Read. Analyze. Emulate

During our break from school as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, my two boys and I have been using our morning to complete reading and writing prompts.  Yesterday, we pulled our inspiration from George Ella Lyon's poem "Kitchen Table."

In an activity similar to one I do with my high school students, I asked my boys to read the excerpt, analyze the moves that the writer makes, and emulate the style in an original work of their own. Last year while attending the Michigan Reading Association conference, Penny Kittle engaged us in a very similar activity using an excerpt from Alice Hoffman's book Faithful. In using a small excerpt from a piece of writing, students of any age are able to engage in analysis and bring those writing craft moves into their own work.  Using shorter excerpts from a variety of texts gives emerging writers the opportunity to play with their writing. 

In yesterday's activity, my 9 and 11 year old boys talked about repetition, imagery, and shifts in tone. These are the same concepts that my high school writers were unpacking in their rhetorical analysis of a variety of speeches just prior to our break. My high school students were tasked not only with analyzing a selected speech, but using their analysis to craft their own speech. This is what it means to use a text as a mentor. What can we learn from writers about the craft of writing? 

The result of our writing endeavors yesterday with my boys were poems about our living room furniture.

By H. Ward

This chair stands where
no chair has stood,
where I have read for
hours on end,
where my father
plays guitar,
where my dog frequently
jumps up to play.
A place of comfort,
learning,
and fun,
where I sit
still,
watching
from the green
chair.

By L. Ward

This end table is where 

coffee sits in a cup,
where Mary sleeps under,
where my dad read
the New York Times,
where my mom
grades her students'
papers
and where I wrote
this poem about the
end table.





By Jennifer Ward

This coffee table stands where
a folding chair first sat when
we moved into this space.
Months later I jigsawed
this table into the Prius,
seats folded down, the two
boys buckled into the front
passenger seat, giggling as
this table bounced between us.
This is the table where we gather to play
Munchkins, Exploding Kittens, Pandemic,
where dad used the wax
from his bees to polish
out coffee cup rings that
left O’s in the grain.
This is the table where
we lean into computer screens
to chat with friends while
sheltering inside during the pandemic,
where we would rather be gathered
together in person
laughing, chatting, playing music
as we had in the past.

Thinking about Revision

With this gift of time as we are sequestered away in our separate homes, I've been dipping back into my writing, rereading cringe-worthy drafts of poems and half-finished stories. Whew! I need to spend some time revising!

Writing is never finished. Walt Whitman rewrote Leaves of Grass five times. Former poet laureate Galway Kinnell never seemed to deliver his published poems the same way twice, omitting and adding lines even after the poems were bound in a book.  I’ve heard both author James McBride and poet Naomi Shihab Nye talk about writing as rewriting. Naomi Shihab Nye said: “If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn’t realize the teacher was saying, ‘Make it shine. It’s worth it.’ Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It’s a new vision of something. It means you don’t have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!”



In thinking about how I go about revising my own writing and how I teach revision to my high school students, I notice a divide. And actually, in rereading some of my posts on this space, this divide is something that I have been struggling to bridge for a large portion of my teaching career. How do I help students invest more time in their revision process? This is going to sound weird, but our current break from traditional school as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has actually provided me some insight into revision. Let me explain.

My youngest son, Lukas, is nine years old.  This past week was our first week home together as schools shut down in Michigan as a result of the spread of the novel coronavirus. On Monday and Wednesday, his teachers posted links to math worksheets and online resources for his class to access.  He was assigned reading homework, encouraged to complete a creative book report, and asked by his teacher to complete and send back work that he had missed due to a recent orthodontist appointment.  But what did Lukas want to do?  He wanted to grab the Chromebook every chance he could so that he could add to the collaborative story that he and his buddy were writing titled "Where the Dragons Dwell."

You need to understand that when I ask Lukas about writing, he tells me that he hates it. "I hate my writer's notebook!" he complains each Wednesday night.  His weekly writing pages are typically due on Thursday morning, and of course, as an English teacher, hearing him say this each week breaks my heart. But here's the thing, I know why he's saying this. I love that his teacher has students writing in notebooks each week.  I also know that my son doesn't actually hate writing.  He, in fact, continues to write more than he is assigned when he is given free choice on what to write.  What he hates is that the feedback he has received is that he needs to fill the page and not slant his writing so that his last few lines on the page only cover 1/3 of the available space on the page. He dislikes the feedback that is focused on what his writing looks like and not on what he elects to write about. This is not feedback on the content of his writing. He enjoys writing, writing so quickly that it is a bit difficult to decipher at times, but he doesn't like when feedback interrupts his work or when it is not connected to the work. In cases when he's received feedback that he needs to write more because he doesn't "fully fill the page," he protests.  He claims he hates writing and doesn't understand why he has to do it. This is also what he said when I asked him to grab a notebook so that we could write at home together this past Monday.  However, later that same afternoon when his buddy shared a Google doc with the start of a story, Lukas didn't want to put down his writing.

Over the course of this past week, Lukas has added to the story, read the story aloud to his older brother a few times to get some advice, talked through most of our meal times about the progression of the story, always focused on how to make the story better.  This is what revision should look like. What it doesn't look like is a worksheet or a series of required comments left on a partner's draft. What it doesn't look like is everyone working on the same "step" of writing at the same time. So when we do return to school, I have some ideas about how engage students in the revision process differently.  It starts even before we begin drafting.

