Category Archives: Reflection

Reflection

Back to School 2015

school photoI forgot to post yesterday for Slice of Life Tuesday. I was tired when I returned home from school and wound up taking a nap. While Monday was our first day of school, it was mostly taken up with orientation activities, so Tuesday was the first day we met with our students. We had shortened classes.

This year I am teaching American Studies in Literature and AP English Literature and Composition. American Lit is familiar territory. I have been teaching it for most of my career—and this will be my eighteenth year. It doesn’t seem that long in a lot of ways. AP Lit, on the other hand, is new for me, so I have been doing a lot of work to prepare for that course.

I began the year in my AP class with a chalk talk: “What are your goals for AP Lit this year?” on one poster, and “What challenges do you foresee in this class?” on the other. Students wrote responses silently for ten minutes, stepped back to read what others wrote, and added comments or agreed with peers’ comments by starring, checking or adding some other mark. They liked it, and they discovered they really have similar hopes and fears. I am going to like this class very much. They put me on the spot right away and asked me what my goals are for the class. And as it turns out, we have pretty much the same goals: 1) I want students who are taking the AP exam to go into the test feeling like they are well prepared, 2) I want students to feel well prepared for their college English classes, and 3) I want to have fun while we learn. Today in AP, we examined the rubric. I was proud of them for pointing out its vagueness (I think it could be clearer in the top end as well), and we tried our hand at reading a student’s AP timed writing and determining 1) what prompt the student was attempting to answer, 2) writing the prompt in our own words, 3) evaluating the essay (two students nailed the exact grade the student received, and the rest lowballed the student, which gives me hope that if anything, they will be harsher graders (which is potentially better than grading too high), and 4) talking about thesis statements. They are great, engaged class.

My American Lit students began the year with some discussion of essential questions:

  • What is the American Dream?
  • Is the American Dream accessible to all? Why/why not?
  • What makes a person American?
  • How is America different from/similar to other countries?
  • Why do people come to America to live?

I asked students to take sticky notes and pick at least two questions to reflect on and write answers to. Then they put one of the sticky notes on chart paper and made connections between notes: two ideas were similar, two ideas were opposites, two ideas were connected in some other way. Then I asked them to take another sticky note and put it on the appropriate chart and connect a negative with a positive or make a connection between a note and something they heard in the news. It won’t really surprise most folks (and didn’t surprise me) to learn they didn’t follow the news much, though one student commented he’d heard candidates talking about “anchor babies.” We talked about what that was. I told the students we would put the charts away and take them out at the end of the year and look at them again. We would reflect on what we had learned. Are our answers the same? Are they nuanced in some way? What do we know now that we didn’t know in the beginning?

I think these classes will be interesting in particular because I have many international students. I have students from China, Vietnam, Russia, Sweden, Thailand, Nigeria, and South Korea, as well as students from Massachusetts and the rest of New England. It looks like a really diverse group, and I think they will bring some very interesting perspectives to our discussions about American literature. Of course, they are likely to need support as non-native speakers of English. I always think my international students are brave for traveling so far away to study in a second (or perhaps third or fourth) language. I wouldn’t have been able to do that when I was in high school.

We are plunging into the deep end of the pool without water wings tomorrow as we have a Socratic seminar on Emma Lazarus’s poem “The New Colossus.” I like to frame the year with this poem because I like students to ask questions about why this poem is on the Statue of Liberty and whether we believe the idea expressed in the poem (or, indeed, if we ever have believed it). I was proud that one of my former students who is in my class again approached me to check because he remembers our 70-minute Socratic seminars from last year, and he was concerned we weren’t ready as a class to do that yet. He’s right, so I was able to reassure him by letting him know they will have time to prepare for their seminar in class (half the class, in fact), and the seminar would likely be more like 30 minutes. The reason I was glad he approached me is that he 1) advocated for himself, but really 2) advocated for his peers and showed concern for them.

I have written in the past about how I reworked my curriculum so it’s thematic, and it worked well last year. I did the same opening activity last year, and you should have seen my students’ faces when I pulled out their chart paper from the beginning of the year, and they could actually see how their understanding and thinking about the questions had evolved, even if they still basically agreed with the sentiments expressed—they had evidence to back up those sentiments by the end of the year. I am hoping this year’s class walks away feeling the same way: proud of how much they had learned.

My advisory students are now seniors, and I have been with some of them all four years of high school. They are a great group—very conscientious and hardworking. I am looking forward to seeing them through their last year as they work through the college application process and prepare senior projects. I really look forward to seeing them walk across the stage at graduation at the end of the year. I am so excited to see what they will do.

