Then I read this passage from E of E (from Part One, chapter 13, section 1): "It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking ..." If you have the book, turn to this section and read all of it as there as much more than I will quote here.

This quote gets me thinking a lot about my overall essential question for my course, and I am still figuring out how to bring all of that together. But I do know that when we discuss BNW and the Ford article, I will be reading this passage to them to show how momentous this time in the world was to two authors from two different countries. I think they will be struck by this connection across continents and see how what we are discussing truly is life-changing stuff ... at least I hope they will.

In the End, It's All About People

I just got home from meeting one of my Senior Exhibit mentees. She was really concerned about the progress of her Exhibit, and I know that talking helped her feel better about a roadblock she had hit. I could assure her and watch her to see if my words were making a little difference.

Our conversation turned to college too (I am the college counselor as my "other" job), and I had emailed her earlier today in response to her question about her current GPA. She was honest with me tonight that reading my email with her GPA was hard for her -- she had hoped it would have been higher. We talked about this and the ramifications. These are often the hardest conversations I have with my seniors because I strive to always be honest and realistic about admission requirements while also keeping students' goals strong and positive. It is a balance I worry about all of the time.

In the end what I gained from tonight was a reminder about how my job -- as teacher, as college counselor, as whatever I am at that moment with that student -- is really about the individuals I get the privelege to work with. Sitting down face-to-face with my students whenever I can is something that for me can never be replaced. Technology (email in this case, but blogs, Twitter, Facebook) can and do keep connections alive, but it is talking with my students where I do best. It is how I can know a student is upset about her GPA and I can respond as needed for that situation. I can't always fix it, but the personal moment together matters.

I would not have spent my evening any other way.

Making More of AP

My mind is caught up right now on striking a balance between the "AP" part of my course and the "world literature" part. I feel very fortunate to teach AP Lit because the College Board does not set a prescribed content curriculum. Instead, the curriculum is skill-based, and as long as my students are reading works of "literary merit" as defined by CB, deeply analyzing them, and carefully writing about them, then we read what we want and do what we want. So, my course is listed on students' transcripts as AP Literature and Composition, but it is really a world literature course with college-level skills empahsized. At least, as I see it. But ...

My school is radically changing our daily schedule (from a traditional 7-period, 45-minute class day to a collegiate modular schedule), so we have been told to make our #1 priority in our lesson planning to focus our time with students on meaningful, incisive learning. (Yes, we should be doing this anyway, but the mandate is clear and no more "work on your project" days if I can help it.) So, I have looked over my plans with new eyes this summer, and that is scary and exciting. Scary because it always makes me remember that first year of teaching when I felt like I was recreating a wheel every single day (if you are a first-year teacher reading this, please teach for another year -- it is so radically different and you WILL now have time -- I promise). How nice it is to have old plans that work well to use again. But that leads me to the exciting part -- to be forced to look at these old plans and make them even better. As I have said before on this blog, even the best lesson can be made even better through reflection. Yet, sometimes we don't make time for that reflection, so when my admininistration makes me do it, all the better.

Back to the "But ...": what I saw when I opened up my first unit was that I have focused on establishing only the "AP" part of my course on the first day. We talk about what it means to be AP, look at books used on the exam, think about how prior classes have prepared us for this point ... all good stuff, but none of it about world literature. So as much as I have always said, "I do not teach this course towards the AP exam," I was setting up the course just this way. Ah, what new eyes can show us.

Now I am going to use this first day, this first class that is ripe for setting the tone for our year, to talk about the world and my essential question, "Why must we think?" I have not yet figured out HOW I am going to do this (it is really only July still -- plenty of time to solve this puzzle), but I know it will change my course for the whole year. Maybe not so much for my students -- the first day, as important as it is, is still only the first day and just one part of their whole experience. But for me, this first-day shift of focus has allowed me to see that I really do for the most part teach a world lit course that also prepares students well for college. Now I am going to capitalize on just that.

Reading Instruction in High School -- Really?

"... [A]s students became increasingly aware of the fact that they were actually going to have to 'do' something to make a text comprehensible, their frustrations with reading decreased. Suddenly it wasn't that anything was wrong with them (or with the text) causing them to find a book incomprehensible, but that they simply weren't doing the things good readers do when they read" (50). So writes Carol Jago in With Rigor for All, a book that every high school (and even middle school) teacher should read. It is not very long, but it offers one of the most convincing arguments I have ever read for offering challenging reading.

