Sweet painted lady

My Toyota is a pole dancer. She returned from the tire shop yesterday looking soiled, red with shame. A new sheen on her sidewalls declared the obvious: she was a kept coupe. And I had been blind until then. The telltale sign? Armor All on the outside of the normal tires which had just replaced their winter counterparts.
Why did the local garage feel it necessary to tart up my Toy this way? As Hamlet puts it, “paint an inch thick.” She squeaks now as we round corners in the Harmon’s parking structure, cruising on the smooth cement, and when I return from my shopping trip, a sultry-voiced stranger hollers “hey”, likely thinking I will pimp her out. No go, buddy.
Parking in front of my own house, I get out and notice the showroom-slick glistening black that bespeaks her dim origins, hinting that I just picked her up off a lot on south State Street near the Republican Tavern. Not across the tracks, but beside a bail bond office, and straying into the territory of high interest financing.
She has been a good car; why the Snap-On tools men thought she needed a makeover I don’t get. Her chassis is fine, her trunk capacious, and aside from a little glass that keeps turning up from a break-in last autumn, the interior spotless.
Today I am a little embarrassed to be seen around town with her. It’s Sunday. You know how the church crowd talk. One minute it’s “you’re the model couple” and the next people are tweeting you e-Harmony stats during the sermon. I’ve seen it all.
But I am boldly going to park next to the red curb, leave the windows open on this 87-degree morning, and stroll down the aisle into the second row. I will take two powdered sugar doughnuts during fellowship time min the breezeway and carelessly let the white dust scatter over my lips, beard, and Clark shoes, slick with the leather oil they sold me with this pair.
We are a team.

Learning the unfamiliar

April 26
We are just 4 days away from the final drafts being turned in on the Unfamiliar Genre Project (UGP). So far the first draft results have been impressive because I see student creativity, student interest, student risk, and students reporting on their own learning, as well as supplying evidence of it. I also see unexpected yet welcome connections to free choice reading and democratic learning. [My student writer plans to have his father read and respond to his autobiographical piece, a choice inspired by his free reading. Last week he showed me his new Nook]

At the moment, I am thinking of my own learning, especially in light of this new genre I am studying–the unfamiliar genre paper itself (Writing Outside Your Comfort Zone, Fleischer and Andrew-Vaughn). If not a paradox, then perhaps at least a Mobius strip, that a new school report involving an unlimited possibility of genres in itself becomes a genre: not unlike the way found poetry becomes a genre of poetry.
So among kinds of writing classed as academic, the Unfamiliar Genre Report is a Report, constructed as it is out of letters, a research journal, experimental writing and early drafts in the student ‘s chosen genre, the final draft of the imitation itself, comments received from 3 readers, a proposal, and an annotated bibliography. Because I am looking for a series of components in this report genre, I could myself construct a How-To-Book for it, just as I and the students have done in our personal genres for this project, and the above pieces would be named in it, with the identifying features of each listed on facing pages, the “craft” and “content” of each enumerated generally first, and then by genre-specific samples we view, and finally describing the way each of our own imitations fulfills or deviates from these expectations, as Fleischer and Andrew-Vaughn suggest.

What We Lost

I like to think of myself as embracing digital technology. At parent teacher conferences last night I faced a parent who claimed how confusing it was for her child to navigate the electronic expectations of class – sometimes requiring a response to a Tweet, or logging in to Edmodo, the educational site where students can see and turn in homework assignments, grab quick links, or review or post files. In a paperless classroom, technology is an invaluable friend. But my response last night belied my true colors; I silently and, occasionally volubly, curse this cloud of blessing.

   Take iTunes: we had uploaded our entire music library to the Cloud last spring as we installed a new Mac desktop and consigned the old PC to its rightful place in the recycle mill. This week, however, yearning to hear a little Mozart played by its best practitioner of his piano repertoire, Alicia de Larrocha, I threw up my hands when I couldn’t retrieve a collection of his piano sonatas I had downloaded as a purchase this summer. Unwilling to accept its loss, I sighed, groaned, and wished for the halcyon days when my mom would return from a trip to Zody’s with the latest Partidge Family vinyl album: it would rest in the record bin we had at home, cared for with a special anti-static red cloth, and as long as I kept it out of the sun, it would play whenever I chose to toss it onto the turntable. This whole Cloud business is for the birds, I deemed. 

