Evolving English Teacher

Kindling Classroom Conversations with Primary Documents from the Folger Shakespeare Library

2012-01-24T17:57:00.000-07:00

Teaching William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew presents some challenges for feminist teachers such as myself. With the help of the Folger Shakespeare Library's online primary documents, the job gets much easier.

The Good and the Badde or Descriptions of the Worthies and Unworthies of the Age (1616) addresses stereotypes of women in the 17th century. On the Folger website, teachers will find a lesson plan with scans from several of the book's pages, including descriptions of "Virgins," "An Unwanton Woman," "A Quiet Woman," "An Unquiet Woman," and "A Good Wife."

I chose to introduce students to The Taming of the Shrew by first having them read these passages. They handled the archaic spellings beautifully and generated a dynamic discussion with little prompting from me in one class and no prompting in the other. My students eagerly offered their assessment of the 1616 stereotypes of women's roles:

"It's like women are property of men," offered one young man.
"Reminds me of my mom, except for the patience. She's not patient," said a young girl.

These comments, and others, lead to additional opinions by others, as well. My students have strong opinions about whether or not a woman's role in relation to her husband.

We followed up the discussion about stereotypes with a line-tossing activity, two-person skits, and an interactive summary, all designed to engage students with Shakespeare's language and introduce students to the play.

If today offers an indication of how the unit will unfold, my students will have plenty to laugh about and talk about as we discover The Taming of the Shrew and seventeenth century notions about gender roles.

As teachers prepare to implement CCSS into the English language arts curriculum, primary documents from the Folger Shakespeare Library offer fantastic informational documents for igniting classroom conversations and for meeting critical reading standards in the twenty-first century.

Dear Administrator: Please Don't Ask Me...

2012-01-22T14:37:00.000-07:00

If I could write a letter to administrators about why I'm still a teacher after 31 years in the classroom, here's what I would say:

Dear Administrator:

With all due respect, and I do have great respect for you and appreciate the hard work you do very much, please don't ask me why I don't have a Ph.D. and why I don't pursue a professorship in a university.

I know you mean this question/suggestion as a compliment and want to encourage me to self-actualize. But I'm a high school teacher and have never desired to become an administrator or a professor. I believe high school students deserve the smartest, most learned, most inquisitive teachers and would like to see some of the fabulous college professors I've had use their talents to teach high school students.

Thank you for noticing and acknowledging my efforts to continue learning. However, I assure you that I'm not nearly as smart as you give me credit for being. I know my limitations and can name many teachers from around the country who make me look like the village idiot in terms of intellect and accomplishments. Just a few I've had the pleasure of meeting include Jim Burke, Kelly Gallagher, Tim Gillespie, Penny Kittle, Meenoo Rami, Gary Anderson, Donnalyn Miller, to name a few.

Some others I know only online but have come to respect and admire: Michael Umphrey, Mardi, Mark Smith, and many others. Others I've had the good fortune to work closely with via my ties with the Folger Shakespeare Library and via the Ning my students share with a school in California: Julie Bowerman, Ami Szerence, Dana M. Huff, Mark Miazga, Scott O'Neal, Joe Scotese, and a whole host of other teachers whom I don't have space to name.

I've also had the good fortune to work side-by-side with excellent teachers who challenge me to be better than I ever thought I could be, including Shirley Saraf, a former colleague who encouraged me to pursue National Board Certification.

The news media and corporate education reformers tell us that American schools should be more like those in Finland. Yet Finland actively recruits the top students from their universities to be teachers. Conversely, in the United States, we often tell those teachers who push themselves academically, whom we see as "too smart to be teachers" to go do something else. This paradigm seems counter to the rhetoric, I think.

To my profession's credit, we have many teachers who ignore the "you're too smart to be a teacher" good intentions and remain in the classroom anyway. That's where I plan to stay until my retirement.

I'll need you to support and encourage me in my work. I'll need you to continue diminishing the importance of the scary laws that punish hard-working teachers. I'll need you to help me see how to improve my practice rather than telling me you "have nothing" to offer me in terms of planning and lesson execution. I need you to value my expertise and experience and work to encourage other teachers to continue learning and achieving in their academic areas.

As an undergrad I spent a summer working in a church in West Palm Beach, Florida. One Sunday the minister proclaimed from the pulpit: "You can't lead where you haven't been." That admonishment has stuck with me and has guided my teaching. I believe it's the kind of leadership students need in the classroom and beyond.

So please don't ask me why I'm still a teacher thirty-one years in; I've heard this question too often. Instead, ask why we aren't doing more in our state and nation to encourage the best among us to be teachers, and not just for a brief two-year stint as TFA requires.

Ask me to help make that happen; then it'll be time for me to step aside and make room for the next generation of teachers, whom I hope will be far more accomplished than my limited successes have made me.

I'm a teacher because I want to make a difference in the lives of students, just the way those teacher who challenged and pushed me most have done for me. I still have a few years left to do that.

Respectfully,

Glenda Funk, NBCT: AYA/ELA; MA English; Folger TSI Alum

What would your letter to administrators say?

Below: "What Teachers Make" by Taylor Mali

Educators: NCLB's Whipping Posts: Thoughts on "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" by Diane Ravitch, Part 2

2012-01-02T11:06:00.004-07:00

"It takes a beating and keeps on ticking." The tag for the old Timex commercial seems particularly relevant to the teaching profession. For ten years, one decade, educators have been submerged in the draconian No Child Left Behind mandates, yet we keep on keeping on despite the corporate reform movement's efforts to deprofessionalize our profession.

Diane Ravitch offers a copious account of the attacks on educators in The Death and Life of the Great American School System.

My first encounter with a charter school occurred in the 1980's. Ronald Reagan elementary opened in Yuma, Arizona and immediately siphoned students from around town into it's state-of-the-art, brand new facility. Admittedly, I sensed something out of kilter and undemocratic about a public school not required to follow the mandates of its sister institutions in the same district. Although a young teacher at the time, I had familiarized myself with the inequities of Arizona education.

The charter school movement began when Al Shanker, president to the American Federation of Teachers, proposed in 1988 that groups of teachers organize to create curriculum-rich, innovative schools within their districts to teach "disaffected students" (Ravitch, Location 2272). Shanker's idea grew from A Nation at Risk and envisioned organic education reform in which teachers created models of effective instruction within their own buildings.

Corporations, entrepreneurs, and others hijacked Shanker's idea, pushing teacher-leaders aside and embracing a privatization model of education reform. Back in the '80s a colleague told me that charter schools would lead to the destruction of public education and to the complete privatization of schools. How fortuitous her words were at the time.

Shanker "withdrew his endorsement of charter schools in 1993 and became a vociferous critic" (Location 2296). In no small way, the charter school movement has ballooned the education industry, increasing corporate profits at the expense of student learning and inviting lay people, including members of the billionaire boys' club and their corporate, pseudo-philanthropic foundations, to profiteer at the expense of the most innocent among us: children.

For Americans, choice is sacrosanct, and charters offered choice and a promise to transform American schools. One of the saddest outcomes of the charter movement is the closing of most Catholic schools, 1300 from 1990-2088, says Ravitch. Moreover, "vouchers, charters, and choice were rapidly eroding the public education system" (Location 2444). Especially in urban areas.

Those who espouse the virtues of charters might consider their history in Milwaulkee, which includes religious schools, and has produced "no evidence of dramatic improvement for the neediest students or the public schools they left behind" (Location 2257).

Virtual charter schools erode and de-professionalze teaching by diminishing the face-to-face relationship and personalization of the teacher-student relationship. Private companies often run virtual schools for profit, so the fewer teachers and the more students in a virtual charter, the greater corporate profits. It's a multi-million dollar industry. Ravitch cites Pennsylvania as a state where virtual charter schools have collected funding for special education instruction without having to use all the money for that purpose (Location 2485).

KIPP Academy schools, arguably, increase student learning. Ravitch describes them as resembling public education from the 1940s, a time when schools adhered to strict disciplinary codes for students and no contracts or working condition codes for teachers.

However, the KIPP model undermines the professional status of teachers and their hard-earned contracts. Moreover, KIPP's "high levels of student attrition and teacher turnover raise questions about the applicability of the KIPP model to the regular public schools" (Location 2526).

Over time, charters, originally designed to support public education, have instead undermined neighborhood schools. "Charters were supposed to be research and development laboratories for discovering better ways of educating hard-to-educate children. They were not intended to siphon away the most motivated students and families in the poorest communities but to address some of the public schools' most urgent problems" (Location 2705).

Thus, if the litmus test for a charter school's success were based on Al Shanker's original vision, in their totality, charge schools represent a monumental failure in ed reform, particularly when we consider their detrimental impact on urban schools and neighborhoods.

NCLB claims to make educators accountable for student learning, as though acquiring knowledge and skills, the components of education, happens on a one-way cognitive street. No education reform, law, or fad has done more to construct a bold-faced lie corporate reformers and politicians peddle to the public. Simply, the lie states that only educators determine student learning and success. NCLB states nothing about the role of parents in raising children in a literacy-rich home. NCLB states nothing about parents' and students' responsibility to attend school and to prioritize academic pursuits over leisure activities. NCLB states nothing about parental role models and age-appropriate behaviors, such as homework routines, self-discipline, respect for one's health and for others.

A public that sees education as the sole responsibility of teachers opines that getting rid of bad teachers will increase student learning. To that end, 2011 might very well be labeled the anti-union year. Attacking those "lazy, over-paid" teachers and their unions (AFT and NEA) occupied the minds of governors from Wisconsin to Idaho last spring. Yet the best performing students live in the highest unionized state: Massachusetts while the lowest performing students live in non-union or weak-union states such as Mississippi. When teachers must worry about their job security and working conditions and income, they spend less time concerning themselves with student performance. It's human nature. It's basic Malow hierarchy of needs.

"No one...has demonstrated a clear, indisputable correlation between teacher unionism and academic achievement, either negative or positive" (Location 3179-81).

Ravitch names many of the dubious reasons for teachers' dismissal: religion, race, sexual orientation, political affiliation, group membership, etc. Some have lost their jobs "for not paying a bribe to someone for their job, for speaking out on an issue outside the classroom, for disagreeing with the principal, or simply to make room for a school board member's sister, nephew, or brother-in-law" (Location 3204).

Now the assault on teaches embraces value-added assessments, a practice by which teachers are evaluated based on standardized test scores. "Value-added assessment is the product of technology; it is also the product of a managerial mind-set that believes that every variable in a child's education can be identified, captured, measured, and evaluated with precision" (Location 3269).

Value-added evaluations ignore curriculum, students' lives and experiences, etc. Only data matters in a value-added education world. Value-added models tell the public that teacher salaries, certification levels, advanced degrees, pedagogical knowledge, and experience don't impact student learning. Value-added models further erode the professional status of teachers.

Yet Ravitch cites research showing that teacher quality shifts from year-to-year, that teaching excellence isn't static or unchanging (Location 3379). Most teachers will testify to having good and bad years, to the shifting nature of their effectiveness, which often depends on the student behaviors and learning readiness of their students.

Research from economists Brian A Jacob, Lars Lefgren, and David Sims suggests that "teacher value-added measures may overstate the ability of teachers, even exceptional ones, to influence the ultimate level of student knowledge since they conflate variation in short-term and long-term knowledge. Given that a school's objective is to increase the latter, the importance of teacher value-added measures as currently estimated may be substantially less than the teacher value-added literature indicates" (Location 3388).

The truth about value-added models didn't stop the Los Angeles Times from ranking elementary teachers from the LAUSD last spring based on value-added assessments. Other newspapers have followed the LAT's lead, and we are on a course of increasing use of value-added evaluation models.

Teaching is both art and craft. Teachers must know their subjects and know how to teach them. This is a core standard of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Yet Teach for America dupes the public and potential teachers into thinking five weeks of pedagogical training adequately trains them to teach. Drawing academically gifted young people into education should be a national goal, but to do it by treating teaching as a temporary job and TFA recruits as Peace Corp workers or temps is nothing short of disgraceful.

I've long believed and written that teachers in secondary schools should have subject-area degrees and should be required to take graduate-level classes for recertification. However, without pedagogical knowledge, all the subject knowledge is rendered impotent.

Michelle Rhee, a former TFA teacher and former chancellor of the Washington D. C. schools, has been instrumental in constructing a narrative that de-professionalizes teaching by suggesting that TFA teachers and other teachers with little experience and pedagogical knowledge are as effective as their counterparts.

Yet Linda Darling-Hammond studied 4,400 teachers and 132,000 Houston students "and concluded that certified teachers consistently produced significantly higher achievement than uncertified teachers, and that uncertified TFA teachers had a negative or nonsignificant effect on student achievement" (Location 3444). An additional study in North Carolina confirms Darling-Hammond's findings, finding "that traditionally prepared secondary teachers were more successful than beginning teachers, including TFA corps members, who lacked teacher training" (Location 3452).

As Ravitch notes: "most studies find that new teachers are less effective than experienced teachers and that the first two years of teaching are the least successful" (Location 3452). A TFA contract lasts two years, at which time most leave the profession, pad their CV's with their philanthropic teaching experience, and pursue more lucrative professions for which they earned their degrees.

TFA teachers who remain in the profession develop the pedagogical skills that elevate them to the levels of master teachers. We need a national effort to recruit and retain the smartest summa cum laude and magna cum laude graduates from the best private and public universities to teaching, and I'm in complete support of intensive, long-term, government-funded programs to train these intellectual graduates who commit to careers in education. My philosophy has long been that students deserve the smartest, hardest-working, most academic adults teaching them in both elementary and secondary schools. Ravitch calls on teacher education programs to "ensure that their graduates have a strong foundation in the liberal arts and sciences and are deeply grounded in the subjects they plan to teach" Location 3473).

When the public listens to lay people like Bill and Melinda Gates who claim that experience and education don't matter and that a first or second year teacher is just as effective as a career educator with an advanced degree, we should examine their motives, motives I believe are corrupted at worst and ill-advised and naive at best.

Despite the public, political, and philanthropic flogging the teaching profession has endured in the decade of NCLB, I'm hopeful that this too shall pass and that like the enduring Timex watch, our profession will survive the onslaught. In Part 3, more about the Faustian deal education has made with corporate philanthropists and the ways money with strings attached chokes democratic dialogue about education.

NCLB: The Worst Education Legislation Ever Passed: Thoughts on "The Death and Life of the Great American School System" by Diane Ravitch, Part 1

2012-01-01T19:03:00.001-07:00

When I was a student at Mark Twain Elementary School in Webb City, Missouri, our principal roamed the halls with a paddle stuck up his suit sleeve. When he spied a wayward child, perhaps someone talking in the lunch line or out of line, the principal grabbed the unruly student's arm and whipped out the paddle, and in one continuous action applied that specific board of education to the student's backside.

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, public education has been whipped and beaten down with the long arm of the education law much as students in my elementary school felt the stick of a wooden paddle during the 1960's.

Sometimes I get whiplash from the plethora of education fads, programs, and reforms I've observed and experienced during my career. There aren't many teachers who entered the profession prior to 1983, the year the groundbreaking report A Nation at Risk ushered in the standards movement. I started teaching in 1981.

Reading Diane Ravitch's insightful, clear history of education reform The Death and Life of the Great American School System offered catharsis and validation for the positions I've articulated about No Child Left Behind and the data-driven, test-prep trajectory of education in the past ten years.

Ravitch reminds readers that the "federal government is prohibited by law from imposing any curriculum on states or school districts" (Location 300). Yet states (read: the public) has tolerated the federal incursion into states' rights via NCLB. Ravitch writes that NCLB is the worst piece of education legislation ever passed, a point on which I agree. In time we might realize that NCLB's most harmful effect emanates from its diminishment of federalism.

Like many teachers, the election of Barack Obama gave me hope for the death of NCLB. Sadly, from President Obama students and teachers got Arne Duncan instead of Linda Darling-Hamond. Duncan gave us the ill-conceived and immensely harmful Race to the Top, suggesting that there should be winners and losers in the education lottery. Obama's and Duncan's education philosophies march lock-step with the corporate reform movement that Ravitch describes:

"The new corporate reformers betray their weak comprehension of education by drawing false analogies between education and business. They think they can fix education by applying the principles of business, organization, management, law, and marketing and by developing a good data-collection system that provides the information necessary to incentivize the workforce--principals, teachers, and students--with appropriate rewards and sanctions" (Location 371).

The corporate mentality grounds itself in competition with winners and losers. Ironically, corporate reformers frequently reference Finland's education system as a model. They fail to recognize that the Finnish system is based on equity for all students. The corporate model seeks to destroy neighborhoods by closing "failing" schools. Schools ground communities, serve as meeting places for neighborhoods, and promote democracy among citizens, a theme Ravitch repeats throughout the book. Thus, closing schools translates into diminishing our democracy.

The standards movement that began with A Nation at Risk morphed into the accountability movement with the passage of NCLB: "What once was the standards movement was replaced by the accountability movement. What once was an effort to improve the quality of education turned into an accounting strategy: Measure, then punish or reward" (Location 437).

Standards offer educators an opportunity to develop a curriculum-rich program of learning, unlike test-based accountability that has evolved into a numbers game states and schools play at the detriment to student learning. "NCLB was all sicks and no carrots. Test-based accountability--not standards--became our national education policy. There was no underlying vision of what education should be or how one might improve schools" (Location 529).

As Ravitch writes, "No Child Left Behind had no vision other than improving test scores in reading and math. It produced mountains of data, not educated citizens. Its advocates then treated that data as evidence of its 'success.' It ignored the importance of knowledge. It promoted a cramped, mechanistic, profoundly anti-intellectual definition of education. In the age of NCLB, knowledge was irrelevant" (Location 687).

Side Note: Since we're still in the NCLB age, I wish Ravitch had used the present tense rather than the past tense.

Ravitch offers ample evidence of NCLB's harmful impact on the New York City school system that relinquished control of its system to mayoral control and on the San Diego school district that "emphasized 'how teachers should be teaching at the expense of conveying what students should be learning'" (Location 1237). Both districts adopted Balanced Literacy pedagogy that filled students' heads with educational jargon such as "I can make a text-to-text connection!" (Location 1296).