Students learn how to read in elementary school then just keep on reading in middle and high school, right? As a high school English teacher, I have fallen into believing this trap. My students grow as readers, able to tackle the next challenge, just because they KNOW how to read, right?

This, according to Jago, is why schools are increasingly offering shorter, lighter, and easier books to older students. The students complain that reading is too hard, and we, very honestly, fear that we are turning them off as life-long readers. But instead of regressing, we need to teach reading skills that are appropriate for the level of reading we are asking our students to do. "If lessons include only work that children can accomplish without the help of the teacher, students are being shortchanged. The thoughtful teacher aims instruction just beyond what students are able to perform independently" (Jago 72).

Jago offers great suggestions for making transparent for students what expert readers do as they read. She starts many texts with short read-alouds, stopping to talk about what she has noticed and then what they have noticed. She then rereads the opening to show how readers work to be sure they have a feel for an author's style and flow before getting too far and too lost (she strongly disagrees with reading aloud whole texts -- this is just an introductory activity). She has her students mimic literary devices authors use, such as the epic simile, so they really understand the device and can watch it develop in the text. The list goes on (read this book -- it really is worth it). In the end, she is teaching students how to read, that is how to take the next steps in reading skills so that in the end they are indeed life-long readers. Yes, even in Jago's world, there is a place for light reading, but it should not be the only reading students are able to do.

What rocks your students' worlds?

I have been thinking about the texts we teach at my school quite a bit as we work to finetune things. I am stuck right now with my AP English Literature class because while I want to add a Faulkner novel, that leads me to a harder decision -- what do I drop to make room? This is my eternal albatross -- I always find great new things to add, but that does not often mean I have something to drop. So what is a teacher to do?

Think about something else of course. Here are the texts I would absolutely NOT drop:

World Literature/AP English Lit:

• Excerpts from religious texts, but excerpts from the Koran specifically: My students and I study the Koran (here is the document I use with my students) along with the Bible, Torah, and Bhagavad-Gita, and I know their understanding of the Koran is enhanced by building off the other religious works. Yet it is reading the Koran that changes their world views the most, and our field trip to the Islamic Center in Washington, DC, is irreplacable.


• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho: This text is a student favorite every single year. I do not do much teaching of the text -- since it comes at the end of the first semester and is an "easy read," I turn most of it over to the students to read and understand themselves. Consequently, it is the novel itself that deserves the credit for inspiring, reassuring, and fascinating my students.


• Othello by William Shakespeare: The tremendous Folger's Shakespeare Set Free teaching guide brings this play literally to life for my students. Each year, they perform the entire fifth act, and I am always amazed at the depth of understanding they show -- as well as memorizing all of those lines in just a week! They love this -- here are some pics and the U-Stream of this year's performance. It takes quite a bit of time to work up to such a performance, but that time could not be better spent -- even on Faulkner :)

Introduction to Genres (Freshman Year):

• Night by Elie Wiesel: Wiesel's story is the single text every freshman says should never be removed from the curriculum. Using Wiesel's wise words, students work hard to fight indifference as the worst evil.
• "We Real Cool" by Gwendolyn Brooks: If you can find the anthology Poetry Speaks (which is well worth buying even if you don't teach this poem because of the incredible wealth of voices reading wonderful poems) with a recording of Brooks herself reading her poem, you will have the tools for the best discussion of the use of line breaks to create meaning that you can ever have.

British Literature (Sophomore Year):

• Regeneration by Pat Barker: Maybe it is because this is one of the few texts they read all year that is not written in verse, but this novel fascinates students. I also am awed by the World War I poets, so being able to teach them in conjunction (I got verse in there!) was an extra bonus.

American Literature (Junior Year):

• A Farwell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway: I think I have a future research project embedded in students' reactions to this novel. I no longer teach American Lit, but I get most of the seniors the next year, and this is by far the class favorite. Why? There is my research project for you because this novel grabs every kind of reader -- male, female, action, love, discerning, just like to turn the pages ... I know our junior year teacher is great, and there is something even greater about this novel.

What are your students' favorites? And why? Is it the text itself separate of all else or is it something you really rock at teaching? I'd love to hear your answers ... that way I will have even more great things to add ...

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.