Looking at both sides of language and power.

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I wrote about reading James Baldwin and unpacking language and power with my 10th Graders earlier this month, and now I’d like to share a few of their final projects in that unit.

Here’s a snippet of the instructions:

Your language autobiography will investigate some of the themes from our language unit and relate them to your life. The expectation for this paper is a polished piece of writing that combines personal experience with larger analysis and reflection.

This is NOT a traditional “thesis paper” — you will share a deep understanding about yourself, but you want to lead your reader to that instead of sharing it in your intro paragraph.

Your paper must contain at least one descriptive scene from your own life — and this will probably include dialogue — along with deeper analysis. You must also incorporate a quote or idea from the language essays we are reading together.

If you’re familiar with the diverse makeup of our student body, you can imagine many of the relevant subjects that many of our students explore. Code switching, slang, foreign languages at home, neighborhood accents, are all topics that students often gravitate towards.

Every year, though, there are also students who hesitate when the assignment is given. They don’t see anything noteworthy or unusual about their language; they have never experienced it as a place of conflict. They might be white, or middle class, or sound like news broadcasters, or something else entirely — it all depends.

This unsureness can turn into a situation where the majority or dominant culture feels under-celebrated, like they have no unique experience. (This is, I think, where the motivation for things like “White Studies” comes from.) The privilege and power might be something to be defended, or ashamed of, instead of examined.

I am blown away every year when kids actively resist this path, and take the time to explore their individual stories. Whether they’re coming from a place of struggle or a place of comfort, each can be examined in the larger context of society. Students do a great job getting past cliche and to real meaning.

And with that, I give you two Digital Story versions of this project. Both take on this project through the lens of school — and present the opposite, but equally relevant sides of the same coin.

“You Have Nothing To Hide From”

“Listen to Our Words”

Thanks to Josh Block for handing me both the original assignment and the Digital Story remix.

Independent Reading: Weekly Reading Tracker

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As we all know, independent reading doesn’t quite flow like a traditional get-through-the-book curriculum. Since everybody’s working through their own text, what matters is the regularity of checkpoints, instead of a day-by-day sequence. The joy of the unit — students pursuing their own reading, at their own pace — can also be a nightmare for a classroom teacher, especially if you have to give quantitative feedback, aka grades. How can you best keep track of what everybody’s up to without stifling their freedom?

The best tool I have for this so far is a “Reading Tracker” which students fill out once a week during class.

Reading Tracker sample

The “Prompted Response” section is where I can tailor the activity to the needs of the students. Here’s the sequence of prompts that I used last year:

Week 1:
Is your book a “holiday,” a “just right,” or a “challenge” title? How do you know, and why did you pick this level of difficulty?

Week 2:
Did you get to your reading happy place this past week? If yes, describe how and why. If no, what do you need to do differently this week? (Rough guideline — I usually assign 75 pgs a week when we’re reading an all-class book, so if you’re not moving at at least that pace, you need to re-think your strategy.)

Week 3:
Find one of these literary devices in your book and describe what effect it has on you, the reader:
hyperbole
personification
alliteration
metaphor
simile
onomatopoeia
Alternate challenge: Have students go onto www.Literary-Devices.com and pick their own item — or a few! — to work with.

Week 4:
What is a major theme in your book? What actions or ideas in the book are showing this theme to the reader?
(The theme is a main idea that should be shorter than a thesis statement, but more than a single word or something cliche like “love is eternal.”)

Week 5:
Who is a main character in your book, and can you relate to them? Give some specific examples of why you do or do not connect with them (maybe some of both). How does this affect your relationship with the book?

Week 6:
Compare two different books you’ve read — how has your EXPERIENCE of reading them been different? If one was easier to read than the other, why? Really think about it to describe how it felt to read each title.

“Notes from Pahomov” is where I comment on how kids are doing, sometimes asking questions, sometimes encouraging them to break up with their book, and sometimes HW credit for reading outside of class.

I’m always tinkering with this process, trying to find the right balance of accountability (“I need to know how they’re doing”) and joy (“any page counts or accountability kills the reading spirit!”). I would love to hear other strategies on how to strike this balance when it comes to managing independent reading on an individual basis.

Check out a write-up of the complete unit here.

EduConversation: Creating the Ethic of Care

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This is the second of two EduCon sessions that I am participating in. I joined this one in a happy moment of confluence, when I was toying around with building a session around my posts about standardized testing — and then I found out that our esteemed PE and Health teacher Pia Martin had already planned one with a similar focus. And Lehmann was in on it too, so we had ourselves a party.

This all got sorted out through a series of staff meetings and casual office conversations — a nice reminder of how the easy sharing of ideas at SLA benefits us, and you!

