Category Archives: Issues

Issues

“Look What I’m Reading for Pleasure”

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I have a student whom I just love (well, a lot of them, actually, but I’m going to focus on just the one today). I have taught her for three years. I teach in a small school, and sometimes that happens. When she was a ninth grader, she let me know she didn’t like to read. One day it dawned on me she might really like Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, so I told her she should check it out—I thought she’d like it. I don’t really remember for sure, but I think she was in tenth grade by that point. She devoured the book. And the next. And the next. She got the last one when it came out.

Yesterday she showed me that she’s reading The Autobiography of Henry VIII by Margaret George. She said, “Look what I’m reading, Ms. Huff. For pleasure! For pleasure!” She watches The Tudors and has developed a real interest in the historical personages depicted in the series. This book is nearly 1000 pages long. I know the Twilight books aren’t skinny, but I admit I was impressed. She is excited about next year and the opportunity to take a Shakespeare course. In short, whether she’s a voracious reader or not, I don’t know, but she is a reader now. So am I taking credit for that? Heck yes, I am (/Napoleon Dynamite voice). In all seriousness, I made a suggestion. It seemed casual at the time, but it did have an impact in that my student did read and love the book I suggested for her. But I didn’t do anything, really. The book did.

Assessment, Issues

Late Work

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I am curious as to your policies regarding late work.  Will you take a moment and answer this poll (if you are so inclined)?  Feel free to elaborate on your answers in the comments if you wish.  The poll expires Monday evening.

Do you accept late work?

  • Yes, at a significant penalty to the grade. (62%)
  • Only in rare and extenuating circumstances. (20%)
  • Yes, at no penalty. (18%)
  • Never. (0%)

Total Votes: 87

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Issues

Magistricide

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I adopted a word at Save the Words: magistricide.

magistricide: noun; the killing of one’s master or teacher

Etymology: Latin, magister, teacher or master + –cide from caedere, to kill.

Usage: If Mrs. Huff doesn’t quit assigning so much work, I’m entertaining magistricide as a viable option.

Magistricide

I have vowed to use this word as much as possible, but I chose it not just because I have a dark sense of humor (sometimes), but also because it makes me think about so much of what I read about in reference to education.

New teachers are a lot like young students.  They’re excited to begin teaching.  They have lots of ideas.  In my experience, they work like the dickens to help students.  But there is an epidemic of metaphorical magistricide.  The state of so many of our schools today kills that desire to teach, and teachers leave the profession in droves in their first few years.  I feel very sad for some of my colleagues in the edublogosphere when I read about their experiences, and I feel sad sometimes when I reflect on my own experiences in other schools.  I am so happy to be teaching where I teach right now.  I love my students and colleagues.  I feel invigorated by teaching.  I am given so many opportunities to try new things, like Web 2.0 tools, when other teachers are being cut off with irrational blocking or fearful administrators who don’t trust their teachers.

So many of my colleagues don’t have the kind of support I have, either (from either parents or administrators).  I know I can count on my administrators, but what do you do if you work in a place where students do not have to meet expectations for behavior?  I tried teaching in a needy school with a poor administration in my first year.  I was so depressed.  I used to cry on my way to work because I didn’t want to be there.  At best, all I could manage was crowd control, and even if I was able to manage that, I felt successful given the odds.  My students didn’t really learn because I was not given the support to really teach.

Teacher attrition is a big concern of mine because after my first four years, feeling beleagured and unsupported, I wanted to quit.  I did quit.  I came back, had two more years in a failing school with no discipline and finally lucked into my present position.  I wonder if I’d be teaching now if I hadn’t found a job at my current school.  I can’t say with certainty that I would be.  I am not one to toot my own horn, but I think I’m a pretty good teacher.  I am passionate about my teaching.  How many really potentially good teachers are lost every year to this form of magistricide?

Blogging, Issues, Web 2.0

Transparency and Reassurance

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Bill Genereux has an interesting post about what he calls “The True Digital Divide.”  He discusses in detail something I touched on in my presentation at GCTE.  If we truly want students to engage with the technology and use the Web 2.0 tools available to them, we have to be leaders.  We have to use the tools ourselves.  If we want students to blog, we should be blogging.  I think educators blogging could be a very positive form of transparency.  In an age when people make a lot of assumptions about what is or is not happening in classrooms, often I think the teachers’ voices are missing, and blogging can be a positive platform to share what we are thinking and learning and doing.  On the other hand, I think it has become for many teachers who blog a platform to complain.  No doubt teaching is hard work, and sometimes it feels good to vent.  I personally think blogging is a terrible platform for complaining.  First, I don’t think most of us like to read it.  Second, it’s just not wise; Regnef High School anyone?  I am very interesting in posts and conversations that make me think.  So yes, we need to be using the tools, for as Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach notes, “Technology will never replace teachers. However, teachers who know how to use technology effectively to help their students connect and collaborate together online will replace those who do not.”  And of course, Alfie Kohn reminds us that sticking techy labels on tired or misguided practices isn’t the answer either.  Still, I think we’re moving into a positive direction when parents and students (as well as other teachers) can gain insight into what teachers are thinking and doing.  I have actually noticed something interesting: students joke about Googling me and finding lots of links.  I admit it’s true that I am in a lot of places online.  But I encourage them to read it and tell me what they think.  And when they do, they share their observations.  It can be a good thing when students, parents, and colleagues get a glimpse into a teacher’s mind and like what they see.  Transparency can foster reassurance.