I had a great start to the year. Last year was my best teaching year yet, and I’m hoping to top that one, even. I am really in a happy place right now.

Reflection, Slice of Life

Slice of Life #8: Hanging Out with Glenda

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Slice of LifeLast week, I mentioned how inspiring it was to discover that I had some colleagues at my school with whom I could collaborate as part of a Critical Friends Group®. I think collaborating with teachers outside our individual disciplines or subjects can be really helpful. Secondary teachers can be awfully focused on their subjects and forget what we share in common with all teachers; as a result, they lose out on some pretty helpful collaboration and perhaps, even more important, some supportive friends.

Still, it does help to connect with colleagues in your subject matter. I am glad that my friend Glenda Funk, who lives in Idaho, and I have started collaborating on AP Literature. Both of us are new to the subject this year. We connected via Google Hangout and talked a bit about our respective course outlines and our experiences in AP training this summer. We pooled our resources in a shared Google Drive folder. One of the things Glenda is really good at (and I’m not sure if she realizes this about herself or not) is lighting a fire under others. The Hangout was her idea, and we already have some other ideas cooking (all hers). She is also really good about reminding me to do my Slice when I haven’t. She’s not just a great collaborator but also a great friend. Knowing that she is out there and we can connect easily means I have someone I can run to with the quick question about something I might want to try. We also bounced some other ideas off each other. I told Glenda how I had planned to start off with a chalk talk in my classes and what I thought might be some good questions to ask, and she said that gave her an idea for a lesson tweak she might try on the first day as well. Even better, Glenda mentioned our collaboration on Facebook, and as a result, we’ve invited a couple more friends to join in.

I’ve been working my way through King Lear andA Thousand Acres. I plan to start the year with an introduction to AP—some analysis tools, some practices with both writing and multiple choice, learning how to read, use, and apply the rubric—and my unit on Home and Family with Lear and A Thousand Acres at the center will follow. I am really excited about teaching these pair texts. It has been a while since I read either of them, and they are so rich and powerful. I have been working a bit on a unit, but I realized I needed to finish reading both books completely before I could make progress (and I need my Folger books, which are at school, and I haven’t had a chance to go get them recently).

I think talking with Glenda has energized me, and I don’t think I’d be spending as much time on a unit that is probably about a month away if not for the fire she lights under me. It’s funny how subtle she is about it, too. I often don’t realize she’s prompted me to do something until I’m in the middle of doing it. We all need to have friends like that in our lives. Thanks Glenda!

Glenda and Dana
Photo by Glenda Funk. Next time, I will do something with my hair before we chat! Yikes!
Issues, Reflection, Slice of Life

Slice of Life #7: Help Me Understand…

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Slice of Life

I was taking notes today in a professional development session, and I wrote down these three comments: 1) Help me understand where you are coming from; 2) Help me understand what your role is; and 3) Help me understand what is happening. They were not anything anyone else said, but they occurred to me as I was listening to my colleagues. We could understand so much better if we asked people to tell us one or all of these things.

I am attending a Critical Friends Group® training (National School Reform Faculty) at my school. The other people in my group are my colleagues. They are all either department chairs, department directors, or class/school deans—essentially middle management, if you want to think of it like that. We are learning protocols for Critical Friends Groups. As fussy as the word “protocols” sounds, it’s really helpful to have “structured processes and guidelines” in place to “promote meaningful, efficient communication, problem solving, and learning” (Critical Friends Group® Coaches Handbook, Michele Mattoon and Luci Englert McKean, eds.). Many of them, I am finding, can be used with colleagues or with students. I am getting lots of ideas for the classroom as well as department meetings.

I wrote down the three comments at some point when I was listening because it occurred to me that we often don’t know where others are coming from and why they are doing what they are doing until we ask, and we can be much more understanding and empathetic if we do. I thought they might be good questions to ask students, too. If a student is checking out and not being a part of a class, there is a reason for it. It might be they’re worried about something, or it could be that something happened which is preventing them from being present. I once took a phone away from a student, and a colleague later told me that her mother was in the hospital. I felt terrible. She wasn’t following the school rule, but she was doing it for a reason.

I also found out today that I have some wonderfully supportive colleagues, and because we hadn’t really worked together this way before, I didn’t realize I had that network. What an amazing and affirming discovery. I think we as teachers sometimes are so trapped in silos. It helps to hear others validate and support you. These kinds of groups can give us real tools we can use to support each other, which is so helpful. I’m really hoping we can continue to meet as a group through the year. I know we all do a lot. I am really involved in a lot of ways at my school, but as one of my colleagues said, a Critical Friends Group would help so much with a work/life balance.

