Have you heard about NaNoWriMo? I have been hearing about it (and scoffing, I’ll admit) for about five years. I finally decided to see if I was up to the challenge. I must be crazy to think I can do this with three kids and a full time job teaching, but it isn’t as if sitting on my rear scoffing about it for five years has enabled me to put pen to paper.
You can follow my progress if you like at my personal blog and NaNoWriMo profile.
I have re-organized links in the sidebar so you don’t have to hunt for my other sites. In a box entitled “Links,” you’ll find links to my classroom wiki, classroom blog, GISA Educators’ Wiki (set up for participants in my upcoming GISA presentation in November), lesson plan wiki, and student blog.
I encourage you to check out my students’ work at their wiki and blog. We are doing so exciting things right now (or, I should say I am excited, at least). I have added some material to my lesson plan wiki. I have found that I don’t have as much time to add material to that wiki as I would like — oddly enough, I’m too busy planning and teaching to actually find time to share, too, but I’m trying to be better. I now have my Colonial and Revolutionary American literature pages restored over there. Every time I look at it, though, I’m aware of how much I still want to do and I suddenly feel very tired.
Every once in a while, something funky will happen with Firefox, and I will lose all the links in my Favorites. It is very irritating, given that it shouldn’t happen anyway, because then I have to hunt down the links and save them again, assuming I remember what they were — didn’t I “Favorite” them to begin with because I wanted to find them easily later? Anyway, I’ve given up on saving links that way. I figure it is too much of a gamble. I know some of you folks that know more about technology might be kind and try to help me troubleshoot my problem. Don’t worry about it. I have started saving all of my links to del.icio.us. I have had an account for well over a year, but I didn’t really use it much until recently. I think the last time I lost all my Favorites, I thought, “That’s it! I’m sick of this!” Also, using del.icio.us has the added benefit of being available to me on whatever computer I decide to use, rather than just my home desktop.
Robert shares some of his del.icio.us links on Tuesdays. I decided perhaps sharing my own links once a week might a) give me something to post about at least once a week, which is hard when things get busy, b) enable me to share some things I use and/or learn with other teachers who might be interested.
My first link is something you may have seen if you regularly read The Reflective Teacher. A few days ago, he posted a link to Brian Benzinger’s post “Back to School with the Class of Web 2.0: Part 1” at Solution Watch. I don’t constantly bug my colleagues with links, but I thought this one was so valuable, I not only sent it to the entire faculty at my school, but also shared some of it with my students. One of my students told me he has already tried the application Gradefix and loves it. Brian now has Part 2 up, so check it out, too.
Another link that I have used extensively over the past few weeks is this ReadWriteThink lesson plan, “Reader Response in Hypertext: Making Personal Connections to Literature.” The author of the lesson plan suggests using this lesson plan with novels “that contain a strong sense of place, that focus on closeness of characters, and that are metaphorical in character, such as A River Runs Through It, Montana 1948, and The Bean Trees.” Based on examples in the lesson, my assumption is that the author, Patricia Schulze, uses it with A River Runs Through It. I used it with The Bean Trees, which is a summer reading selection for incoming college prep 9th graders at my school, and I have to say it worked very well. Instead of creating websites, however, I elected to adapt the lesson to a wiki, which made creating the sites and editing much easier, I think. You can check out my students’ Bean Trees Wiki and see what I did with this lesson plan. At this point, all of the students are supposed to have four quotes and four writing assignments posted, but there are a few who need to get caught up.
I don’t think I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s an idea I got from our biology teacher. Essentially, “Clock Buddies” is a system of group work that I have found (after using it a great deal in several classes over the last few weeks) to be very effective.
Students are given a handout that has a clock face on it. They sign up with twelve other people for “partner” assignments. Once they have a buddy for each time on their clock, you are ready to go. Next time you want students to work with a partner, tell them to work with their 9 o’clock buddies (or whatever number you prefer). Students have choice in terms of who they work with, but they also work with different people. Hint: Students usually sign up with their best friends for 12 o’clock or 1 o’clock, so if you want to make sure they really buckle down, you can avoid calling those times often.