If writing is rewriting as McBride and Nye suggest, then conversations with students about revision strategies need to begin at the introduction of each new writing assignment.  Very few published writers complete a full draft before making a tweak here or there. We revise as we go, so we cannot leave a peer-revision workshop as the last step before our students turn in a writing assignment. We must teach students to engage in revision as we go, at each step of the writing process.  Moving forward in my own classroom, this will look more like the writing workshop model with students working in small groups to draft, craft, and revise. No more revision checklists or peer revision worksheets.  Instead, revision needs to look and feel more organic, like my son's process of crafting the collaborative story with his friend.  They use the online document to add to the writing, comments to make suggestions or ask questions of one another, and the chat to talk about where they are headed in the story.  Late this past week, my son hopped on a virtual chat with his friend, and I listened in as the two talked about the upcoming chapters they wanted to write together.  This conferencing got both boys engaged in the writing and revision process. 

I use writing conferences in my high school English classes now, but typically they are conversations between the student writer and the teacher and are left toward the end of the writing process. Using my son's writing process as a model, I see that I need to help students establish similar collaborative writing relationships much earlier in the drafting process.  Connecting my students writers and giving them space to organically talk about their writing and their struggles will do more to help them grow in their confidence as writers. Moving forward, I need to help my students establish trusted writing partners, peers that they can rely on throughout their writing practice, much like my Lukas relies on his writing buddy. 

I'll rely on the work of educators like Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher to guide me as I think about how to reframe writing assignments in my classes.  Having the opportunity to hear them talk about their work and book 180 Days last spring at the Michigan Reading Association conference was powerful.  And I would love to hear from other educators about your successes when in comes to engaging students in the revision process. 

Slowing Down to Learn

At this point, we are a couple of days into social distancing and staying at home as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.  Michigan schools, like so many other schools around the country, are closed for the next few weeks. In response, educators are sharing an abundance of digital learning tools and home-schooling suggestions. I must confess, even though I am an educator and consider myself digitally saavy, this is all just a bit too overwhelming.  Too many suggestions, too many lesson ideas.  It's just too much! I love the passion and collaboration that is growing as a result of needing to quickly address our new learning landscape, but slow down!  My own boys, now 4th and 5th graders, have received messages and optional assignments from their classroom teachers, art teachers, music teachers, physical education teachers. And although they are communicating with the best of intentions, it is overwhelming my dudes...and me.

I want to encourage my own kids to pause and reflect on this particular moment in time. Yes, it is scary. We've never lived through something like this before, and so we don't know what to expect.  The adults don't have all the answers right now.  But, we have the gift of time. We don't need to rush. We don't need to try to replicate a traditional school day at home. We have time to reflect and explore and learn together. So rather than trying to cram in a science lesson and a math handout and history project and a writing activity each day, we're taking it slow.

Each morning, my boys and I get up, chat, make breakfast, and take the dog for a walk.  Then, I use the prompts above to guide our morning reflections.  We talk about the prompt, write a little, read a little, and make something.  Yesterday, after we talked about what we would like to learn in our next four weeks together, my boys and I went outside to build an epic fort.  We then came inside to figure out the best tools for learning how to code.  Today, we talked about the power of our hands after listening to Sarah Kay's spoken word poem "Hands." My boys and I completed a writing activity that had us writing our own poems about a something special that we've held in our hands.  After viewing the photojournalism piece posted by the BBC on Tim Booth's photography of hands, my boys wanted to take a black and white photo of their own to add to their writing piece. So we discuss, we write, we read, we create.  And that's enough for now.  We don't need to fill every moment.  We have time.

Feel free to join us and use the prompts above.  I will add new prompts each day.  We'd love to hear about what you are learning, reading, and making during this time.

Remember, we're in uncharted territory. It is okay to not have the answers. It is okay to slow down.

Self Care Challenge

Wow!  What a week this has been.  Things have been moving very quickly, and in my Michigan school district, we suddenly find ourselves out of school through April 12th, a full month away from school.  The impact of COVID-19 is unprecedented, and as a result, we are all in uncharted territory.

During our time away from school, we have an opportunity to reconnect with our families and take care of ourselves and one another.  For those that are interested, I created the self-care challenge for my high school students.  Feel free to make a copy of this document for yourself and your students.  Highlight each of the challenges as you complete them.  Use the comment box below to tell us how your self-care challenges are going!

Reading Routines

Fridays are our reading days. It's my favorite day of the week.

This past Friday, as the temperatures dipped and snow swirled, we declared it our first "Snuggle Up and Read Day." We had hot water so we could mix up some hot cocoa, cookies to dunk, and we found a comfy place in the room to record our reading goals for the coming week and spend the class hour reading.

We begin the class hour each Friday by adding up the number of pages that had read in the past week and added it to our weekly reading log. Students can select any style of text to read - realistic fiction, poetry, self-help, memoir, graphic novels, dystopian. At the close of each month, I reward students who have met or exceeded their weekly reading goals each week during the month (thank you, Herb and Fire Pizzeria). After eight weeks time, we break our weekly routine to share our books and learn about more potential books that we add to our "To Read" lists. Finally, we end each Friday class hour with "First Page Fridays."

What is "First Page Friday"? As students wrap up their reading time, I use the last five minutes of our Friday class time to share with them a little about a book that I have enjoyed. I briefly introduce the author and a summary of the story, and then I read students the first page of the book. In a few short weeks, my students will take over and begin to share their favorite books.