Gaming the NCLB system has become a favorite pastime among states and districts. To increase graduation rates, schools often use what Ravitch characterizes as "a dubious practice called 'credit recovery,' a covert form of social promotion for high school students" (Location 1721). Ravitch offers a description of CR: "Under credit recovery, students who failed a course or never even showed up for it could get credit by turning in an independent project, whose preparation was unmonitored, or by attending a few extra sessions."

Credit Recovery has many incarnations, but regardless of its form, it undermines attendance policies, teachers' efforts to set high academic standards for students, and the value of other students' diplomas. We have CR in my school. I'll comment more on its impact on the learning program in a future post.

Another, more egregious why states game the system occurs from rewriting the state tests. Ravitch names five states that have not engaged in this practice: Missouri, Maine, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Wyoming. She compares student outcomes on various state tests to the NAEP. Rather than test prep, which teachers are encouraged and mandated to do, students need to "expand their vocabulary and improve their reading skills when they learn history, science, and literature, just as they may sharpen their mathematics skills while learning science and geography" (Location 2058).

Test-taking skills developed to pass one test, the NCLB mandated state assessment, mean students know how to take a single test but not necessarily know the subject content. Nor can they pass a comparable test based on the same subject when the format changes. "They master test-taking methods, but not the subject itself. In the new world of accountability, students' acquisition of the skills and knowledge they need for further education and for the workplace is secondary" (Location 2911, 2932).

Not only does the accountability movement with its emphasis on states' high stakes testing diminish student learning, it also creates a false notion among the public about the criteria on which we judge successful and failing schools and teachers.

NCLB is a stick used to beat students, educators, and stakeholders. Ironically, schools no longer tolerate corporal punishment in schools, but the federal government continues to flog public education with the NCLB paddle. More about the beating educators have taken under NCLB in Part 2.

"The Art of Slow Reading" by Thomas Newkirk

2011-12-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

"I am a slow reader. There, it's out." Thus begins Thomas Newkirk's excellent book The Art of Slow Reading: Six Time-Honored Practices for Engagement.

I breathed a deep sigh of relief when I read Newkirk's confession for I, too, am a slow reader, a reality that seems to surprise my students and others. After all, aren't English teachers suppose to be fast readers? Aren't we suppose to devour books at the speed with which others scarf fast food? Isn't our value as a teacher somehow measured by the sheer number of books we read each year?

I've long lamented the snails pace of my reading life, and it just seems to get slower as I get older. I like to savor books; I like going slowly and even going back when I sense I've missed something.

Among the gems in Slow Reading, here are some of my favorites:

Chapter 1: "About Slowness"

"To read slowly is to maintain an intimate relationship with a writer" (2).
"Reading is the making of a deeper self" (3).
"In all good writing, even informational texts, I am in the presence of a teller, a narrator, a guide" (5).

Chapter 2: "The Speed Curriculum"

"The standards movement has...failed in its primary mission--to focus, to direct attention to essentials, to concentrate effort" (30).
Teachers are not powerless against "technological determinism" and its "alterations of cognition" that "challenge traditional practices in reading" (36).
"We an reclaim resourceful modes of reading, born in times of scarcity. We can learn to pay attention, concentrate, devote ourselves to author. We can slow down so we can hear the voice of texts, feel the movement of sentences, experience the pleasure of words--and own passages that speak to us" (41).

Chapter 3: "Reading goes Silent: Performing"

In this chapter Newkirk challenges readers to heed "sound cues." Readers should heed the role punctuation plays in cuing readers. An interesting analysis of silent reading suggests that readers can recapture in silent reading the skills used by ancient, oral readers of "sacred texts."

Newkirk invites teachers to use methods honed in British secondary schools during the 1970's:

Teachers, learn to read orally in ways that convey textual meaning to students. "Provide a model of the way good writing can sound, the rhythms and emphasis" that interprets meaning. This teachers students an "internal performance" techniques (61-62)
Teach excerpts of great literature for oral reading. Students may not be able to handle all of Crime and Punishment, Newkirk's example, but exposure to snippets from classic texts at a young age prepares students for the reading they'll encounter later.

Chapter 4: "Learning by Heart: Memorizing"

Memorizing creates a storehouse of prior knowledge, and "reading is highly dependent upon prior knowledge" (75).
"We need information to be internalized, to be part of our long-term memory, if it is [to] be useful" (75). Availability on the internet and via reference books isn't good enough to give students ownership of information. "My ability to write is totally dependent on the ability to make these memory scans," writes Newkirk (76).
"Memorization is also a pledge of allegiance, an act of loyalty and deep respect, of affiliation" (76).
By memorizing, we are "claiming a heritage" (77).

I am increasingly convinced that the marginalizing of memorization has had a detrimental affect on student writers. Students simply lack the prior knowledge they need to generate ideas for writing.

To promote memorization, Newkirk suggests students: Memorize proverbs. Memorize canonical sentences. Copy out passages. Learn and tell jokes.

Chapter 5: Making a Mark: Centering

Take notice. That's the theme of chapter five and Newkirk's challenge to readers. "Much of what we read, virtually all of it, drifts into the background. We are left with 'what we notice,' with what strikes us as significant, central, memorable..." (94). So how do readers take notice? Newkirk offers some of my favorite ways to focus students, to encourage them to notice what's in a text:

text code
annotate
find key words (diction)

I have already used the following teaching idea from Slow Reading, and attest to their effectiveness at generating discussion:

Pulled Quotes: Think about the ways magazine articles draw readers into a text by hilighting a quote from the article. It's a hook. I used this with the opening letters in Frankenstein.

Chapter 5 may be the book's most important one. In it, Newkirk reminds us to read the opening passages of a text carefully, for in these pages we learn the kind of reader we will be and the roles writers invent for us as readers: "In effect, openings teach us what kind of viewer we will be" (100).

As readers, our challenge is to adopt "an attitude of suspended conclusion" (John Dewey qtd. by Newkirk 105). This makes me wonder whether having students predict endings serves them well. Does predicting ever de-center students' reading?

Chapter 6: "The Pleasures of Difficulty: Problem Finding"

"I am convinced that a crucial measure of intelligence--and by extension, reading skill--is this ability to work through this inital discomfort of situations that don't make sense, when our habitual patterns of understanding don't do the job" (120).

In recent years I've met many students who have "learned helplessness," students who see themselves as unable to work through difficult reading material. I am challenged to find ways of guiding students through the hard stuff in books.

Chapter 7: "A Writer's Choices: Reading Like a Writer"

Newkirk offers some fabulous teaching ideas I'm looking forward to trying: "The Great Type-Out" in which students actually type a few pages of text, mark it up, and discuss the writer's craft in a written response (143). "Wrecking a Text" will hook students by its name alone; it's a modification of fractured classics (150).

Chapter 8: "Opening a Text: Elaborating"

My students had an epiphany when I showed them Montaigne's annotations and asked them to follow Montaigne's lead and annotate a writing circle response in such a way that they, like Montaigne, included more detailed information in their annotations than in their original responses. "Often Montaigne used is additions to add greater emphasis and imagery to the points he is making" (Newkirk 178-179).

Each day teachers ask students to open a book. The Art of Slow Reading challenges us to take time as we lead students in "opening a text." Enjoy the read, and don't forget to take your time.

What's In a Name Tag: Artistic Expression and Social Justice for LGBT Students

2011-11-21T14:12:00.014-07:00

Proper names are poetry in the raw. Like all poetry they are untranslatable. W. H. Auden

I attended session L.04 "MULTIPLE PERSPECTIVES OF INQUIRY IN A SOCIAL JUSTICE CLASSROOM: USING MULTI-MODAL TECHNIQUES WITH AND FOR LGBT YOUTH" during NCTE and want to share some of the projects I acquired during the session. The subject of this post is "Name Tag Project."

The idea is for students to create a nametag that represents them. Here's the procedure:

1. Use a notecard or "real" nametag.

2. The student's name should be the focus of the nametag.

3. Add words and images that reveal something about oneself on the perimiter of the nametag. Think about arrangement when adding details. For example, a student may want to create a "found poem" for his/her nametag.

4. Other considerations: think about a theme for the nametag, consider adding 3D elements to the nametag, be unique and creative.

The images below show some examples the presenters used during their session:

I'm planning to use this project in my speech classes early in the trimester as an introductory presentation.

I can also see this project as a way to prepare students for class interviews of other classmates or characters. For example, teachers may want to have students create nametags for characters in a novel; next, students can interview one another about the various images and words on the nametag and what each reveals about the character, citing textual evidence for their responses.

Thank you, Jamie Rhein, for this artistic way of expressing ourselves.

I'm interested in hearing other variations on this idea.

NCTE 2011: G.41: Teaching the Hero's Journey: Understanding Our Past, Creating Our Future

2011-11-16T04:21:00.001-07:00

If you are attending the NCTE Annual Convention in Chicago, I hope you'll include the panel on which I am participating in your schedule. Here is the data from the convention program:

Session: G.41 - 9:30 am to 10:45 am 11/19/2011	Format: Panel
Room: Chicago Hilton/Continental Ballroom, Salon B, Lobby Level	Topic: Literature
Level(s): Middle (6-8), Secondary (9-12)

Title: TEACHING THE HERO'S JOURNEY: UNDERSTANDING OUR PAST, CREATING OUR FUTURE
What transpires when teachers and students read and write through Joseph Campbell’s hero archetype? This session will examine designing a course based on the hero journey, creating a Ning collaboration among students in an urban and a rural school, and offering students YAL based on the hero archetype.

Presenter:	Glenda Funk, Highland High School, Pocatello, Idaho , 'Class Lines: Writing Beyond Borders'
	Dana Huff, The Weber School, Atlanta, Georgia
	Ami Szerencse, Schurr High School, Montebello, California , 'Class Lines: Writing Beyond Borders'

For our part of the presentation, Ami and I will share many resources from our Ning collaboration. Here's a list of documents:

1. Form and Blog posts (Teacher and Student Topics with supplements)

2. Student Responses to some posts.

3. Student Collaboration on Tracing the Hero Journey in Epic Poetry

4. Grading Rubric for Student Posts

5. Student Reflections

6. Books Students are Reading (so far this school year)

7. Successes and Challenges

8. Forum Simulation, an interactive activity replicating responses to a discussion on Ning.

Additionally, Ami has created a delightful Animoto video showcasing our Ning, and I will present a Prezi tracing our collaborative journey using the archetypal monomyth.

I will also spend a couple of hours working at the Folger Shakespeare Library booth. Stop by and introduce yourself and pick up some goodies from the library. Sign up for Bard Notes and enter to win something fabulous from the Folger. Plan now to apply for TSI 2012, which will be next summer in Washington D.C.

See you at the convention.

How Much Time Is Too Much Time?

2011-11-09T18:43:00.001-07:00

Question: How much time is too much time?

If I’m baking a cake and leave it in the oven too long, I render the pastry inedible. I was thinking about this as I recalled a time when I was 10 and left a cake baking in the oven while I went for a bike ride. Boy was I in trouble!

Another time I burned custard. It actually looked like a black charcoal bricket when I removed it from the oven; I was a junior in high shcool when that happened. My father seethed and the house reeked from the fumes.

Nowadays, I rarely overcook anything, but when I was a budding bride, I had a couple of disasters. One of the skills that keeps me from destroying every meal is a well-developed sense of timing.

This year, however, my timing feels off. I think two factors contribute to my planning clock's loss of synchronization: trimesters and the absence of deadlines for student work.

The past two years my district has moved toward a "no zero" policy for student work. Last year I participated in a book study on A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades with other teachers in my building and will participate in another one on the ICU (Intensive Care Unit) theory of grading.

I like the idea that all busy work needs to exit the grade book, but I worry about how I and students will manage removing the artificial construct called deadlines. Theoretically, the idea appeals to me in ways similar to the leisurely pace of baseball. Some kids need the flexibility and assurance they can complete a task, which omitting deadlines creates. Others manipulate the system by putting off until the end of the trimester much work from earlier dates in the semester.

As an English teacher, I need time to carefully consider and respond to student writing; that doesn't happen when I'm buried by a stack of papers that come in the day of finals. I'm particularly worried about students completing oral presentations before the end of the trimester. And past experience has taught me that given extra time offers no guarantee that a student will finish the work, even when given an extension into the next term.

Western culture tethers us to the clock, as the return to normal time from daylight savings time this past weekend illustrates and as the buzzer in most competitive sports confirms. Should we ignore the clock and the calendar when it comes to student work?

Sometimes, too much time is too much time.

"There Is No Such Thing as a Five-Paragraph Essay," says Kelly Gallagher

2011-10-17T16:42:00.000-06:00

In his new book Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing Through Modeling and Mentor Texts (Stenhouse 2011), Kelly Gallagher challenges a staple essay form taught in middle schools and high schools from coast to coast: The Five-Paragraph Essay.

Thank you, Kelly!

I devote too much time proding seniors to consider the three parts of an essay--introduction, body, and conclusion--when composing essays rather than defaulting to the five-paragraph formula.

Before teachers sharpen their red pens, they should consider Gallagher's argument: When one searches the plethera of real-world writing in books, in magazines, on blogs, on web sites, in journals, and most everywhere else, the five-paragraph essay is as elusive as the proverbial needle in a haystack. Writes Gallagher: "in the real world, there is no such thing as a five-paragraph essay" (232).

Examples of collumnists who eschew the five paragraph essay include: Rick Reilly, Leonard Pitts, George Will, and Fareed Zakaria, offers Gallager.

"If our goal is to develop lifelong writers, and we recognize that the five-paragraph essay doesn't exist in the real world, then why are we still hammering it into our students' heads?" asks Gallagher (233).

Gallagher counters teachers' responses that students "need the structure of a five-paragraph essay" by suggesting we teach students that essays need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Translation: introduction, body, and conclusion.

This, of course, makes more sense than the artificialness of a five-paragraph essay.

I'm a bit more cynical in my thinking about why many teachers teach the five paragraph essay: it's easy. All one need do is direct students toward what to do for each paragraph: Put your thesis in the first paragraph; make your first point in the second paragraph, your second point in the third paragraph, and your third point in the fourth paragraph. Summarize in your fith paragraph. Now you have an essay.

For teachers who are mandated by their districts to teach the five-paragraph essay, particularly as part of state-mandated testing, Gallagher suggests teachers spend approximately a week on the formula.

So, once again, thank you, Kelly, for vindicating those teachers who have long railed against the five-paragraph essay as a formula of a world other than the one in which we live.

I actually received a scolding many years ago by an administrator for telling students not to use the formula, the consequence of a well-intentioned colleague who complained because I refused to teach this contrived formula while she taught nothing but it.

Perhaps our reliance on formulaic writing helps explain why so many students find writing both meaningless and tedious.

It's time the five-paragraph essay go the way of the Whooly Mammoth: to extinction.

The Flipped Language Arts Classroom

2011-10-13T19:04:00.000-06:00

Today I received via Accomplished Teacher an article titled"How YouTube is Changing the Classroom,"which describes the innovative Flipped Classroom. For those who need a definition, a flipped classroom reverses the traditional teaching model in which a teacher presents a lesson in a whole-class setting, and students complete assignments at home. In the flip students watch short instructional videos at home and return to school for a workshop in which they complete projects and write papers.

I watched part of the video about the five-paragraph essay and found myself succumbing to auditorium whiplash, but I did find the podcast interesting.

I also found The Flipped Classroom Network Ning, devoted to promoting the flipped model and supporting teachers using it.

I've long thought about how instructional videos and podcasting can help alleviate my own frustration from explaining and reteaching concepts to students who don't pay attention, who are chronically absent, who are in the kid clink down the hall, etc. And while I have created a few instructional videos, I'm far from accomplished.

Moreover, I'm not much of a lecturer and don't want to adopt a lecture format to my teaching practice. Thus, I'd like to know who is using or has used the flipped classroom model, particularly in English. What advice do you have for novice flippers? What do you like about the flip? What doesn't work?

*The infographic offers an excellent explanation of a flipped classroom model:

Looking forward to your comments and advice. Thanks for reading.

**A slightly different version cross-posted on the English Companion Ning.

Time to Talk: Telling Whoppers in Class

2011-10-05T15:34:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time…

So begins many memorable stories.

Once upon a time, I attended a workshop where I learned awriting strategy I adapted to my speech classes: WHOPPERS.

To write a WHOPPER, simply constructs a story around afamous person, a place, and a thing. The student then composes a whopper, whichI characterize to students as a big fishstory:

“You know how your father describes the minnow he caught inthe American Falls Reservoir? Eventually, as dad tells and retells his fishingtale, the fish mutates into a twenty pound rainbow trout.” This elicits lots ofnods, smiles, and “that’s right” responses from students.

To illustrate the concept further, I offer another example: “Andthat three-point buck your uncle tagged turns out to be a five-point buck hechased down Scout Mountain.” Even the girls know this story!

Adapting WHOPPERS to speech:

Since anecdotes and illustrations offer excellent supportingdetails in speeches, I asked students to create a whopper and to share theirtall tales with the class. What a great success. Labron James figuredprominently in several of the boys’ stories. Of course, in their WHOPPERS, L Jfailed to outscore my students. We had shark tales, stories about hanging outwith celebrities in Hawaii, and a story about a road made out of Pop Rocks thatElmo tinkled on. Hey, boys like bathroom humor, and the story amused us all.

I haven’t assigned WHOPPERS in many years, but as we watchedan animated version of three Canterbury Tales in my senior English classes, Irecalled a time I assigned whoppers in conjunction with the C Ts. After all,the pilgrims’ stories, in their imagination and in their telling, constituteWHOPPERS, with each pilgrim attempting to out-tell the others. Remember, theSummoner responds to the Friar’s tale by having a host of Friars fly out of thedevil’s booty when the devil lifts his tell.