Download the handout by ReadingQuest: Clock Buddies (PDF)
This afternoon, I finished reading Frank McCourt’s third memoir Teacher Man. When asked by new friends why he waited until he was 66 before publishing Angela’s Ashes, he explains,
I was teaching, that’s what took me so long. Not in college or university, where you have all the time in the world for writing and other diversions, but in four different New York City public high schools… When you teach five high school classes a day, five days a week, you’re not inclined to go home to clear your head and fashion deathless prose. After a day of five classes your head is filled with the clamor of the classroom.
I couldn’t have said it better. Teaching is exhausting, physically and psychologically.
I wasn’t able to finish Angela’s Ashes. At the point when I realized the twins would die, I had to put the book down: it was too depressing. I haven’t read ‘Tis, either. I picked up this book thinking it would be right up my alley, and I walked away feeling that I was right.
It was interesting to see McCourt second-guess himself, to feel he wasn’t a good teacher at times. It was a joy to celebrate with him after a particularly good lesson. I have had moments in my teaching life in which I, too, felt like an utter failure, punctuated by moments when I know I’ve really hit it — I have really taught a great lesson. It’s an amazing feeling. I feel like I could fly afterward, and it is that feeling that McCourt so eloquently captures in his book.
I can’t recall where I read this now, but one comment from a reviewer stands out to me after reading this book. “McCourt hates his students.” I have to wonder if that reviewer read the same book I did. It was clear to me that McCourt loved teaching, especially after he began teaching creative writing at Stuyvesant High School. That he cared deeply about his students is evident on each page. Did he complain about some of them? Sure. Show me a teacher who has never done that — you can’t. That teacher never existed. And each teacher is sure the kids in his/her generation were more respectful, more engaged, more… whatever. McCourt tells it like it is — in his thirty years of teaching, the kids didn’t change. Indeed, his late 1950’s students were just like students I’ve had. However, I also noted that even if he complained gently, he often wrote in the next few pages of reaching a new understanding or peace with the student he was having trouble with. I did not sense any resentment in the end. I think he was very happy with his career in the end, despite wondering at times if he had done the right thing in becoming a teacher.
I came away from the book wishing I had been a student in his class. His classes sounded so interesting, so different. He actually reminded me so much of a colleague at my current school, a fellow English teacher, that I bought a copy of Teacher Man and had it sent to my colleague at school. I hope he enjoys it as much as I did.
Education Week recently had an article about challenged books (subscription only). I have never had any problems with parents disagreeing with reading selections I ask their child to read. One thing that seems clear to me after reading the article is that it might not be a bad idea for our department to come up with a procedure for challenging books, just in case a parent ever does have objections. I have to say that my experience of parents of my students at Weber is that they are well-educated, thoughtful, and want their children to be exposed to divergent thinking. They are open-minded and intelligent. I could be mistaken, and someone will surely correct this notion if I am, but it seems to be common in Jewish culture to test, to question, to learn, to expose one’s self to other viewpoints. Thus, I have not found that they concern themselves with challenging book choices; rather, they seem to embrace our curriculum, as they embrace their children’s intellectual freedom. At least, that is how it seems to me.
The article recounts an incident involving a school library and a concerned parent in Fayetteville, Arkansas. The parent apparently objected to a large number of books, most of which were not described in the article. The book she seems to be most upset about is It’s Perfectly Natural by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley. The article seems to imply that the parent, Laurie Taylor, only wanted to prevent her own children from being able to check out the book, as well as the other books on her list; however, a quick glance at Laurie Taylor’s website tells another story — what she really wanted was to remove the books.