This week I shared Laurie Halse Anderson's nonfiction poetry book titled Shout. Many of my high school students have read one of her early books, Speak. Shout, intentionally titled to follow in the footsteps of Speak, focuses on Anderson's early struggles with silence and her journey to find and use the power of her voice. It is a devastatingly beautiful text, one I was excited to share with students. And, to add to the excitement, I also got to share with students that our school will host a visit with the author come spring! At the close of the day, I was able to give away a copy of the book to a student in each of my classes (thank you for making this possible, FirstBook). And to top it all off, we heard from Ms. Anderson on Friday! I posted a picture on our class Instagram site of our cozy reading day activities alongside page from Shout about "hygge", the Danish idea of comfort and connection. The author took a moment to write us a "comforting" reply.

I love our Friday reading routines! ​


Cross-posted at msward.org
​

Learning Communities are Built on Relationships

I don't yell.

Okay, if you ask my own children, they might tell you something different, but when it comes to my classroom, you'll find me most days guffawing and giggling more than anything else. I've been known to cackle so loudly that they can hear my laughter echo down the hallway.

But today, I yelled.

Over my years of teaching, I have come to realize that my philosophy of classroom management starts with building relationships. We start that very first week of school by constructing a social contract for our learning community. I ask for student input on what our learning and behavior expectations should be. We have candid conversations about what respect looks like, both from the teacher and from students. When I talk about the classroom, it is our classroom and our learning community. We work together.  It is not mine or yours. And it doesn't take long before students are using those same plural pronouns to talk about our class.  We reserve the opening moments of every class period to share out what things are happening in our lives. We share our highs and our lows. I know my students. I listen to their struggles. I try to provide a space that is flexible, comfortable, and safe.

And so when conflict happens, I rely on the strength of those relationships to lift us up.  If a student is off-task, I just need to quietly come stand beside her and ask how things are going. That's usually enough to help redirect her back on task.  On the rare occasion when anger fills our classroom, when someone uses profane language, or calls someone a name, I can usually get the situation under control quickly by pulling the student aside and trying to understand what is at the root of the issue and help the student see another's point of view. I point out the tenets of our social contract. This is what respect looks like in our classroom. This is what empathy looks like in our classroom.

But today I yelled.

Not at first.  At first I tried to calm down an irate student by pulling her aside. I tried redirecting. I tried separating. I tried getting the class back on task.

And then I yelled.

It is not how I like getting control of my classroom. It feels like a broken trust.

But I know that it will work out.  And I know that because as students walked out of class, I heard apologies. Students apologizing to one another. Students apologizing to me. I saw students offering to help others.  After school a student stopped by to see if I was okay. He was checking on me. It will work out because our relationships still build the foundation of our learning community.  Our walls may have shook this afternoon, but our relationships remain strong.

Time to Unplug

OMG! How did I end up on the Daily Beast?!

Okay, not really. My hair is longer. But those glasses are spot on.

Seriously though, when the sun goes down this evening, it will mark the start of the National Day of Unplugging. And for much as I love technology's ability to connect my students and me with authors, writers, and experts of all varying kinds, an over-reliance on our smartphones, tablets, and all manner of digital devices can have a detrimental effect on our ability to connect in real time.

Dr. Kowal meets with my Public Speaking students in February 2017.

My friend and communications expert Dr. Chris Kowal has done quite a bit of research on this matter. A nonverbal communications scholar, Chris studied people's body positions as they engaged in using their smartphones. The study, conducted at Purdue University, concluded that our curled-up body position when using smartphones leads to stress. In a 2016 article in The Exponent, Chris stated, "...we need to be aware of how we use our smartphones."

And he's not alone in this call for moderation. About this time last year, the American Psychological Association (APA) released a report about American's use of digital technologies and their increasing rates of stress.  According to the report, nearly one-fifth of those surveyed reported that digital technologies were the source of "very or somewhat significant" stress in their daily lives.  Similar surveys have been conducted by Gallup, the Milken Institute, and the Pew Research Center. And there's a growing body of research on cell phone addiction.

Now, don't get me wrong. I love my technology. To be quite honest, I would not be the educator that I am today without the connections that I have fostered in digital spaces like Twitter and Facebook.  Or what about all those fantastic donors who have provided my classroom with books and Chromebooks and cameras through online networks like DonorsChoose and PledgeCents.  And Skype and Google Hangouts/Meet have connected my students with editors, authors, biologists, poets, and fellow students from all around the globe. Technology has transformed my classroom in amazing ways.  However, that said, we all could use a break from that constant connection.

I'm old enough to remember a world prior to cell phones, prior to people being to get in touch with you whenever or wherever you happened to be. In college, I would hop in my car, windows rolled all the way down, radio blaring, and make the hour drive to the Lake Michigan shore. Alone.  If someone needed me, it had to wait until I was back in my dorm room. In a similar sort of way, this is why I have always loved camping, being in the great wide open.  No need for televisions or phones or tablets or laptops when there are so many open spaces to explore. In a world where digital connections are ubiquitous, it is refreshing to be reminded of the real-life connections that we might be missing out when we walk through the world with earbuds in and our faces looking down at little glowing blue screens.

So, take the 24-hour challenge with me. Unplug from your devices for one day. Who knows, maybe you'll find more powerful connections in real-life.  At the very least, unplugging might help us to find a bit of balance in how we are using technology in our daily lives.

The Gift of the Unexpected Snow Day

view from my window this morning

Ordinarily, if there's even a whiff of snow in the forecast, my boys and I have spoons nestled under our pillows, our pajamas on backwards, and ice cubes floating in all the toilets in our house. But this morning, as I was trying to convince myself that I didn't need to get up early, that 10 more minutes snuggled in my flannel sheets was worth the rush I would face later, my phone made the familiar buzzt, buzzt of an incoming text message. My fellow tenth grade honors English teacher shot out a quick text about how we could post a part of our plans on our Google Classroom pages. "This shouldn't put us too far behind schedule," she texted.

