Tag Archives: reflection

Issues, Reflection

We Have a College Admissions Problem

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college photo

I follow many of the students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL. on Twitter. I don’t think anyone who has followed my Twitter feed or even this blog for any amount of time is unaware of how I feel about the MSD students and their stand against gun violence. I was surprised to see this tweet from one of the MSD students who has been most vocal in his advocacy for change:

If someone as articulate as David Hogg has demonstrated himself to be—time and time again over the last month—is not accepted into the colleges to which he’s applied, we have a college admissions problem. To my way of thinking, colleges should be clamoring to admit David Hogg and his peers. The fact that he has received several rejections boggles the mind. What, exactly, are these schools looking for if he doesn’t have it?

I wasn’t going to write about my personal experience here. I’m not embarrassed about what happened, but it’s not something I thought I’d talk about publicly. A doctoral program I spent about a half a year preparing to apply to and another three months waiting to hear from rejected me. I took the GRE, and given how long it has been since I had taken mathematics at the level the GRE tests, I was pretty proud of my average score on the math component of the test. Behind that average score was months of hard work practicing math using Khan Academy and GRE practice books. Aside from that, my verbal and writing schools would be difficult to beat: 168 (out of 170) on the verbal and a perfect score of 6/6 on the writing. I honestly thought it was a sign when one of my essays prompted me to write about the very subject I’d like to study in graduate school.

My college transcripts for both my bachelor’s and master’s reveal a hardworking student. I graduated magna cum laude from UGA, and my master’s GPA was a 3.9. My recommendations couldn’t have been stronger. I wrote something like seven or eight different drafts of my statement of purpose. Was it the statement of purpose that sunk me? I don’t know. It’s hard to tell if you have hit or missed the mark by a wide margin with such things, even if you pore over the advice from admissions offices.

My résumé reveals someone who publishes (including this blog for over a decade), often presents at a variety of conferences, and regularly engages in professional learning. I’m honestly the kind of lifelong learner for which I should think a doctoral program is looking. I have a certain humility, but I am proud of my desire to learn. You will never hear me say I know everything there is to know about a subject.

The rejection letter was a mere few sentences long. I didn’t think there would be a point in trying to figure out why I was rejected; most likely, I’d be told that the school didn’t have time to respond to those types of questions. Maybe a part of me didn’t want to know. So one of my dreams died. That’s okay, I consoled myself. I have other dreams. Maybe I should focus on achieving them instead.

So, aside from the fact that the program to which I applied is competitive, why was my application rejected? I was honestly a bit more stung by the fact that I didn’t even receive an interview request, which spoke of a whole other level of disinterest on the part of the school. I suppose I don’t understand why I didn’t even make it through the first hurdle of being asked to interview. The only reason I can think of is encapsulated into the word “fit.” That word covers a wide variety of potential reasons for rejection, some of them discriminatory, some of them not. It’s true I am a lot older than the average age of the student who studies in the program. I felt my experience would be an asset. It’s true also that I am a teacher, a practitioning educator, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my career researching. I want to be involved in education, not just study it and talk about it. For that reason, I admit, the program might not have been the best one for me. I have tried to decide if I am feeling bitter or if I’m being honest, and after much soul-searching, I concluded that the program honestly would not have been the best program for me. I was swayed by the cachet the name of the school would have offered me. Perhaps they just recognized it before I did, and if that’s case, maybe they did me a favor.

I went to two respected public universities—University of Georgia and Virginia Tech, and yet I have often felt, especially in New England, where I currently live and teach, that neither school is considered good enough. A former colleague shared he felt the same way. A doctorate from the college to which I applied would prove something. I’m not sure what.

I spent a couple of weeks feeling sad about it. I cried a few times. Then I thought long and hard. Did I still want to earn a doctorate? I concluded that I did. I applied to a different program. I am hoping for better results, but at the moment, my application remains incomplete until the school receives official transcripts and one more letter of recommendation. And honestly? The program I just applied to is much better suited to my needs and my current career as well as my future goals.

I do think we have a problem when applicants as strong as David Hogg receive multiple college rejections. I honestly think it’s a problem that my application went into what I imagine is an enormous slush pile. What exactly is it that colleges want in their applicants?

