The Line

Today I inaugurate a new category on the blog: Stupid Things That Help. Posts carrying this title will describe tricks, tips, and maneuvers that I would normally never blog about, except that when I mention them in conversation or in writing, blushing at their banality, the response I always get it is “WOW– that’s really helpful.”

So I’m taking your word for it, readers and colleagues. You have only yourselves to blame.

So: Page Protectors. Not for me, mind you (although I use them constantly): for the kids.

Seventh graders, it will come as no surprise to anyone, are notoriously disorganized.  Turns out here’s a neurological reason for this, as Linda Perlstein writes in her wonderful book _Not Much, Just Chillin: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers_:

The human brain has two major growth spurts: in infancy and preadolescence. Though it’s nearly full-size by this age, it is no longer thought to be fully formed….Right before puberty, brain cells grow extra connections, far more than are needed, like trees wildly putting out extra roots, twigs, and branches. This growth in the frontal cortex peaks at age eleven for girls and twelve for boys.

(Linda has a fabulous blog on education issues, too. Check it out. )

This wild tangle of development is not only often primarily responsible for the mood swings, attention issues, and curious mix of dependence and independence we see in our middle school kids, but also for the ridiculousness of the idea that because a kid is twelve, they should have “learned some responsibility by now,” as I have heard countless times in the faculty room.

This is not to say that we don’t set high expectations for our kids’ physical management. But it also means that we’d better be doing everything possible to help them achieve those expectations, instead of throwing them to the Maturity Wolves.

Page protectors– stay with me here– do this. I use them in two  major ways.

One: if I have an assignment where clean, neat presentation is important, I hand it out in a page protector. Page protectors don’t solve all the problems of wrinkles, rips, jelly, and Backpacks from Hell, but they do solve the majority of them. There’s also a gravitas to them that middle school kids dig. They require some manipulation, like a tiny puzzle, and the result is immediate and college-y-looking.

Two: If we’re embarking on a long-term process-oriented writing assignment, kids store all their related materials in a page protector. Initial directions, brainstorming pages, notes, drafts, rubrics, feedback sheets– it all goes into the page protector, which is stored on the rings in their English binder until the project is complete. At that point, the kids place their final copy in the front of the page protector, and turn the whole kit and caboodle in. I don’t accept an assignment otherwise; there is no way they can demonstrate their growth, challenges, and successes without this longitudinal proof of their work. I also grade these assignments on a process continuum, so I need to see the rubric I marked up for their first draft in order to correctly assess the final copy. More on that in a future post.

The basics: Page protectors come in many weights and sizes. It’s helpful, as I mentioned, to use ones with hole punches. The three types I use, generally, are lightweight single page protectors; heavier ones with deeper pockets for longer-term writing assignments; and 4X6 photo protectors, which neatly hold four index cards back to back for oral presentations or research notes.

Been quiet on the blog, I know, while I sift and sort and think (and also start a simple blog with my kids– check it out here). Thanks for hanging in there.

I wonder if, with the national situation for education being so fraught, if I am also being extra hard on my posts-to-be. You know, it’s one thing to just flip out a thought every few days or so. It’s quite another to take up the energy of professional people whose very livelihood is being attacked. Feels a bit like offering jelly doughnuts to the front lines at Normandy.

That being said, though, here are two songs that make me happy, because they are happy, and give me courage, because they are courageous. (And because there is something to be said, after all, for jelly doughnuts.)

More soon. That’s a promise.

When my internal terrain gets bumpy, I can usually attribute it to hormones, frankly. Or mid-year adjustments, which also have been happening, but usually only have the power to convince me that I’m a poor educator for maybe 48 hours.

But for the past couple of weeks, it’s been different. It’s been eerie watching Wisconsin send an emissary buzzard to roost in my district. I can smell the tar on its feathers.

Here, we were informed this week that we have a 2.6 million dollar deficit due to the fiscal shambles of our state. Simultaneously, pressure increased massively on ELA due to Race to the Top and our state’s recent inflated assessment scandal. A new test, new instruction model for struggling readers, and a new academic intervention model all were introduced to us in the past month alone. And lastly, our contract– a year and half late in its making because negotiations were so rancorous the last time through– also comes to an end within months. The union is ramping up, with t-shirts and buttons starting to flow.