Wait!  What? We have a snow day!

Sure enough, school was closed today because of dangerously icy road conditions. I didn't see that coming. I certainly could use a day off to catch up on some grading that has been lingering in my book bag untouched for a few days. But, there will always be papers to grade and lessons to plan, snow day or not.  So today, I made the decision to simply enjoy this unexpected gift of a snow day.

I spent the morning watching the sun come up over our snow-covered yard, watching fat flakes float from the tree limbs outside my kitchen window as I made pancakes and eggs for my boys and husband. We got ready slowly this morning, chatting, goofing around, connecting. And then after my boys boarded their bus, two hours later than they usually start school, I hit the treadmill. Time to get those steps in. I read a book that has been sitting untouched since January. At the moment, I'm sitting in front of my fireplace crafting this blog.  And you know what? I'm relaxed. On a Wednesday afternoon.

I'm not worried about what has been left undone, about how much still needs to be planned, organized, graded, what emails I have yet to return, what paperwork I need to turn in. These things seem to consume my daily life. I rush from class to class, activity to activity.  Don't forget to... Be sure to...  Make certain you... I have to-do notes on my phone, in my planner, oftentimes even written in ink on the palm of my hand, always so much to accomplish in the span of a day. There never seems to be enough time.  And yet, there always is.

Things that must get done usually do. Those that don't quite get done on time tend to work themselves out.  And what seemed so important in the moment is forgotten by the close of the month. Will this matter in a year? Things move so quickly in our classrooms, and it is easy to get overwhelmed, both for teachers and for students. We are all so rushed. As educator John Spenser has said, we are wearing busy like a badge of honor. But it's not.  It does not make us better teachers, better students, better partners, friends, or parents to take pride in how busy we are. It does no good to repeat that trite claim that there just isn't enough time.

It took me many years as an educator to learn that I needed to let somethings go.  So today, I'm letting go of my to-do lists, if just for a little while, to enjoy this unexpected gift of time.

I find comfort in the poetry of Whitman:

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can wait.

Why is This Working?

This is not the first time that I have taught students how to blog.

For many years, I had my tenth-grade students create blogs for their project-based research projects. We connected with writers and with experts on their topics.  Some students spent hours exploring other blogs, using them as mentors for their own writing, making sure their posts were loaded with images and links to entice readers.  But inevitably, this would be the exception and not the rule. Most of their blogs read like mini-essays, each post written in a typical five-paragraph format.

This semester, something has changed.  But I'm not quite sure how or why.

My seniors have started blogging to reflect on their reading of a "banned book." They selected a book of their choice from the American Library Association's list of challenged books. We will spend the month of March digging into issues of censorship and reader's rights. My students are reading everything from Huckleberry Finn to Looking for Alaska, and although they have only just started their blogging adventures, I'm noticing a difference in the depth and the quality of their reflections.

Take for example this morning.  Cheyenne is reading American Psycho.  She came up to my desk and asked, "I want to include lines from my book in my post, but I'm not really sure how.  The writing is much more dense and dark than I expected."  We got to have a conversation about what she thinks might most benefit her readers, and think through the best approach for including lines.  Should she type up a paragraph from the text, blocking out particular words so as not to offend some readers? Or, should she take a picture of a page in the book and simply post it along with her annotations written on the page?

Madeline just asked, "How should I cite this?"  We've been talking about ensuring that we give credit to the original writers and artists.  Students are including specific passages, evidence, images, and links to other news articles and writers.

So why is this blogging experience working out so much better than earlier years? I need to spend more time reflecting on this question, but my initial thought is that this time around I spent much less time instructing students how to set-up our blogs and much more time pointing out what good bloggers do.  We looked at more examples than I had in year's past, and I started the first week by having my students comment on one another's first posts.  In doing so, not only did they receive feedback on their writing, but they also had an opportunity to explore how their peers had designed their online spaces.

In short, I spent less time on instructions and more time on having students get hands-on with writing.

And here's how their looking so far.  We would love your feedback on their blogs!  Simply hover over the images below to access links to my students' blogs.

Whatcha Reading?

It's quiet.  Occasionally I hear the plastic crinkle of a plastic-encased library book as a student flips the page.  Brad is engrossed in Looking for Alaska. Alex, sitting next to him, is just starting to dig into The Handmaid's Tale.  Alyssa picked up The Perks of Being a Wallflower just yesterday, and it already looks as if she is halfway through the book. I can tell from the expression on her face that she is deep into this story, empathizing with Charlie. My Independent Novel Studies students have just started our study of banned and challenged books, and our room is silent.  If I break in now with some instructions, I know that I will get pushback. "This is a reading day, Ward." Let's read!

And this is why I love March.

March brings with it our March Book Madness bracket, with students voting each day for their favorite books, pitting classics against contemporary YA novels, until one book reigns victorious just before our spring break begins at the close of March. For students that vote, we are giving away signed copies of books each school day in March. The number of students that voted yesterday compared to today has already doubled, and it's only lunchtime.  The school is buzzing with talk of books.  Who will win today? To Kill A Mockingbird or Where the Red Fern Grows?

Teachers have hung signs outside their doors declaring their current reading choices.  Students, high school students, are excited to share today their favorite titles for Read Across America Day.  "My mom would always read that story about the nutbrown hair to me right before bed. What was the title again, Ms. Ward?" Guess How Much I Love You. "Yeah, I loved it. I memorized the words before I could read it."