Whether we call these stories "tall tales," "yarns," or "stretchers," as does Huck Finn, there's power to construct meaning in telling tales.

At the end of the day, after listening to students’hyperbole, my mouth ached from smiling so much, and my students experiencedthe power of “Once upon a time…”

Of Peculiar Children and Fringe Geeks: Bridging YA Lit and Social Commentary

2011-09-25T11:11:00.002-06:00

Two distinctly different genres bookended my summer: The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth by Alexandra Robbins, a book I read on my Kindle in early June and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs, which I finished just before returning to the classroom in September.

Aside from their obvious genre differences--Geeks is social commentary and Miss Peregrine's is YA literature--both books possess haunting similarities.

Both books focus on the lives of marginalized children and the ways they negotiate their worlds. In her insightful analysis of "the cafeteria fringe," students who don't fit into the school culture, Robbins examines the lives of eight individuals in various school settings. Each exists on the fringe of the popularity grid, including a cheerleader who finds herself at odds with the mean girl crowd in which she runs.

Similarly, Miss Peregrine's Home tells the story of a group of children who live in a time warp off the coast of Wales. Jacob's relationship with his grandfather's secret past propels him to investigate his family's secret past. When he arrives at the home Miss Peregrine runs for "peculiar children," he discovers that society's notions of peculiarity include character traits and skills others might label gifts.

This theme that children's quirks make them the most gifted, and ultimately the most successful adults lives on the pages of both books. In Geeks we meet the Band Geek, the New Girl, the Loner, the Gamer, the Nerd, the Overachiever, and others. In Miss Peregrine's the peculiar children include a levitating girl, an invisible boy, a contortionist, and others.

Both books remind us that we should embrace one another's quirks, that what makes us unique doesn't just make us special but capable and successful in managing life's mazes.

Both emphasize the importance of point of view when considering ways children experience the world. Jacob, whose peculiarity is his ability to "see" monsters, narrates Miss Peregrine, while Robbins allows each student a voice in reconstructing their experiences in reportorial style.

“Adults tell students that it gets better, that the world changes after school, that being ‘different’ will pay off sometime after graduation,” writes Robbins. In contrast, Riggs, through the character of Jacob's grandfather, suggests that even in the adult world, we find the peculiar among us.

Even Robbins's inclusion of a lesbian teacher, Regan, contradicts her premise that adolescence ends and life gets better. That's not always true, at least not for the adults who live on the fringe of the teachers' lounge in our schools, especially in our era of homogenized curriculum.

The message that life gets better after high school needs rewriting, reconstructing. "If the alternative is to wait and just hope...I say that's no alternative at all," says Millard, one of Riggs's peculiar children while he awaits a particular escape from danger.

Children need the epiphany Jacob experiences in Miss Peregrine, the one some of the cafeteria fringe Robbins writes about come too late in their school journeys. "I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was," says Jacob.

"LIE" by Caroline Bock: A YA Novel with Multiple First-Person Narrators

2011-08-21T11:01:00.000-06:00

*The review portion of this post is on my book blog: Hanging by a Book. The lesson plan portion is all new to this post. It's after the trailer.

The attacks were such an established pastime that the youths, who have pleaded not guilty, had a casual and derogatory term for it, "beaner hopping."

---The New York Times, front page story

after the murder of a Hispanic immigrant on Long Island

Author Caroline Bock opens her YA debut novel LIE (St. Martins Griffin: August 30, 2011) with this news snippet. The objective, journalistic style offers a stark contrast to Bock's use of multiple narrative voices to construct a fictional narrative touching on the nature of hate crimes and other issues relevant to teens.

Reading LIE is like slowly peeling an onion by its translucent layers of skin. Readers learn "the truth" in snippets and from ten distinct voices. Complicating readers' search for the story is the absence of the most important voice, that of the accused, Jimmy Seger.

The novel opens with Skylar Thompson narrating. She has been interrogated by Officer Healey about the events of "last Saturday night," specifically Skylar's boyfriend Jimmy's role: "Was Jimmy Seger the Mastermind?"

Bock complicates Jimmy in myriad ways, including his friendship and romance with the grieving Skylar after her mother's death. To what extent does Skylar really know Jimmy? How can Skylar reconcile the complicated moral code by which Jimmy lives and protects his friends with the "morality" which also makes him a bigot?

LIE raises many questions, and it's the ten first-person narrators these binaries create that give voice to the issues. Yet the silences Bock constructs also speak volumes: Why don't we hear from Jimmy? What motivates teens to create a bubble of silence, one in which "everybody knows, nobody's talking," as Skylar's BFF Lisa Marie Murano chants throughout the novel.

Innocence has no place in LIE, as Bock deftly critiques the pedestal on which school administrators and coaches place student-athletes, from whom they then attempt to distance themselves and the school when those students are laid low. Readers hear this in the adult voices Bock interjects into the narrative.

Bock even challenges the American pastime, baseball, in her symbolizing of the Louisville Slugger.

She further critiques the iconic great American road motif and its symbolism of freedom and the Westward journey that leads to fulfillment of the American Dream. The LIE (Long Island Expressway) ends abruptly, but it's also the scene of the crime in LIE.

LIE debuts just in time for the anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attack, which plays a subtle role in the narrative and suggests how we should and should not define heroism.

Readers may find reading LIE a bit slow-going at first. Try peeling an onion by its thin skin to see what I mean. Ultimately, LIE voices the questions with which teens find themselves challenged, and the pace quickens, like a speeding car on the LIE, propelling the rider to the abrupt ending.

LIE is worth the trip. That's the truth.

*Book Trailer:

Lesson Plan Ideas:

Readers Theater:

If you are a teacher looking to incorporate more oral reading into your classroom, LIE offers an excellent opportunity for a readers theater activity:

1. You need at least two (maybe three) copies of the novel.
2. Split the novel into parts. There are ten narrators. When you split the novel, number the sections, which will make keeping the order easier.
3. Assign parts. Okay, with ten characters and a class of 30, you'll want to assign more than one student to some characters.
4. Have the students "cut" the sections. This will be complicated by the dialogue in some sections, but it's very doable, especially if in the cutting process some parts get reassigned.
5. The performance can take several forms:
One: Practice and present a traditional readers theater.
Two: Create a news broadcast and edit the "scenes" to create a traditional news segment.
Three: Record the scenes in documentary style.

Class Debate:

In my last post, I offered a lesson for teaching the refutative speech. Rather than focusing on a policy issue, LIE offers an opportunity for debating a value question: Should friends remain loyal to their friends regardless of the circumstances?

Narrative Voices:

Focus on the multiple first-person narratives in LIE. One way to do this is with body biographies, another is with students explaining character choices from the specific character's point of view, either in writing or in an oral presentation.

As a fan of multiple narrative voices, such as Faulkner uses in The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying and Absalom, Absalom!, I'm excited about a YA novel that introduces students to a difficult narrative form. Why did Bock choose to tell the story from ten points of view? This question would make a provocative fish-bowl discussion.

Definition Essay:

The definition essay is my favorite expository mode, and LIE raises questions about many terms on which students could write extended definitions: loyalty, moral code, hate crime, heroism are just a few.

*Do you know titles of other YA novels with multiple first-person narrators? I'd like to hear about them if you do. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Time to Talk: The Refutative Speech in the LA Classroom

2011-08-16T18:16:00.000-06:00

Flickr CC Image

Writers of argument recognize the importance of offering refutation for the opposing position. Teachers of the argumentative essay also know the difficulty of getting students to respond to opposing arguments. The refutative speech, which is based on policy debate, offers a lively introduction to refutation in argument.

A common problem with student counter-arguments is the absence of direct clash (disagreement). Clash results from identifying the central point of disagreement and identifying a weakness in the opposing viewpoint.

The most common way to refute an argument resides in testing the inductive and/or deductive reasoning. For deduction, test the syllogisms and enthymemes. For induction, test the examples, analogy, causation, authority, or statistics used to argue a point. Also evaluate the argument for fallacies.

Refutation Approaches:

1. Argue the evidence: Accuracy, sufficiency, relevance, timliness, bias, completeness are all potential points of clash. The source's credentials and statistics also offer potential for clash.

2. Argue the reasoning: Faulty generalizations, analogies and comparisons, cause/effect relations, and deductions may present flaws in an argument.

3. Deny the argument with credible evidence that shows the falseness of an argument.

4. Identify inconsistencies in an argument.

5. Minimize the argument by showing its insignificance.

6. Use "reductio ad absurdum" to show the logical conclusion of an argument is unacceptable. Analogies work well for this.

7. Deny inherency. When arguing policy issues, what we should do, an opposing position might be that fixing what's wrong needs only a minor adjustment, the system is moving toward resolution of the problem, etc.

8. Address dilemmas. Boiling an argument down to competing alternatives, neither of which is acceptable, is an effective form of refutation.

9. Argue differentiation. First show specific differences in your position. Next, through direct comparison, show the strengths in your position.

10. Turn the Tables: Argue that the opposition actually supports your position rather than the one s/he claims to support. This method of refutation is a form of concession.

4-Step Refutative Process:

Both systematic and clear, this four-step process guarantees clash with the opposing argument.

1. State the position you are refuting.
2. State your position in a concise sentence.
3. Support your position, using reasoning and evidence to support your claim.
4. Explain how your position is superior to or trumps the opposing argument.

When arguing against a position, having more than one response is important. Three is the magic number. Thus, when a speaker (or writer) advocates a policy for requiring students to take online classes, ideally the refutation consists of three refutative arguments.

For example, an argument for decriminalizing drugs might be refuted in three ways:

[refutation S1] I have three responses to the argument that decriminalizing drugs will reduce crime.

[refutation S2] Drug use leads to crime, so decriminalizing drugs won't reduce crime. (Cause/effect argument)

[refutation S3] It's true that studies connect crime to drugs, but this isn't caused by laws against drug use. Rather, its the byproduct of addiction and an addicts driving need for the next fix. The number of crimes committed to acquire drugs is minuscule compared to the crime committed from the influence of drug use.

*At this point, its appropriate to present supporting evidence. Again, three is the magic number. Some sources include Drug Watch International, JAMA, The Drug Policy Report, et al.

[refutation S4] Impact (consequences): Since decriminalizing drugs won't decrease crime. The behavior associated with drug use will result in other threats to society as demand for now legal drugs escalates.

The next refutative argument:

[refutation S2] Decriminalizing drugs will not eliminate the black market. (argue reasoning and causation)

[refutation S3] Advocates of decriminalization still support restrictions to drug use by minors, pilots, pregnant women, and felons. Thus, demand for a black market would persist, as would crime.

*Offer evidence to support. The Shipmann Library of Drug Policy is a potential source.

[refutation S4] A black market creates an environment for crime and other criminal tendencies. Thus, the argument that legalizing drugs reduces crime loses its impact.

The third refutative argument:

[refutation S2] Decriminalizing drugs may increase crime [Turning the Tables]

[refutation S3] Legalizing drugs removes the criminal deterant, leading to increased use and addiction. This will result in increased crime.

*Offer evidence to support the argument.

[refutation S4] Since decriminalizing drugs will increase use, addiction, and, consequently, crime, the argument for legalizing drugs has the opposite effect of its intent.

In-class Refutative Speeches

Students work in pairs to present refutative speeches, which proceed as follows:

Speaker 1. Argument in support of a position (2-3 minutes)

Speaker 2. Refutation against the position (5-6 minutes). This includes a constructive argument separate from the original proposition.

Speaker 1: Refutation against the second speaker's constructive argument. (2-3 minutes). It's important that the speaker only argue against the second speaker's constructive and that s/he present two or three refutative points (see above format). This results in direct clash with the opposing position

By practicing direct clash in speaking situations, students learn both to support and refute a position. Thus, rather than writing essays that offer a cursory nod to an opposing position, they learn to clarify their thinking and build strong, clear analysis.

Works Cited:

Communication 101 Principles of Speech Course Supplement, 4th ed. Department of Communication & Rhetorical Studies, Idaho State University. Fall 2011. pp. 104-108

*Special thanks to Nancy Legge, PhD for her excellent work on the refutative speech, the Comm1101 supplement, and commitment to maintaining academic standards in education. The information in this post is adapted from the Comm 1101 supplement, including the sample refutative argument, although this method of refutation is one I used and taught during my competitive debate years. :-)

The Problem with the One Week Workshop

2011-08-10T22:43:00.002-06:00

During the summer months, teachers around the country often seek professional development opportunities. To this end, many turn to the one-week workshop to fill gaps in their content and/or pedagogical knowledge.

One-week P.D. serves a vital function, and I've been fortunate to attend some terrific summer sessions ranging from one to four weeks. Note: I'm not talking about summer classes from which one earns university credit, although workshops often offer credit opportunities.

The College Board encourages current and new AP teachers to attend their workshops, theoretically so that AP teachers will be prepared to teach AP classes when school commences in the fall.

So what's the problem? Simply, a one-week workshop is no substitute for an advanced degree or a graduate-level course in rhetorical theory or rhetorical analysis.

Recently, as the summer draws to a close and teachers return home from their AP workshops and begin preparing for the coming school year, I've seen an increase in the number of online inquiries from teachers seeking assistance in preparing to teach AP, particularly the AP lang and comp class.

Teachers who acknowledge doubts about their preparation and who seek help in online forums certainly deserve accolades. I admire their willingness to say "help, please." Their willingness to take advice from other teachers shows a desire for excellence in their teaching.

At the same time, I'm troubled that some teachers enter the AP lang and comp class not knowing the meaning of rhetoric, even as they ask about the difference in rhetoric and style. Most English teachers focused on literary analysis rather than rhetorical analysis in their university coursework.

Unfortunately, rather than actually preparing teachers who lack a background in rhetoric and / or communication studies, the one-week AP workshop diminishes the worth of those teachers who do have substantial knowledge in rhetorical studies, whether through an advanced degree or grad-level coursework.

Put another way: The one-week workshop doesn't sufficiently fill gaps in knowledge about rhetoric. It merely gives the false impression that a teacher has sufficient knowledge. The one-week workshop (read: The College Board) is guilty of what Tom Newkirk calls the "deskilling" of teaching in Holding Onto Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones.

At this juncture, I feel compelled to offer a little self-disclosure: I do not teach AP lang and comp. I do, however, have substantial grad-level coursework in rhetoric and communication, including courses in argumentation theory and rhetorical criticism.

I don't blame teachers for wanting to teach AP courses and for grabbing the opportunity to do so; after all, AP students are generally more motivated and easier to teach than reluctant learners and students with poor reading and writing skills.

However, I do hope these teachers will seek to improve their knowledge by taking grad-level courses in rhetoric and argumentation.

I hope they realize a one-week workshop is no substitute for intensive, long-term study at the graduate level with a professor devoted to "the art of persuasion, beautiful and just."

I hope teachers realize that identifying chiasmus, litotes, synecdoche, etc. is no substitute for constructing essays using Neo-Aristotelian Criticism, Fantasy Theme Criticism, Cluster Criticism, Pentadic Criticism, Generic Criticism, etc. Sonja Foss's Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration and Practice is a good source for learning more about these methods of critiquing rhetorical artifacts, which, incidentally, aren't limited to nonfiction texts. In communication studies, pretty much anything has rhetorical value and, consequently, is subject to critique, including architecture, fashion, music, art, speeches, etc.

And while these methods of rhetorical criticism may not be necessary for one to teach the AP lang and comp class in its current incarnation, it certainly behooves teachers undertaking such an endeavor actually to know something about this communication field--something more than one learns in a week.

Revised: 8-22-2011

Cheating Teachers: A Crucible of Character

2011-08-08T16:08:00.000-06:00

At the end of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, John Proctor refuses to nail his verbal confession that he's guilty of witchcraft to the church door. When questioned about his refusal, he shouts:

"Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!"

Those educators involved in the litany of cheating scandals have blackened the name of our profession. They have sold the soul of teaching, and now many defend their failure of character and refuse to own their choice to cheat. Their refusal to do the honorable thing and resign testifies to their poor character.

As have many teachers, I have followed the Atlanta testing scandal and have given it much thought. Similar cheating scandals have occurred in Washington D.C. during Michelle Rhea's tenure, in Baltimore, in Philadelphia, in New Jersey, and in New York. And these are the ones we know about. I wouldn't be surprised to learn standardized test cheating is both systemic and epidemic.

The rationalizing, the efforts, however well-intended, to explain how and why cheating occurs bothers me.

Writing about the Atlanta scandal, Maureen Downey says this on the ajc blog:

"I think some of their motivation was less self-serving; they wanted to fulfill Dr. Hall’s vision that low-income children from single parent homes and tough neighborhoods could and would succeed at levels comparable to suburban Atlanta peers and that such performance could be achieved system-wide by adopting best practices and by working harder and smarter.

The APS teachers, principals and administrators wanted to prove that the faith of the Broad and Gates foundations and the Chamber of Commerce in the district was not misplaced and that APS could rewrite the script of urban education in America and provide a happy, or at least a happier, ending for its students."

Is Ms. Downey really saying educators cheated for the students?

Vicky Davis, writer of the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, is quoted in the Huff Post as explaining teacher's cheating:

"[Teachers'] funding and their lives and their money is based on that. When the stakes are extremely high and it's very competitive but you add in the fact that the teachers feel that they don't have control over the results, some will cheat."

As an article in Education Week notes, many see these cheating scandals as a byproduct of our testing culture and cite them in calling for an end to testing:

“If the stakes are so high that the teachers don’t even believe the measurement itself, they’re going to try to cheat," says Yang Zhao.

Nationwide teachers have questioned the educational benefit of high-stakes testing. This lack of faith in the
tests doesn't create a cause-effect scenario in which all teachers will cheat on the them. That's because the vast majority of teachers possess honorable character that prevents them from cheating.

Rather than attempting to explain the why behind the cheating scandals, educators should acknowledge that the decision to cheat constitutes a test of character. Those who cheat fail the character test, their students, and their profession. They have nailed their name to the door and they need to leave the profession on their own. If they choose not to leave, educators throughout the country should call for their dismissal and the revocation of their licenses as loudly as we call for an ending to high-stakes testing.