But what bugged me most was running into a veteran colleague this morning in the hall: a friend and mentor, and a woman not given to complaining. “Honestly– can we do one more thing?” she said to me. And then she, this educator of multiple decades, said something that still shocks me.

“I feel like such a crappy teacher,” she said.

And tears filled her eyes.

What do I tell her?

That unions are just as often part of the problem as they are of the solution? Having heard in person the rhetoric that blasts any conversation about starting the school year two days before Labor Day and leaves needy students locked out of our rooms until 8:30 AM exactly, I don’t always feel at all comfortable putting on my t-shirt.

Yet I had food on my table and health insurance growing up precisely because of the effort of unions– as did she, no doubt.

That it is the human tendency to resist change unilaterally, even change for the better? It’s documented science, and also lives in my own heart. I hate the automated multiple choice reading exam we’re now giving three times a year on its smug Orwellian face, for example– despite the fact that perusing and challenging its questionable, sloppy data has still given me a better handle on kids’ reading levels than I’ve ever had before, just because we’re actually taking some kind of regular measurement now.

Yet this seems cold comfort, when our livelihoods depend every day on our ability to do more and more, with 2.6 million dollars of less.

That the reformers have some things right, even though they’re rich? I literally forced myself to the discount theater to watch “Waiting for Superman” a couple of weeks ago, but there I was, nodding my head along with many of the points made in it.

And yet I see class war personified, necessarily and understandably, in myself and in my colleagues. No one (trust me) has a kind word for Bill Gates– or, for another example, the local Broad-trained superintendent who asked for a multi-thousand dollar raise in a district this winter, where the poverty rate bests the national average by a shameful amount. How could those people possibly know what the hell is going on? the faces and language of my colleagues ask me, every day– by the copier, in the library, in the lunch room. And they are, in many ways, right.

We are all of us, on every multifacted side of this issue, in many ways, right.

So I don’t know what to tell her. I don’t know what to tell her to stop her tears.

And as I examine my increasing silences over the blog, I note that I also don’t know what to tell you.

Kids wrote an anonymous paragraph on the back of a copy of their class contract, discussing how the first half of the year went in terms of my promises. Call it a Politifact for the classroom. First time I’ve done a midyear assessment. Won’t be the last.

In brief:

• Students overwhelmingly report satisfaction with their contracts, which cover everything from treating kids with respect to changing up styles of teaching.
• A significant amount report that the reading time (supposed to be 10 minutes) is taking way too long in the beginning of class– I get tangled in choosing books, disciplinary calls, dashing off the grading I hadn’t quite completed and want to get back to the kids in a timely fashion– you name it. Embarrassing, since I would really like to be the only one who’s noticed. Time management continues to be a massive challenge for me, since my natural inclination is to teach as if I have the care of only the student in front of me, not 76 times that amount.
• They hate– HATE– the peace sign we developed for getting attention and quieting down. This is clearly because I overuse it, flashing it several times in a class conversation instead of limiting it to key transitions. The kids and I will need to figure something else out for “you’re wandering off track/please come back to us/my thought is not completed yet/we’re only half way through instructions, guys.”
• Two kids report that I don’t keep my appointments, which is statistically insignificant, but still burns. Is it true? Yes, especially when a meeting backs up to lunchtime and flows over. Totally my bad. When I remember than an appointment with the principal is less important than one with a child, I do better. On the flip side, do I have a file an inch thick of appointment slips missed by kids? Yep. We’ll talk about that too.
• They also want more games. (They always want more games. Hell, who doesn’t?) It’s not too much to ask, though, that one of my loops through the content be game-based, or that home-based practice becomes a type of game.
• Fun reports: roughly equal amounts of kids reporting that my pace is too fast or too slow; and roughly equal amounts of kids reporting that I give too much homework, and not enough homework. This is where an anonymous survey shows its weaknesses; since if I knew who was complaining about what, I could tailor my responses. As it is, I will have to trust that the much larger amount of kids who report satisfaction with homework and pace is the one I should be sleeping on at night.

How do you guys gather student satisfaction data?