My students are readers.  In part this is because our district has placed an emphasis on independent reading and choice, from kindergarten all the way through senior year.  My students, whether AP-bound honors sophomores or struggling junior students, know that reading is a priority.  They have grown up with books always at the ready. They have their regular reading days each week, when they are encouraged to dig in to a novel of their choice. And don't you dare try to take that time away from them.  It is quiet now, not because they are bored or sleeping.  It is quiet because we are all immersed in the pages of a good book.

This is how you build a culture of reading. This is why I love March. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to my book.

Let the Blogging Begin

The only sound in my room at the moment is the crisp clicky-clack of 224 fingertips typing.  And then Cheyenne can't contain herself any longer. She turns and whispers excitedly to Madison, "I can't tell if this is supposed to be dark funny, or if I'm misunderstanding this. So, there's this guy..." And she goes on to explain in a whisper that grows into a conversation why it is that she has gotten sucked into her book. Her banned book.

Image by Emily Podsiadlik

My Independent Novel Studies students, mainly seniors, just started our unit on banned and challenged books.  We've explored the ALA website of banned books and discussed their Bill of Rights.  We've combed the library shelves for challenged books that pique our interest. This morning, my students are blogging, many for the first time, on their reading of a self-selected "banned" book.  Cheyenne is hoping to get some feedback on her reading of American Psycho.  Emily calls me over. "Ms. Ward, you gotta read my last paragraph. I created a hashtag!" #blogon.  She's also posted a picture she snapped of her and a friend engaged in a staged conversation over a book.  They are loving this.  I am loving this.  The excitement is palatable.

So let the blogging begin!

One Word for 2018: Listen

For the past couple of years, I have taken time at the beginning of the new year to reflect on the past and set some goals for the coming year. It's time to come up with my #oneword for 2018. I'm not one for resolutions.  They sound so...well, resolute. So final.

Instead, I focus on finding a touchstone word, a word that serves as an inspiration and call to action for what I want to accomplish and who I hope to be in the coming year.  Last year, my word - resonate - kept me focused.  My word - resonate - helped me connect with the texts, the ideas, the people, the actions that resonated with my beliefs, values, and priorities. If it didn't resonate, it was time to let them go.  This was not always easy.  It meant letting go of some negative thinking about myself, about my physical appearance, letting go of projects and idea that I had been working on for years.  And while that sounds easy to do, when you've latched onto an idea or thought for so long, it is difficult first to recognize it as a habit, and second to release it.

This coming year, I hope to build on what I have learned from my focus on what resonates. To do this, I have to get better at listening.  This includes listening to myself, listening to my loved ones, and listening to the voices of others.  Listening does not mean that I need to agree or accept.  Instead, listening is the act of acknowledging.  And while I hear my voice, the voices of my loved ones, and those of others, I am not always so good at honoring and acknowledging those voices.  I hear up until the point that I have thought about how to respond.  This is not listening. This is waiting for my turn to talk. Listening, really listening, is an act of compassion and empathy.  This is what I hope to cultivate in 2018.

Evolving Space

My classroom space is in a constant state of revision.  I make changes to my space, my layout and design, based on the learners sitting in my room.

When I first started teaching, my student desks were grouped as pods, my teacher's desk angled to face the door at the front of the room.  And this worked. Until it didn't.

A number of years ago, I had a tenth grade student suffering from debilitating migraines.  Her doctor and later her neurologist struggled to make sense of the severity of her migraines.  But what my student knew was that overhead florescent lights seemed to trigger the onset of her blinding headaches.  She struggled to make it to class. School is filled with blinding bright white lights.  I wanted to find a way for our classroom space to be a safe haven. And me, not that far out of college at the time, had a plethora of cheap floor lamps cluttering my one bedroom apartment. So rather than clicking on those big industrial lights, I lugged those lamps into my classroom and purchased inexpensive table lamps from my local thrift store. I hung white string lights around my bulletin boards and dangled them from the ceiling.  And not only did the change in lighting seem to help my student suffering from migraines, but other students seemed to appreciate the less institutional feeling of our classroom space.  Murmurs of adding a reading nook with a rug and couch - "you know, like the ones we had in elementary school" - started to come up in conversation.  And so my classroom evolution began.

Over the years, I have added new pieces to my classroom space - a bench here, some pillows, a stool, a couch there - to accommodate the needs of my learners. My classroom now features a variety of different spaces.  There is a reading nook with a couple of couches, pillows, a rug, and chair situated next to my bookshelves for a comfortable place to read.  There are two desks facing one another near my back window, a perfect spot for a one-on-one conference.  My teacher's desk, a hacked Ikea bookcase on casters, is at the back of the room without a chair.  It is a counter to hold my computer and teaching materials and to host informal conversations, but I don't spend much time there, so there is no need for a chair.  I have a combination of tables and chairs, traditional desks, comfortable benches, and pillows around the room which my students move between throughout our class period depending upon what task we are focused on.  My classroom set-up has evolved over the last few years.  In changing from traditional rows of desks which I started with,  I honor the needs and stories of the students in my learning community, but my classroom also reflects my evolution in thinking about teaching.  My teaching is less about me being at the front of the room and more focused on space for my students to collaborate. My room reflects that change.