On Being Human: What Shylock Teaches Us in "The Merchant of Venice"

2011-07-29T12:12:00.000-06:00

Montana Shakespeare in the Park traveling company mounted two plays on the quad at Idaho State University this week: Much Ado About Nothing and The Merchant of Venice. I've been thinking about Shylock's "Hath not a Jew Eyes" speech in III.i for a couple of reasons:

1. Our local paper carried a vitriolic anti-gay rant in yesterday's paper ("The End Is Near"). The letter write is upset because of a planned Pride Pride parade and efforts by some local residents and the ACLU to keep the city council from beginning meetings with prayer.

2. A local writer, who recently switched careers from broadcasting to public relations, was interviewed by a local reporter and asked to defend her contribution toPocatello Pride. She posted on FB her thoughts. Here's the thread:

Brenda Baumgartner Stanley
I can't believe I have to defend our donation to the Pocatello Pride event on the news. I didn't have to defend any of the other hundreds of contributions we've made to organizations in the community.

19 hours ago · ·

3 people like this.
- Drew Schnoebelen That is absolutely ridiculous. You should have said THAT to them when they asked you to do so.
  19 hours ago · · 1 person
- John Stosich Next time donate to the Boy Scouts...you would never have to defend that in the Media??? Sounds like Foxnews
  18 hours ago ·
- Mark Russell Rapp Ludicrous. When will acceptance & tolerance abide?
  18 hours ago · · 2 people
- Todd Blackinton I'd like to point out that KPVI was not the organization asking the question. First, it's not a question that has to be asked. Second, Brenda would have de-friended me.
  18 hours ago · · 7 people
- Eric Forrest Well along the lines of "you only get what you can handle", maybe that's why you got it, you're the champion. Everyone will see the folly of past generations because Brenda stood up for what's right!
  17 hours ago · · 2 people
- Carolyn Olsen One of the many reasons I admire you so much.
  16 hours ago ·
- Doug Long Ignore the ignorant. No need to defend loving thy neighbor Brenda.
  15 hours ago ·
- Matt Smith Thank you for your stance and action. (inaction is still action) YOU are a ripple of change. And thank you all for your words of support and encouragement.
  13 hours ago ·
- Glenda Cowen-Funk That was one nasty letter in the Journal today. I'd like to hear the reporter's defense for asking such a homophobic question. I'm thinking about rewriting Shylock's "I am a Jew" speech from "The Merchant of Venice" so that it is applicable to LBGTs.
  11 hours ago · · 3 people
- Susan Groseclose Stephens We are all Gods Children! He doesn't love one of us more than the others!
  about an hour ago ·

The world is full of hate, and after a former gay student's suicide in January, I admit to being a bit incensed. Whatever one thinks of the complicated Shylock, his remarks ring true for all humanity. All we need do is complete a little code switching, like this:

Hath not a Gay person eyes?
Hath not a Gay person hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions;
fed with the same food,
hurt with the same weapons,
subject to the same diseases,
heal'd by the same means,
warm'd and cool'd by the same winter and summer, as all others?
If you prick a Gay person, do they not bleed?
If you tickle them, do they not laugh?
If you poison them, do they not die?
And if you wrong them, do they not revenge?
If they are like us in the rest,
they will resemble us in that.

"Shylock" from Park's Shakspearean Twelfth-Night Characters. Hand-colored print, ca. 1830. Shelfmark ART 231747.

Critics of teaching Shakespeare as having no relevance to teens, especially minorities whom the critics claim can't see themselves in the Bard's characters, need look no further than Shylock's reminder that we all share in one commonality: We are human beings, and each person deserves the same humanity we expect from others.

*Image of Shylock and a lesson plan on "The Making of Shylock" available from The Folger Shakespeare Library.

Hanging by a Book: "A Sick Day for Amos McGee" by Philip C. Stead

2011-07-22T18:08:00.002-06:00

Hanging by a Book: "A Sick Day for Amos McGee" by Philip C. Stead: "When Amos McGee takes a sick day and misses a day of work, his routine gets disrupted and his friends notice. Several themes emerge in this..."

*Cross-post from my book blog: Includes a review, video w/ the illustrator, and teaching ideas.

"Landscapes of the Passing Strange: Reflections from Shakespeare" by Michael Witmore and Rosamond Purcell

2011-07-18T13:22:00.002-06:00

Landscapes of the Passing Strange: Reflections from Shakespeare uses lines from Shakespeare plays and pairs them with photographic images. Michael Witmore, the new director of the Folger Shakespeare Library, chose the lines, and Rosamond Purcell photographed the images.

The collection has an ethereal, other-world quality, which grows primarily from the unique photographic images Purcell has created. She has taken mercury bottles and used them as reflective mirrored surfaces, from both the inside and outside.

Purcell describes herself as a photographer of "glassy things." Thus, Purcell doesn't photograph things but reflections glassy things create. This gives her art a dreamy, ethereal quality fitting of Shakespeare.

"The wavering shapes begin to evoke the fluidity and multiple meanings found in speeches and verses of Shakespeare. Each element moves or dissolves if I shift the vantage point...These come to be the shadows of this stage," writes Purcell (116).

Simply, Purcell seeks to mirror nature in much the way Shakespeare uses mirror images: "Shakespeare uses mirrors to reflect the nature of twins or siblings, to show signs of moral corruption, beauty, self-loathing, and shame" (117).

Here's an example from the collection:

THE WARS TO COME

And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars

Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound.

Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny

Shall here inhabit, and this land be called

The field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls.

---Bishop of Carlisle, Richard II, 4.1

The idea of using modern photography as a window into Shakespeare appeals to me and resonates in our image-driven culture. "Shakespeare thought in pictures," writes Witmore (7).

Acknowledging the difficulty readers often encounter with Shakespeare's language, Witmore describes the Bards imagery as "tangles, like the riotous buds" (7). Thus, teachers and readers can approach a play as a "script within the script" (8).

Shakespeare's imagery filled the gaps created by the Globe Theater's limitations and transported the audience beyond the Wooden O. "His language directs us to that other place where theatrical events happen: not on the stage but in the shuttered world of the imagination" (10).

Art opens the mind's eye to the pictures Shakespeare molds with words.

DESCANT ON MY DEFORMITY

I that am curtailed of this fair proportion,

Cheated of feature by dissembling nature,

Deformed, unfinished, sent before my time

Into this breathing world.

---Richard, Duke of Gloucester, Richard III, I.I

When Hamlet instructs the players he says:

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature:
for any thing so o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose
end, both at the first and now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the
mirror up to nature: to show virtue her feature, scorn her own
image, and the very age and body of the time his form and
pressure.

The "body of the time" and of our time lives through art that shapes, molds, and transforms our mind's eye and enables our vision in ways that speak to modern ways of viewing, reading, and comprehending image-driven texts.

Landscapes of the Passing Strange looks like a coffee-table book, but I'll be giving it a prominent place in my classroom where budding artists can find inspiration.

*Interested in more ideas about using imagery to teach Romeo and Juliet? See the Shakespeare Set Free lesson on Queen Maab's dream.

States Curbing 'Double Dipping' by Teachers

2011-07-17T20:29:00.000-06:00

States Curbing 'Double Dipping' by Teachers

Sculpture Garden: A Lesson Plan for Teachers from "Marty McGuire" by Kate Messner

2011-07-15T10:59:00.000-06:00

Surprise! I found a performance technique in Marty McGuire, a chapter book by Kate Messner about a third-grader who just wants to catch frogs and play with the boys. Much to Marty's dismay, she lands the part of the princess in the school play, and she didn't even audition.

The lesson idea: Sculpture Garden (58-68)

In "Sculpture Garden," students take on various roles and create a garden of sculptures by freezing in place.

1. Group students. In MM the group has eight students.

2. Students take turns striking a pose and announcing who (or what) they are and what they're doing.

3. Students remain frozen in place until cued to "come to life." At that point, students move as their "character/object" would move. "I want you to do---and say---whatever your character would do and say in this situation, given everything happening on the stage right now," says James, the drama coach in Marty's class (66).

Suggestions for Varying Sculpture Garden:

I see Sculpture Garden as a variation of tableaux vivant. Teachers could use sculpture garden as a form of assessment. Have a list of characters and objects from a short story, a chapter in a novel, or a scene in a play. Next, have students draw a role to play, have them take turns posing for the part, and have them present the part when cued. In MM the drama instructor claps to cue the students. Of course, other cues work. I like counting down: "Three, two, one, action."

Another variation might be to have students work in groups to create a sculpture garden. They choose parts from a short story, a chapter, or a scene. Students work together to present their poses based on what makes sense in terms of the work. Finally, they create the scene through performance. Those watching the scene could then describe the characters and action as a follow-up whole-class discussion.

A Book Is Just a Book---Except When It Isn't: Editing Matters

2011-07-12T12:42:00.000-06:00

"That's a play Shakespeare never wrote."
--Professor Jay Halio, editor of the Cambridge Shakespeare

When Barbara Mowat, co-editor of the Folger Shakespeare editions met with attendees of the Teaching Shakespeare Institute at the Folger Shakespeare Library (2008) to offer insight into the editing process, she included her rational for conflating The Tragedy of King Lear to include lines from the first folio (F1)as well as lines from the quarto (Q1).

Professor Halio parts company with Dr. Mowat when editing Lear and bases the Cambridge Lear on the first folio as the copy text. So while Dr. Mowat eloquently explained the editing of Lear, Dr. Halio responded in a friendly aside, "That's a play Shakespeare never wrote."

It was a light-hearted moment between two academics who enjoy a friendly debate about Shakespearean texts editors find universally troubling to edit.

Now teachers and scholars can learn from Dr. Mowat in a series of YouTube videos.

In the first one, Dr. Mowat offers a general overview of the issues confronting the Shakespeare editor.

Teachers of Macbeth may find Dr. Mowat's discussions of the play that shall not be named fascinating.

Editors must often deal with nonsensical issues, words, and spellings in a play. In this video Dr. Mowat credits eighteenth century editors for their contribution to modern editions. She also discusses emendations and other textual problems.

What do editors mean when referring to "the Weird Sisters" problem? Dr. Mowat discusses Lewis Tybalt's contribution to solving the diction issue of whether to use the term weird or wayward.

Sometimes editors face problems with iambic pentameter. Dr. Mowat discusses how editors address these issues that often have a profound impact on dramatic action.

When it comes to Shakespeare, "the play's the thing." But the thing is, not all plays are the same.

Teaching to the Test: Why Do Teachers Defend It in Some Contexts and Denigrate It in Others?

2011-07-08T19:06:00.001-06:00

AP test scores came out this week. This should relieve AP teachers who have been fraught with anxiety awaiting their students' results.

I just texted my niece, who will be a senior at Broken Arrow High School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma next fall, and asked: "What did you get on your AP tests?" She took the AP Spanish and AP Language and Composition exams. I imagine her teachers taught to the AP tests, which the College Board encourages with test-prep materials and which is a practice observed by AP teachers across the country.

I know the AP teachers in my school teach to the test because I hear them talk about this and know many frequently give students practice tests, both multiple-choice and essay tests, which they evaluate using actual past exam questions and prompts.

Perhaps I'm a bit uninformed, but I've noticed little criticism and much endorsement of teaching to the AP test.

In contrast, teachers frequently criticize the notion of teaching to state tests mandated under NCLB. In fact, the reductive practice of teaching to the standardized tests constitutes a major rallying point for abolishing NCLB.

Why is teaching to one standardized test--the AP exam--okay in the minds of teachers while teaching to NCLB standardized tests not okay to teachers' thinking?

Writing in The Christian Science Monitor (2008), teacher Walt Gardner defends teaching to the test and distinguishes between teaching skills that will be tested and teaching from the test:

There is a distinct difference between teaching to the broad body of skills and knowledge that a test represents (good), and teaching to the exact items that will appear on the standardized test (indefensible and illegal). Teaching students how to answer a particular set of items that appears on a test shortchanges them ethically and educationally. The confusing part arises when we fail to make that distinction.

Sports psychologists consult their clients in ways to visualize their performances. Isn't giving students practice taking tests similar to those they will experience in actual test-taking situations a way for them to visualize the event? Arguably, yes.

Yet practice tests, which I encourage students to write for themselves and which I have often used, are a slippery slope; the inherent risk is that instruction will evolve into only test prep. That's what the psuedo-reformers now defend as sound pedagogy. There's a huge market for test-prep materials, too. That's because writing good test questions and essay prompts takes time and effort and expertise.

As an undergrad I was required to take a class called "Tests and Measurements." It focused on ways to write all sorts of tests and mathematical formulas for assessing grades. It gave me the skills to write tests that I have used for thirty years.

Unfortunately, state mandated test-prep programs and products don't exist in a vacumm. There's a huge market for these materials for AP classes, too. A simple Google search gathered thousands of hits.

One possible reason for the increased demand for canned AP curriculum is the College Board's decision to change its standards for AP teachers. Until a few years ago, the college board required AP teachers to have a MA degree, preferably in the subject being taught, and/or National Board Certification.

Now potential AP teachers are advised to attend an AP workshop during the summer as preparation to teach the course. Consequently, inexperienced teachers--often those with no more than one year teaching experience--receive the AP teaching assignment. I frequently see posts online requesting help with the class from these newbies.

Even though these changes in AP trouble me, there's a huge difference in the AP curriculum and the Common Core Standards, which will increasingly drive state standards and curriculum: The breadth and depth of material.

Last fall Kelley Gallager explained the problem in Education Week:

The state tests being used to evaluate student progress—and, in turn, the effectiveness of teachers—virtually ensure mediocrity.

The standards are so broad that teachers don't have time to sufficiently teach the curriculum in an in-depth way: Gallagher calls this a "sprint-and-cover approach" to teaching.

AP teachers, in contrast, know the texts most often referenced on the AP exam. More importantly, they know students will be questioned about shifting narrative point of view, for example, so they know that students need to read at least one work that exposes them to such narration. Students can then synthesize their prior learning and apply it when they take the AP exam.

One of my biggest fears is that as the generation of teachers who taught before the standards movement began in 1983, who taught before the teaching profession began the long slide down the slippery slope to today's version of test prep, and who taught prior to the era of reliance on canned curriculum retires, their collective memory of a time before the craziness will be gone, too.

When teaching to the test, teachers should dive into the deep end of the pool and ignore the shallow warmth of the baby area. Even though both ends are part of the same pool, there's a huge difference in the water.

ECN Summer Webstitute: Reading Classic and Young Adult Literature with Students

2011-07-05T18:13:00.000-06:00

Over on the English Companion Ning , Gary Anderson and the other site administrators have been busy developing the third ECN webstitute, a free professional development opportunity for teachers. The webstitute is Monday and Tuesday, July 11-12, 2011.

This summer's webstitute addresses the sometimes contentious question of whether to teach texts from the cannon or YA lit. Confession: I've never seen this as an either/or issue. I like to think there's room for lots of literary entrees on the book buffet. Here's a description of the webstitute:

This Webstitute emerges from the passionate interest of English Language Arts folks in reading texts of all kinds. All too often, it seems the we see classic and YA lit as mutually exclusive, even going so far as to position one as being "better" than the other, educationally, culturally, and sometimes even morally. In this Webstitute, we are bringing together accomplished teachers, writers, and scholars to explore the best of each world, as well as areas where they blend to create a rich learning environment.

I'll be leading one of the sessions in the webstitute: "Twice Told Tales and Old Odd Ends: Common Ideas in Shakespeare and Young Adult Lit." Many YA texts allude to classic works. Having read the classics enriches students' reading on YA lit. Conversely, the YA lit that speaks so intimately to students about issues they face offers opportunities for introducing them to classic works from which many YA authors find inspiration. I'll also share teaching methods that bridge the classics and YA lit.

I also plan to focus on a Shakespeare play that has been particularly troubling to me and how I learned to love The Taming of the Shrew, which where I live offers unique insight into the local culture, family dynamics, and male/female relationships. Of course, expect lots of info from the Folger Shakespeare Library as well as a drawing for a copy of The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World.

Please join me and the other webstitute session coordinators for what promises to be a lively and informative two days of learning and sharing. I'm humbled and honored to be among the following impressive voices:

Teresa Bunner: Ideas for engaging students in texts teachers choose.

Jo Knowles, David Macinnis Gill, Kate Messner: These YA authors will be discussing their works and genres.

Tom Liam Lynch: Reading Bytes: "Rather than 'reading' texts, Dr. Lynch argues for re-reading and non-reading as essential practices for our students to master. Though the session focuses on online and blended learning, the questions raised and techniques shared can be applied in all English classroom settings and adapted across grade levels."

Teri Lesesne: Professor Nana, author of Reading Ladders, brings her extensive knowledge of children's and YA lit to share.

"Bring Your Best Stuff: Titles that Work" is the culmination session where everyone is invited to share their expertise and titles.

Words With Friends: I'm Hooked on Digital Scrabble

2011-07-03T22:15:00.000-06:00

Scrabble has long been one of my favorite games. Admittedly, I get a little nervous when I play, mainly because as the English teacher, I'm suppose to be good with words. Problem is I often find myself stymied when searching my memory for the perfect word that begins with the letter "j" and ends with "q". So when my niece, whom I recently visited in Collierville, Tennessee, insisted I load the free app Words With Friends on my phone and challenged me to a game, I couldn't resist. Now I'm hooked.

I wiled away many hours in the car last week, alternating between reading Bossypants and State of Wonder on my Kindle and playing Words With Friends on my phone. At present, I'm awaiting the players of the seven games I have going to make their next moves.

One of the most appealing aspects of Words With Friends is the option to play against a random opponent. I've played Vm704, Ericalee86, Jk_yb, ying1, among others. I'm Wordswamp!

YouTube offers video tutorials, including the following excellent strategy guide:

Players can also find the "Cheats" that seemingly crop up and on which gamers often rely for help. I have mixed feelings about these. On the one hand, I want the challenge of thinking for myself. On the other hand, the "cheats" may help players learn new words. I'm still pondering the ethical dimensions of "cheats" and am interested in readers' thoughts.