If applicants like David Hogg find college acceptance difficult, what does that mean for other students? Some might argue that college isn’t for everyone. It should be for everyone who wants to go, but I don’t agree that college should be required for everyone. In our economy, however, we demand college educations for jobs that don’t necessarily need one, and college graduates still find it hard to obtain work. However, despite recent arguments to the contrary, colleges do great work with students, and I remember my time at UGA in particular as a wondrous time filled with learning.

I don’t think I could have been better prepared to teach than I was as a student at UGA. Even to this day, their English Education faculty includes such luminaries in the field as Sara Kajder and Peter Smagorinsky. I applied to the school as a transfer student after a year at a community college. I was relatively new to Georgia, having moved there halfway through my junior year in high school. I had the most unhelpful college counseling you might imagine (as in it didn’t exist). The internet wasn’t available for me to research programs on my own. So, I went to community college for a year, so I could decide what to do. I saw a recruiting table for UGA’s College of Education at my community college. I spoke to the recruiter for a few minutes. I liked the look of the materials. I applied only to UGA. Later, I found out my SAT scores and probably my high school grades were not high enough to meet UGA’s threshold for freshman admittance. And yet, the entire time I studied at UGA, I earned A’s and B’s and, as I already mentioned, I graduated magna cum laude. UGA never asked for my high school transcripts or SAT scores when I applied as a transfer. I wonder if UGA would have given me a second look had I applied as a freshman rather than as a transfer, after I had proven I could excel in college studies.

Therein lies the problem. How many potentially great students are rejected for seemingly arbitrary reasons each year? I’m sure that college admissions offices have a tough job. How to distinguish one strong candidate from another on paper? How to determine who would be a good “fit”? Competition for a shrinking number of open student slots is fierce. I’m not sure how they should change, but I do know that if colleges are rejecting students like David Hogg, they’re getting it wrong. I’m concerned about issues of access for all if strong students like David Hogg are shut out.

Wish me luck as I wait to hear from the second doctoral program to which I’ve applied. I think I would not only be an excellent fit for the program but that it’s an excellent fit for me. If I’m rejected, however, I’m not sure I could try again with another program.

Update 3/19: I want to state for the record that David Hogg appears to be handling these rejections in stride. He is regrouping and discussing a gap year and internships as possibilities. He is in no way acting like his recent activism entitles him to college acceptance. I did not make that clear. It is also true I don’t know about his school record beyond what I have seen, but I am impressed with what I have seen. I think it speaks to the notion that he is a strong critical thinker and communicator.

Update 3/29: TMZ said yesterday that David Hogg’s GPA is a 4.2 and his SAT score is 1270, for those people wondering about his background and potential credentials. The SAT score puts him above the 80% percentile when compared to other SAT test-takers. He has been rejected from UCLA, UC Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Irvine, which, incidentally, is a school I considered applying to before my family moved away from California in my junior year. Not sure I’d have been admitted, but it was my top choice until I moved. So, I think my argument that we have a college admissions problem is probably accurate.

Blogging, Reflection

Twelve Years

twelve candles photo
Photo by Pewari

Today this blog is twelve years old. I originally envisioned this blog as a place where I could write about what I was thinking and where I could share my teaching ideas. It hasn’t changed a lot from that vision over the years, though posting has grown less frequent. I have been looking over some of the posts I wrote years ago, and it makes me wish I had a little more time to write—aside from summer, when I seem finally to be able to catch up and write.

I just finished my twentieth year of teaching, and such an important milestone has made me a bit reflective. It’s hard to believe I have been blogging here for more than half of my career now. Sometimes I don’t even feel like I was a teacher before this blog. Perhaps because I wasn’t reflecting or journaling about teaching much until this blog, my memories of my teaching career up until this blog are fuzzier. It’s hard for me to articulate what this space has meant to me over the years. I have said it many times, but I’m not even sure I’d still be teaching if not for this blog because I no longer felt alone, and I was able to share what I was thinking with an audience who cared. Two years ago, when I wrote my tenth anniversary post, I thanked many supportive friends who helped me early on. I’m not sure what more I can add. Thanks to those of you who have been readers, whether for many years or a few days.