Help me understand where you are coming from. Help me understand what your role is. Help me understand what is happening.

These three sentences are we should ask students and each other to gain more empathy with the students we teach and with our colleagues. We should also be telling people our own answers to these questions. We are all beginning or preparing to begin our new school year. It’s a good time to take care of everyone and ourselves.

As full as my summer has been (and I can’t do it again next summer), I have had some great professional learning opportunities this summer.

Reflection, Teaching and Learning, Teaching Writing

The Transformative Kenyon Writer’s Workshop for Teachers

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Doc Emily's Groovy Writers
Photo courtesy Andy Sidle

I spent June 27 to July 2 in Gambier, Ohio at Kenyon College as a participant in the Kenyon Writer’s Workshop for Teachers. Given how much writing I did while I was there, I had a difficult time figuring out how to begin talking about it here on my blog. I thought about it for a few days. I’m still not sure I’ll be able to put the experience into words, which is ironic given how I did rediscover a writing voice I thought I had lost.

I think one of the reasons I was nervous about going to Kenyon was that I didn’t necessarily consider myself a writer anymore. I don’t really want to characterize what I did as “giving up,” but I guess it was. I no longer did any of the things I told my students to do—to just dump out ideas, to write first and revise later, to write for themselves. I had this internal editor going all the time. Most of all, I just didn’t write. Not really. I mean, I wrote the occasional blog post. But I couldn’t have told you the last time I wrote a poem. I used to write poetry all the time. I always had a notebook for my poems, pretty much all through high school and college. I can’t even tell you when I stopped. I think one day I just thought maybe I wasn’t very good at writing poetry. I have written fiction off and on for a while, but it had even been a while since I had written fiction.

What this writing workshop did is crack me wide open. Now I have all these ideas and all this material to work with, and I feel like I found my voice again. I am a writer again. There was a time when writing was something I thought I would always do. I even started an application to study creative writing Emerson College in Boston (I abandoned it once I realized I would not be able to attend college out of state, and at that time, I lived in Georgia). My high school English teacher, Shelia Keener, encouraged me to write and has been telling me for years that I missed my calling. I do believe that I should be an English teacher, but Shelia is right that I should have kept up the writing.

I feel like I found my tribe at Kenyon. We had excellent instructors, for one thing. Real teachers who work with students in the classroom. My instructor, Emily Moore, is a gifted writing instructor. I am stealing simply everything she did with us. The participants were also writing teachers. I was struck not only by their dedication to the craft of writing but also to their dedication to their students. Many of them are practicing writers, and I admit to feeling a bit intimidated by them. They are really good writers. I was thrilled when one of our tribe, Joe Carriere, not only took on the task of creating a literary magazine out of our work, but also created a Facebook group for us. All of us wrote something to share at a reading, even our instructors. Each time we did a writing prompt, they wrote with us. In fact, Emily has a great technique of freewriting on the board with her students, making the messiness of freewriting public. It is freeing to see writers in process. I knew, as a writing teacher, that writing didn’t come fully formed and perfect from anyone’s pen, but for some reason, this inner critic inside me expected my writing to be different from every other writer. If I had to pick one moment when I realized what I had been doing, it might have been when we read the Robert Frost poem “Design.” Emily shared two versions: a rough draft and a final draft. It was like something clicked into place. Even Robert Frost wrote shitty drafts. Even Robert Frost!

Seeing that poem in draft form really helped me see that I am not a bad writer. I probably need to spend more time revising. Just like my students. And a writer’s workshop is extremely valuable. Given how much workshop I have done with my students the last two years, you’d think I’d have figured that out. Somehow I always separated what I did as a writer from what I did as a teacher.

The five days and change that I spent at Kenyon were transformative. I actually see myself as a writer again. I feel like I have been given a gift. The people I met were amazing. I think I have made new lifelong friends. I really do. The campus is gorgeous. The stained glass windows in the dining hall depict scenes from books! It truly is English teacher (or English major) heaven. In addition to giving me back my writing life and helping me make excellent friends, I also met two writers and had an opportunity to talk shop and now have a year’s subscription to The Kenyon Review. I actually read poetry on the plane back home. When was the last time I read so much poetry? I discovered Andrew Grace in the May/June 2015 issue and liked his poem so much I ordered a copy of his collection Shadeland. I really, really can’t remember the last time I read contemporary poetry.

At the workshop, I ran into Sam Bradford, a friend and former colleague from the Weber School, where I worked in Georgia.

