All posts by Dana Huff

English Department Chair/English teacher, doctoral candidate at Northeastern University, reader, writer, bread baker, sometime soapmaker, amateur foodie. Wife and mom of three.
Movies in English Class, Professional Development, Reflection, Technology

Digital Storytelling Workshop

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storytelling photo

Thanks to my school, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in a digital storytelling workshop with the Center for Digital Storytelling in Denver at the Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop.

I will admit that I went into the workshop with a fair amount of hubris. I thought to myself, I’ve been teaching English for sixteen years. I know a lot about these kinds of projects. I’m a technology integrator. I know iMovie pretty well. I’d go so far as to consider myself an expert in comparison with many teachers—though I’d not go so far as to say I know everything there is to know about it, I can do pretty much everything I might want to do for school purposes. I didn’t really expect to learn very much from this workshop, but I was glad I would have the opportunity to visit my grandparents, who live in the Denver area.

On the first day of the workshop, we engaged in probably the most powerful part of the entire experience (for me), which was a story circle. We were advised to come with a draft of a script, but I tried to sit down and write one, and I found I couldn’t figure out what to say. As it turned out, very few of the participants were prepared with a script. In story circle, we each had twelve minutes to talk about our story, answer questions, ask questions, and obtain feedback from the facilitators and other participants. I think the reason it was such a powerful experience is because it was such a bonding moment. Several of us cried as we reached the heart of what it was we wanted to say, and the facilitators were excellent at provoking us to really think about what story we wanted to tell.

I started my spiel with the idea that I wasn’t going to cry at all. I told everyone I was visiting my grandparents. My grandfather is a WWII vet, and I decided I would make a digital story about his experiences in WWII. He has some really interesting stories about being inducted into the Navy, joining the Seabees, breaking his glasses and running afoul of postal censors when he wrote home asking for his parents to send him two pairs to replace the broken ones, coming up with a secret code so he could communicate with his mother, and contracting meningitis and causing the Army’s 7th Division to fall under quarantine and have their Christmas leave canceled. A couple of years ago, he was able to travel to Washington, DC on an Honor Flight to see the nation’s capital, specifically the World War II Memorial. He enjoyed the trip a great deal. So, I said to the story circle, that’s what I want to tell a story about.

The facilitator looked at me, a pointed expression on her face, and she asked me, “Dana, how is this story about you?” I was startled by the question, but I thought for a minute, and then, naturally, I burst into tears. It was about me because of everything my grandparents had done for me. It was about me because they are elderly, and I don’t know how much time I have left. It was about me because I will be devastated when they are gone.

With this much-needed clarity, I began to write my script. I was having trouble paring it down to the 300-word suggested limit. I thought I might be able to do 500 words, but 300 was too little to say everything I thought I needed to say. I decided I would just rebel and make a longer video, and I set to work with that script. The facilitator helped me record my voiceover. I interviewed my grandfather, who spoke for an hour about his experiences, and I selected the parts I would use in the story. I scanned lots of pictures my grandparents had around the house.

When I began stitching together the different pieces, I accidentally deleted a whole segment in which my grandfather goes into some detail about having meningitis during the war. After I listened to the video, though, I realized I didn’t exactly need the clip, so I let it go, and I actually managed to get the video at the upper time limit. I never thought I’d do that. It has taken me a couple of weeks’ worth of soul-searching and wrestling to decide whether or not to share the story I created.

The experience of making the video convinced me to pull digital storytelling into my own curriculum. One natural place I could see it falling is in my American Studies in Literature course. I had already decided to incorporate This American Life into my American literature curriculum, as I see media like podcasts and videos as the new “wave” of writing/storytelling. Well, maybe not so new anymore, but you know how it is in education. Near the end of the year, I plan to explore the theme of the journey. I did not select a large number of works because I knew I wanted to do a culminating project of some kind. The journey, can, of course, be a physical journey. It can also be an inward journey, a self-discovery. Like my video was, after a fashion. Here is another example from the Denver director of the Center for Digital Storytelling:

It really impacted me when I watched it. Obviously, I would not ask students to tell stories that they are not ready to tell, but I think this could be one of the most powerful experiences for my students:

  • We all have stories, and think about how important it is for us to tell them. Think about how interesting your average episode of This American Life and The Moth is. Think about how entertaining it is to read, say, David Sedaris.
  • We often ask students to read the stories of others, but we don’t ask them to tell their own. We ask them to analyze the stories of others.
  • Digital storytelling is a new way of sharing narrative. In the past, we listened to storytellers. Then we read. I think this might be the next thing. Not that we stopped listing to people tell stories or that will will stop reading. But this adds a new dimension to storytelling.
  • The “writing” aspect of this project is some of the hardest writing I have ever done. I can see people challenging the idea that this is writing, but drafting the whole story was an extremely challenging and rewarding process.