Mary Beth comments on my Speeches post,

I always loved opening my school year with speeches. I had the kids write an award speech for a book they read over the summer. It could be anything from “Best Beach Read” to “The Book that Bored Me to Sleep.” They had to write (of course!) persuasively first and provide us with good reasons for the award and create an award that symbolized the book for them.

And not a day or two later, the 90-Second Newberys showed up on my radar.

Coordinated by YA author James Kennedy and the New York Public Library, the 90-Second Newberys project picks up on Mary Beth’s great idea– that the kids for whom these books are written have the right to be their harshest, most creative critics. Check out the sample video on A Wrinkle in Time, which had me on the floor.

“A Wrinkle In Time” In 90 Seconds from James Kennedy on Vimeo.

And if you want a sense of the delightful kookiness of the project’s progenitor, watch how he wins the Newbery himself– by physically wrestling it away from “Neil Gaiman.”

Part 2: I Fight Neil Gaiman for the Newbery Award from James Kennedy on Vimeo.

I’m not sure how to work this brilliant thing into my curriculum before the deadline, but would welcome suggestions. Nor have I read Kennedy’s book, The Order of Odd-Fish. But if you email me tonight around midnight, it’s likely I will be shorting myself on sleep the way I often do, by devouring a copy as my family peacefully slumbers away.

UPDATE: The man himself comments.

Hello, this is James Kennedy, the co-curator of the “90-Second Newbery” film festival (and the author of “The Order of Odd-Fish”).

Thanks so much for spreading the word about the video contest! I really hope you do work it into your curriculum. You’ve got plenty of time — the deadline is September 15!

Oh, and yes, if you enjoyed the Gaiman video, I think you’ll enjoy “The Order of Odd-Fish.” I look forward to shorting you on your sleep!

I swore I would never pull a Freedom Writers on a kid, but I did last week: the brilliant, bright-haired imp who devours books, talks like a lawyer, and was earning an F because of a potent combination of truly not being able to organize his stuff, and a time-tested overreliance on charm.

Finally overwhelmed with frustration, I told him– firmly, and not bothering to take him aside– that I would come to his house after school to help him look for his missing work. I believe the words “I will not let you fail” actually came out of my mouth. I got as far as looking up the address, planning my route, and getting the counselor to come for backup, before the kid came in to class later that day, sheepishly holding the missing papers.

The counselor advised me that the kid had told him privately that he was ashamed by the public nature of my calling him out. I winced, remembering the contract I had signed with the kids promising not to do that exact thing. I wrote a note to myself to make sure I apologized the very next day. “But don’t mention the contract,” I told myself. “The guy’s a budding Clarence Darrow.”

He came in, smiling, at lunchtime, with an equally quirky and brilliant friend in tow. “I’m glad you’re here,” I said, “because I owe you an apolo–” and found myself rubbing my eyes in embarrassment and explaining the whole contract thing anyway. I’ve spent too much time in confessionals.

“It’s OK,” he said. And his face was completely open. Guileless. Like the child he was.  

His friend suddenly bursts into peals of laughter. He points at my folder.

“You wrote a post-it note to apologize?!”

I start to laugh. “Listen. That’s how important it was to me to get this straight. A whole post it note.” 

His friend points to the class contract, hanging on the wall. “He didn’t sign it, though,” he says, grinning.

I blink. “What?” I say.

“Yeah, ” his friend reminds me. ”He came in later in the year. He didn’t sign it.” He pulls it down off the wall and brings it to the kid.

The kid glances over it, looks up at me, and nods.  I hand him the pen.

My six year old son is staring out the window at the drive-in recycling center, where we are about to drop off a load of cans and bottles. The wide, truck-sized entrance and exit on either side have translucent plastic sheets hanging down to cover the top half of each.

“Why is that curtain there?”  he asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “Why don’t you ask the recycling guys?”

As we pull in and the head recycling guy starts unloading, my son turns around in his car seat and shouts his question politely through the open hatchback.

“I don’t know,” the man responds. “Wish I could chat, but we’re busy. Have a great day.”

As we pull away, to my surprise, my son bursts into tears.

“I asked him,” he says, “I asked him…and…. he DIDN’T KNOW!”

I’m ready to laugh, but I get another surprise: my own eyes well up.

“It’s all right,” I say. “It’s all right. Sometimes we don’t know the answer to things. But you got to ask your question, right?”