Dana and SamSam has been writing fiction for years and will be the department chair at Weber next year, so we will have a lot to talk about, and I am so grateful we are back in touch. Neither of us knew the other would be there. I was so excited to see him, but even more excited to see him connect with Charley Mull, a colleague from Worcester Academy and one of my favorite people. I made them both take a picture with me on the last day.

Charley, Dana, and Sam
Charley, Dana, and Sam

I am so glad they became friends. Charley and Sam were in the same group, which was not my group with Emily. We still had plenty of opportunities to interact.

Here is a picture Sam took of me doing my reading.

Dana Reading
Photo courtesy Sam Bradford

A photo of me with my new friend Whitney (and a photobomb with my new friend, Andy).

Whitney, Dana, and AndyAnd a photo of me with my instructor, Emily. Andy somehow photobombed that one, too!

Emily and DanaWhat a phenomenal experience. I have to thank my Dean of Faculty, Cindy Sabik, for convincing me to go.

I learned some new techniques for teaching writing. I wrote some things I feel pretty good about. In fact, I am actually thinking about pursuing publication, which is something I haven’t thought about doing for many years (and that is one reason I haven’t shared anything I wrote at the workshop here). Honestly, I thought that ship had sailed a long time ago. I truly can’t remember the last time I thought about publication for myself.

You should go next summer.

Blogging, Reflection

Ten Years

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2439090788_b175f92406_mGuess what today is? Ten years ago today, I wrote my first entry on this blog. I don’t know that I had a notion when I started this blog that I would keep it going this long. I didn’t think about it at all. I just did it.

I had just finished my first year teaching in a private school. I started reading education blogs. At that time, most of the education blogs were written by ed tech folks. Very few classroom teachers were blogging. I am really excited to see that is no longer the case at all. Teachers at all levels are now blogging about teaching, educational issues, their classroom, educational policy, and, yes, educational technology, and it is wonderful that they have that outlet so their voices are heard. Do you remember what it was like before we could hear from teachers like we can today? How many of us used to sit in our classrooms, feeling alone? I know I did, which is part of why I started blogging.

One of the things blogging has helped me do is be more reflective. I admit at first I started blogging so that I could connect with teachers like me. I was feeling pretty isolated, as I mentioned. Over time, it allowed me space to think about the craft of teaching, what I was reading, and what I was teaching in some seriously helpful ways. I can’t even tell you how many friends I have made through this blog. I don’t think I could honestly tally it up. It was such a wonderful feeling to meet up with these friends at conferences and know that I was no longer alone.

Once I started teaching at a school that was more in line with my educational philosophy, I admit that I didn’t write as much here, mainly because I was supported and encouraged at work. It makes such a big difference. But it meant that I didn’t really need to blog in order to connect to others who shared my thinking. One thing I have realized just recently, however, is that this blog is really about the conversation. Sharing ideas. Committing to reflect. I say it like that because getting lazy about reflection gets me into trouble. I need to have some time to think, and the best way I think is through writing.

When I was a relatively new teacher, I remember a teacher I worked with, a well-respected teacher whom everyone loved, spoke out when the superintendent visited our school. She let him know she disagreed with the fact that he was cutting PD and taking some of the management away from the schools. I still remember her saying, “In this county, we have a concept called site-based management.” I thought she was so brave. She wasn’t afraid she’d be fired on the spot, like I would have been if I had spoken. She didn’t care. It was worth speaking out because it was a problem, and he needed to hear about it. Even if he elected not to make changes, he would know he was not supported, and in that county at the school board was elected. I don’t remember that he actually stayed that long with us. In fact, I barely remember him at all. But I do remember my colleague standing up to him, and I have always wanted to be brave like her. She just recently retired after teaching the first grandchild of one of her students, which is quite an achievement.

Over the years, I have spoken out about some topics that concerned me, such as the way we teach writing, or the way we put students off books, or censorship, or standardized testing, or homework, or any one of a variety of educational issues over the last ten years. I have been pushing myself to write more. It’s important for me to sift through my ideas and feelings here. One of the things this blog has helped me do, actually, is to figure out how I feel about educational issues and speak out about them. I need to do more of that than I have done in the last few years.

Something I heard last week at a conference has resonated with me. I mentioned it before when I wrote about the conference, but now I’m seeing new applications. Rosetta Lee, one of the speakers at the conference, was speaking in the context of how we can be good allies. She said that when allies are silent, she can’t tell if they are silent because they agree with the comments or treatment that others received or if they disagree, but are afraid to say something. I have been thinking about that comment for a week now because it has so many applications. If we are silent about anything that is important to us, no one can tell what we are thinking. And sometimes that kind of thing is important to share. It might help someone. It might encourage someone. It might teach someone. But most importantly, it helps us because our voices are heard. Teachers need to continue to speak out about educational issues. I really do think it’s making a difference. Maybe not as quickly as we would like. But if we don’t speak out and share our ideas, how quickly would things change?