Years ago I kept Scrabble in my classroom and occasionally let students play. Now Words With Friends is a game I will invite students to play with one another and with me, too. This digital version of Scrabble gives me a reason to let students use their phones in class. They'll think they're getting by with something! Mum's the word.

3P Grading: Student Responses and Making it Work for Parents, Colleagues and Administrators

2011-06-12T10:30:00.001-06:00

This is Part 2 of a two part post. Part 1 can be found here.

When I began contemplating using the 3P Grading Method, I worried about students gaming the system, getting others in my building on board with the plan, and making the computerized grade book work with it.

Student Responses

Students overwhelmingly loved the 3P Grading method, although many expressed having initial doubts in their reflections:

"The grading method was really good I liked it. At first I wasn't pretty sure about it, but it ended up being good." Lupita

"The 3P grading system is a great idea in letting us have a part in deciding our grade." Abbi

"I really like the 3P grading method, because it allows students to be honest with themselves and give the grade they think they deserve...." Tanner

On his website, Steve Peha tells teachers to have students write a reflection about their grade at the end of the course. I set this up as an essay, instructing students to address participation, progress, and performance, the 3P's. Since I used the method in my speech classes and have students in all four grades (9-12), I reviewed some basic essay expectations.

Students impressed me with the honesty in their reflections as well as the awareness of their own learning. Since coming to class prepared and having work done on time fall into the participation category, which counts as 50% of a student's grade, many wrote about that aspect of their performance candidly.

Participation

I think I deserve a B, because I didn't turn in my speeches on time and I didn't perform in front of the class a few times." Artemesa
"I often volunteered to help pass out folders and keep time for speeches, along with helping the teacher in other wasy. I enthusiastically participated in group discussions and class time projects. Also, my assignments showed hard work and lots of time put into them. For example, i had detailed notes and speeches that were well prepared." Courtney
"I think I earned about a B in participation...I think my grade could have been a bit higher if I hadn't missed as many days." Saria

Progress

"I would say that my progress developed very nicely. I had more respect for my teacher and my peers...I learned now that I can talk on the same one subject for at least 7 minutes. And not only me, but also my teacher has noticed progress in my attitude and skills." Makayla
"At the beginning of the year I was very scared to get up and talk in front of my classmates, and I could not meet the time limit. Now I can get up with no trouble at all and I have no problem meeting the time limit." Ben T.
"I always like to be the best at everything I do, so progress is natural for me...From my paper bag speech, which I barely made the time limit, to my persuasive speech...I have felt like I have made leaps and bounds in my skill level of speaking." Mitch

Performance

"My performance was a little messy sometimes, but I worked very hard to do well with getting up in front of the class.." Abbi
"I have been hindered in my ability to speak well and have performed in articulation and volume poorly...I have learned that being better prepared is helpful in increasing my performance." Jeshua
"However, in Performance I think I definitely deserve an F. Every speech I have gotten up to give has always been awkward and boring. ..[M]ost of my speeches have been just plain bad." Trystan

Public speaking is the greatest fear most students will face. The 3P grading method decreases the fear level by emphasizing participation, including preparation. Students experience freedom that gives them tools for overcoming their fear of speaking.

Participation also offers informal ways for students to mingle with their peers. During the trimester, I noticed that the most shy students often offered to pass out folders and do other little chores. These tasks got them out of their seats and talking to their peers, and as they did these tasks, their comfort level increased and level of fear decreased, empowering them to present their speeches.

Gaming the System

Generally, when I had students complete a grade check, I also had them set goals for each of the 3Ps and put them in writing. This let them know that I was paying attention to the criteria and their interpretation of each component.

Students often graded themselves more harshly than I graded them. However, a few students did have difficulty understanding some of the participation components, especially attendance. One student went on vacation to Hawaii and had access to the assignments. Yet he returned to class unprepared. He had, to my way of thinking, an inflated perspective of his overall grade, but the 3P Method resulted in his earning a grade for the class that I considered fair and accurate. That's because both student and teacher have equal say in the grade and because we don't give plus or minus grades in my district. Without the 3P Method, the student's final grade might have resulted in a conference with the student's parents.

Another student who didn't write the final reflection ended up with a low grade, and I had several lengthy conversations with the student's mom. When I agreed to let the student write the reflection, she did not address her grade or the 3Ps but vented and rationalized her choices. Thus, she abdicated her opportunity to have a voice in her outcome in the class. This her mom understood, saying that the student needed to learn something from the experience. I'll need to make this final reflection very clear next year.

Even if some students are a bit disingenuous in their reflections, I can live with this because on balance students see the system as forcing them to be honest with themselves. They have to face their own realities. Giving students a voice empowers them, and, paradoxically, giving them some power really increased my authority.

Getting Administrators & Colleagues in Step w/ 3P

This was easy. I simply emailed my administrators the document I prepared for students, a link to Steve Peha's website, and followed up with a visit. My administration knows I work to keep classroom issues out of the office. My district has been pushing for a "No Zero" grading policy.

The A Repair Kit for Grading: 15 Fixes for Broken Grades book advocates a no zero policy. For more information, check out this Pearson Ppt. The 3P Method almost guarantees students won't have zeros in the grade book. I participated in a book study on the 15 Fixes book this spring and prefer the 3P Method without hesitation.

Next, I presented the 3P Method to my colleagues in the English department. Some expressed doubts but were eager for me to try the system and report back on the results. I know of one colleague who plans to use 3P next year, and I'll expand it into my English classes.

Computerized Grading & the 3P Method

This is where I found the biggest challenge. I decided to record 3P Grade Checks and named each one that and included the unit. For example: 3P Grade Check Expository Speaking.

Next, I had to convert the 3P Method to numerical grades. I made each grade check worth 50 points. This made converting letter grades to numerical ones easy.

Whenever a student missed a grade check, I left a blank in the grade book and recorded the next grade check in the new and old slot. I did this because the 3P Method is cumulative and my goal was to make the final points in the computer correspond to the 3P final grade.

We are required to give a final at the end of the course. I recorded this as a numerical grade. I also did the same with the final reflection. Since I recorded a final grade check and these other components at the end of the trimester, it was pretty easy to tweak things a bit to reflect the final student grade agreed upon by myself and the student during our final conference.

A few students did not write a reflection, and I recorded this omission accordingly.

Overcoming Fears

Trying a new grading method requires a huge leap of faith. Yet the evidence suggesting that the status quo doesn't serve either students or teachers very well is overwhelming.

Mark Twain once said, "Education consists mainly in what we have unlearned." Maybe it's time to unlearn what we have learned too well about grading and make our classrooms even more about learning. Using the 3P Method this last trimester made pretty much everything in my speech classes work better. It's a win-win scenario.

Purposeful Grading Using the 3P Method: Participation, Progress, and Performance

2011-06-07T17:41:00.002-06:00

Part 1 of 2:

Steve Peha's 3P Grading Method, from the Teaching That Makes Sense website, transformed how I grade students and how they perceive their grades in my speech classes this past year.

Among the many tasks I perform as an English and speech teacher, grading is my least favorite. Whether I'm tackling a pile of essays, exit tickets, or a daily assignment, I often find myself looking for ways to grade tomorrow what I should grade today.

Even worse, teachers often find themselves on the defensive as students, parents, and administrators confront them about the grades recorded in the grade book.

How many of us have found ourselves in similar situations in which we're asked to base a grade on things other than the academic standards and curriculum for our subject?

The 3P Grading Method literally took the grading monkey off my back and transferred much of the responsibility for assessing students to the students themselves in terms of their participation, progress, and performance.

Rather than the onus for grading falling solely on the teacher's shoulders, the 3P method requires students to share equally the responsibility for grading based on three criteria: participation, progress, and performance.

Participation = 50% of the student's grade.
Progress = 30% of the student's grade.
Performance = 20% of the student's grade.

Of course, when I first saw this division, I was a bit skeptical. For English teachers, the final draft of the essay matters most. Similarly, as a speech teacher, I consider the final performance of major speaking assignments most crucial to student outcomes in my speech classes.

The 3P Grading method, however, operates on the simple premise that students who come to class prepared to participate will progress (read: learn more) in their performances, whether reading, writing, or speaking.

This theory works well in speech since I want students to get better as the course progresses. Although I haven't use it in English yet, I expect it to function well there, too, given the recursive nature of the writing process. The 3P Grading Method is somewhat intolerant of regression.

What does participation mean?

For 3P to work, students and the teacher must define terms and form a consensus about the criteria for evaluating the first P: participation. Steve Peha suggests some (p. 9, 29+):

Follow directions the first time they are given.
Come to class every day; don't be late!
Share regularly. Give good feedback. Ask good questions.
Take ownership of your results; be accountable; don’t blame.
Ask for help when you need it; use the advice I give you.

Teachers can build on these suggestions and discuss them with the class in an ongoing conversation. In my classes, I asked students to identify goals for participation that would help me and them assess their progress during the course. This made them much more cognizant of their own behaviors, attendance, etc.

Although Steve Peha offers ways of tracking participation, I encouraged students to track much of their participation by listing each day's tasks, what the student contributed to the discussion, how the student assisted the smooth functioning of the class, etc. For example, students participate by keeping time during speeches, by volunteering to present a speech first, by leading a group discussion, etc.

What does progress mean?

Students make progress and learn in several ways (39):

Improving participation (edited at 6:16 p.m. June 7, 2011)
Improving performance.
Setting and meeting goals.

To evaluate progress, Peha suggests teachers ask themselves some questions: What has the student learned? What can I expect students like mine to learn in the time from alloted for a given task? In what ways am I pleased or unsatisfied with a given student's progress?

Subjectivity does play a role in evaluating progress, as Peha notes. Teachers uncomfortable with this "P" can omit it and adjust the weight of participation and performance accordingly.

I found progress a fairly simple thing to gauge in my speech classes since several of the speeches have similar organizational patterns. For example, the expository, persuasive, and impromptu speeches all require a preview step. Students often omit this step early in the course, so including it in subsequent speeches provides a good indicator of progress.

What does performance mean?

Quality of work drives performance. For students to achieve quality in their work, they need models, which in speech means high quality speeches they can watch and emulate. In English mentor texts often serve as models. I show students sample speeches from YouTube; they watch speeches from the National Forensic League national tournament, and I often perform speeches for them. Together we deconstruct what makes the speeches effective so that they can transfer these techniques to their own speeches.

Secondly, students need criteria by which they and the teacher measure their work. In speech, I give students planning forms and speech evaluation forms. I can easily look at the planning form as I complete the speech evaluation as one way of assessing performance.

What do grades mean?

Over 10% of the seniors who graduated from my school this year received the "highest honors" distinction. That grade inflation lives a vibrant life comes as no news flash to teachers. Steve Peha addresses the loss of meaning in grading and offers a different way for teachers and students to consider what grades mean (55):

A = above and beyond
B = basically fine
C = could've done better
D = didn't try
E = excuses, excuses
F = forget about it

I didn't use "E" this year but will next year. I often found myself asking students, "What does "A" mean? I attempted to train students to use these definitions as they assessed themselves and to set goals for improvement based on them.

Coming up in Part 2: Gaming the system; students respond to the 3P method; getting administrators, colleagues, and parents on board; making the system work in the computerized grade book.

"How to Forge a Jane Austen Manuscript": Teaching Students Austen's Style w/ a Quill and Paper

2011-06-03T18:19:00.001-06:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a teacher at a professional development workshop must be in search of lesson plans!

The Early College Program PD I attended today at Idaho State University offered many fantastic lesson ideas. Among my favorites is Professor Roger Schmidt's presentation on teaching students to understand Jane Austen's style, particularly irony, by having them learn to write with a Quill just as Austen did.

Materials:

.
Sentences from select Austen works. I used Austen's famous line from Pride and Prejudice in my opening. It has been parodied numerous times. A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy at the Morgan Library offers a fine collection of Austen resources.
Examples of English Roundhand, the penmanship style in which Austen wrote. Many Google images exist and Dover books offers The Universal Penman as a resource
Ink
100% rag paper
Feathers for making quills. Although teachers can purchase both feathers and quills, Professor Schmidt prefers collecting them from "road kill" and hunters. He shared some amusing stories of traveling around collecting feathers in Southeast Idaho and the Washington coast, as well as the gift of a couple of unplucked wings from a student!

The Lesson:

First practice writing (copying) some of Austen's sentences on lined paper to get a feel for the slant and size of her lines. Use a dip pen for this first exercise.
Have students study Austen's penmanship. Several resources are available online. The Lady Susan facsimile is available in the Morgan exhibit, as well as a close examination of English roundhand.
Dr. Schmidt advises having students rewrite a short letter from one of Austen's works, such as Captain Wentworth's letter in Persuasion. Students can embody Captain Winthrop's character and write a new version of the letter, perhaps one in which Winthrop says he has waited for Anne long enough, suggests Dr. Schmidt. A second option is to have students imitate Austen's style, utilizing her sentences as models for their own ideas.

"I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant. You alone have brought me to Bath. For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this? Can you fail to have understood my wishes? I had not waited even these ten days, could I have read your feelings, as I think you must have penetrated mine. I can hardly write. I am every instant hearing something which overpowers me. You sink your voice, but I can distinguish the tones of that voice when they would be lost on others. Too good, too excellent creature! You do us justice, indeed. You do believe that there is true attachment and constancy among men. Believe it to be most fervent, most undeviating, in F. W. I must go, uncertain of my fate; but I shall return hither, or follow your party, as soon as possible. A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening or never."

With enough practice, students will begin producing elegant books in Austen's style.

Booklets created by Dr. Schmidt's students in Jane Austen's style.

Students who practice writing in Austen's style, copying her sentences, and rewriting her letters gain a greater appreciation of the novel as a new literary form, acquire an appreciation of elegant penmanship and the artistry of Austen, comprehend Austen's use of irony and complicated sentence structure.

For high school students, making quill pens, dipping them in ink, and making booklets from rag paper is good literary fun! It's a kinesthetic activity that will appeal to right-brain as well as left-brain students.

Making Quills:

Collect feathers
Strip the bottom feathers so that they don't impede one's grip. This is called fletching.
Cut the quill. This site offers nice illustrations.
Cure the quill in dry sand at 350 degrees.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a high school English teacher at the end of the school year looks forward to the upcoming year and the new lessons she will teach to next year's students.

Thanks to Dr. Schmidt's excellent session and Barbara Bishop's superb coordination of the ECP workshop, my students and I will have many new learning adventures next year.

Update: 4 June 2011

Jenna Gardner shared the video below w/ me via The English Companion Ning. Thanks, Jenna. This is a fantastic resource that gives yet another dimension to Dr. Schmidt's writing project.

The Divine Jane: Reflections on Austen from The Morgan Library & Museum on Vimeo.

Why Write Sentences?: "How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One" Part 3

2011-05-30T16:40:00.001-06:00

This is the third part in a three part series on the book.
Part 1, Part 2

Throughout How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One, Stanley Fish consistently emphasizes modeling as the most important tool for writers wanting to learn more about composition at the sentence level.

Although Fish spends consideralble white space describing three styles of senences--subordinating, additive, and satiric--his thoughts about first and last sentences will appeal both to writers and teachers.

When I teach students how to begin an essay or a speech, I emphasize the importance of the hook (attention-getting device). I use a fishing metaphor, obviously not original, since I teach in a nature-lover's paradise.

I offer students a menu of choices for first sentences: an anecdote, a quotation, a statistic, a joke, etc. Again, there's nothing new with these offerings.

Fish, in contrast, describes first sentences as having an "angle of lean" in that a first sentence points at the essay's subject; it anticipates the essence of an essay (99):

"Even the simplest first sentence is on its toes, beckoning us to the next sentence and the next and the next, promising us insights, complications, crises, and, sometimes, resolutions" (100).

Some first sentences point toward the future, some harken back to the past, and others challenge expectations. Still others create stasis, or offer meditative thoughts, or construct a narrative (plot), or require deliberation from the reader. Others construct arguments or describe characters.

Fish offers examples from both classical and contemporary first sentences to illustrate these ideas.

This shift to what first sentences do from different types of first sentences may offer teachers a way to engage students in stylistic considerations.

What do I want to say in my essay?
What must my first sentence say to lean toward my content?

These questions suggest an approach to teaching students how to begin an essay that I haven't considered often.

Conversely, last sentences also do more than sum up thoghts in an essay. Teachers often describe final sentences as clinchers. I usually suggest that students answer the question "So wht?" in their conclusions. They often struggle with this idea.

Fish proposes that last sentences "can refuse to sum up" (119). They can also "explode perspectives" (119).
Since last sentences don't have to get things going but are responsible for winding things down, Fish argues that they don't have as many responsibilities as first sentences.

To wit, he indicts some famous last sentences as not very good apart from their context:

It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done before; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

After all, tomorrow is another day.

Fish critiques the former as too readily imitatied and the latter as too banal, apart from their famous contexts.

The best last sentences, argues Fish, stand alone as impressive on their own. Some, like the last sentnce in The Great Gatsby, are eligaic:

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Admittedly, this is one of my favorite sentences in all of literature. Fish deconstructs the alliterative style of the sentnce as well as the nostalgic longing for a receding past, a promised land we can't reach:

This last sentnce mimes the treadmill we are on, mocking our efforts at acceleration with a series of b's--"beat," "boats," "borne," "back"--that keeps bringing us to the same place. We try to get ahead, but the current, both of life and the sentence, flows ceaselessly backward, carrying us again and again into the past, which is of course the sentence's last word. It says, here we are again (124).

Fitzgerald's last sentences resonates because of the irony of growing older and of witnessing change, change that often creates discomfort.

I find myself thinking about this longing for the past increasingly often, especially this past week as I witness the devastation in Joplin, Missouri via conversations with family, on television, and through social networking. We hear the longing, the being borne back into the past in the committment to rebuild what once was Joplin.