His sobs quiet.

“Sometimes,” I find myself saying, “the most important thing is that we get to ask the question.”

I’m in the middle of my first speech project– yes, in year four of ELA. Sad, but true.

Speaking skills is one of our state’s four ELA standards, and arguably– I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb here– the most important thing our kids can learn how to do in ELA.  The phrase “oral communication” garners nearly 200 million hits on Google; of people suffering from fear of public speaking, I have seen (unsourced) estimates ranging from 75% to 95% of the general population. If this 2003 survey of students at the University of Leicester is any indication, such fears persist and deeply impact schooling, if not anything else. And if none of this convinces you, check out this fascinating bit on how short-term stresses like public speaking may actually make you healthier.

So why have I been so slow in getting on the speaking train? And why, when I survey my kids, was their last significant oral communication project somewhere in the I-can’t-really-remember-Ms.S misty depths of elementary school?

Because it’s not tested in New York State.

Sigh.

So here we are, with Ms. S recognizing the massive need for an effective oral language/public speaking unit, but still working out the glitches. I thought I might save readers the hour it took me to find decent speeches for my kids to pick apart with the rubric I am using, so here’s the sampler.

This one is super. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/adora_svitak.html

 Adora is a 12 year old author and quite precocious, so kids are hooked right away. The speech has its weaknesses and is geared towards adults, which has created some fascinating conversation in class about audience.

Also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aaRMFlOTsU&feature=channel

 Same kid, talking to sixth graders. Nice to put this up against the TED talk– the audience and the tone is entirely different.

Other kids making speeches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ih7wHtohw0

 (11 year old for Obama– lots of pros and cons to talk about, including the timeworn and hairpulling conclusion ”well, that concludes my speech”). 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yZm0BfXYvFg&feature=related

(Dalton Sherman, 10 year old, keynotes Dallas Central School District kickoff a couple of years ago)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66F1lNi4GLo&feature=related

( A nice 8th grade president campaign speech. Funny. Strong, with some fluctuations in volume and mumbling that will be fun for kids to pick apart.)

I’d love to hear from readers about public speaking stuff they do, effective resources, whether the skill is valued in your curriculum or state– you name it. Maybe this is the book I need to write.

Kathleen, author of the Howard Gardner- and Deborah Meier-touted Fires in the Mind, kindly writes a reflection on my previous post. If you’re new to the profession or simply looking for a way to align your work more completely with what kids really think and need, _Fires_ continues to be a great place to start.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Licking the Envelope

Dina Strasser reminds us in a wonderful post on The Line this week of the power of making students send out their written work to an audience other than their teacher. I couldn’t agree more.

Sending out work brings young writers immediately into the community of developing experts. Anyone who’s done it—and I’ve done it by now 637,243 times—knows the thrill of combined dread and excitement that goes with exposing your work to the eyes of “real readers.”

What do I dread when I do it myself? That they’ll be bored. The ideas will seem stale. The language will be overblown or jargony. The same adjective (for me it’s always “powerful”) will appear three times without my having noticed it. Some horribly embarrassing mechanical error (like “pubic education”) will slip in.

The adolescent fear of humiliation sticks with us writers for a lifetime. Yet all of us write, in large part, to be heard. And so we practice the habits used by “real writers”—that is, writers with a genuine audience.

We pass those habits along to each other in the ways that craft has always been passed down. Like a secret handshake letting me into a club, older, wiser writers gave me theirs, starting when I was only a teenager myself. Now I pass them on to the students that I work with—and as long as I maintain credibility by doing it myself, they take me seriously. (That’s why it’s so important for teachers of writing to actually write and share their work.)

I’ll list a few of my “expert habits” here, just to illustrate:

–Get over the fear of writing something dumb. The great writer John McPhee taught me this trick: Write “Dear Mom” at the top of the piece, then just start telling her what you’re thinking. Your mother (or your grandmother, or whoever stands in) will be thrilled to hear from you, no matter what you say. Then, once you have your words on paper, you can go back and cut out the dumb parts.

–Always read what you write out loud. Every time you change it, read it aloud again. Your ear will tell you what your eye has missed.

–Let it cool. Don’t show it to anyone until you’ve let it sit for a day or so. You’ll hear it differently with even a few hours of perspective.