For the curious, here are some weird stats:

  • I have written 1,086 posts on this blog. That works out to 90.5 posts a year or 7.5 posts a month.
  • I have received 3,989 comments. That’s about 332 comments a year, almost one per day.
  • I only have statistics for the last five years, but it looks like my best day for visitors was October 1, 2012. I can’t figure out how to drill down into the statistics and find out how many viewers that was.
  • Most of my visitors today were from the United States, although I checked my stats for all time, and it looks like I have had at least one visitor from, well, almost everywhere. See below.
  • The average number of views ranges from a low of 206 per day for this month of June 2017 up to over 1,000 per day in September 2012. I don’t have statistics older than 2012, but five years is long enough to have a fairly good range. I’m not sure if at one time, I had more views than 1,000 per day, but it boggles my mind that so many people were checking into this blog. Thank you!
  • My blog gets the most traffic on Mondays.
  • I have a combined total of 3,145 subscribers from WordPress and email. Thanks, and I hope I made subscribing worth your while. Since Google shut down Google Reader, I haven’t found an RSS reader I like much, despite trying a few, so I am afraid my own blog reading is really haphazard. I used to be so much better at checking other blogs.
  • My most popular post describes how to use TPCASTT to analyze poetry. I didn’t come up with this technique, but somehow, my page is the #1 Google ranking when you search TPCASTT, which likely explains why the post is so popular. Plus it’s a really good tool, and I can’t take credit for it. Thanks to whoever invented it. My students still use it all the time. As of today, the post has had 47,243 views. The most popular posts seem to have remained pretty steady over time. Rounding out the top five (with number of views) are Understanding by Design: Essential Questions (41,856), Interactive Notebooks (33,325), Teaching “A Modest Proposal” (31,836), and Teaching Romeo and Juliet: Part One (29,253). Many of the most popular posts are among the oldest posts.

Statistics

Thanks for coming along for the ride.

Blogging, Reflection

20 Years of Teaching

Dana's Teacher Stats

This month I finished my 20th year as a teacher. A few years into my career, I almost left it behind. I had finished my fourth year, and it was particularly bad for both professional and personal reasons. I had a really hard time finding a job. I finally found one about October—teaching preschool. The kids I taught that year are in college now, but I think of them often because they brought me back into the profession. Teaching them somehow rejuvenated me and helped me figure out why I do this job. For a while, I thought perhaps I had chosen the wrong age group and considered teaching younger children. I taught two years of middle school after that and went back to high school, this time in private school, and I never looked back. I have now spent 13 years teaching in private schools.

I saw the above teacher stats meme going around, and I had to do some estimating, but the only figure I’m not really sure about is the number of students. I would estimate I’ve taught anywhere from 1,200 to 1,500 students. Some years in public school, I taught five sections and most of them had 20+ students, but I have now spent the bulk of my career teaching 4 or 5 sections with fewer than 18 students in each section (also an estimate, as sometimes the number is higher, and sometimes it’s lower… by a lot). As a ballpark, it’s not bad. Those faces come swimming back years later, even after I have forgotten the names. I wonder about many of those faces. Some have kept in touch with me.

I was feeling quite frustrated a few weeks ago. You know how it is at the end of the year. Everyone’s nerves are frazzled, and we forget to be as kind and thoughtful as we should be. I include myself. I had a particularly draining experience toward the end as well, and I have to really thank my colleagues for their moral support at that time. It’s remarkable what difference some time, perspective, and rest can make. The ending of the year was particularly good for me, as my colleagues nominated me for a prestigious teaching award at my school, which in itself was a huge honor. My colleagues then voted among the nominees, and I was selected for the award. I can’t articulate what it means to me that my colleagues recognized me for my teaching, especially after I had been feeling so down on myself as a teacher. For those colleagues of mine who read this blog (and I know there are a few), thank you very much for such a tremendous honor. You really made my year.