Other last sentences create dissolusion or peace; again Fish offers examples and analysis.

Toward the end of his little tome, Fish challenges readers to consider the many vantages from which we can view the best sentences and to

refuse the confines of the medium and deploy it as a springboard to truths it cannot express; use mortal language while bending, stretching, and even breaking it at the same time" (143).

Why write sentences? Why focus on the various forms for writing sentences? Because in a very real sense, the sentence sets the writer free; the sentence is the ultimate embodiment of truth.

Forgetting Thoughts to Learn "How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One"

2011-05-25T16:38:00.000-06:00

Part 2 of 3: In Part 1 I focused on Fish's ideas about relationships in sentences and activities for developing them.

What if teachers were to instruct students to forget about content, the what of writing, and instead helped them learn the how of writing sentences? This is Stanley Fish's advice in How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One.

Fish's advice would require a paradigm shift in writing instruction:

"The conventional wisdom is that content comes first...but if what you want to do is learn how to compose sentences, content must take a backseat to a mastery of the forms without which you can't say anything in the first place" (25).

Many teachers, myself included, focus on essay structure: introduction, body, and conclusion. We find ourselves frustrated when students scratch their heads in confusion about how to write a thesis sentence and its placement at the end of the introduction.

When I taught junior high in the mid-eighties, I spent considerable instructional time having students practice writing subordinating clauses they attached to kernel sentences that follow the subject + verb + object pattern. Later, I demonstrated how to move the subordinate clause from the beginning to the middle and then to the end of the base sentence.

Fish's suggestion that "when it comes to formulating a proposition, form comes first; forms are generative not of specific meanings, but of the very possibility of meaning"...Form, form, form, and only form is the road to what the classical theorists called "invention," the art of coming up with something to say" (27).

An essential truth, therefore, exists in students' denials of knowledge about what to do when it comes to putting thought to paper. It's the diction they get wrong, I think. Rather than not knowing what to say, they don't know how to say their thoughts.

Activities such as text switching diction in Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" will lead writers to understand "forms" as opposed to parts of speech. In writing Fish claims: "You shall tie yourself to forms and the forms shall set you free" (33).

One form Fish advocates practicing is "Had I". For example, Had I known Joplin, Missouri would be hit by an F5 tornado, I would not have burned all my personal days. Had I gone to law school, I'd now be a member of a profession that receives more respect than teaching. Had I not eaten the treat Alyssa brought me, I'd have no guilty feelings.

"Had I" sentences relate past actions (whether taken or not) to present ones (taken or not). "This very abstract account is an account of form; as a form, it is empty, but precisely because it is empty...it serves as a mold into which innumerable contents can be poured" (31).

Fish suggests practicing other forms: "Even though," "Were I to," "Notwithstanding that," "Depending on whether," and "In the event that." Each offers ample opportunity for filling in the slots with one's own ideas.

Function Follows Form: "What Is a Good Sentence?"

When contemplating the question Fish poses, writers typically employ stylistic constructions and devices, such as parallelism, balance, parataxis, etc. Similarly, Fish turns to Cicero, Aristotle, Milton, Swift, and others to build his argument, simply that all writers have a writing style:

"The shaping power of language cannot be avoided. We cannot choose to distance ourselves from it. We can only choose our style, not choose to abandon style, and it behooves us to know what the various styles in our repertoire are for and what they can do" (42).

Here's the partial classification list for sentences Fish suggests:

short sentences and long sentences,
formal sentences and colloquial sentences,
sentences that satisfy expectations and sentences that don't,
sentences that go in a straight line and sentences that surprise,
right-branching sentences and left-branching sentences,
sentences that reassure and sentences that disturb,
quiet sentences and sentences that explode,
sentences that invite you in and sentences that exclude you,
sentences that caress you and sentences that assault you,
sentences that hide their art and sentences that ask readers to stand up and applaud.

Simply, the key to writing good sentences is to consider the effect you desire, identify what you want the sentence to do (say), and decide how best to accomplish these two objectives.

How Do You Write a Sentence? Thoughts on "How to Write a Sentence: and How to Read One" by Stanley Fish

2011-05-22T18:43:00.001-06:00

Part 1 of 3
In his promising but compact book How to Write a Sentence: and How to Read One, Stanley Fish teases the reader into thinking composing at the sentence level necessitates a magical potion, key, or formula. All one needs to write like the masters is access to the Holy Grail of syntax.

Early on Fish promises "to give you both sentence pleasure and sentence craft, the ability to appreciate a good sentence and the ability to fashion one" (8). He does a much better job advocating for appreciation than offering ideas for craft.

Although I found no magic potion in HtWaS, I did rediscover important notions about composing sentences and offer a few of Fish's kernels here:

1. I like Fish's definition of a sentence: (1) "a sentence is an organization of items in the world; and (2) a sentence is a structure of logical relationships (16).

Activity: To illustrate his point, Fish suggest one observe items in a room and list four or five. Next, "add a verb or a modal auxiliary (would, should, could, must, may, might, shall, can, will)." Lastly, take this potpourri and construct a sentence, adding words as necessary. My items: dogs, computer, couch, phone, and might. My sentence: The dogs might mess up my blog post if they jump on the couch and onto the computer while I check my phone for texts.

Fish has a point to make from this simple exercise that, theoretically, one can alter to create a finite number of sentences: When we compose sentences from random words, and when we add other words to our random list to create what grammatically we call a sentence, we construct relationships.

Words alone are merely words we label as various parts of speech. Only by adding relationship building words to other words can we compose sentences. In Fish's words:

It is important to understand that the relationships that form the sinews and relays of sentences are limited. There is the person or thing performing an action, there is the action being performed, and there is the recipient or object of the action. That's the basic logical structure of many sentences: X does Y to Z...(this is the key point, ...): doer, doing, done to" (18).

The fear of making mistakes, argues Fish, paralyzes many would-be writers, which, of course, composition teachers know all too well. When writers remember that the key to constructing sentences resides in the structural relationships one desires to present, the writer is free to remember "there is only one error to worry about, the error of being illogical, and only one rule to follow: make sure that every component of your sentences is related to the other components in a way that is clear and unambiguous," unless ambiguity is the writer's objective (20).

Fish rightly notes exercises such as the construction of sentences from random words have value only when the writer reflects on the act of writing and deconstructs the previously crafted sentences.

2. For developing writers, Fish advocates focusing on form rather than thoughts. He suggests a sentence expansion exercise in which the writer builds a monstrous sentence from a kernel sentence. Teachers will recognize this exercise as what has been called a "rubber-band sentence," so called because like a rubber band, adding phrases and subordinate clauses to the base sentence stretches it to the breaking point.

Fish offers examples, but here's one of my own based on his model.
Base sentence: Puck chased the ball. (Puck is my dog).
Expanded sentence: On a rainy Sunday evening, while Snug--an anxious Schnauzer his owners initially thought was a Poodle cross--snored on the couch and while Ken watched "60 Minutes," Puck, the little white Terrier with the sweet smile, whose previous owners abandoned him at the city animal shelter, chased the broken, neon green tennis ball thrown repeatedly by his owner, a game that gave him joy beyond any other activity, a game he anticipated playing upon waking each morning, a game of which he never tired despite his rapid panting, and a game that kept his weary owners from completing any leisurely activity.

The key to building such sentences lies in the relationships among the various parts to the base sentence. Students don't necessarily need to know all the grammatical terminology nor should developing writers worry about the occasional misplaced modifying phrase. Simply using different three-word sentences and practicing new variations of the model empowers student writers.

In Part 2, I'll share more thoughts about Fish's book and ideas about writing and reading sentences.

Idaho's State Ed Leader Resorts to Intimidation and Threats in Response to Referendum and Recall Campaigns

2011-05-17T18:28:00.000-06:00

Idaho State Superintendent of Public instruction doesn't like the Idaho Education Association's referendum campaign to place the recently passed "Students Come First" legislation on the ballot for a vote from the electorate.

Nor does the grass-roots effort to recall Luna sit well with him. What to do?

Resort to intimidation and name-calling. That's Luna's response, which he details in a thinly veiled smack-down to superintendents across the state in which he

Threatens teachers with letters of reprimand.
Threatens suspension of teachers' certification.
Threatens teachers with revocation of their licenses.
Threatens stipulating conditions on teachers' certificates.

Luna ignores the strict protocol establish by both the recall and referendum campaigns.

Ironically, as an elected official and non-certified teacher, Luna is not bound by the Idaho Code of Ethics, but that hasn't stopped Travis Manning from Caldwell from charging Luna with ethics violations.

That Luna has suddenly calibrated his ethical compass strikes many teachers as the ultimate insult. After all, Luna failed to mention his proposed legislation in his campaign last fall. Luna continued to lobby and push his agenda in the last legislative session despite overwhelming opposition among the electorate. He extended his palm to out-of-state educational software companies eager to sell their products in Idaho by accepting thousands of dollars in campaign contributions.

During the campaign, Luna showed little regard for the ethical use of state funds and schools, as the IEA chronicles:

The IEA today released a photo of a political event in support of the Luna campaign on the grounds of Lake City High School in Coeur d’Alene last fall. In the months since the passage of his “Students Come First” legislation, Luna and his staff have sent emails in an effort to generate controversy about supposed Code of Ethics violations, and they took a taxpayer-funded statewide trip to try and sell the unpopular new legislation.

"Political activity outside a football game last fall at Lake City High School in Coeur d'Alene."

Dear Readers, if you live in Idaho or know someone who does, please sign the referendum and recall petitions and urge those you know to sign, too.

Finally, to Tom Luna, I say two things:
1. Shame on you for implying that teachers should discourage students from voting and for suggesting Idaho educators use their positions for political gain when the evidence clearly contradicts your thesis.
2. "Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye " (Matthew 5.7 KJV).

Students Who Have Made a Difference in My Life

2011-05-14T19:19:00.001-06:00

Teacher tournament week on “Jeopardy,” prompted Alex Trebeck to ask the panel: “Have you had any students who have made a difference in your life?” What a great question. Several of my past students come to mind:

1. Mark's influence:

M Years ago I assigned sophomores an essay asking them to write about something in their lives that had changed over time. One student, Mark, wrote about dinnertime in his home. He talked about being the youngest child in a large family that maintained the tradition of sitting down together each evening to eat dinner together. Over time the older siblings grew up, went away to college, and got married. Eventually, Mark and his parents were the only ones remaining in the family home, and just as his siblings scattered, so did Mark and his parents go their separate ways at dinnertime. Mark wrote about how he missed that time with his family but not because of the food. He missed the discussion about school, work, activities, and other important goings-on.

My children were very young at the time, and after reading Mark’s essay, I vowed to give my children the gift of family dinners together at least three or four times a week. We often had an extra child sharing dinner with us, and my children still fondly remember our family dinnertime. I owe Mark and his insightfulness much gratitude for keeping me from falling into the trap of eating on the run or in front of the television.

A Allen's Story:

Al Allen, a quiet Asian student, modeled the ideal of a student-athlete, even as a freshman, which is the year I taught him. On weekends Allen’s family traveled to Salt Lake City, three hours south, so that Allen could play on a competitive hockey team. During the week, Allen honed his writing skills and spent much time conferencing with me about his essays. He never allowed his hockey obligations to interfere with his academics. As a junior, Allen brought his AP history essays to me for an additional perspective.

Of course, many students live quiet lives typical of Allen’s, but Allen did something unique for many athletes. For his senior year, Allen’s family moved to Colorado Springs so Allen could experience a higher level of competitive hockey and academics. Allen entered college on a full athletic scholarship and had dreams of playing professional hockey. But after one year, Allen dropped his athletic scholarship to concentrate on academics.

In an email, Allen explained his decision, saying he did not like the privileges afforded athletes, such as immediate seating in restaurants, preferential dorm accommodations, and other perks. These made Allen uncomfortable. How many athletes have a moral compass that guides them to reject the bonuses that come from playing a sport at a major university? How many athletes are so troubled with the inequity and unfairness that they sacrifice their childhood dreams? This is what Allen did and why he remains one of the most impressive students I’ve taught.

Without question, all teachers have stories about students who have made a difference in their lives. Mark and Allen are only two of many. Sometimes keeping focused on the positive characteristics of students is a struggle, especially this time of year when seniors who have avoided attending class find a newfound interest in the impending outcome of their choices!

Sadly, sometimes those students who impact us most do so in negative ways. My goal is to focus on the positive, so I'll share more stories about the positive impact students have had on my life in the future. With thirty years experience, I have many tales to tell, and can write my own "Jeopardy" category!

'Preciate You: Honoring Teachers in My District

2011-05-06T13:01:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago I sent an email to some teachers in my district and requested input about the ways teachers support education. I made the request after receiving an email critical of teachers who don't protest openly with signs during organized gatherings.

My colleagues read into my email a different meaning. In honor of them and Teacher Appreciation Week, I'm posting their responses. Some asked for anonymity, and others signed their names.

English teachers do more than feed students a diet of wonderful literature, as a colleague in another school shares:

“I have many high school kids that don't have enough money for food, so I buy snacks for them, such that they can concentrate in class. These kids have a lot of pride, so I tell them to go to my snack drawer whenever they're hungry. They usually go when I'm not around. Several of them don't have any support at home. I spend $10.00-20.00 a week on them; this cost is above the normal classroom supply necessities.” (anonymous)

The following is from a colleague in my building. I had no idea the extent to which he goes to support students. John is retiring at the end of the year, and I will miss him in so many ways. He is among the most humble people I know.

I am Idaho High School Counselor of the Year. I have worked way beyond my regular hours each day helping hundreds of students. Among scores of other students this year, I have especially helped one young handicapped man. I have gone to his house to deliver assignments, collect assignments, offer support and proctor exams. I do my visits on weekends and after school and rarely during school hours as I am too busy during the regular day with other students. I hope that this promotes the education of this one particular handicapped student.

In addition to this sort of thing, I donate monthly to the Highland Foundation. This money is used for a myriad of activities and programs. I also give to the IEA Children's Fund which is used throughout the state for everything from clothing for underprivileged kids to educational assistive technology.

I hate "tooting my own horn" but I feel that this needs to be done so that our government officials don't continue to think that they are doing something new to "Put Students First." Educators have been doing this throughout the history of education.

Thank you,

John D. Howe

Andrew teaches down the hall from me. I love that he brings his students to my classroom to sing Christmas carols in Chinese each year. I had no idea our school hasn't provided the resources he needs for his language classes.

I believe strongly in teaching Chinese at the high school level. I worked with the principal of Highland High School to get a Chinese program approved, and I agreed to teach the classes. The district didn’t have the money to buy textbooks, so I have had to use lessons that I created myself from scratch. It has been a lot of work to make sure I cover all of the state standards in my lessons, and I have had to work many extra hours during school vacations and weekends to get these lessons ready. Everything I have used in my classes has been created or purchased by myself, yet my students have been quite successful in learning Chinese. I volunteered to work for a week last summer getting Total Instructional Alignment documents ready to standardize how foreign language is taught in Idaho. I also spend several weeks every summer on professional development training so that I can be a better teacher. Many of these activities are outside the requirements of my teaching contract, but I do them because I know my students deserve the best.

Andrew Lake

Highland High School

Not only is Mrs. Graham a generous teacher but she also has fantastic children whom I throughly enjoyed having in my class.

Mrs. Funk,

I teach third grade at Ellis Elementary. You taught both of my daughters at Highland (Sarah and Kelsey Graham). About 6 weeks ago, we had an animal research report due. We did much of the research and the technology portion (Inspiration Web and computer generated picture with facts) in class. We sent the report home to be polished up. The students had to bring back the finished project to be graded with a rubric. I had two students who did not meet the deadline; either because they forgot, procrastinated or did not get much support from home ( a combination really). I went to both of their homes that evening to pick up their reports after visiting with their moms. It was pouring rain and I went after working at my second job. Needless to say, this past week, another large project was due (Water Cycle Model). Both students who didn't make the deadline on the research report were both prepared to explain their model of the Water Cycle. I think they know I will come to their house if they forget--and I will!! I love to teach. I have clear expectations for all students. Just wanted to share.

Thanks,

MaryLynn Graham

I'm learning that if you want to know who really knows what goes on in a school, talk to a counselor, as the following comments show:

As a school counselor, I continuously see teachers and staff assisting students by going out of their way to help ensure that students have adequate food, clothing, and a safe place to be at night.

Teachers bring clothes, shoes, coats etc. to school for students who do not have adequate attire. I even know of a situation where a teacher anonymously purchased underwear for a student who confided in her that she only had two pair. Many of the teachers I work with have food stores in their rooms for kids who do not consistently have enough food. I'm not a teacher, but as a school counselor, another staff member and I got permission and took a student home yesterday to make sure she was safe due to a situation that occurred between the student and her father.

Hope that helps!

Tonianne Wood :)

A common thread echos in the lives of teachers: We have stories about the special teachers in our lives, like the sixth grade teacher who spent time on weekends with my brother after our father died. This was when Steve was in seventh grade.

For me that special teacher is Nydia May Jenkins, my high school speech and debate coach who later said she wouldn't "give a plugged nickle" for me when I began competing but "wouldn't trade for anything" by the time I graduated. Her tutelage meant I attended college on speech and debate scholarships. She use to come to my house and pick me up at 6:00 a.m. so I wouldn't have to walk to school on tournament days.

Miss J. attended my father's funeral when I was a junior in high school and guided me through some very difficult times during my adolescence. She's my muse and my inspiration for remaining in a profession that doesn't get much real appreciation these days.

Teachers near and far, in the words of my college debate coach, Dr. Robert Derryberry: 'Preciate You!

Rhetoric and the Teachable Moment: "Remarks by the President on Osama Bin Laden"

2011-05-02T11:52:00.000-06:00

Teachers love the "teachable moment." President Obama's speech announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden offered a teachable moment for my speech and English classes, all of which are currently immersed in persuasive speaking/writing units.

Last week we watched a video explaining Aristotle's use of logos, ethos, and pathos, which is available on the Read, Write, Think website. While the video addresses advertising specifically, the definitions also apply to all forms persuasion.