The classroom environment is sometimes referred to as the "third teacher," influencing the ways in which students engage in the learning that happens in our spaces. The environment reflects the priorities of that class.  I need my classroom to support active learners.  Chickering and Erhmann write about the need for students to get hands-on with their learning. A learning space should reflect that idea. "Learning is not a spectator sport. Students do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers, memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers.  They must talk about what they are learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to their daily lives. They must make what they learn part of themselves."

A couple of years ago, I had an opportunity to put this idea into practice when I redesigned my learning space to reflect some of the brain research coming out. Students need flexible learning spaces to encourage active learning.  Educators Erin Klein, AJ Juliani, Ben Gilpin, and Robert Dillion hosted a classroom redesign contest on their site Classroom Cribs, selecting my classroom as one of the grand finalists. “Redesigning spaces to maximize learning is primarily a shift in culture and mindset,” they write in their book Redesigning Learning Spaces. It was at this time that I moved my teacher's desk and podium away from the front of the room, and spent more time creating spaces where students could collaborate and share.

These days, my room is loud.  And I need it to be.  I see my students for only 55 minutes each day.  I need my students to use this time to collaborate, to connect, and to create.  Teaching in a rural district means that many of my students don't have the means or time to travel after school to meet with a classmate to work on a project. Some of my students drive as much as 30 minutes to get to school each morning. Many of my students work after school jobs. Some work more than one. The classroom is the place where my students have time to connect.  I view my classroom as a workshop. This is my students time and space to "make what they learn part of themselves."

And that can look very different for each student.  George needs to move.  He's one of the EI students in my classroom. He knows that he sometimes needs to remove himself from a conversation. Sometimes he needs to move into a conversation.  He needs a chair he can pick up and move.  Michael doesn't.  Michael needs a corner, maybe a pillow to lean on, so that he can put on his noise-cancelling earbuds and write his blog post.  Hannah and Abby need chairs right next to each other, not across from one another, so that they can share a computer screen while they craft an email together to gather information for their research. I need a flexible space to reflect all the various ways in which my students learn.

connectED

I had an opportunity to participate in a panel discussion about the impact of social media in education this morning on the campus of the University of Michigan at Flint. Students in their graduate program for Educational Leadership met this morning to discuss how social media has changed professional development for educators.  And, Saturday mornings are the perfect morning to discuss this!  I got to mention how awesome #satchat has been for growing my PLN and exposing me to new and innovative ideas in education.

I also was excited to share how I use social media to amplify my students' voices and connect them to other thinkers around the world. Our world has been flattened by technology.

But this is old news.

Instead, I was surprised to hear about the level of push-back that these future administrators faced. Many of the educators in the room spoke about their districts having strict policies against connecting with parents online.  Connecting with students online was out of the question, as the districts they currently worked in had clear board policies against using social media in the classroom even at the secondary level.

Perhaps it is because I have immersed myself in technology and love sharing how social media has connected my learners with authors, experts, real readers, and classrooms around the globe that I forget that there still exists fear about how young people are using connective technologies.  I am not naive. I know that students need to be taught digital responsibility and that irresponsible behavior online can have dire real-life consequences, but locking the box on social media is not doing anyone any good.  How can we teach digital responsibility if we do not allow our educators and students to access it?

I hope that I was able to share today ways in which social media has helped make the walls of our classroom more transparent. I loved sharing some of what I have learned from Joe Sanfelippo (he's actually in town on Monday for MACUL's Mindshare!) and Tony Sinanis's work: "As lead learners, administrators, and educators, it is our responsibility to transform the thick brick barriers surrounding our school buildings into clear, transparent walls of glass." Social media helps teachers and administrators connect with our most important stakeholders.  It also helps us clearly articulate our story. The story of our schools.

Speed Dating to Find Your {Book} Match

I've got books on the brain.

During the second week of class, when not everyone in our tenth grade English class knows each other well, I surprise students with speed dating. Speed dating books, that is.  The students walk into our classroom to find the desks grouped into tables, covered with tablecloths, and decorated with centerpieces featuring flowers, candles (LED candles), "menus," and a large stack of books. This is our speed-dating day to find our {book} match. Not only do students get to know one another better through this activity, but they also learn more about specific genres found in our classroom library and select their first independent reading texts. At the close of the semester, this activity was rated by students as one of their favorites, so I thought I would share how I set up this activity with my high school students in case others want to give it a try with their students this fall.

One of the first questions that I've got from other teachers about this activity has to do with the books themselves. How did I select my genres? Where did I get all my books?  So let's start with the most important aspect of this whole activity - the books. Looking at my classroom library and what my students have been gravitating toward the past few years, I established "menus" for each table featuring a different genre.  I have seven tables around my room, each featuring a different genre - realistic fiction, historical fiction, dystopian novels, poetry, graphic novels, self-help, and creative nonfiction. The "menu" gives a brief description of the genre, which the students will record on their handout in addition to taking their own notes about the genre based on what they notice about the commonalities found in the books at their selected table. But where did I get all these books in the first place?

It can be difficult and extremely expensive to stock your classroom library with high-interest YA novels. New books are expensive.  So, here's where I've picked up many of mine.  First, hit your thrift stores.  During August, the local thrift store near my home used to have $1 bag days.  You pay $1 for a paper bag and stuff it with as much as you could. I would show up the first day of the sale and pick through all their books. During the summer months, it is easy to pick up inexpensive books at thrift stores, yard sales, and block sales. This was how my library got its start.