We have a voice. We have the opportunity. I know you’ve probably heard like I have that the blog is dead. I don’t believe that. It’s easier than ever to start. If you haven’t started a blog yet, I challenge you to do so. If you have one, but you haven’t written in a while, or you’ve abandoned it, or you feel like you don’t have a lot to say, so you just don’t post a lot, I challenge you to resurrect your blog. It’s not easy to start. At first, not many people are reading, and it can be frustrating to feel like you’re talking to an empty room. But people will start reading. In fact, leave a comment and link to your blog here, and we’ll support each other.

At the risk of sounding like a cheesy acceptance speech, I do want to thank a few people for their support of this blog. I want to thank Robert Talbert, who left the first ever comment on my blog and has supported me ever since. I think that comment may have disappeared when I had to migrate my blog from Movable Type to WordPress, as I can’t find it now, but I remember it. I also want to thank Glenda Funk, for pushing me to write and for commenting often. I am not as good as she is about supporting my friends. I want to thank Grant Wiggins for supporting the efforts of the UbD Educators in trying to create a wiki. It hasn’t really turned out like I wanted (which was no surprise to Grant, when I told him), but he didn’t have to support it. I appreciated that he did. I want to thank all the teachers near and far, who have come along over the years and supported this blog. I am afraid there are too many to list, and I am deathly afraid I’d leave someone out and hurt someone’s feelings, but it would be wrong of me not to mention several folks by name: Clix, who made so much effort to help me get the wiki off the ground; Nancy, who has been a long-time reader, commenter, and now a friend; Mike LoMonico, who brought me into the Folger fold; Bud Hunt, who gave me some personal attention when I changed fields (back in English again, though, Bud!); Peter B-G, who is now a more local friend and has supported me by coming to my sessions at conferences; Buffy Hamilton, BEST LIBRARIAN EVER; Megan Hayes-Golding, who made friends with me at the first ever EduBloggerCon (I forget what they are calling it now, but it was nice not to feel alone in that room full of super techy folks when I was a new blogger). There are a lot of people who contributed to making me feel like I was worth listening to, and I appreciate you all very much.

Image: René Schäfer.

Blogging, Reflection, Slice of Life

Slice of Life #5: A Week in the Pause

Slice of LifeI forgot to do my Slice of Life yesterday. I think I’m settling into a lazy summer groove. I haven’t read as much on my time off as I thought I would, but I did finish a couple of books this week (and I started a new audio book). I blog about books in a separate blog. I suppose I could have folded book reviews into this blog, but truthfully, that blog sort of came first, and it had a different audience that I wasn’t sure would be interested in teaching. Likewise, I wasn’t sure everyone who stopped by here would be interested in my book reviews (unless they concerned professional reading). I actually love blogs, and I really compartmentalize my interests in different blogs. None of the audiences for any of these blogs really overlap much from what I can tell based on comments. I don’t write in any one of them a great deal, though I suppose my book blog gets the most attention these days. I decided not to worry about it and just write when I felt moved to write, though I was looking for excuses to write more often.

This Saturday, I’m traveling to Kenyon College in Ohio for the Kenyon Writer’s Workshop for Teachers. I have a notebook ready to go, and I am looking forward to seeing what it will be about, though I admit I am sad I’m missing my children’s first full week of summer. I hope that when I get back, we can take the commuter rail into Boston and have a fun day exploring. Later in July, I’ll be going to AP Literature training. I’m offering a workshop on digital storytelling at my school. In fact, if you are in the New England area, check out our summer learning series.

Tomorrow is an important anniversary for this blog. Today’s post is a bit rambly, but tomorrow’s will be a bit more focused.

Blogging, Reflection, Slice of Life

Slice of Life #4: Blogging

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Slice of LifeI had an interesting revelation today. This blog will turn ten years old in a little over a week. I used to blog a lot more than I do now, and I have tried to figure out why. I am no less interested in educational issues than I was when I started blogging. I am still invested in blogging as a way to learn and reflect, too. So what gives?

One reason I started this blog ten years ago is I needed validation. I was not getting it where I taught. I was not teaching with other folks who were invested or thinking about blogging or, in some cases, even in reflecting. It was not an easy place. I needed to find my people. I was chatting with a work colleague about my blog today, and I mentioned that I didn’t blog as much after I started teaching at my current school, mainly because I am validated at work. I don’t think I realized it before, but I think blogging was a way for me to connect to other teachers so I didn’t feel like I was crazy. There were other people out there I could talk to about the issues that concerned me, and I had to go outside the school building to find that validation. Now, I tend to have more of those conversations with work colleagues. It’s refreshing.