–Give it to a first reader you trust. It’s the equivalent of asking “Does this outfit look good on me?” Before you go out in public, you really want to know what they think, even if it stings a little.

–Revise repeatedly. But know when to stop! Getting it read is more important than getting it absolutely perfect. (And there’s no such thing anyway.)

–When you’re ready to send out the work, proofread one last time. Read every word of every line, including headline and footnotes! If you’re sending it with a letter, proofread the letter, too.

~KC

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’ll bet at least 80% of my ELA teacher readers have used, distributed, or have on the walls of their classrooms some type of graphic called “The Writing Process.” I’m thinking of creating one that has  “Go back later to cut out the dumb parts” somewhere on it.

It is easy. Even the most canned, arbitrary, teacher or district-driven writing assignment can quickly become something in which a student will invest. It takes one simple step:

Make sure someone other than you sees it.

I don’t know about you guys, but even I, the Hippie, always feel nervous about any constructivist-type or authentic project-based learning I undertake. The perception– and the reality– to put it bluntly, is that it takes so much more damn time and effort. I know planning for it  is always going to take the stuffing right out of me, and always fall short of what I think the kids deserve. This is made worse by my membership in the Big Dreamer School of Education, where I think that all worthy projects really should involve speaking one on one with Barack Obama.

It doesn’t have to be like that, though. And I know this, but I forget it.

I was reminded forcefully of it a couple of days ago while implementing the backup project to the failed literacy field trip. Kids are now reflecting on altruistic experiences in their lives, choosing one, and articulating its deeper meaning for themselves (the “SO WHAT?” in Nancie Atwell language). They then write a friendly letter to the person involved in the memory– and, in all cases where it applies, addressing an envelope, putting the letter in, licking it closed, and SENDING IT.

“We’re SENDING IT?” they howl.

“We’re sending it,” I repeat, smiling. (Because I actually enjoy seeing them react like this; like watching a canary in coal mine, chances are that if I’m making them visibly uncomfortable, we’re hitting Vygotsky’s sweet spot.)

As they get over their shock (quickly– they’re resilient folks), a two part realization hits me. One: that kids don’t do nearly enough of this kind of thing. My announcement should be boring them to tears.

Two: that kids, without malice or deviousness, come to count on the fact that you are their only audience.

Far from raising stakes or expectations, the knowledge that their writing products live, move, and have their being merely within the artificial bubble of school decreases those products’ value to kids– no matter how clever or challenging the work.

It also encourages the path of least resistance that we all tend towards.  Why bother to capitalize, think a sentence through, or search for just the right word, when the only person who cares about it is Ms. S? Doesn’t she live with the other teachers in the janitor’s closet anyway?

In contrast, the make sure someone other than you sees it approach has already garnered some of the neatest handwriting, the most complete grammar, and– most importantly– the most genuine thinking I have seen all semester.

And as I mention above, it doesn’t have to be complicated, technical, or even require a reworking of assignments you already have.

• Photocopy final products and have the kids mail them home with a post-it.
• Throw another set into a manila envelope and have the kids watch you mail them to the superintendent.
• Circulate word-processed assignments to your colleagues via email.
• Email some more to friends or family of the kids’  choice.
• Put together an anthology for every homeroom.
• Create a quarterly literary magazine (read: stapled double-sided copies).
• Distribute homemade poems at lunchtime.
• Or if you fancy it, use one of the multiple powerful technologies available to classroom communities: blogs, wikis, webpages.

Who the audience is or should be, of course, is a question deserving of its own post: pros and cons to all, from peers to parents to the Internet. For now, though, if there’s any dark side to this approach, the word of caution I would give is not to use authentic audience as a punishment or a threat. Speaking simply in terms of keeping the assignments real is going to go a lot further with middle schoolers than “You had better spell this right, or your mother will be ashamed of you.”

The second half of the year is looming, and as implied at the beginning of the post, I continue to wrestle with the balance between totally kid-generated writing, teacher-guided writing, and writing that is teacher-directed from A to Z.  Regardless of the writing’s generation, however, I am making a personal commitment to have every single product my kids create this year go out into the world in one way or another– and that the kids are active participants in that process.

It’s not a magic bullet. But it comes close.