Issues

Planning

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Lesson planI have been thinking about planning and new teachers quite a bit lately.  When I was a new teacher, everything I taught was new to me, and I didn’t have enough time to plan.  I think a lot of schools are a similar schedule: six periods a day, teachers teach five and have one planning period.  Not nearly enough.  Many teachers, especially new teachers, need to use time outside of school to plan.  Of course, nowadays the Internet makes a wide variety of lesson plans available to teachers, and I imagine planning is much easier for student teachers and new teachers than it was when I started teaching; however, the quality of a lot of this material is mixed, and I think it might sometimes be hard for new teachers to be able to discern the quality of lessons.

What can we do to help new teachers learn to plan?

  • Mentorship: Model how to plan for units and lessons.  Meet with new teachers to plan with them.  I was provided with a bunch of templates when I was student teaching and sent on my way.  It really took me years to figure out how to select activities that would meet learning objectives and instructional strategies for teaching those objectives.  We need to be doing more of this in teacher preparation, and some time down the road when I am working with preservice English teachers, I will.
  • Make them turn in their lesson plans: I expect many of you will disagree with this requirement, but I think regular feedback on and discussion about the lesson plans they create will really help new teachers.  No one made me do that once I had my own classroom.  In my first school, I turned in weekly plans to the Curriculum Director, but she never looked at them, or if she did, she never gave feedback.  Of course I had to turn in lesson plans when I was student teaching, but once I no longer had to do so as a new teacher, I admit I went into the classroom winging it sometimes, and that’s not good.
  • Engage in professional development with new teachers.  Do a book or article study together.  Discuss techniques.  Our school is doing one on The Skillful Teacher to the left in the sidebar.  It’s a good book: one I wish I had as a new teacher.
  • Build in some sort of regular reflection: Jim Burke’s Teacher’s Daybook has space for reflection.  Journals would work.  For those who want interaction, I think blogs are perfect.  My teaching has improved more than I can measure as a result of this blog.

Those are a few of my ideas.  I’m convinced that better planning will lead to better classroom management in many cases (some schools have administrator issues too large to compensate for, and I’ve been there and done that in the past).  If we can help teachers become more effective planners, we might retain teachers at a higher rate than we currently do.

What would you do to help new teachers?
Creative Commons License photo credit: kokeshi

Issues

Lawrence Lessig on Fresh Air

I was in the car the other day, returning home after Christmas shopping, and Terry Gross’s interview of Stanford law professor, founding board member of Creative Commons, former board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and geek Lawrence Lessig came on the radio.  I wasn’t able to finish listening to the interview, but it’s since been posted on NPR’s site (h/t Miguel Guhlin).  Check it out!

Issues

Overdue Update

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I knew at some point during the semester, I would be too overwhelmed to blog much, and that point came at the junction of creating the English department budget for next year and keeping up with grad school.

Some things I’m thinking about: assessment and professional development, planning a curriculum map/scope and sequence for my department, and NCTE.  Will I see any of you at the conference?  I’m looking forward to going.

I am plugging away in my grad school program, but I’m immensely frustrated by one of my classes to the point that I feel I should warn anyone interested in the program about the class.  It’s required, and it’s a complete waste of time.  It’s outdated, it’s boring busy work, and it’s mostly irrelevant.  It’s also the one that I was most looking forward to when I registered.  It’s a course on using the Web in education.  We have learned nothing, and I mean nothing, about Web 2.0 tools.  Several of the assignments have been redundant collections of links on various subjects.  When I finally thought I’d learned something in the class — fair use — I quickly learned from my blog commenters that even that lesson was outdated.  I was encouraged by one classmate to look at the class as a means to an end, but I admit it bothers me that I paid tuition for it.  And I plan to share this information on my course evaluation, too.  They MUST get this class, and in some respects, the rest of the program into the 21st century.  Why am I reading a book about how we are entering an information age and we need to change how we teach kids that was written in 1993?  Nothing more recent has been written on a similar subject that we can use instead?  I don’t believe it.

On the plus side, I was able to get a student discount for Adobe Studio 8, which was later replaced by Creative Suite.  It comes with Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8, Fireworks 8, Contribute 3, and Flashpaper 2.  I haven’t worked with all of the programs, but I loved Dreamweaver and Fireworks.  I know Dreamweaver throws in a lot of code that isn’t necessary when you use it to create Web sites, but it’s so much easier than coding with HTML.  I used it to build the shell of the Web site that will be my ITMA portfolio.  Most of the pages are placeholders right now except for the home page and résumé, but feel free to watch it for developments!  A permanent link is in the sidebar to the left.

Issues

Megan Golding is a Class Act!

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I hope I don’t embarrass Megan by announcing here that she was the recipient of the Class Act award.  Class Act is given by 11Alive (WXIA), a local NBC affiliate, based on a nomination by a student, parent, or colleague.  11Alive has not updated their Class Act blog to reflect Megan’s award, but that’s probably because the story just appeared on the news this morning.

If you get a chance, visit Megan’s blog and offer her congratulations.

Issues

Copyright and Fair Use

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I just completed an assignment which required me to research copyright and fair use (first useful assignment in that course, sadly), and I thought I would share some of what I learned here in case it’s helpful to you:

  • Your students in grades K-6 may not necessarily be expected to understand how much material they can use before they infringe copyright, but if your students are older, be sure to educate them about portion limitations.
  • Even for educational use, fair use has time limitations.  Make sure you are aware how long you can use materials without infringing copyright.
  • Fair use is defined in a nebulous fashion: err on the side of caution and either 1) obtain proper permissions, 2) follow the letter of fair use guidelines with regards to all restrictions and limitations, or 3) don’t use the material.

I found these sites helpful with regards to learning more about fair use:

Remember: You can find music, images, video, and other materials licensed under a Creative Commons License (which often just requires attribution in the case of non-commercial use, but check the license for the individual work you want to use).  Make sure your students know about this valuable resource.