However, I do find blogging to be a great way for me to think and reflect. Writing is the way I learn, and participating in the Slice of Life weekly writing challenge (is it a challenge? or a meme?) has given me a reason to blog. I have rediscovered why I wanted to blog in the first place. I even wrote a post about an educational issue that concerns me yesterday. I haven’t done that in a while. I really do miss the regular interaction with folks who read this blog as well as the thinking that writing here allows me to do.

Today I went to the Multicultural Teaching Institute (day one of a three-day conference). I am enjoying it so far. This conference gives participants plenty of time to think and talk to each other. It’s active, and I’m engaged. I really like all the journaling they are asking us to do. It’s like my English classes! We each received paper-cover Moleskine notebooks for journaling, and I love mine! I want to have a whole stack of them. I was able to talk about an incident that bothered me this year in a comfortable space and get a few tools for dealing with a similar incident in the future. The food is also great. Often, big conferences skimp on food, if they provide it at all, and it’s refreshing to see such care taken at this conference, mainly because when you gather teachers together, you need to feed them. If you are looking to learn more about diversity issues or multicultural education, I definitely recommend this conference. I think at this point, my mind is a little full, and we have just started, so I don’t have a lot of major reflections aside from the fact that the facilitation is great, and the teachers I have met so far are great. I think I will be learning a lot.

So, no creative writing for me today. Really just some reflection, and that’s a slice of my life today, too.

Issues, Reflection, Teaching Literature

Shakespeare: To Teach or Not to Teach

shakespeare photo I have seen an op-ed published in The Washington Post come across my Facebook feed two or three times now, so even though I knew I wouldn’t agree with it, I decided to read it. You can read the original article here: “Why I don’t want to assign Shakespeare anymore (even though he’s in the Common Core)” and a pretty good rebuttal here: “Why it is ridiculous not to teach Shakespeare in school.”

A few thoughts occurred to me as I read the articles. First, Shakespeare may indeed be guilty of being a dead white male, but his writing does include a profound understanding of humanity that I would argue has not changed as much as we might think. Shakespeare deals with matters of family, race, religion, politics, and love. If he were not Shakespeare, truthfully, many of his plays would be challenged (if not banned) in classrooms because of the themes they explore. Othello was taught when it was not legal for people of different races to marry in some parts of this country. It’s a little scary how often the plot of Macbeth seems to be borrowed by those who wield power. What about the fact that inmates studying Hamlet saw themselves in its characters? Jack Hitt, who covered Prison Performing Arts’ work in “Act V,” an episode of This American Life, quoted inmate Derek “Big Hutch” Hutchinson,

Once Hutch got on this riff he kept going. “Denmark’s a prison,” Hamlet tells Rosencrantz in Act Two. And Hutch says you could do a version of the play that takes this central metaphor literally. All the characters in the play are types he sees in the yard every day. The Claudiuses, who’ll do anything for the emblems of power—money, drugs, high-end tennis shoes, Poloniuses who kiss up to the powerful, Rosencrantz and Guildensterns—rats, he called them—spies who run to the administration with information.

James Word, cast as Laertes in the production that Hitt profiles, says, “I am Laertes. I am. I am.” He found himself in the performance of Laertes, and he concluded,

[I]t was one of the best feelings I’ve ever felt. It was like the day my daughter was born. And it made me want to be better. Not just in acting. I mean, it just opened up a whole world for me. Like man, if I apply myself, I can pretty much do whatever I want.

I have seen students connect just as powerfully to Shakespeare as Derek Hutchinson and James Word did. They see themselves in the characters. We all do.

My hunch is that Dana Dusbiber, author of the original article, hasn’t discovered performance-based teaching methods yet, and I would love it if the Folger reached out to her and invited her to participate in a Teaching Shakespeare Institute. I know I sound a bit like an evangelist for the Folger, but honestly, their TSI is some of the best and most transformative PD I have ever experienced, and I hear that from everyone else who has done it, too. The best way to get students to understand and even to like Shakespeare is to get them on their feet, with his language coming out of their mouths. They will figure out what is happening and what words mean when they need to perform. Students want to read Shakespeare. It might seem counterintuitive to make that argument, given the challenges that Shakespeare presents, but my experience has been that students enjoy the challenge, and when they meet it, they feel the accomplishment.