   Then, this morning as I was reading Kierkegaard’s Either/Or in anticipation of St. John tutor Richard McCombs’s newly released ____ , which will arrive by post any day, I read this sentence:  ”With his Don Giovanni, Mozart enters the rank of those immortals, of those visibly transfigured ones, whom no cloud takes away from the eyes of men…” I was seized by a sudden impulse to locate my Alicia recordings, and went to the computer. 

   Behold! Her name was at the top of the iTunes page already open when I struck the spacebar to reawaken the Mac. Clicking on it, and selecting the first track, I was able to hear the first notes of the allegro movement of Piano Sonata K.283, and the clouds were rolled away.   

   What I had lost is suddenly found; I am not ashamed of the Cloud, but feel sheepish or having doubted. I had pretty much said “Unless I place my hands in the groove of his andante, I will not believe.” What a fool this mortal be. 

   What I thought we had lost, besides a few tracks of Mozart, was a peace of mind that came with de-cluttering the house last year, pitching the concrete (CDs, bound books) in favor of cloud storage. Fortunately, we now have a collection of the most sublime music, interpreted by an inspired musician; we have peace. And by the way, we also have a new cover and title for Sara Zarr’s novel – What We Lost (formerly Once Was Lost). When you think something is gone, you really appreciate it fully when it reappears after an absence.   

(Photo credits: What We Lost copyright Little, Brown; McCombs copyright Indiana University Press)

Productive energy

Last week I wrote about engagement, which started me thinking about grading; and this a.m. I came across the paragraph I wrote in front of my combination 11-12 class. Here it is, with a modicum of tinkering to contain the verb forms:

An engaged club is alive! In 11-12 this will sound like a hubbub and fervor of excited yet focused energy and attention. People will be holding books, flipping pages, and seeking the exact quote that continues someone’s thought or refutes it; smiles, attentive eye contact, mirth, and every sign of listening will be evident. Sometimes writing will happen, and everyone has a pen or pencil at the ready. For whole minutes, complete silence may occupy a group as they write down their ideas. Other times a group will be quickly speaking, gesturing with hands, making connections, etc. I observe that effectively engaged group members kept their groups intact, without crossing into other talk from the room. Concentration is necessary, of course. There is reference to notebooks, so it is clear that when a person arrives at book club, she or he is well prepared to ask questions, share thoughts from the reading, and add to the knowledge and writing done already. In an engaged 11-12 club, members are open to and encouraging of new thinking and the making of meaning out of what was read. I surmise that meaning-making is a form of life-bringing activity: it enriches life and causes or leads to new growth.

Because of someone’s blog post last week I have been thinking how to modify overhaul my report card grading categories. I’d rather use such categories as risk, trust, caring, initiative, and productive energy–the latter suggested by the above exercise–to lead students to see what I value most in my classes. My current categories, homework sharing and independent reading, begin to do that, but it still niggles at me that they are insufficient to dissuade a senior from approaching me and saying “I noticed my grade went down because I didn’t do that assignment, so I turned it in yesterday.” I guess I would rather have heard him say, “I realized I hadn’t cared enough about the assignment to put my productive energy into it, nor did I even take the initiative to write it down the day you assigned it, then go home and take a risk by posting my changes to the googledoc so everyone in class might see them. I realize now that the rest of the class was deprived of my contributions to the film review criteria–contributions that were important since I love movies and have a lot of experience to offer.”

I am interested to hear what you value in your classroom. As long as we have reports, why not let them reflect what we value? Even if it’s a bit whimsical, I would love to consider non-traditional categories such as critical thinking, productive energy, playfulness…

sophomores write letters with quills as they read Jane Austen.
Hmm… Engaging with new ideas; finding your voice, reaching your goals…

Have you tried rebuilding your grading system? As we call into question even such traditions AS homework, we must replace these obviously empty categories (homework) with meaningful terms that provide information to parents and students about what is truly important: “asks good questions”, “invites others into exchanges about significant ideas or events”.

I suppose it is not so odd to consider having students complete weekly self-evaluations for such categories, compare them with my own observations, and both of us monitor such practices in consultation with the other over a grading period.

I think what I really want, consistent with my prior aims, is for students as well as teacher to continually ask What is Learning?

What is Learning to you? As always, I am waiting for THE Answer.

flipped in-service

Last night we joined librarians, writers, and teachers for dinner, where I heard an elementary school leader share that this week he had attended the best in-service ever. His first grade teacher showed a video of the classroom in which she was teaching students to engage in classroom conversation, using sentence openers such as “I agree with [my peer] because…” and “I disagree with [my peer] because…”
This reminded me of some footage I shot last week as eighth graders in our school building began book clubs. I thought they were really engaged, and that their actions and facial expressions expressed their engagement. I showed the video to my juniors and seniors, who were about to launch into their twice weekly book groups themselves (and whose engagement varies), inviting them to list the details they noticed that might suggest these students were engaged. Then they wrote briefly what an engaged 11th or 12th grade book club would look, feel, and sound like.