Later, one of my former students became the teen librarian at our township library. And Shelly hooked me up!  Librarians go through their collections two or more times a year, and if a book hasn't been checked out for an extensive period of time, that book needs to go in order to make room for new titles.  Shelly, my local hook-up, would call me up any time she had collected five or more boxes of books.  She'd let me pull any titles I wanted and the rest the library would sell.  Your local librarian is not only a fantastic resource for helping you learn about emerging authors and new titles, your librarian might also be able to help you stock your library! Invite them into your classroom to give a book talk to your students. Get to know your local librarians!

My most recent discovery is FirstBooks. If you are a teacher or librarian in a high poverty district as I am, you likely qualify for deep discounts on books through FirstBooks. It will take you between 10-15 minutes to complete your application, and if you qualify, you can order individual titles or titles in bulk. My first order is arriving this week. I ordered 13 books - everything from The Book Thief to I'll Give You the Sun, Lily and Duncan to An Ember in the Ashes - for just under $60.  And through their bulk book program, you can get a bulk order of one title for FREE!  You just pay for shipping.   Right now you can get a carton of 24 copies or The Maze Runner for $8.40!  

So, now that you've got all sorts of books and genres in your classroom library, what else are you going to need to set-up your Speed Dating Books activity?  I purchased a few rotating picture frames from Ikea to use on each table as the "menu" holder to display the genre found at that table.  If you are near an Ikea, the Tolsby picture frames comes in packs of 2 for just $.99. Then, I created a "menu" (I print out two so that I can display them on each side of the frame) for each genre using Canva.  Here are my menu cards.

Then, to add ambiance, I picked up a pack plastic table clothes, some small LED candles, pulled a few candle holders from around my house, used a JoAnn Fabrics coupon (and my teacher discount) to get a bunch of fake flowers, some Hershey Kisses sprinkled on each table (get it? Kisses? Dating?) and viola! You have a restaurant-style setting for your classroom, perfect for your speed daters!

The room is set up, your books are carefully displayed, now what?  As students walked into my room, I handed them a Speed Dating Scorecard. I let my students self select the tables they moved to first, but you could easily copy the scorecard sheet on different colors of paper to establish groups. If you need six groups, copy the scorecard onto six different colors of paper. Students find those with the same colored sheets to become a group.  I let my students self-select their first table, and then they moved as a group to the next table.

On my projection screen, I show a classroom timer.  Students have about five minutes to record notes about the genre at their table by looking at the "menu" cards and by perusing through the books and talking with their group members.  In that time, they need to select one book on the table to "date."  Then, I start the timer.  Students have five minutes to flip through and read some sections of the book to figure out if they would like to "date" it further.  At the close of five minutes when the timer goes off, students complete the ranking section and notes for their "date."

By the close of class, students will have delved into five genres and "dated" five books. In the following class days, I go over our independent book reading, how we log our pages, and how we will be completing book talks, all inspired by Penny Kittle's book Book Love. We return to our Speed Dating handout throughout the semester when we are looking for our next book to read.

If you do a similar activity with your students, I would love to learn from you! What works for you? How do you inspire independent reading in your classroom?

Amplifying Student Voices

For a few weeks now, Karter has been getting up earlier and earlier.  He'll wake at 3 AM and drive 40 minutes to the farm. He's helping to transition the dairy cows to a different milking time.  Every few days, they're moving the milking time back just a little more in order to transport the cows later in the month to a new farm. Dairy cows are very particular about when they are milked, and so a delicate, well-timed transition in milking times makes this move possible. Once the cows are moved, Karter's job on the farm will be over, and he'll have to look for a new job. He comes to journalism class after working a full morning on the farm.

Allen has been living on his own for the past two years.  He's an emancipated minor. In Public Speaking class last week, he gave a moving speech about what it is like living on your own at seventeen. Contrary to how much his peers complain about their parents, he described the alternative as a lonely, sometimes dark place.

Sara has a one year old daughter who's blood recently tested high for lead contamination. They can't figure out where her daughter would have been exposed to lead. She's just received her third doctor's opinion and has missed 29 days of our journalism class.

I cannot count the number of students that I have sitting in my classroom who at one point in time have been in "the system" with Child Protective Services.  "After you've been in 'the system'," Bethany says, "CPS follows you. They track you until you are 18, sometimes showing up at school to ask the same questions they did 10 years ago."

I have students working two or more jobs in order to help with their family's expenses.  I have homeless students, orphaned students, sick students, students teetering on so many different precipices. I work in a Title 1 school with over 50 percent of my students receiving free and reduced lunch.

I work in a rural school.

In some ways, the students that I work with are no different than those that I worked with earlier in my career in a more affluent area outside of Philadelphia. Students want to be heard, valued, and understood. They all are struggling to understand their roles, identities, and purpose. Rural or urban, suburban or somewhere in between, adolescents everywhere want to know that their voice matters.

It is the particulars of their experiences that have power. But my students are so in the thick of their own stories that it is hard to see outside of them.  They don't see themselves as unique, as having stories to tell. My students can tell you in great detail how to field dress a deer, how to restore a '57 Chevy truck, the best places to find refurbished auto parts, how to clip a goat's hooves, the best rivers to kayak, how to catch air snowboarding. But this is just what they do. "These are not stories," they tell me.

Until we start to unpack these experiences.  Why did you chose to restore that old Chevy? Isaac tells us that it was sitting in the yard after his grandfather passed away.  Together Isaac and his dad worked to bring it back to its former glory. Isaac tells us stories about what it is like to work side-by-side with his dad.  He has these memories that tie him with the men in his family. His grandfather, his dad, and now Isaac have all worked on this machine; their histories are tied to this truck. It is by far, the most memorable vehicle in our student parking lot, shiny robin's egg blue with wooden rails lining the back bed. "It's road ready, but I wouldn't say it's road safe. Kinda like my grandfather," Isaac says.  There's another story there just waiting to be shared, and you can hear it in his voice.