I have always felt that it is the parent’s prerogative to decide whether or not their children should read certain books. My mother often read books she had concerns about, but I can only remember her telling me once that she didn’t want me to read something, and to be fair, it was a romance novel that was too old for me at the time I wanted to read it. On the other hand, I am vehemently opposed to removing books from a library because one or even the majority of parents feel the books are not appropriate for their own children. If this is the case, they have every right to ask that the library put some sort of block on the child’s library card. I do not think this is an unreasonable request at all. They do not have the right to tell other parents that certain books are not appropriate for the children of those other parents.
We all have different levels of tolerance for what we consider appropriate. I think Taylor’s labelling of the books as “pornography” is taking things too far, and she was apparently unhappy enough with the school system’s ultimate decision to remove her children from the school system and enroll them in a private Christian school. In the end, Fayetteville schools determined they needed a procedure in place for parents to challenge material:
Parents must first read the entire book, discuss it with a teacher or librarian, and outline their concerns in a written “request for reconsideration.” If the principal cannot resolve the parent’s concerns, the complaint works its way through the district administration, and could eventually be turned over to a review committee selected by the superintendent.
I think this is fair. One of the biggest problems I have with many parents who challenge books is that they haven’t read them, except for, of course, passages with which they have some objection. A perfect example is a local case involving Gwinnett County Public Schools and Laura Mallory, who wanted the Harry Potter books removed from GCPS libraries. The district decided against Mallory, who is appealing to the Georgia Department of Education. Mallory has not read the books herself; in her defense against the charge of wanting to ban something she doesn’t really even know much about, Mallory contended:
They’re [the Harry Potter books] really very long and I have four kids. I’ve put a lot of work into what I’ve studied and read. I think it would be hypocritical for me to read all the books, honestly. I don’t agree with what’s in them. I don’t have to read an entire pornographic magazine to know it’s obscene.
I’m not sure what I can add to that, except to say she has proven my point.
The State of Georgia will hear Mallory’s appeal on Tuesday, October 3.
As I have previously mentioned, I am presenting a session on using blogs and wikis in the classroom at the GISA conference this fall. I was reading through the descriptions of the afternoon sessions (mine is a morning session) so I could decide what to take, and I was more than a little dismayed to discover someone else is doing pretty much exactly the same session as I am doing in the afternoon. I am not upset at the other presenter at all. In fact, I think it’s great that so many teachers are using blogs and wikis and want to show other teachers how. I do, however, think it is redundant to have two sessions on the same topic, even if they’re at different times. I think it may take participants away from both of us. I wonder how it is that GISA managed to make this mistake. If the other teacher’s proposal arrived before mine, they should have told me they already had a session on that topic, thank you very much, or vice versa.
Well, here’s hoping we will both still have success.
I mentioned some time ago that my 9th graders were going to create hypertext writing assignments based on The Bean Trees. They have revised and edited essays about an important place. You can read their work if you visit our Bean Trees Wiki and click on their pages. You will find they have chosen four quotes that illustrate place, characters, metaphor/theme, and the essence of the novel. If you click their links to place, you can read their descriptions. If you would like to leave comments on their work, you can address them to the students here. For security reasons, I prefer not to have our password available to folks outside our school community. I will share any comments you make with the students.
By the way, my five-year-old daughter Maggie is blogging. Check her out!
I took some pictures of my classroom in our new building.
This is the view outside my window:
As you can see, we still have some construction going on. You can see a piece of the baseball field. The building is our gym, which is still under construction. It doesn’t look as pretty through my camera as it does when I look out, but I have pretty view of the hills and trees.
This is my desk:
I was lesson planning. Ms. George, can you see my Jim Burke Teacher’s Daybook under the curriculum unit book?
This is the view toward the front of the room from my desk. You can see my projection screen, which is pulled down over my SMART Board.
This last picture is a view of the back of the room, including my then-empty bulletin board, student desks, and book shelves. This was is kind of blurry.
Isn’t everything shiny?
My tribute to Eric Andrew Lehrfeld, who perished in the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center, is posted at my personal blog. If you have the time, please read it and reflect upon a life cut too short — one among 2,996.