I keep trying to make more time to reflect on this blog because I really miss it. Some post ideas I have in the offing:

  • I wrote about ditching chronology for thematic design in teaching American literature, and I get emails about how it has gone, as the post is now old enough that comments on it are close. It has gone very well. I plan to write an update.
  • One of the most enriching experiences of my career has been a collaboration with my fellow 9th grade World Literature I teachers and 9th grade World Civilizations I teachers (history). I want to reflect on that collaboration and share how we planned and what the year looked like.
  • I brought home several professional books to read, and I will write reviews here once I’ve finished with them.
  • I have now taught AP Literature and Composition for two years. I always contend it feels like year three is the year when things start to feel really good, whether it’s working at a school, teaching a course, or whatever else might be new and different. I have lots of thoughts about how this year went (much better!) and ideas for next year.
  • I went to some excellent professional development at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education with three of my colleagues, and I haven’t written a thing about it on my blog.
  • I am also becoming more involved with my local NCTE affiliate, the New England Association of Teachers of English (NEATE), and even though it’s early days, it has been great establishing local connections like I had in Georgia with GCTE.
  • My students have done some great work this year, and I haven’t shared it.

Stay tuned!

Reflection, Slice of Life

The Empty Garden

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Granna and Papa

These are my grandparents. I spent seven years of my childhood living near them in Aurora, Colorado. They mean a great deal to me. I am sure they are the reason that I consider Aurora “home” even though I didn’t live there the longest, and even though I have not lived there since I was 14, and even though I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve visited Aurora since I moved.

My grandfather was a tremendous gardener, and his lawn was always beautiful when I was a kid. He isn’t really able to keep a garden now. I remember going with them to Dardano’s Flowerland in Denver to buy marigolds and other flowers. In the front yard, right in front of the front door, they grew marigolds with large, bulbous orange and yellow heads, almost too perfect and too similar to one another to look real. Around the corner from the front door, on the side of the house they grew roses. In the backyard, way in the corner of the yard, they planted purple irises. The power lines hung low over their backyard, and I can never hear doves cooing today without being once again in the back yard.

The other two gardens were devoted mainly to experiments. Granna usually had some zucchini going, but we tried watermelon with some success, and one year she let me pick out some seeds, and I grew some pretty little flowers that looked like closed mouths. I could squeeze right under the bud and make the mouths look like they were talking. The grass was thick and green and cool under my bare feet in the summer. We used to lie under the bean tree in her front yard at night and look up into the sky filled with stars and almost feel like we were falling into the sky.

I knew how much work went into cultivating this yard. Every year we went to Dardano’s Flowerland for the big spring trip. We circled around the greenhouses for what felt like hours as mt grandparents puttered, inspecting and selecting plants. I tried to do anything to relieve the boredom. I looked for rocks with green moss growing on them under the wet flower trays. I touched all the plants. It seemed like the yard was transformed as if by magic almost overnight somehow into a wonderland of plants and trees and flowers. The sprinkler ran every other day; Papa never tried to cheat the water restrictions that I knew of, but his lawn was always verdant and lush.

I was sad to learn from a quick Google search just now that Dardano’s is closed. I can’t really say I enjoyed the trips to the greenhouses at Dardano’s because all I really recall is boredom. Strange that I recall that boredom with so much fondness. I can feel the humid air in the greenhouses. I can smell the flowers. I can hear the trickles of water running. I don’t know much about the history of the place, but I gather it was one of those Mom and Pop businesses that had been around for over 60 years. It’s such a weighty history, and it won’t be too long before people forget it ever existed. Their URL is up for grabs. Their last tweets were posted in 2012. People have moved on and buy their flowers from another nursery, I’m sure. This place was an institution in my childhood, though.

Dardano's
Photo by Dardano’s

I visited Aurora almost two years ago. It was wonderful to see my grandparents. But there was so much about the town that I didn’t recognize. To be fair, much was the same, too. The plains are still flat out there east of the Rockies, and the sky still goes all the way to the ground. But there is a University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and Children’s Hospital on Colfax Ave. now, and it looks completely different with all the new buildings in the huge medical complex.