Here’s the official write up from our EduCon page:

At SLA, the Ethic of Care is central to the way we treat our students and each other. But what does that look like in practice? As educators, how do we make sure that the students we teach come first, and not the subject? How do we create and sustain an environment where students are supported and cared for while honoring the structure necessary for a school to function?

This conversation, led by the principal and two teachers, will address the successes and challenges of implementing the Ethic of Care at every level of a school’s operations, from daily classroom interactions to the strategic design of school policies and operations. Participants will be invited to share stories from their own learning environments in order to examine how they too can “care for” instead of “care about.”

For more context about where I’m coming from in this, check out my posts on “love in the face of the system.” Too often, teachers caring for students only happens in the gaps between the curriculum and the rules. I look forward to brainstorming with participants about how that compassion can be embedded in the coursework itself.

I would tell you to register, but the conference is sold out! However, all sessions will be streaming online, so we encourage you to join us from your nearest internet connection.

Unit Plan: Independent Reading

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Reading slide

After spending a month or so on Shakespeare, it’s time to set 11th Graders free with their reading. This unit is self-explanatory in its title, but the focus changes a bit each time.

Here are the essential questions for the unit:

  • What are my reading preferences, and what influenced these preferences?
  • How do I change as a reader when I read different books?
  • How can reading make me happy?

The unit also seeks to answer one of the three grade-wide essential questions, around the theme of change:

What causes systematic and individual change?

This unit really seeks to acknowledge that students are in very different places with both their attitudes and skills. The goal is to help them figure out where they’re at, meet them there, and help them improve.

When they arrive on the first day, students are met with the journal prompt displayed at the top of this page: What’s the last book you truly enjoyed reading? Why?

This leads into my slideshow of the Reluctant Readers Bill of Rights — which I believe is a must-share for any independent reading unit — and some discussion of my own current reading habits. Extra credit points in my heart go to any student who notices that one of those books is not in English.

 

Lastly, I introduce them to the idea of their “Reading Happy Place.” Is it a place? A time of day? A noise level? A state of mind? Sometimes we draw visualizations of what that place looks or feels like.

Students don’t always buy what I’m selling, at least not right away. Especially that part where the bill of rights says you have the right not to read. “What’s the catch?” They ask. “When are you going to make us do something?”

The beauty is that there is no catch. As long as they are reading and loving it, they’re doing the right thing. And if they’re not loving it, then it’s on them to find the time and place and book that inspires them.

Check out the complete unit here. I will also be writing up some activities and assessments from this unit in the coming weeks.

An EduConversation about Standards Based Grading.

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When it was time for SLA teachers to brainstorm sessions for this year’s EduCon, Standards Based Grading was a no-brainer.

SLA faculty has been building, tweaking, tearing down, testing, implementing, arguing, and also agreeing about standards for 2+ years now. As with many things at SLA, people sometimes assume, looking at us at a distance, that we’re an educational utopia and the learning here just magically happens. We will be happy to disabuse you of that notion, and give you perspective on what building your own standards-based grading system involves, and how we integrated that with project based learning. To give you a full sense of that picture, we have a representative from each major discipline — and we all came to standards from a very different place:

  • Mark Bey – Spanish
  • Roz Echols – Physics
  • Pearl Jonas – History (and a first-year SLA teacher!)
  • Brad Latimer – Math
  • Larissa Pahomov – English

Here’s our official write-up:

In the face of Common Core and increasing pressure from administrations, many schools are looking to produce more data about student learning. At SLA, teachers have responded to this shift by creating their own system of Standards Based Reporting. In this panel conversation, teachers from each discipline will discuss how they created standards language for their specific subject area, how they track student progress throughout the school year, and how they integrate the skills and reflection into their own classroom. The staff will also share the online system SLA uses to collect and report standards data with students.

If you have any questions or ideas in advance, we strongly encourage you to post them as a comment on our EduCon page — that way we can take it into consideration as we build our framework for the session.

How to collaborate on a test.

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At SLA, the 11th Graders take vocabulary tests every two weeks. The process is as cut and dry as you could imagine — a list of 20 words, taken from The Princeton Review’s “1000 most common SAT vocabulary words,” and they’re tested on ten at random, where they have to write the word and a synonym, antonym, or sentence for each one.

This is the only formal testing I do in my classroom, and I like to think it helps prep them a bit for the actual SAT, not to mention the Keystone exams. I’m probably stating the obvious for folks that don’t work in a project based environment.

But once in a while, I like to mix things up.

Today, I read them ten words, and then each table of four students produced one final document: ten words spelled correctly, and one sentence for each word showing its meaning in context.