Before watching President Obama's speech, I asked students to draw a triangle on their papers and to label each point with the terms ethos, pathos, logos, and we reviewed the terms.

During their viewing of the speech, students had transcripts that allowed them to follow along as POTUS spoke.

After listening to the speech, students broke into small groups with each taking a protion of the speech to analyze. Each group posted examples of ethos, pathos, and logos on the board and added to their own graphic organizer of the speech.

My background in rhetoric and communication provided an opportunity to discuss the speech as both writing and speaking. I explained to students that President Obama's speech falls into the "special occasion" speech genre.

A brief review of general speaking and writing purposes followed:

to inform,
to persuade,
to narrate,
to entertain

My students had no trouble identifying President Obama's purpose to inform Americans about Bin Laden's death, but I wanted them to understand that the President had a larger audience than just Americans in mind, so I asked: "Did President Obama need to give a speech for us to know that Bin Laden was dead?"

Imediately, students understood that the world was listening to the President. I told my classes about my virtual Canadian colleagues who burned the midnight oil to listen to the speech. I reminded them of the world reaction to the 9-11 attacks: "We are all New Yorkers."

This discussion propelled us forward as we talked about purpose: to persuade us to unite as a nation; to convince the global community of the justice in our military action of entering Pakistan to find Osama Bin Laden; to persuade us to remember and honor the victims of 9-11, their families, and the military personnel who have served in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

President Obama's speech, I explained, is a form of Apologia, a form of public discourse designed to defend one's actions. Specificaly, President Obama uses the strategy of bolstering:

"Bolstering refers to any rhetorical strategy which reinforces the existence of a fact, sentiment, object or relationship. When he bolsters, a speaker attempts to identify himself with something viewed favorably by tthe audience" ( Ware, B. L. and Wil A. Linkuger. "They Spoke in Defense of Themselves : On the Generic Criticism of Apologia." Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice ed. Sonja K. Foss).

Another necessary element of apologia is denial. In the President's speech, he explicitly denies any wrongdoing by referencing Bin Laden's declaration of war on the U.S.A. and by noting his promise to enter Pakistan to find Bin Laden.

Thus, the President's address offers an explanation that asks the audience to understand his "motives, actions, beliefs" so as not to condemn him. And it offers a justification that asks for approval as well as understanding.

For a nation who will forever commerate 9-11 both understanding and justification are inherent audience responses, but as one of the greatest orators to take the podium, President Obama knows the world may need a reminder that "We're all New Yorkers."

That's what I love about the teachable moment. I'd love to hear how your teachable moment.

"Some Splainin to Do": Exposition and the Speaking--Writing Connection

2011-04-27T21:25:00.000-06:00

What can expository speaking contribute to our understanding of expository writing?

Since I started my career as a speech teacher, speech has defined my approach to teaching English. Last week my speech classes presented their expository speeches. It's a time of learning for us all.

I'm often amazed by the efforts students make to complete this assignment. Here Sidney explains her teratoma tumor. She actually talked the hospital into giving her a copy of the scans. I and her classmates sat riveted to our seats as we learned the definition of a teratoma tumor, the differences between mature and immature teratomas, how the tumor manifests itself in men compared to its form in women, and that teratomas can have teeth and hair!

Listening to students' expository speeches affords me an opportunity to know my students. I'm honored when student trust their peers and me enough to tell personal stories. Sidney shared that her teratoma necessitated the removal of an ovary, that kids gossiped about her before her surgery because they thought she was pregnant. But she also adopted a very light tone in her speech as she revealed the tumor's weight: 12 lbs!

I have students of all grade levels (9-12) in speech classes. Sidney is a senior whom I also taught in English. She and her fellow seniors bring maturity to the class as they often model a higher standard of classroom decorum and academic preparation for the younger students.

Student topics range the gamut from ordinary to odd. Nathan asked if he could bring chickens to class and use them as his required visual aide. His family raises chickens as a side business, and Nate chose to inform us about it. That's Red in Nathan's hands.

The chickens did misbehave a little: They made a deposit on a desk and clucked during the speech that followed. Afterwards, the class had a short chat about chickens in literature: Chicken Little, the chickens in Chicken Run, Chanticleer and Pertilote in "The Nun's Priest's Tale," to name a few.

Lately I've been thinking often about the similarities between expository speaking and writing. Ideas and organization are the most important components of an expository speech, just as they are in an expository essay.

The mode of exposition depends on the topic: definition, process analysis, comparison/contrast, cause/effect, and a combination of modes. Nathan's speech evolved through process analysis while Sidney's conflated the various modes, beginning with definition.

In English students workshop their essays in writing circles and through peer evaluation as they rewrite and refine their ideas.

Speaking workshops offer informal opportunities for students to practice designated parts of their speeches as they mill around the room delivering their attention getters and preview steps to their peers and receive a thumbs up when the speech works for the listener.

The Moral of the Story: Taking time to talk and presenting an expository presentation is required in speech, but it might be time to consider talking exposition a bit more in English. More thoughts about this forthcoming.

Teacher Lottery--Ed Reform: Who Will Cast the First Stone?

2011-04-17T17:42:00.002-06:00

The children assembled first, of course. School was recently over for the summer, and the feeling of liberty sat uneasily on most of them; they tended to gather together quietly for a while before they broke into boisterous play. And their talk was still of the classroom and the teacher, of books and reprimands. "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson

Half an hour north of where I live and teach, on the fringe of the Ft. Hall Indian Reservation, the small town school board in Blackfoot has taken a dystopian approach to implementing State Superintendent Tom Luna's recently- passed education laws---a lottery may determine who stays in the classroom and who goes.

The recently-passed legislation abolishing tenure and continuous contracts will force school boards into creative RIF plans. The Blackfoot school board recently adopted a new RIF policy, explains the Blackfoot Morning News of April 15, 2011:

First, natural attrition will be used. Then, if necessary, those on probation due to unsatisfactory performance will be terminated. In phase three, those on a plan of improvement due to unsatisfactory performance will be terminated. Finally, a formula will be used to calculate education, training and competency based on certification, endorsements, additional degrees and evaluations.

If additional layoffs are necessary, those in each category with the lowest formula scores will be placed in a lot to be selected for termination.

Teachers in Blackfoot surely must feel as though they live in Shirley Jackson's short story "The Lottery" as their employment may now be based on the time-honored, democratic process---drawing straws.

Hey, it worked in "The General Prologue" of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales to determine which of the pilgrims would tell their story first.

School boards in other districts might prefer a game of rock-paper-scissors to a lottery. Whatever method they use, they will need to decide how to implement Luna's laws.

The Blackfoot school board really shouldn't be vilified for their action. Some worry that the new legislation will open the district to lawsuits based on age discrimination. They just sense the constraints of Idaho's version of education reform.

That the Blackfoot board elected to abolish its policies governing teacher employment demonstrates just how far Luna's "Students Come First" legislation goes to circumvent local control of education.

As an allegory for Idaho education policy, Jackson's short story works all too well. In the education reform version of a lottery, the legislature, governor, and state superintendent have cast their stones. Now they use a weird form of conscription to enlist local boards into the game.

In Jackson's story, the town's citizens call upon the children to throw stones at the losing child, Tessie: "The children had stones already."

Ignoring Tessie's cries, "It isn't fair, it isn't right!," Jackson writes, "and then they were upon her."

Having shoved his wrong-headed legislation through the system, Luna's laws leave many school boards asking: "Who will throw the first stone?"

Out to Run & In to Write--A Little Inspiration from My Neighbors!

2011-04-15T14:47:00.002-06:00

I decided to take a break from writing my NBPTS recertification portfolio and went for a short run in my neighborhood. Here are some of my neighbors:

At first my dog ran from them and they from us. I've had students who initially react the same way at the beginning of the year. But when I turned to snap the picture, I had to wait for the neighbors to move away from the fence to get an unobstructed view.

We looked each other in the eye; they posed for the photo, and Puck and I trotted on home. Soon I'll say goodbye to this year's seniors, too. Many of us have gotten closer to one another as the year has progressed, but we'll go our separate ways and, perhaps, pass each other around town occasionally.

My neighbors inspire me as do my students, so having gone out to run, I'm back in to write.

"Angry Birds:" A Metaphor for Standardized Testing

2011-04-12T17:28:00.002-06:00

As sure as the tulips begin to sprout; the trees begin to bud; and teens plan senior sneak, prom, and graduation, state-mandated testing assumes its federally-mandated intrusion into American classrooms.

"Gr-r-r-there go, my heart's abhorrence!" With apologies to Robert Browning and his "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister."

We have three computer labs in my school. All are booked for six weeks to accommodate the state-mandated test. We have a media center with room for one class--almost. It only has twenty-eight computers. It, too, doubles as a testing center but for the AP tests.

Still, the tests reign. So while I played "Angry Birds" last night, a metaphor formed in my mind. Here I offer two options:

1. The birds = teachers and/or students. The pigs=the tests and/or their proponents.

2. The birds=the tests and/or their proponents. The pigs= the teachers and/or students.

Both metaphors speak to the feeling I have of being hurled into a fortress of federal mandates and of having said mandates thrown at me.

Those who have discovered the addictive pull of "Angry Birds" know what I'm talking about. For others, I offer a brief tutorial.

I'm required to teach research skills in both my speech and English classes. The all-important tests prohibit me from offering students sufficient media center or lab time.

Today I shared the media center with a colleague; another colleague has graciously sacrificed two of her media center days for one of my speech classes; a third colleague has agreed to share computers with yet another class.

I'm certain many teachers around the country have tales to tell of a much more horrific nature. I hope you'll share.

"Angry Birds" is free. There's nothing remotely free about standardized tests of any flavor. Like the federal deficit, we don't yet know the real cost to education; we just keep piling it on.

Albert Pujols: Lessons for Educators, Students, and Others

2011-04-10T19:51:00.000-06:00

"Albert has shown us many things since coming to America. How to be a great baseball player is just one of them." Bob Simon of CBS "60 Minutes" concluded his profile of St. Louis Cardinal slugger Albert Pujols with these words.

Full disclosure: Pujols is my favorite player. When I discuss baseball with students and the conversation turns toward our favorite team, I say, "My father raised me right. My favorite team is the St. Louis Cardinals."

Pujols's accomplishments on the diamond put him among the best baseball players of all time: "he has never hit less than .300, never had less than 30 home runs, and never had fewer than 100 RBIs. No player in baseball's long history has ever achieved that in his first ten seasons."

So what does Albert Pujols's career show students and teachers? The "60 Minutes" story offers some answers, which "60 Minutes: Overtime" extends:

Work Counts as Much as Talent: Sure Pujols has phenomenal talent, but his work ethic deserves credit for putting him in the upper echelon of baseball greats. Pujols "takes 15 to 20 thousand practice swings a year," says "60 Minutes."

Being Driven Produces Results: When asked what makes him work so hard, Pujols describes his anger at being drafted in the 13th round.

Everybody Deserves a Chance: Pujols's foundation sponsors a prom for teens with down syndrome. His daughter Isabella has down syndrome. He dances with the prom-goers through the night.

Loyalty counts: The St. Louis Cardinals took a chance on Pujols, drafting him in the 13th round, behind 401 players, in 1999. Pujols says he wants to be a Cardinal forever.

Pay your debts: His wife Dierdre describes the family's financial woes in Pujols's early career, yet he refused to file bankruptcy.

Reputation and Name Count: Pujols respects baseball and leads an exemplary life free of steroids and substance abuse, including using tobacco and alcohol.

Actions Speak for You: Rather than seeking photo ops and celebrity, Pujols practices humility. He even visited Brandon, a sick boy, and gave him the bat he used to hit his 400th career home run.

"There's a search for examples of excellence," says Cardinal Manager Tony LaRussa, and Pujols is that example.

One final thought: Go Cards!

#engchat: Out of the Desk & Into the Text: Using Performance Pedagogy in ELA

2011-04-04T17:01:00.001-06:00

I teach speech as well as English. I'm also certified to teach drama, but I lost my way until I found the Folger Shakespeare Library and the wonderful folks there. Many of the resources I'm sharing are based on the Folger materials and lessons I acquired at the mini workshop I attended at the University of Tulsa the summer of 2007 and the Folger Teaching Shakespeare Institute in Washington D.C. the summer of 2008. The next TSI is 2012.

I learned to use Photo Story at TSI and now use it w/ poetry and short stories. This document is an assignment I use w/ a unit on the Southern Gothic short story.

Interactive Summaries work well w/ any text. I'm sharing the assignment and an example from Chaucer.

Silent Scenes: Here's the Dumb Show from Hamlet. I have students practice w/ this scene, using props and sparse costuming, before writing their own. Any text will work, particularly heroic tales such as Beowulf. I've identified the scenes I allow students to use for their silent scenes.

Line Tossing: Put lines from any text on note cards and distribute to students. Students mill around the room and say the lines to one another. Then have them switch cards. Next, have students create skits w/ two or three people. Don't add any words to the lines but split and reorder the lines in any way desired. You can incorporate these lines into an interactive summary or have students predict action in the plot, talk about new vocabulary, name the characters, etc. I use these lines for The Importance of Being Earnest. I shared this activity at a faculty meeting. It works in other subjects, too.

Pic: Final Student performance from The Importance of Being Earnest.

I have used line tossing to introduce British poetry to students. Again, students mill around, say lines to one another, and follow up w/ skits. I think it would be fun to have students get in random groups and create chants or some other type of "poetry performance" w/ their groups lines.

Shoe Box Staging: The shoe box becomes a stage on which students move and manipulate the characters in a scene. They must plan stage directions and movement, entrances and exits, a summary of the action. They must know why characters do what they do. This performance task works well w/ The Crucible as well as w/ any Shakespearean work.

Tone is one of the most difficult literary concepts for my students to understand. I give students the DIDLS Tone list and ask them to show me what a specific tone "looks like." This can be done in a milling fashion so that no student feels put on the spot. You can also try incorporating tone into tableaux lessons. That is, students create tableaux that show a specific tone or one specific to a passage in a text. The tableaux tutorial at the Shakespeare In American Life website is invaluable.

For teaching the nonfiction selections in British literature, I've had students collaborate on a Google Doc in which they first write a news story. We review the elements of a lead: who, what, when, where, why, and how. Then the group records the story using my Flip camera. This essentially is a news broadcast.

Awards Speeches: I have students in speech present awards speeches to one another, but this assignment can work for characters too. The student interviews a "character," decides on an award based on the interview, creates the award, plans a presentation, and delivers a 2-3 minute speech in which s/he presents the award. Garrett is receiving the "Heavy Lifter" award from Shylo in the picture below:

At the invitation of the Folger Shakespeare Library, I presented at NCTE 2010 on the value of including performance pedagogy in teacher training programs. Here is the Prezi I used in my presentation.

The Folger Teaching Shakespeare Institute activities included many performance opportunities. This document was prepared and shared by an amazing professor at American University, Calleen Jennings.

Thank you for joining me for #engchat. If you have any questions, please contact me.

"Shush!" You're Not Suppose to Talk about the Naughty Students

2011-04-03T15:06:00.000-06:00

I'm pretty lucky. I encounter very minor behavior problems in my school. I'm sure I'm a bit naive about what goes on in classrooms elsewhere. Still, the silencing of teachers who speak out about student behavior scares me.

Today's Huffpost addresses the New Jersey first grade teacher who was suspended for comparing her job to that of a warden and for characterizing her students as "future criminals in comments she made on Facebook. The teacher certainly exercised poor judgment in posting such a critique publicly.

However, with first grade the second year of formal education (after Kindergarten), the behavior of six-year-olds may say more about their experiences before entering school than those of their formal education. That just won't do in the era of "Blame the Teacher."

Still, I cringe whenever I see teachers disparage students or their work on Facebook or in other public forums.

Yet in a system that discourages teachers from voicing their concerns about student behavior and interruptions to the learning of other students, some push back in public. Should they?

School board president Theodore Best explains the reason for the first grade teacher's suspension: "The reason why she was suspended was because the incident created serious problems at the school that impeded the functioning of the building." That's because parents complained.

Does anyone else see the irony here? Who was concerned about student behavior that "impeded the functioning" of the classroom? Who listens to teachers' concerns about student behavior and bullying?

A second grade teacher was suspended for reporting bullying. She had the temerity to step outside the school's reporting track when she perceived no action against the bully would occur, as Anderson Cooper reports.

Dealing with classroom behavior and management often offers teachers a lose/lose proposition, particularly for those whose supervisors define quality teaching by the absence of discipline referrals and parental complaints.

Should we reach a time when teachers no longer comment on student behavior, remember silence communicates much. Parents, teachers, supervisors, and critics should listen to what's not said.

Look Who's Listening

2011-03-29T20:03:00.000-06:00

“Don't underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can't hear, and not bothering.” Winnie the Pooh

Today students in my speech glasses played a listening game called "Listen Up" in our ongoing efforts to become better active listeners as opposed to hearers only. The game rules:

Four students sit at the front of the room.
The teacher asks the students a question to which each responds in turn.
The first respondent speaks for thirty seconds.
The second student repeats the first person's response and then offers an answer--different from the first to the question.
The third student repeats the first response, then repeats the second response, and then offers one.
The fourth student follows, repeating each of the first three responses, followed by yet another answer.
Lastly, the first respondent repeats all four responses.

We played one round of the game in each of my three speech classes, using two questions: What quality is most important for a teacher to have in order for students to learn? What is the most important quality for a student to have to be successful in school?

Students' responses to the qualities necessary for students to have fascinated me:

Dallen said, "A willingness to work hard is the most important quality in a student." He expounded his answer by describing how a hard working student does assignments on time, studies for tests, etc.

Ty said, "A willingness to learn is the most important quality for a student to have." Students who are willing to be taught learn better than those who think they know everything.

Derek said, "Good study habits" are necessary for success in school.

Other students mentioned listening as the most important criterion for student success in school. I suspect that this student may have been riffing on the purpose of the activity. Still, this student's response offered an opportunity for discussion.