Here is more of Daniel Weinshenker on storytelling:

One aspect of the process that I will definitely borrow is the story circle. It fits hand-in-glove with the kind of writing workshop I have been doing in my classes.

In the end, I even learned some useful technical tricks that made my video better (and here I thought I was an expert!).

Years ago, I was in Coleman Barks’s last poetry class at the University of Georgia. The final project we did in his class was to bring our own poetry to class and share it. Dr. Barks anthologized it. He told us explicitly that after we studied the great 20th century American poets, we were now among them, the next generation if you will. And I believed it. I want to give that gift to my own students.

If you have a chance to take one of the Center for Digital Storytelling workshops, don’t hesitate. They do excellent work. Next to Folger Teaching Shakespeare PD, it’s the best PD I’ve ever had in my life.

Photo by Jill Clardy

Professional Development, Recommended Reading, Teaching Literature

Falling in Love with Close Reading: First Discussion

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I apologize for dragging my feet starting our study of Lehman and Roberts’s  Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts—and Life.

I propose that we read the first two chapters this week and gather here to discuss them next Sunday, August 3. I know we’re butting up into the beginning of school for some folks. I just had a really hectic July, and I wasn’t able to get us started. I’m all set now. Let’s go!

Professional Development

Summer PD Reading Book Club: Falling in Love with Close Reading

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I’m sorry for not posting this sooner, but my July is a little hectic. The final results of the poll are in, and it looks like  Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts—and Life by Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts is the winner (by three percentage points, or just one vote!), so if folks who wanted to read Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst want to do a part two as fall begins, let me know in the comments.

The next thing we need to decide is how to conduct the discussion. I’ll bring my copy with me as I leave for a Digital Storytelling Workshop in Denver this week. What sort of reading schedule do you propose? How would you like to discuss the book? Here?

Sound off in the comments to let me know!

Technology

Folger Teaching Shakespeare Institute 2014, Part One

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Me at the Folger LibraryYou’ll have to forgive my windswept look, but I took this picture after spending two thrilling days at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, DC, working with participants in this year’s Teaching Shakespeare Institute.

My role at the institute is to teach and coach the participants in creating projects integrating technology. Here is the list of tools we talked about:

Some of the other instructors discussed other tools, and I also taught other tools during a “technology fair” in which TSI participants circled around for quick instruction and discussion about various tools.

If you are an English teacher, you really must try to find a way to go to a TSI. If you can’t give up four weeks of your summer (I know how that is because I couldn’t do it either and went instead to a mini-TSI), then you must seek out opportunities to see the Folger educators at conferences, such as NCTE, or try to bring them to your school. You will learn amazing things, and you will never teach Shakespeare the same way. You probably won’t teach other things the same way either. The Folger education folks are awesome at what they do.

I was thrilled to be asked to join them, and I had a wonderful personal tour of the library. I saw some unforgettable things. Of course, I was most excited to see a First Folio (I really wanted to touch it). Aside from that, perhaps my favorite item on exhibition right now is a vellum pedigree scroll commissioned by Edward IV for the purpose of legitimizing his kingship. It truly is incredible. Imagine that this scroll once belonged to Edward IV. THE Edward IV, as in the Yorkist king who overthrew the Lancastrian King Henry VI and was father to the two princes in the Tower and brother to the “evil” brother Richard III. That Edward IV. Can you imagine? Here are some details of the scroll: Detail 1 and Detail 2. Detail 1 shows Edward IV at the top, and begins his pedigree with God, moving down to Adam and Eve, and then Noah in Detail 2, and then forward to some (perhaps) more legitimate ancestry claims.

I also was able to see the drafts of the Shakespeare Coat of Arms from the College of Arms. It was really interesting to see such very old documents. Another real prize on exhibition is a family tree of Queen Elizabeth’s, starting with Henry III at the “root”—all the “branches” sprouting from Henry III’s stomach. You can see a detail of the pedigree here. Of course, through Henry VIII’s mother, Elizabeth of York, Queen Elizabeth descends from the York family (daughter of Edward IV), and from Henry VIII’s father, Henry VII, Queen Elizabeth descends from the Lancaster family. Both the Yorks and the Lancasters find their “root” in Edward III, who was the father of both John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, and Edmund of Langley, Duke of York. It’s a fascinating document to look at, with so much detail.