Another argument Dusbiber makes reduces teaching Shakespeare to an either/or proposition—we do not have to chuck Shakespeare in order to be inclusive of diverse authors. He does not speak only to those who lived in his own time or else he would not have endured. Ben Jonson couldn’t have known how prescient he would be when he wrote that Shakespeare “was not of an age, but for all time.”

When speaking about the language Shakespeare used in Hamlet, Chris Harris, who was profiled in the episode of “Act V” I mentioned before, said,

The sea-gown scarf’d about me is the fog. I’m out at night. And it’s the flow of the words. Up from my cabin, sea-gown scarf’d about me, groped I in the dark to find out them. Shakespeare really put some work in this. And this is the only play I’ve really studied from him. But he really is good.

I just don’t believe the argument that Shakespeare doesn’t speak to us today. I have seen too much evidence to the contrary. I have seen teenagers connect to Shakespeare when they connected to nothing else. This school year, in fact, I had a student who absolutely loved reading Macbeth, and he was more engaged in the study of that play than in anything else we did all year.

Another argument in the article, made more by Valerie Strauss than by Dusbiber, is that English majors don’t study Shakespeare as much in college these days. I really don’t understand why that argument is made. Is “you will see it in college” the only reason to study anything? We are preparing students for life, and I think Shakespeare is excellent preparation for many of the issues we will confront in life. At some point, we may feel like King Lear, at the mercy of loved ones who disregard us. Many of us have felt like Romeo and Juliet, desperate to cling to a first love. That is life, and that is the business of Shakespeare—to portray us as we are. The argument about college is trotted out quite a lot, from assessment methods to using lecture in instruction. College is four years. Students need to learn to read, write, and think for life. I have seen the argument of what is or is not done in college given too much weight, particularly from people who don’t really seem to know exactly what is done in college now—just what they remember was done when they went to college.

But of course, that argument is beside the point because the article Strauss linked doesn’t even say that English majors are not studying Shakespeare (despite the deceptive headline). What the article does say is that entire courses on just the Bard are not often required. Big difference. I happened to have taken a Shakespeare course in college, and it was lousy (unfortunately). It is possible to teach Shakespeare in a way that turns people off, and I suspect that may be what happened in the case of Dusbiber.

One argument Dusbiber makes is true: no, we should not keep doing something because it has “always been done that way.” That is why I think performance-based teaching of Shakespeare is so crucial. It is not teaching Shakespeare the same old way. I am guilty of being one of the white teachers Dusbiber decries who will “ALWAYS teach Shakespeare.” The author of the rebuttal, Matthew Truesdale, introduces an interesting metaphor of literature as both a mirror and a window. I love it. I have often made the argument that we read to understand who we are as people, and that literature is a mirror that reflects who we are, but Truesdale is right. It’s a window, too, and an excellent way to learn about what we are not and what we could be in addition to what we are.

Should we include diverse voices in the classroom? Absolutely. Should students be choosing more of their reading? Yes. I don’t think that doing either of these things means that Shakespeare must go, however. It’s long past time for us to think about our approach to teaching Shakespeare, though.

If nothing else, these op-eds have inspired me to get going on planning my King Lear unit for my AP course. And I just got out of school for the summer.

Professional Development, Reflection, Slice of Life

Slice of Life #3: Leading and Learning

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Slice of LifeToday marks the end of my first year leading the English department at my school. I have been department chair previously, but the circumstances were quite different. In that situation, I led a department with four other teachers, grades 9-12, at a relatively small Jewish school.

My department this year included 14 people teaching grades 6-12 (plus post-graduate students). It was a different challenge to work with so many moving parts and personalities. Sometimes, it was a fun challenge, like a puzzle. Sometimes it was not such a fun challenge. I am still really glad I’m doing it. I like working with teachers, and I really think I have a good idea or two on occasion. Otherwise, I wouldn’t want to do it.

Some of the things I think I do well:

  • Listen. This is hard for some people, but I try to hear what the teachers in my department are saying, good and bad. I think often teachers don’t feel heard. I have not always felt heard in my history as a teacher. And in some places, I felt I was actually not valued. I want teachers to feel their value. Listening to teachers is an important part of valuing them.
  • Share good feedback. When things are working, I let teachers know. If parents pass on compliments, I tell the teachers. I think we are under-appreciated in our profession, so I have always made it a habit, even when I wasn’t chair, to pass on the good things that others say. I had a great opportunity to do that today after a parent told me at graduation what a fine department I led, and how much her daughter had learned from our teachers. She didn’t have to tell me that. I never taught her daughter. But it means a lot to hear, and it should be shared with those who need to hear it, too.
  • Make suggestions and share ideas. I love to plan units and lessons, and I always love to share ideas for approaches I have taken with teaching material. If you have read this blog for a while, you know that I am invested in backward design or UbD, and I am a passionate advocate for using UbD with teachers.