Students' responses to the question about teacher qualities surprised me:

The first student to speak said teachers need patience because students learn differently from one another, and teachers need to understand this. Another student indicated "teachers need to make the class fun" and that a teacher with a sense of humor helps make learning fun. This student also spoke about the importance of conversation to the learning process.

Notably, no student mentioned knowledge of the subject, although they may not understand that this is integral to the qualities they value in teachers.

Today's lesson reminds me that students understand their learning needs and responsibilities far better than many inside and on the periphery of education realize. We do our students a great disservice when we take away all ownership for their educational success.

“If the person you are talking to doesn't appear to be listening, be patient. It may simply be that he has a small piece of fluff in his ear.” Winnie the Pooh

*For more on listening, check out this information on "The Art of Listening."

Pardon My Twitteruption--It Did Get the IEA's Attention!

2011-03-16T18:20:00.000-06:00

Question: Why did Sherri Wood, Idaho Education Association president, call me?

Answer: In a series of tweets late March 10 and early March 11, I made some comments that spiked the attention of my union, the Idaho Education Association. I'm posting the relevant parts of the conversation between myself and the IEA press agent here in reverse order for ease of reading:

@IdahoEdAssoc @DianeRavitch IEA asleep at the wheel on Luna plan. Should have offered legislature a different choice but didn't.

@gmfunk @DianeRavitch http://idahoea.org/hotline/articles/when-will-the-iea-put-forth-its-own-plan We've been over this before ...

@IdahoEdAssoc Transportation budget in Idaho up 15% next fiscal year. Ed cut at least 5%, maybe more.

@IdahoEdAssoc Heard it all before. Excuses for NOT strengthening certification in ID and recertification. IEA should have known. SHAMEful.

@IdahoEdAssoc I am very angry w/ IEA.

@IdahoEdAssoc Thanks for encouraging NBPTS cert. Guess that's why I'm paying $1150 out of pocket to rectify and get nothing in Idaho 4 it.

@IdahoEdAssoc Staying the course landed us in Bermuda Triangle of Education reform.

@IdahoEdAssoc My husband says staying the course absolutely wrong thing to do, fed Vandersloot's rhetoric, did what Luna wanted. Thanks

@gmfunk Please send an email outlining anger, ideas. Twitter ill-suited for dialogue. Send to jfanselow@idahoea.org I will forward it. Thx.

On this last tweet, I wholeheartedly disagree. Twitter consistently proves itself an excellent platform for shaking up the status quo and getting attention from power brokers that typically ignore more conventional modes of communication--including email. Still, I did promise to compose an email as requested.

However, I have not yet emailed IEA, which prompted the call from Ms. Wood.

We talked about many things, including IEA's decision not to give the legislature a choice by offering its own plan. I value hearing IEA's goal of keeping the public's attention focused on Luna's heinous legislation. It's good to know that the advertising aimed at demonizing the union and paid for by Melalucca president Vandersloot actually mobilized support for teachers.

Behind closed doors, in concert with the NEA and paid consultants, IEA is strategizing and weighing options.

Without input from its membership, IEA leadership decided not to present a plan that has been in the works to the legislature.

This was all news to me, and I asked President Wood if I had missed something in IEA's hotline. I had not.

How do I feel about being locked out of IEA's planning? Disenfranchised, as though my opinion about issues directly affecting teachers and students are best made without input from teachers such as myself. Yet I understand IEA's objective of keeping attention focused on the Luna Plan.

Still, I am not comforted. The legislature has passed the pay for performance plan, the abolition of collective bargaining, and will begin reconsidering Luna's laptop learning proposal in its newest incarnation.

I stand by my contention that IEA should have been more vigilant, should have known Luna had something in the works; after all, the state department of education unveiled a new fourth grade history curriculum with on-line options last months ago.

As a pawn in the education reform game, I hope IEA's strategy circumvents a check-mate from Luna and the legislature.

*I want to publicly thank Sherri Wood for calling me. These are trying times for all educators, and I know President Wood has more pressing business than to devote a chunk of time listening to a seemingly disgruntled union member. I very much appreciate Ms. Wood's willingness to listen to my myriad concerns. I'm committed to maintaining my union affiliation.

Teachers Take "Reform" Personal--Real Personal: A Colleague's Response to the Luna Plan

2011-03-14T17:52:00.000-06:00

I've previously blogged about the attacks on Idaho teachers, who face a massive restructuring of public schools. At this writing, two of the proposed bills in state superintendent Tom Luna's plan have been passed by the legislature and await signing by the governor. That they will be signed is virtually a foregone conclusion.

My colleague next door, Tom VanDeren, penned the following in response to the proposed legislation and has graciously consented to my posting it in this forum. As Tom passionately writes, teachers take "education reform" personal--real personal:

I have been a certificated and contracted secondary teacher in Idaho for fifteen years. Prior to entering this field, I worked in consumer finance and banking for seven years. I believe I am qualified, therefore, to be able to offer my opinion concerning the State Superintendent’s plan to “fix” public education in Idaho.

I knew when I went back to school to earn my Secondary Certification that I would be entering a field that would not be as financially rewarding as the one I’d left, but monetary reward was not my main motivation for my desire to become a teacher. I did believe, however, that if I were to become an educator, I would be able to maintain a standard of living and, at the very worst, never earn less than I had the previous year–provided I worked hard and helped my students succeed. I also, foolishly, believed that I would be entering a profession that was respected and deemed valuable by both the citizens of Idaho and its elected officials.

I have held my end of the bargain. My first teaching position was in a small town in Lincoln County. At that school I taught grades six through twelve, coached football and basketball, directed the school’s dramatic productions, served as the senior class advisor, and volunteered at literally every function that involved students, the school, or both. According to Mr. Luna, though, I didn’t put the students first because I had the audacity to join the Idaho Education Association. I moved into a rental house less than one-hundred yards from the school because I apparently was solely concerned with how much money I could make–without any concern for my students. I fed students at my home and constantly bought meals for players when we traveled because I love money more than kids. Mr. Luna and his accomplices have made it abundantly clear that they know all about me, my motives, and my teaching abilities. In truth, they know less about me (and my colleagues) than they do about education, which is really saying something.

I have since moved through three subsequent school districts, moving to larger schools with greater challenges and better opportunities. I have had countless formal and informal observations from a myriad of administrators, and all of those reviews have been either exemplary or outstanding. I have devoted countless hours to helping students improve their test scores, their acting skills, and their athletic abilities. I never expected any financial reward for that time spent with other people’s children and, of course, did not receive any. My own children regularly came last as I taught, coached, and helped my students. But I and others in my profession have been painted by Mr. Luna and others of his ilk as money-grubbing, lazy non-professionals who have served as nothing more than leeches on society. That certainly makes us feel completely unappreciated, no matter how one “weights and measures” it.

At this point in my career I can honestly say that I have never felt as maltreated, disrespected, and attacked. My future, my occupation, my avocation, and my family’s security are being voted on by people who have openly expressed a distaste for me–without ever having taken a moment to meet me or spend a second in my classroom. The irony is that I went into education believing I could affect lives and impact the future in some small way. I knew I would never be wealthy, but I never anticipated the personal, spiteful attacks that have been leveled at me by elected officials, wonderful examples of the Peter Principle, California carpet-baggers under the guise of the Tea Party, and modern-day snake oil salesmen from Idaho Falls.

I hope that the people of Idaho will seriously consider the ridiculous nature of the proposed “overhaul” of an educational system that Mr. Luna himself touted as being wonderfully successful during his campaign for re-election. Idaho has ranked no better than forty-fifth in the nation in per pupil spending (that number is now fiftieth-at least we’re better than Puerto Rico!); yet, our students regularly score higher than the national averages on test scores. This is a system that needs to be overhauled?

Empirical data has shown that the basic “ideas” of the proposed plan are 1) not new to Mr. Luna and 2) wildly unsuccessful in instances where they have been implemented. What does work, and those crazy little things called “facts” back this, is proper funding for education, manageable class sizes, great teachers, and student access to up-to-date materials. Of those, the only constant that education in Idaho has seen in the past few years is great teachers. I work with some of the best, most talented, and hardest-working people in the state. Good thing they’re hard working, though, because almost all of them have to work at least one additional job to make ends meet.

I personally go to Alaska from June through August (so much for the idea that teachers only work seven months a year) to supplement my income in the commercial salmon industry. I don’t do it because I love the scenery or want to be away from my wife and children all summer long. My wife, who is a long-time (twenty-three years in the profession) teacher, also has taken on part- time positions so that we may live a lifestyle somewhat commensurate to two college-educated professionals.

Mr. Luna and others who are mistakenly backing his ill-conceived plan claim to “care for the children.” How nice of them. How inconsiderate of them, though, to absolutely disregard those of us who have always cared for the children.

Tom VanDeren

Pocatello

The two bills that have passed are the revocation of collective bargaining and the pay for performance plan, which currently is an unfunded mandate.

What a Difference a Day [In First Grade] Makes

2011-03-06T12:17:00.000-07:00

My day in first grade began at 9:15 a.m. on Friday, March 4, 20011 at Morley Nelson Elementary School in Boise, Idaho. I went to first grade with my granddaughter, Kayla, and planned to help Mrs. Buckles, Kayla's teacher, any way I could. I received an education in the vital groundwork lower elementary teachers give their students, groundwork that lays the foundation for students' success in high school. Here's what I learned:

Games Make Learning to Read Fun:

Students in Mrs. Buckles' class rotated around reading circles. After finishing a reading/vocabulary exercise called "Drops in a Bucket," students practiced reading by playing games, listening to an aide read a story, listening to audio stories of their choice, and working on a story matching exercise about a dog named Rags and his new dog house, which included some tough words, such as terrific and creation. This interpretive activity required students to "read" the picture to understand the written story.

I helped manage students at the game table which required students to take turns, read cards printed with questions about pictures, and move spaces on a board when they answered correctly. Some of the questions: "Am I a pup in a cup?" and "Am I a dog on a log?" exposed students to rhyme, repetition, and parallel sentence structure, all important literary and syntactical techniques in high school English classes.

What we called the silent e in the 1960's teachers now call bossy E because this letter makes the vowel preceding it talk. How cool and how fun games make the same phonetic concepts we learned in the 1960's! First graders like to give directions to one another, but few like to be bossed around, so they can easily relate to the vowel predicament.

The Statue of Liberty is Green:

Morley Nelson Elementary has students representing 19 languages enrolled. These include Korean, Bosnian, Russian, Somalian, and 15 others. My granddaughter's class is indeed a melting pot. "Did you know I'm from Mexico?" one student asked me. One little girl wore the distinctive scarf of Muslim women.

Yet students in Mrs. Buckles' class learn about important American symbols: the bald eagle, the Statue of Liberty, the flag, the Liberty Bell, and the White House by watching a video called "The Symbols of the United States" and by making symbol books, which the students read aloud after they finished coloring, cutting and gluing their pages. At the end of the day, Mrs. Buckles gave each a Statue of Liberty foam crown, donated by Liberty Tax Service. Hey, it is the U.S.A., after all.

Some of Mrs. Buckles' first grade students above.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: Environmental Ethics Begin Early:

A student scolded me for putting paper in the wrong container: "It goes there, not there!" I hope I was able to redeem myself during story time when I read the award-winning "Joseph Had a Little Overcoat." When Joseph's overcoat wears out, he doesn't throw it away; he recycles it into a jacket. Each recycled item experiences a new incarnation in Joseph's world. The book has little cutouts to emphasize the idea of reducing our environmental footprint and is beautifully illustrated. The English teacher in me loves the allusion to Joseph's coat of many colors in the bible, and I suspect there will be students who make the connection in time. I think Morley Nelson, a naturalist and environmentalist, would be pleased.

Character is Pretty Evident in First Graders:

Not all students come to school prepared to play in the sandbox of learning. Some present real behavioral challenges: from keeping their hands to themselves, to taking turns, to being honest when moving their game pieces, and to keeping their eyes on their own papers, elementary teachers juggle all kinds of challenges in addition to teaching the curriculum. I'm in awe that they do so with grace and poise. To assist students in keeping their eyes focused, Mrs. Buckles uses "offices," three-sided cardboard screens students propped on their desks during their spelling test, available through Really Good Stuff. Still some tried to game the system and peer over, around, and under the screens.

Teachers Teach Together in an Open and Caring Collaborative Community:

At Morley Nelson, teachers and staff work as a team in a synergistic relationship to optimize the learning of all students. Mrs. F., the school counselor, taught a health lesson about the risks of smoking and gently reminded students how to encourage their parents who smoke to quit. The music teacher used puppets and movement to weave a physical activity into rhythmic movement. Jessie, an aide from Americorp traveled from classroom to classroom assisting teachers with reading and math. Even though each classroom has walls and doors, the staff had has created a feeling of openness throughout the school community.

The Boise school district and community can be proud of creating a place of learning that's new and fresh and that serves many at-risk and lower economic students. In fact, the school's demographic includes over 85% eligible for the free and reduced price lunch program, yet these students attend school in a cutting-edge, new facility with superb and caring teachers.

I have four personal days left this year, so I hope I get to go back to first grade in the near future, where there's always something for a senior teacher to learn.

Real Supermen are Men Who Teach

2011-02-25T18:25:00.001-07:00

Male Elementary Teachers at Ashley Elementary in Denver

Living in rural Idaho often entails a long wait. I waited many months for Waiting for Superman to land in Redbox, and when it did finally fly in, I used my free movie coupon to rent a copy, which I watched with my husband whose keen insight into human nature prompted this question:

"Where are all the men? There aren't any men in any of these kids' lives. You only see the moms."

The real men in the lives of children are in the classroom, standing in front of students, modeling appropriate adult-male behavior, and serving as surrogate parents for the phantom fathers so often absent in the lives of children.

Teaching has long been known as a female profession. More than 75 percent of teachers are women, and the public still, in many cases, views teaching as a supplemental career. Recently, I spoke with a military recruiter who told me he'd like to become a teacher after retiring from his military career. Since he'll receive a full military pension, he plans to use teaching "to supplement my income."

In 2008 the number of male teachers reached an all-time low. A number that has been in decline since 1981, reports the website Men Teach. Additionally, retiring male teachers usually get replaced by women.

Recognizing the importance of male role models in the lives of students who increasingly lack them, the principal at Ashley Elementary School in Denver has purposely sought male teachers, who now outnumber their female counterparts.

I'm fortunate to have many outstanding male colleagues, including two in my department, and I admit that my favorite college professors have been men.

So when I think about the firing of teachers in Providence, Rhode Island, the salary reductions many teachers have faced and will continue to face, the political climate in Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida, Ohio, and here in Idaho, where our legislative senate has already passed two pieces of legislation gutting collective bargaining and approving so-called "pay for performance," I wander how man more super men will leave our classrooms and choose more lucrative and prestigious professions.

If the political power brokers controlling education really want Superman in the classrooms of America, promoting a climate of disrespect, deskilling, and demotion of the teaching profession won't encourage the Man of Steel to teach in a profession that, arguably, often symbolize kryptonite, the radioactive substance to which our hero is most vulnerable.

Update: 2-26-2011
For additional analysis and reaction to the Providence, RI firings, including teacher reactions, commentary on the budget crisis that provoked the firings, and anti-union rhetoric regarding teacher evaluations and the firing process, check out this Newsy report, that synthesizes multiple perspectives in a report. A transcript of the video is also available.

Multigenre Research: Student Reflections and a Teacher's Thoughts

2011-02-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

The long, cold wenter seems a fitting metaphor for the challenges students and I faced navigating the multigenre research project, which I began assigning seniors last year. Tom Romano created the multigenre research project, which in my class is a hybrid traditional/creative assignment. This year we began the project January 3, 2011 and today students (most) handed in their completed projects.

The way I have students approach research has evolved through the years, and the multigenre project is the latest incarnation of that evolution.

In his reflection, one student wrote about the six-page handout in exasperation. One student who wrote about abusive relationships referenced her abusive "ex-boyfriend." That's the best reflection I read since through her project she found her way out of the abuse.

Some other student reflections follow:

I feel like this project has helped widen my writing skills and made me think a little bit harder on what contents I am adding to my paper.
Most projects tell me exactly what to do and how to do them. I felt like I had more control over the type of work I cose and the grade I will receive. I feel like this project was a real eye-opener on what real work is and how much time it truly takes to do a good job on it.
One thing I found really helpful was the note cards. Collecting data that I found relevant to my topic and recording them on the note cards really saved me time when it came down to the final deadline.
The other genres also got me thinking more about the topic and gave me more ideas for my paper.
This project has really been fun for me, because if [sic] gave me and [sic] opportunity to research about a job that I could discover and learn about.
I also learned that this project is extremely difficult. My computer seems to think so too considering it crashed on me three times in one night while compiling tghe final paperwork....
This little stack of papers is my pride and joy right now, and it's about to be fine-tooth picked combed by Mrs. Funk here, or already has.
When I first heard about this thing that my teacher was calling a multi genre research project...I thought that she was crazy to give us such and [sic] immense project.
Another thing I enjoyed about this particular project was the different genres that we did such as the Toondoos, Glogster, Prezi, or even looking on the cooltoolsforschool.com and having the opportunities be endless.
If I had to do something differently I would do a lot differently....Hopefully learning from my mistakes will make me a better writer and a better student.
When I first looked at the project and all we had to do, I thought I would never be able to do it. It looked to [sic] big and hard for my brain to comprehend.
Things such as the poster are the things that I do best on; I am able to show my creativity.

Among the most enjoyable part of the project is the student presentations of two of their genres, including a love letter to a snowboard and a snowboarding video showcasing our local ski area, Pebble Creek. For students who shun traditional essays and who have creative talents not ofen evident in more traditional English classes, the multigenre research project offers the best of both worlds.

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Brenda Baumgartner Stanley
I can't believe I have to defend our donation to the Pocatello Pride event on the news. I didn't have to defend any of the other hundreds of contributions we've made to organizations in the community.