Dan Bruno, who blogs for High School Matters (NCTE’s blog for the Secondary Section), has been capturing what being a part of the TSI is like for participants, and I would urge you to check out his blog, where you can learn much more about what is happening at the TSI.

The big takeaway about technology integration that Peggy O’Brien wanted participants to walk away with is that we don’t want to use technology for the sake of using technology. We want to use it to meet a need we have, which is exactly what the SAMR Model of technology integration asks teachers to examine. I took a stab at organizing the tools we discussed according to how I think they might fall on the SAMR Model, but of course, this organization scheme is subjective. Some people might use a tool as a mere substitution, while others might redefine an activity using that same tool.

Substitution Task can be done without the tool. The tool is used as a direct substitution and isn’t necessary for the task. There is no functional change. Scrible, ToonDoo
Augmentation The tool allows the task to be done more easily, with some functional change. Google Drive, Animoto, Shakespeare Searched
Modification The task is changed significantly because of the tool. There is more functional change; in fact, the tool might allow you to do the task in a way you couldn’t if you didn’t use the tool. VideoNot.es, Explain Everything/Educreations, Wordle/Tagxedo
Redefinition The task couldn’t be done without the tool. The tool allows for designing tasks that couldn’t be conceived of without the tool. Popcorn Maker, QR Codes GarageBand/Audacity, iMovie/Windows Movie Maker

My thinking on this grouping is that Scrible, which allows users to annotate websites and save those annotations in a library, essentially substitutes a technology tool for something you can already do. You can print articles/pages from websites and annotate them by hand. Scrible makes it unnecessary to print. ToonDoo is similar in that it allows you to create cartoons, but certainly we could always draw cartoons by hand. I see both of those tools as substitutions that don’t add real functionality. Of course, that is not to say that we shouldn’t use them. There is nothing wrong with substituting a technology tool for another kind of tool, but it is problematic if substitution is all we do when we say we are integrating technology.

I see Google Drive as having great potential. Depending on how it’s used, it can be redefining, but I placed it in Augmentation because we can certainly already use other tools to write, and we can either type or handwrite comments and feedback on that writing. What Google Drive does allow for is easier collaboration and editing of a document, so we do see a functional change. Google Drive has advantages over tools we have used to write with in the past. Animoto allows us to upload pictures and select a theme and music, and it organizes the pictures into a movie. We could certainly use other tools to do this same work, but Animoto does the editing for us quickly and easily, making it perhaps somewhat easier to use than, say, iMovie for editing a similar video. Shakespeare Searched similarly allows us to do something we could already do—search all the works of Shakespeare—but it adds a significant amount of functionality through the use of a search engine. We might take quite a long time to perform the same task without the tool.

I see the screencasting tools, word cloud tools, and VideoNot.es as offering something more than a functional change, however. Screencasting tools allow us to create videos of whatever we might be doing on a computer or iPad and share those videos with our students or the world. They offer opportunities to flip the classroom, or to demonstrate a technique or problem-solving process. Anything we can show someone how to do on a computer, we can also screencast. Theoretically, we could the same type of thing without the tool—but the tool allows for significant modification of the task. Word cloud tools, as much as we consider them to be somewhat simple technology tools, really do significantly modify a task. Can you imagine painstakingly filtering every word in a work of literature (if the work is long, the task is even more daunting), and taking a word count, then creating a word cloud indicating word frequency based on the size of the words in the cloud? Me either. I would never do this task with students if not for Wordle or Tagxedo, which means to me that these tools allow for significant modification of a task (perhaps even redefinition). VideoNot.es allows users to annotate videos. Sure, we can already take notes as we watch a video, but VideoNot.es integrates with our Google Drive account to save those notes to our drive, and it also allows us to navigate the video using our annotations.