Things I am getting better at:

  • Having difficult conversations. I sometimes have to explain why something isn’t working and that it has to change. I sometimes have to share tough feedback. I sometimes have to help colleagues who might not be working well together. These conversations are hard, and I am a bit of an introvert, and I don’t necessarily feel like I have all the answers all the time. But I am learning how to have these conversations, and honestly, they have gone much better than I anticipated they would (in most cases).
  • Juggling the work. At the end of the year, it was a lot of work planning schedules, navigating the tiredness of my department (teaching is a marathon, not a sprint, and like a marathon, sometimes you have to pull out that burst of speed right at the end when you are exhausted), and engaging in the hiring process for the first time in my role as chair (we didn’t make any hires when I was last chair). I am definitely tired, but I am going to do some things differently next year after learning this year.

Things I need to work on:

  • Directives. To be fair, this was a year of figuring out the state of the department and learning the various intricacies of leading an eclectic group of teachers. I didn’t want to roll out top-down initiatives. That is changing. I have some ideas about writing and reading. The best thing is when the teachers present the very ideas I had themselves. They already have buy-in, and the initiative will be more successful as a result. However, at some point, certain things need to happen, and the students come first. They need to have a high-quality education. The teachers need to be on board with the school’s mission and initiatives.
  • Inviting conversation. I do listen, and I do encourage teachers to talk with me. I do think that not all of them felt they could, to varying degrees (some felt I was completely open, while others might have perceived that I was closed). It is a bit strange that I consider listening a strength even if not everyone felt I was inviting conversation. I can get better at this. I can go to teachers and actively seek them out. I tended not to do that with some teachers.

So having said all that, I think it was a pretty good year. Teaching—it was my best teaching year yet. I felt the design of my classes really hung together well, and my students saw the relevance of what they were learning and connected it to work in other classes and to events in the world. That’s a success.

This summer will be a bit busy. I am going to the Multicultural Teaching Institute next week. At the end of this month, I go to the Kenyon Writer’s Workshop for Teachers. I am presenting a day-long digital storytelling workshop in July. I am going to AP English Literature training in July. In August, I am participating in critical friends training at school. Because I’m teaching AP, I have some light reading to do:

BooksMost of these books are texts for AP. You might be able to see the Newkirk and Kittle on the bottom. Those are professional reading. I also plan to bring in A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley and How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. I have read some of these books, and even taught them before, but not in a while. Others I have read only but not taught. Others I have not read. I have some work to do this summer. One thing I love about my job: It’s never boring!

Reflection, Slice of Life

Slice of Life #2: Thank You Gifts

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Slice of LifeI had a few meetings today, but my Thursday is looking like a long string of meetings, so I’m really glad I got my grades and comments finished today. In part, I needed to wind up some business with my final paper. Things did not go as well with that last assignment as I wanted, and I will not be doing it again next year. I have a plan: I want to use our school’s Portrait of a Learner—the description of what we want our students to be and do in the world—as a touchpoint for a portfolio. I want students to select the work that demonstrates the ways in which they feel they have met the goals in Portrait of a Learner and also our five core values of Honor, Respect, Community, Personal Growth, and Challenge. Then I want to sit down with each student and his or her portfolio while they talk to me about their learning. It will be a year-long project. I am already excited. I ran it by one of my history teacher friends, and he likes it, too.

On another note, I received a wonderful gift from a student whom I taught last year.

Dana in Traditional Vietnamese Hat

She left it on my desk with a note saying it is a “traditional Vietnamese hat.” She is from Vietnam and is studying here in America. She started out in our English language learner classes, and this year, she was in AP English. She used to sit with me when I had my desk in the library and just do her work and prep for the SAT while I did my work. We sat near each other and just worked. We didn’t always talk, but sometimes we did, and we had really interesting conversations about her home country and about her studies. She has a gift for spinning a story. She picked it up in SAT prep. She would write an essay about how she wanted to pursue her passion for cooking and how she had to help her parents accept her dreams. I said, “I didn’t know you wanted to cook!” She would reply, “I don’t. I just thought it would make a good topic for the essay.” She had a real knack for it. She also gave me a beautiful silk scarf. Her mother is coming to see her graduate on Friday, and my student wants to introduce us.

Working with students is such a blessing. They don’t always thank you, and sometimes it’s hard when you know something you did didn’t work out so well (my final assignment), but in the end, it’s rewarding to be appreciated, and most of the time, the kids are all right.