Opening up space for stories in our classrooms is powerful not only for the authors but for the community of learners in our classes.  Stories are powerful when they are shared. I have watched stories transform my classroom community, whether we are telling fictional stories or sharing our personal truths.  Yet by the time I see them in my high school English classroom, so many of my students do not see the value of their stories. "I have nothing," is a chorus I often hear at the beginning of the semester after introducing the first writing prompt.  My student writers shut down for so many different reasons. They have been told or shown that their stories do not matter, that their experiences are not valued. They do not readily trust my voice coaxing them to share.  They do not see their words as having any power.

Until they do.

It takes a few weeks, sometimes longer, until the stories start of pour out. And then they flood our classroom. They change our classroom. They connect us. About a year ago, I started to look for resources outside of my school that might help to amplify my students' voices. I want my students to not only see the value of their words inside our classroom but how powerful they can be for a much wider audience outside the walls of our school.  We work to publish our words on large platforms like TeenInk and Figment, both fantastic resources for students interested in publication.  However, they are large sites, featuring hundreds of new submissions daily. Stories change over quickly and can easily become lost.  So, we started our own space.

After connecting virtually with an editor at TeenInk in December of 2016, a group of students and I started MIteen Writers, an online and print literary magazine for teen writers in Michigan. We wanted to have a space to showcase the unique stories of writers from this state, to amplify the voices of mitten state teens.

The amazing MIteen Writers editorial board

So, the editorial team sat down and brainstormed what we wanted to publish, how our site should look, and who we hoped would access our online space. Our conversation with the editor at TeenInk helped us think through how we should design our submission guidelines, how many pieces we should post, and how we select pieces for publication. We launched our website in December of 2016 and shared it with the directors of most of National Writing Project sites in Michigan.  Within the first week, we had poetry submissions from Grand Rapids, Cheboygan, Portage, Kingsley, and more.  In fact, we were a bit unprepared for the number and quality of submissions that we received.  As we started to get off the ground, we had to meet regularly and figure out a system for who would review which pieces and how quickly we could respond to submissions. Our biggest challenge was not in getting the site started or getting the word out, it was in answering each of the submissions. To be honest, we are still struggling to keep up with the number of submissions that we've received but this is a great challenge to have.  It speaks to the need for such a space.  Over the past two months, we've received so many fantastic stories, essays, photographs, and of course, poems, which makes up the bulk of our submissions.

We've heard from students in small schools in northern Michigan, schools with graduating classes of under 100 students.  We've heard from students in the suburbs of Grand Rapids and from schools just outside of Detroit.  Students write about their experiences, their particulars, about what connects us as Michigan writers.  This great peninsula has so many stories to tell, stories of heartbreak and of joy, of harsh winters and sandy summers. Our stories matter. We're excited to have created a space to amplify the stories of our unique peninsula.

Having Presence

I'm bummed. The last couple of mornings I have rolled out of bed with a headache and sinus pressure, my second big cold of the winter season.  But this morning marks the first time that I've had to pass on what has become a Saturday morning ritual - community yoga.

Over the last six months or so I've been practicing yoga two, three, sometimes four times a week.  I have my regular teachers at the local YMCA that I love, but I have also enjoyed community yoga, dropping in to take a class with a different studio nearly every Saturday. And here in Grand Rapids, also known as Beer City USA, I have fun attending yoga at different breweries.  Last weekend, 104 of us took to our mats at Perrin Brewery.  And this morning, I was planning to attend one of my monthly favorites, a yoga session at Founders Brewery with one of my favorite studios.  I have the tickets. I was ready to go. But I woke up this morning feeling knocked down by this lingering cold.


I am someone who pushes myself, always looking ahead, planning for the next lesson, next unit, next event.  Yoga has taught me to slow down, to be present for the present, attend to how I am feeling in the moment. So although I am bummed about not attending one of my favorite yoga sessions this morning, I also grateful and aware of just how practicing yoga has changed me.

Six months ago, I would have pushed myself and attended this morning's sweaty session, coughing and sputtering my way through, coming home tired, drained, and likely worse for wear.  Instead, I recognized this morning that I needed to slow down, take an easy morning at home with my family to nurse my cold.  And I am so glad I did.

This morning, my boys decided to dress in their suits for no particular reason.  My eldest grabbed his recent library find and curled into a corner to read.  My youngest announced proudly that he was dressing up in order to play a special session of Dungeons and Dragons with their dad. My eldest quickly agreed that this was the best idea his younger brother had ever had. The game is still going on. My boys are sprawled on the living room floor in front of the fireplace rolling die and talking about cobalts and hobgobblins. I love listening in on their conversations. They are building a world together, crafting stories.  My youngest is drawing a map. My eldest is contemplating strategies.  And I am grateful for this moment, for being present.

So often I find that I am rushing.  Rushing to get to work, to pick up my children from school, to get to practice, or the store, or the bank, or the... But this rushing around creates so much tension, so much stress both for me and for those around me, my family and my students.  I have learned through yoga to slow down, breath, and let the present be a present, a gift. Rushing around, being busy all the time, does so much more harm than good. Being present, having the presence of mind to slow down and be grateful for the moment I am in, takes practice.

I am reminded of a powerful video that John Spencer animated about a year ago asking teachers, really asking all of us, to stop wearing busy like a badge of honor.

This morning I am grateful to have the presence of mind to be present.