I see Popcorn Maker, QR Codes, podcasting tools, and video editing tools as redefinition tools. Perhaps one could try to remix or put together various pictures and videos in iMovie, but Popcorn Maker doesn’t stop there: you can also add hyperlinks and social media to your remix, and you can also collaborate. I can’t think of a tool that allows users to do all of these things (or at least not as well as Popcorn Maker), so I see it as a tool that allows us to do tasks we couldn’t do without the tool. Podcasting can technically be done with a recording device, but GarageBand has a lot of elements that allow easy creation of podcasts and music. Frankly, I don’t know anyone who was using podcasting in their classroom before these tools came along. Actually, movie editing tools are similar. I think I made a movie with classmates for English class when I was in high school. We used a camcorder, which was cutting edge technology for the time. We certainly only did the one project, and it was quite unusual for students to create video projects at that time, and teachers just were not asking us to make them—most of us had no access to equipment that allowed us to make movies. Now, creating video projects is easy, and tools like iMovie make it simple to tell a digital story and edit it. I am seeing a lot more movie-making in classrooms today than I saw even five years ago. Going back ten years ago, it was rare, and fifteen years ago, when I was a fairly new teacher, no movie-making was happening in my school. Finally, I placed QR codes in the redefinition list because I was thinking of how I’ve seen them used. One project I was particularly proud of took place at my previous school. Students filmed each other working on art projects and talking about their artwork. Those videos were uploaded to YouTube and linked to QR codes. These codes were placed next to the works in exhibition around the building. This kind of interactive art exhibit wouldn’t have been possible to do without the QR codes—at least not with the kind of equipment we had. Worcester Academy had a QR code scavenger hunt for Digital Learning Day this year, and I don’t think the task could have been designed without the QR codes. Because they can link to anything, they’re useful in paper projects with digital elements. For example, one of my students created film as one of his genres for his multigenre project, but when he handed in the paper copy of the project, one page had a QR code linked to the film. It was quite handy.

In all, I think the discussion of exactly why you might want to use a tool, and what it can offer in terms of fuctionality and redesign of a task, is an important discussion to have. Substituting is fine, but if we really want to get the most out of our use of technology tools, we want to shoot more for modifying and redefining tasks using technology.

Professional Development, Technology

I Don’t Get What’s Wrong with Asking for PD

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Every year during ISTE, a version of this tweet makes the rounds. It gets a lot of favorites and retweets.

I totally understand the spirit of the tweet. A lot of teachers don’t use a tool (or much technology at all), and some techy folks view asking for PD as an excuse not to use a tool. And there are probably quite a few teachers who can’t make the time for PD, but claim they don’t use tech tools because they haven’t had the PD.

The problem I have with this thinking is that I don’t understand why asking for PD is problematic. Most teachers I have worked with in the last few years I’ve been a tech integrator are quite interested in learning how to use technology. They set aside time to meet with me, or they come to PD sessions for the express purpose of learning to use technology. It makes them feel better to have a guide teach them the basics before they dive in on their own. I don’t blame them. There are several things I prefer to have help with when I do them.

The other problem I see is that when I introduce a tech tool to students, I always take time to teach them how to use it. Sure, some of them prefer to dive in and figure it out, but often, I find students are not the tech savvy digital natives they’re believed to be. There are things they know how to do, and tools they know how to use well, but they don’t know how to do everything, and there is a lot they don’t know about working with some technology. So yes, I have had students ask me to show them how to use technology. In a sense, isn’t that asking for PD?

I would much rather teachers and students both felt comfortable asking me for help when they need it than that they felt there was something wrong with asking for help. Am I just not getting it or something?

Professional Development, Teaching Literature, Teaching Writing

Summer PD Reading Book Club

Some of you may remember that I have hosted summer PD reading in the past. I hope to get another summer PD reading book club off the ground this summer. I have narrowed the selections down to three choices:

Falling in Love with Close Reading: Lessons for Analyzing Texts—and Life by Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts:

Falling in Love with Close Reading shows that studying text closely can be rigorous, meaningful, and joyous. You’ll empower students to not only analyze texts but to admire the craft of a beloved book, study favorite songs and video games, and challenge peers in evidence-based discussions. Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts offer a clear, fresh approach to close reading that students can use independently and with any text. Falling in Love with Close Reading helps you guide students to independence and support the transfer of analytical skills to media and their lives with lessons that include:

    • strategies for close reading narratives, informational texts, and arguments.
    • suggestions for differentiation
    • sample charts and student work from real classrooms
    • connections to the Common Core
    • a focus on “reading” media and life closely

Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading by Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst

Just as rigor does not reside in the barbell but in the act of lifting it, rigor in reading is not an attribute of a text but rather of a reader’s behavior—engaged, observant, responsive, questioning, analytical. The close reading Strategies in Notice & Note will help you cultivate those critical reading habits that will make your students more attentive, thoughtful, independent readers. In this timely and practical guide, Kylene and Bob:

  • examine the new emphasis on text-dependent questions, rigor, text complexity, and what it means to be literate in the 21st century
  • identify 6 signposts that help readers notice significant moments in a work of literature
  • provide 6 text-dependent anchor questions that help readers take note and read more closely
  • offer 6 Notice and Note model lessons that help you introduce each signpost to your students

Fearless Writing: Multigenre to Motivate and Inspire by Tom Romano

What does it mean to write fearlessly? Tom Romano illustrates the power of multigenre papers to push students beyond the “safety zone” of narrative and exposition into a place where fact meets imagination, and research meets creativity. A place to try the untried. Fearless Writing empowers students to leap into this personal, multifaceted take on research writing by giving you specific strategies and practical ideas to help students:

  • generate topic ideas
  • design research plans
  • develop core elements of a multigenre project
  • create innovative genres and “golden threads” of unifying elements

While multigenre papers address many Common Core standards, Tom’s passionate response to both the strengths and weaknesses of the Common Core serves as a lightning bolt of awareness, and a rallying cry for a writing curriculum of genre diversity. Expand your notion of writing and teaching writing, fearlessly.

While I cannot make promises or offer guarantees, it is possible that I can persuade the writers to become involved in our discussions. We can work out logistics in terms of how we want to conduct the discussions, and if you have suggestions, by all means, share in the comments.

Please vote in the poll if you want to participate. The poll closes on July 5 at midnight, so please share this post with colleagues and friends who might be interested in joining us.

Which book do you want to read?

  • Falling in Love with Close Reading, Christopher Lehman and Kate Roberts (39%)
  • Notice & Note: Strategies for Close Reading, Kylene Beers and Robert E. Probst (36%)
  • Fearless Writing: Multigenre to Motivate and Inspire, Tom Romano (25%)

Total Votes: 28

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Blogging

Nine Years of Blogging

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nine birthday photo

I first posted to this blog nine years ago today. My first post, in case you are interested, was a review of Constance Weaver’s book Teaching Grammar in Context. It’s not the most comprehensive or reflective review. I actually re-read a few of my early posts and cringed a little. I like to think I became much more reflective over time, and this blog is a big reason why.

If I had not started this blog, I sometimes wonder if I’d still be teaching. I was in a frustrating position as a teacher for a very long period of my career. I learned a lot. One thing I learned is that there were people out there, people with whom I connected over this blog or their blog or later, Twitter, and they were going through some of the same difficulties, and they shared some of my opinions. It meant so much to have a source of validation. It can be so hard to teach on your own. It took me a long time to realize I was just not teaching in the right place. I’m so thankful that I am teaching in the right place now. However, I wonder—if I had not had this blog and the connections I made starting here, would I have been able to stick it out, or would I have made the assumption teaching wasn’t right for me rather than that I was just in the wrong place?

So I am grateful for my blog because it is the first step I took into being connected to other educators, and it helped me find my voice, and figure out what I believed. I have not always been the most prolific blogger, and I know I don’t post often, but it means a lot to me that this space is always here for me.

I’m also grateful to my blog for helping me reflect. Having an audience and space to talk about what I was reading, doing, and thinking really helped me grow as an educator. I felt myself becoming a better teacher as I began blogging. I taught for about six years before I started blogging, but it was after I started blogging that I became interested in integrating technology. I would never have thought, when I started teaching, that I would ever be “tech savvy.” I certainly didn’t think I’d ever have a real website or anything.

Finally, I’m grateful for you, those of you who have read and sometimes commented. It helped me to know you were out there, somewhere, and that we could talk about whatever was on our minds, read books together, and share ideas.

Photo by LifeSupercharger

Reflection, Teaching and Learning

On the Horizon

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On the Horizon photoI’m interrupting my alphabet series as the year closes. Today was our last day of post-planning, or post-sessionals, as my school terms it. I had a great year. My students were awesome, and I tried some great things in my classroom.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned my changing role on this blog yet. A few years ago, I went into technology integration. I am going back to teaching English full time next year as the English department chair at my school. I am very excited about this changing role, and I believe in some ways it’s a return to my first love. I did enjoy technology integration, but if it had ever taken me completely out of the classroom, I’m not sure I could have handled it. I don’t think this transition means I will not be talking about technology. I do anticipate this blog will shift back towards more of a focus on teaching English, however.