I used to walk down the street to Hoffman Park to play, and as early as the 1990’s, all the playground equipment had been replaced—I’m sure the playground equipment we used was unsafe. A lot of the places I used to walk or ride my bike to are closed. The library was probably the first casualty—the old library on 13th Street, where I used to check out books and get hot chocolate from a machine on cold fall days. Dolly Madison’s ice cream and dairy—that was an old-fashioned soda fountain place. Hatch’s Gifts. The Munchen Shop, a German deli. Hancock’s Fabrics, where my grandmother spent hours. The art supply store where I used to buy posterboard for my projects. The large number of empty storefronts, pawn shops, and check cashing and cash advance places tell a story of the kind of place the old shopping center has become. And yet, there is still a donut shop where old Winchell’s Donuts used to be. The large grocery store is still there. It’s hard to explain. Enough of it is similar that its recognizable, but it’s changed enough that in many ways, it’s completely different. Those places are new, and they don’t remember me anymore.

I guess, in that way, it’s kind of like all of us. Parts of us are the same, but we change enough that those we knew in our youth might not recognize the people we’ve become.

Slice of LifeSlice of Life is a daily writing challenge during the month of March hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.

Reflection, Slice of Life, Teaching and Learning

How I Decided to be a Teacher

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Playing School, William Hahn
Playing School, William Hahn

Teaching was the first career I ever considered, and I actually do remember making that decision. I was in first grade. My experience with education was not that expansive at that point. I couldn’t possibly have had any idea exactly what age group or which subjects I would teach when I grew up. I don’t think I had even considered high school. I’m not sure I even knew the subject of English existed. But I was pretty set on teaching. My teacher that year, Mrs. Jones, awakened my curiosity about dinosaurs and books. Aside from an incident when she embarrassed me in the midst of scolding me for talking with a neighbor, I remember her fondly and remember wanting to be like her.

I remember putting my stuffed animals and dolls in circles and lines and giving them assignments to complete. I remember reading to my sister. My best friend in elementary school swears that I used to go over the material we were studying in school with her. I wish I could remember that.

I thought briefly about being a lawyer in seventh grade after doing a project in which I played the role of a lawyer, but I think my understanding of what lawyers did was quite narrow. I assumed, based on what I had seen in TV and movies and read in books that all lawyers were trial lawyers, and being a trial lawyer didn’t appeal to me. It wasn’t long before I was back to my original plan.

In middle school, I fell in love with French class. I thought I might teach French. I took French in high school, where my teachers were admittedly a lot less inspiring than my middle school teachers (with the exception of one teacher in my upper level French classes). I thought I might one day teach French. I can’t remember if I was told I should also study Spanish, or if I assumed I should, because many of the world language teachers I knew taught both languages, and I just didn’t have any interest in teaching Spanish.

I honestly don’t remember exactly when I decided to teach English. My middle school English teachers were good. I loved reading and writing in their classes, and I have fond memories of projects I did. That changed once I was in high school. I started out in Honors English classes, which were fine, but not all that interesting. I found the ideas shared by the other students intriguing, but I felt they were smarter than me. I understand now that they were just faster and more extroverted. I took regular-level English classes the rest of high school. My tenth grade English teacher was probably one of the worst teachers I ever had. I learned so little in her class, and it was incredibly boring. All I really remember was doing exercises out of Warriner’s grammar books at my desk.

I had a decent first semester eleventh grade teacher, but I remember feeling desperate at that stage that I was missing something. I asked her for a reading list, and she brought me a box of books. I don’t think anyone had ever asked for such a thing from her before. At any rate, I wasn’t in her class long before I moved, and my new English teacher in Georgia was my favorite. The class quickly became my favorite class. I absolutely loved her. I still do, as a matter of fact, because we have remained friends. I was lucky enough to be in her class again senior year, too, though not for first semester. I had a miserable experience in that class with a teacher who did not reward my hard and honest work on a research paper and gave my then boyfriend a good grade on a paper on which he had made up sources and which didn’t meet the assignment requirements. It was so unfair. It still rankles. I am not saying my paper was amazing. It probably wasn’t. But it was the honest work of weeks spent in the library reading Robert Frost’s poems and conducting research.

If not for my second semester junior/senior English teacher, it’s tough to say if I would be teaching English. In some ways, I learned what kind of teacher I didn’t want to be from the other teachers. It is a shame when a kid who loved to read and write as much as I did couldn’t enjoy high school English classes, though. I have tried to do better with my own teaching. I believe I have.