Their faces light up when I explain the procedure. A couple of them because, yeah, they didn’t study enough and they’re relieved. But most of them are excited because they like collaborating. They huddle over the papers, speaking quietly so the other tables can’t hear them, and tease out what the best use of each word would be.

This is, of course, what I really want — students talking about words, making as many touch points as possible in the hopes that the word will stick after testing day. Collaborative tests don’t give me a snapshot of individual knowledge in that moment, but they do give me hope that the knowledge will last beyond the day of the exam.

When we do individual quizzes, we review them right after as a class, which gives us time to talk about the words. But I know that the content is better coming from their peers than from me. And after a few weeks of practice standardized testing in solitude, I’m happy to give them something to do together.

So, how could you turn one of your tests into a collaborative affair?

Cover it up.

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It’s that time of year again. The time where we get out the black paper and cover up any material which could be seen as helpful on the state standardized exams.

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We follow the rules around here. And I’m on board, obviously. So today during advisory, we measured and cut and stood on chairs and taped.

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I just hate that my room has to look like a funeral as a result. Death to the learning.

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Good thing it’s only temporary.

One Book, one Philadelphia, and many curriculums.

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bookcover_buddha_atticI’m happy to announce that my curriculum for the 2013 One Book, One Philadelphia selection has been published online by the Free Library.

(For those of you not familiar with the program–One Book creates unique city-wide programming around one title for two months each year, as well as providing thousands of free copies for Philadelphia schools.)

I’ve had the pleasure of writing the curriculum for the past few years. When I started, I felt a little bit lost. Classrooms around Philadelphia are so different, so unique — what could I provide that would be useful without being rigid, all-or-nothing plans? Teachers who opt into the One Book program are already going above and beyond what their schools ask of them. They’re not the kind of folks who want scripted material (not that I would give them that. Sheesh.)

After looking at lists of previous participants, and sending out some trusty Google surveys, I came up with the following components, which can be used separately or in any combination:

I also wrote a similar curriculum for the middle school companion title, Journey To Topaz. That book as been around for longer, so I also pointed towards the wealth of quality lesson plans which are already available around the web.

Lastly, if you haven’t gotten to it yet, I highly recommend The Buddha in the Attic. It’s not often that a book can be called “poetic” and “accessible” in the same breath. If you’re in the area, Julie Otsuka will also be speaking at the One Book Kickoff Jan 17th.

Truth and Storytelling: Two Final Essays

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My example of a journal brainstorm: "Draw the relationship between the self and the changing world."

My example of a journal brainstorm: “Draw the relationship between the self and the changing world.”

I started this series two months ago, but here’s the final project that goes with the Things They Carried: Truth and Storytelling Unit.

Your benchmark task is to answer the essential question:

What is the relationship between the self and the changing world?

(Sub questions: How does the self react to and deal with change? How does the world in turn react when a person changes? How does this cycle work? What is notable about it?)

You will do this by writing an essay that is both analytical and narrative.

The analytical portion of you essay will identify a major lesson O’Brien gives us about the self in the changing world. You must analyze how he conveys this message in his book. Once this formal analysis is complete, you must then apply your understanding from the book it to your own beliefs and experiences, and then write a personal essay around that theme. (This section can resemble one of the stories in the book.)

The analytical section really just reinforces the writing skills we’ve been working on all quarter with the 2Fers — and students see this. The narrative assignment, though, really blows things wide open. I emphasize that, while you can focus on death or trauma (and many students do), there are so many lessons embedded in the book about the self in the face of x y or z change. I also rely on lessons from Peter Elbow to get these ideas really flowing from students — not always easy after a few months of mostly analytical composition.

Students write about the acute anxiety of transferring schools, or refusing to watch a loved one die in the hospital; to be intensely attached to every item in a care package sent to summer camp, or to have an anger that they bank down inside them, only to have it seep out at unexpected moments.

I love this project, and it’s a fitting end to a unit where we have explored the purpose of storytelling in their lives. (At this point they usually get over the fact that Tim O’Brien was “lying” with his book of fiction.)

How to prevent testing fatigue.

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It’s simple: don’t test too much.

Seriously though. That doesn’t mean that you don’t prep. It just means that you get creative. I’ve written about lots of these tactics before:

Attack sample questions as a class. Teach them the structure behind the different types of questions. Send them on scavenger hunts in pairs. Have them write questions on their own.Let them be frustrated, and don’t forget to tell them that you love them.

The last thing you want to do is hit them on the head with multiple choice practice tests, day after day after day. It’s the educational equivalent of the assembly line. At some point, people get so bored that they quit. And you don’t want that to happen before the actual testing happens.

When kids start to say, “this is dumb,” I replace that with: “No, this is easy.” This is my adult equivalent of “it’s not that deep.” And I mean it.