My school is moving toward backwards design/UbD, and long-time readers of this blog will know how thrilled I am about it. Many of our teachers already use the format for planning, but with a more institutional focus on UbD, I think the teaching and learning will become even better. I work with some excellent teachers, and I think we have the best kids anywhere, so I’m really excited to see the ways in which project-based learning and UbD makes my school even better.

Even more exciting than seeing our school embrace UbD? Grant Wiggins is coming to our school to do a workshop during our pre-planning (pre-sessional) meetings. I am so excited to have the opportunity to meet Grant and learn from him in person.

I also recently had the opportunity to attend a CLA/CWRA Performance Task Academy led by Marc Chun. If you have ever struggled with creating performance tasks, I can highly recommend the workshop, which really helps break down the process and offers opportunities for you to build your performance task with Marc’s guidance.

In preparation for working with Grant, my school has combined our curriculum mapping (which greatly resembled UbD) with our new learning management system. I was one of the early adopters, and I was asked to flesh out one of my unit pages so that I could model use of the LMS to colleagues. I chose to flesh out my unit on The Catcher in the Rye. I will be teaching the novel again next year in a sophomore World Literature class (and I will also be teaching American literature again after a few years’ hiatus—perhaps folks who have been reading a while will remember I taught American literature for quite a long time, and that it was the focus of many blog entries and lesson ideas posted here). Because I’d recently been to the Performance Task Academy, and also perhaps because I love planning, I couldn’t just build my unit page without actually tackling my UbD unit for The Catcher in the Rye. I did borrow the idea behind the performance task that Wiggins and McTighe describe on pp. 199-200 of Understanding by Design. I have used the performance task before without as much success as I would have liked. I realized at the Performance Task Academy that the missing piece was grounding the performance task more solidly in a real-world situation and giving more definitive parameters. The general idea is the same, but the performance task as I revised it will make more use of real-world tools and materials and will have real-world stakes that more closely mimic the work a psychiatrist treating Holden might do. I am really happy with it, though the unit as it is posted is still a little incomplete, as I haven’t finished thinking about discussion questions I will want to use in class discussion.

I have also been fortunate enough to find a fabulous friend and mentor in my Dean of Faculty, Cindy (and I hope she doesn’t mind my calling her out on my blog when I didn’t ask first). It’s been so refreshing to work with her this year (and last), especially as I transition into my new role. She’s my English teaching soulmate, and anyone who has ever worked in a vacuum with no like-minded administrators knows how it feels to find someone like that in your workplace. It doesn’t just make it easier to go to work every day, it makes it fun, invigorating, and challenging (in the best way) to go to work every day. Under her leadership, I joined our school’s Vision Committee, and it has been some of the most rewarding work I’ve done with colleagues. Together we designed a professional development day unconference.

With all of this buzzing around in my mind, I’m so eager to get started on planning for next year. I’m really excited about the work on the horizon.

Assessment, Issues

F is for Failure

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A light bulb but no (good) ideas... (17/365)No one expects a batter to hit a home run on the first try. In fact, even experienced hitters rarely accomplish this feat. Batters strike out more often than they hit, especially at the professional level. We expect it, and we don’t consider it failure because at that level, hitting the ball is difficult.

How often do we give students one chance to learn, though? Lately, I’ve heard educators beginning to say we need to reassess failure. Some even say it should stand for “first attempt in learning.” One of the things I have come to value as a student myself, both in my master’s program and in online courses I’ve taken through Coursera, is the opportunity to retake quizzes and revise work. Whether or not you want to allow revisions largely depends on your purpose for assessment. If you just want to gauge whether or not students did a reading assignment, perhaps not, but if you want to see what students have learned, then why wouldn’t you?

One of our math teachers allows students to revise their tests. Students grade their own tests and know how they have done before he does. He explains the process in this presentation:

Instead of crumpling their tests and shoving them into the deepest recesses of their backpacks, or worse—throwing them away—students are actually learning from tests. What a concept! Using assessments to learn instead of playing gotcha!

In an English class, this sort of revision can be fairly common—the writing process is designed to teach students that one-and-done drafts don’t really exist. However, grading all these drafts takes time, so not all teachers truly teach the process. I found some success in placing the emphasis on the process through writing workshop this year, and what I found is that students revised even after work had been graded, sometimes continuing to revise for weeks or months (no, not every student). Student writing also improved.