In some ways, I think the fact that I decided to teach long before I decided on who and what to teach contributed to the way I teach. I could easily have taken a different path in terms of subject matter or age group. As a matter of fact, I have taught pre-K and every grade from 6-12. In my role as a tech integrator, I’ve also taught adults. As a result, I don’t have ideas that work of literature X simply must be read at a certain age, but I do believe we should scaffold and build skills in reading and writing.

I was always going to be a teacher, even if I didn’t know the particulars in first grade when decided on that path. There was a period of time about four years into my career when I thought perhaps I shouldn’t be teaching. It lasted a few months before I was back in a classroom again. Being a teacher is such a part of my identity that I can’t imagine doing something else.

Slice of LifeSlice of Life is a daily writing challenge during the month of March hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.

Blogging, Reflection, Slice of Life

Slice of Life #22: Hello to my Students

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hello photo
Photo by Franck Mahon

During a discussion with students today over Robin Bates’s wonderful blog Better Living Through Beowulf, and its potential for ideas for their papers, a student asked me, “Don’t you have a blog?” I said, “Yes, I do,” and the students were curious. I told them where they could find it.

In the early days of the edublogosphere, educators often blogged under pseudonyms or were discouraged from blogging at all. Many feared retribution over what they might post, and at that stage, blogging was considered a bit edgy. I have been blogging here for ten years now (eleven in June), and I can’t think of anything I would write here that I would be nervous about administrators, work colleagues, students, or parents reading. In fact, I invite it. I want the people I work with, the students I teach, and their parents to know I think a great deal about teaching, and blogging is a big part of that reflective practice. Blogging about my teaching has made such an immeasurable difference in my teaching career that it’s hard to say what kind of teacher I would be if I hadn’t started blogging. It was through encouragement on this blog that I tried just about every initiative in teaching, and each of the initiatives that has worked has made my practice that much better. In fact, I am not completely sure that I would still be teaching if not for the support and reflection this blog has offered me. When I began teaching at a school where that support and reflection was built into the expectations and culture (in comparison with other places I’ve worked), I admit I slacked off on posting, but I have yet to find any ongoing PD that has been as beneficial to me as blogging about what I am doing in the classroom.

Even though I have improved my teaching practice over time, and this blog reflects that improvement (I find in reading older posts that my positions have shifted quite a lot in some areas), I am proud that my colleagues read my blog (and sometimes leave comments) and if my students were to find it interesting that I reflect on ways I can be a better teacher out here, then they are welcome to visit. (And hello!)

Slice of LifeSlice of Life is a weekly writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers. Visit their blog for more information about the challenge and for advice and ideas about how to participate.

Reflection, Slice of Life, Teaching Literature

Slice of Life #12: The N-Word

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Slice of LifeI started The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn with my juniors today, and I always like to begin study of this novel with a frank discussion of the repeated use of the n-word. In a book that uses the word over 200 times, students will be confronted with it often. I wrote the word on the board followed by some quickwrite questions, and as the students settled in their seats and looked up, there were quite a few exclamations and audible gasps. They confessed they thought I’d lost my mind for a minute.

I learned some really interesting things from my students today. The first is that one student has heard the n-word used as a verb that means something like “played a dirty trick,” as in “He really n-d that guy.” I have never heard that use before. Other students shared (and I admit students share this idea often when I teach the book) that the connotation seems different to them when the word is spelled out “n-er” versus “n-a.” I try to wrap my head around that idea, but I admit I don’t have a lot of luck.

We read an essay by Gloria Naylor about a time when a little boy called her the n-word when she was in third grade, and we read Countee Cullen’s poem “Incident,” which seems simple on the surface, but packs a punch. We also watched part of a segment from the program 60 Minutes on the NewSouth books publication that expurgated the n-word from the novel and substituted it with “slave.” The discussion is a powerful and important one to have prior to reading this novel, I think, but I have two observations:

  1. My students don’t know enough about what is going on in the news and the #blacklivesmatter movement. At all. We are going to talk about it, and if I need to, I’ll bring in the news articles. But I admit to wondering why they don’t know what is happening.
  2. The controversy surrounding this book, 130 years from its publication, which has been a part of the book’s history for the entirety of its existence, still manages to provoke thought and debate. It might be one of the most consistently relevant books written.

I close with a great quote from the preface of Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray:

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

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.

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.

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!