I felt the resulting book club conversations improved, and I assume this was due especially to the audio visual aid, which showed students writing, referring to pages in their novels, making eye contact, listening and speaking, gesturing, relating the text to their own experiences, laughing, and focused. I think this was an improvement over the one model live group demo I had begun with several weeks ago, and over my oral or white board instructional reminders prior to small groups in previous weeks.
The administrator I was dining with said “the school’s most important resources are its teachers.”
What would it look like if every teacher and administrator left every teacher-led in-service feeling like it was the best ever? What would a FLIPPED in-service look like? Maximize the learning and sharing potential of every in-service by keeping ALL housekeeping and business announcements to downloadables we view at home; and celebrate professional learning community while we are together.

I almost forgot to add: the first grade students were engaged in solving a math problem–with the goal of deciding whether its solution required addition or subtraction.

Teaching failure

We have all heard by now that failure is a great teacher. Once parents and students accept this, grades will reflect growth, not judgment; God will be in His heaven and all will be right with the world.

Wrong.

The one component I “failed” to account for was the necessity of failure to my own learning curve. To what degree have I acknowledged failure as my own teacher?

 

Here is what failure is teaching me this year:

Students brought typewriters to self-started creative writing group.

I am prepared for everything except the next thirty seconds.

It never works twice.

My most brilliant students will miss The Second Coming if it occurs in print.

I keep forgetting that classics must be read aloud and with enthusiastic slowness.

Students can do fine without me; students cannot do fine without me: I will never know which day one of these statements is true – I will always guess  incorrectly.

Why Tweet when you can Type?

There is still no point in commenting in writing on a student’s paper.

No amount of literature or dialogue will widen a narrow mind.

 

Now, I am not discouraged by any of this. Perhaps my new-found wisdom will help me to make New Year’s resolutions to be a better teacher. mainly it serves to remind me that whatever I thought they were learning today, they actually learned something else. The very unpredictability of teaching, the Michael Crichton factor of chaos theory (substitute this week’s aluminium foil Mechanical Hound for T-Rex) is what brings me back engaged daily.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.
George Eliot

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgeelio148905.html#4UYvxHo1eVuTG8mK.99

 

 

Poems in the making

I have to write about this before I forget the poetry I heard in freshman English class today. Having recently returned from the NCTE conference in Las Vegas, I was experiencing let-down, realizing yet again that even the best lesson plans will be interrupted by a dismissal bell, school picture make-up day, or other class business needing to be addressed in the 45-minute slot that reading shares with writing, speaking, listening, and viewing. Before NCTE, my 9th graders had divided into small groups to do an initial read-aloud of scenes 3.2-3.5, the immediate aftermath of Tybalt’s death at the hands of Romeo. Today, assigned to particular scenes, their task was to cut the scene down to under two minutes and perform it. [Check the Twitter feed for 45-second audio to accompany this post.]

Spencer Wright, spencer77

To be honest, I like watching the rehearsal process as much as any performance; they haven’t presented their pieces yet, but the animated voices of group members debating specific lines to keep or discard were as entertaining as a finished product.

Initially worried that I would jinx it by recording the moment, I eventually gave in to the impulse and toured the room with an open mic to capture their candid energy (using Evernote on iPad).

I heard vehement pleas to cut whole speeches meet with rebuffs, and mutate into constructive invitations to suggest alternate cutting methods. Shy and reluctant readers became as vociferous as their more outspoken counterparts. I was pleased with the students I had appointed as leaders; they accomplished what they set out to do, and each person in the groups of 2 to 4 seemed to be contributing substantially. Done with their cutting, one group experimented with voices and interpretation, while others donned wigs, hats, and coats pulled from a trunk in the corner.

Although it feels as though we have been in Romeo and Juliet forever, today it felt fresh. Putting the 2-minute constraint on the scene forced students to be conscientious about the story Shakespeare tells and judicious with their cuts. Students discussed the main dramatic conflict in each scene to be sure their choices left it intact; the hope is that their mad slashes will focus the action and language on the bare essentials.

Poetry takes many forms. If the meaningful communication I heard today pleased my ear in its spontaneity, its mirthful music and its candor, and if it wore a kind of beauty, then, yes, my students gave me a sonnet.