We have created a school culture in which students must do well on their first attempt or risk bad grades, but we complain that students only care about grades and not about their learning. The only way to help students care more about their learning is to allow them to fail. If their first attempt in learning isn’t successful, they need to try again. Otherwise, they receive the message that only the first try counts, and they absolutely must not fail on the first attempt.

I struggle with this idea myself. It’s not easy to make the kind of time we need to make in order to help students truly learn. But if that is the goal, then we need to design lessons that will help students learn, and we need to allow students to struggle a bit with the learning. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that right about the time when grades start really mattering, students seem to lose their curiosity. They are not interested in exploring; they want to know the answer. The stakes are too high. There isn’t time to try and try again.

Perhaps there isn’t time on every single assignment, but teachers need to give students opportunities to revise, to try again… to learn. Otherwise, I’m not sure what we’re all doing in school.

Issues, Teaching Grammar, Teaching Writing

E is for English Language Learners

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Yare

For most of my career, I have taught in independent schools. At my previous school, being an independent school teacher meant that I didn’t have English language learners in my classroom. In the eight years I taught at my previous school, I had one student who was learning English when she entered my classroom. Unfortunately for her, we were in the midst of studying Romeo and Juliet. She spent hours and and hours every day learning English and used an electronic translator in class (I didn’t mind). By the time she graduated, she spoke and wrote well and was inducted in the National Honor Society. We are still in touch.

I know learning English was hard for her, but she was dedicated, and she had been admitted to the school with the condition that the school not be responsible for helping her learn English—she needed to gain proficiency and perform at the level of the other students. It was harsh. I didn’t agree with it, and I was inclined to help her along as much as I could as well as evaluate her writing with the thought in mind that she was still learning the language. And let’s face it—English is a tough language to learn.

My current school has many international boarding students from all over the world. We have English classes for English language learners. These classes help students learn conversational and written English and include high-interest/low-level reading that is accessible and engaging. These students typically do well and move into regular English classes within a year or two.

I have noticed several things about teaching international students: 1) they typically work very hard to achieve the same results as their native-speaking peers; 2) they are often quiet in class discussion, leading to the familiar refrain on progress reports—”Student X needs to participate more in class discussion”; 3) they have difficulty with verbs, agreement, and prepositions; 4) they sometimes struggle with directions.

I am not sure there is anything you can do about the first issue. There is no way around the fact that learning in a second (or third, and so on) language is more difficult. However, there are some things you can do that will make it easier.

One tip I learned from the ELL teachers at my school is to give an ELL student a question I want them to answer in class the next day at the end of a class period. It gives them time to process and think so that they can participate. Often, these students have much to say, but they are translating and thinking, and by the time they want to contribute, we have moved on to the next topic. Another way to give ELL students time to think is to engage the whole class in a Socratic seminar and give all students the questions in advance. The international students still have trouble jumping into these discussions at times, but they are prepared with written comments and often do better in these kinds of discussions than in typical class discussions, when they don’t know the questions in advance. Another great way to engage these students in discussion is to leverage technology. If your school has a learning management system or online course with discussion forums, you can ask them questions online, and allow them to respond online, which gives them time to process and think about a response to the question.

Language issues in writing are often best dealt with on and individual basis. You can point students in the direction of resources. If a learning management system allows you to individually assign practice assignments, you can try that as well, but one of the best tools for working on writing issues of any stripe is writing workshop. The more students are exposed to models of writing and work through drafts, they better they will write.

Struggling with directions is a problem certainly not limited to English language learners, but I have noticed they sometimes are not sure what they are being asked to do. You can help by making directions as explicit as possible (clear, no ambiguous language, direct vocabulary). It also helps to hear directions aloud and see them in print. It helps to allow students to ask questions. English language learners sometimes hesitate to ask questions either because of cultural reasons or because they don’t want to look like they don’t understand. Some cultures believe it is insulting to ask teachers questions because it insinuates the teacher didn’t explain well enough. Students from these cultures should be encouraged not to look at asking questions in this way, but it can still be difficult for them to overcome. They sometimes feel more comfortable asking questions in private, so making time to meet with students (office hours, help sessions, email) can go a long way toward helping students feel more comfortable asking questions.

I don’t have all the answers, especially given my limited experience with English language learners in my classroom. What tips would you add? What issues do you see arise?