If you're a linguist, one of my students, or one of my students's parents you will get today's title. Vers and vert are the Latin roots that mean turn. As I travelled up the hallways to my duty period I mused at a change I made to my pedagogy. Students have written me, over the years, thanking me for teaching them Latin and root etymologies. I have also read and heard a lot about the efficacy of chunking information. There's also been instruction to teachers about considering going a mile deep and only an inch across.
All of that pedagogical discourse made me re-examine somthing in my practice that I considered "working." -- my delivery of instruction. For nearly 20 years, it has been my inclination to explore and exhaust the curriculum expediently. After all, the state testing is always in the spring, so we must get all the eligible content in before then, right?
I wasn't so sure that was a good idea anymore, so I conducted a year-long experiment with my students. They did not know it until today, but I had been teaching them significantly differently than I had in the past. I used to go through all the Latin and Greek root words in the span of one marking period. Each day would be a new root with 10-15 examples, and once I had 15 into their notebook, I would proceed to drill and kill in preparation for the test. Students actually wrote me years later to thank me for that???
This year, I talked over my idea with my learning support teammate and decided that it would be better to use one root word per week and give one example each day. Repitition, recall, relate--- repeat. The idea was that, yeah, I could give the kids extensive tests at the end of each 15 word chunk, but how much of an enduring understanding am I building in the former model? Even when a kid memorizes brilliantly and achieves perfection, how many of these tools will she remember three years from now when she needs it most on her SAT reading comprehension test?
Today, after students completed their scholastic reading inventory tests, I gave them a crossword puzzle that included all thirty Latin root word definitions. In the puzzle, students had to write in the correct root words. My old teacher's heart was warmed by what I witnessed. Students did remember. Students flipped through their notebooks remembering when they had first encountered the root words. I let students work in pairs or groups, each according to their comfort level. The level of engagement I witnessed is what made my day brighten. Students engaged in discourse of not only what the words meant but also how they knew they had the right answer or when they remembered learning the roots.
No where was this more evident than with my Honors English students. They were nearly giddy with enthusiasm. I have results to my first reservation-- students do remember more for a greater period of time when spend an extended period of time with new information. My second querry is harder to answer. How do all of my students to that level of enthusiasm for their learning?
Group work seemed to go a long way to achieving the goal. Students became more competitive when they were attacking the goal--- finish the crossword before the bell so that all can learn the answers. For a formative assessment, I conducted root relays in class. I broke the class into five parts. Each group had a designated spot to answer their questions from and each student had the opportunity to earn points for thier team. When a teammate provided an incorrect ansewer, they were eliminated from thegame. When all members were eliminated, the sole remaining team became the winner. Students were focused on the win, I was focused on their learning.
This is the season where I begin to look back at the year and forwards to next year. The less is more approach is working for vocabulary but reading needs tweaking. I am researching how to enable online journalling or something similar to a tweet--- a chance for students to daily respond in a sinple paragraph (2-3 sentences) about the quote of the day or if they didn't want to write about the quote, they could tweet about what is happening in their choice- novel. If every student in my room has a device or laptop, students would be able to see the posts or tweets and repond to them real tiome.
Friday, May 24, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Actually, I do marvel
Sixth period has been a hard nut to crack. For the first three marking periods, the words I would use to describe the culture of the class would be unsettling: zombie-fabulous, lethargic, passive-aggressive, or blah. They are my first class after lunch and that might account for some of their lackluster enthusiasm for class--- were their stomachs taxing all their energy ny digesting their high carbohydrate menus? The answer lay in their comments however: "Are we going to have fun in class today?" "Why can't we play a game?"
Fun? So my dazzling personality and student-centered lessons weren't fun enough?? I tried not to be offended. This group is also my smallest class: a whopping eleven students. The words I used in the previous paragraph no longer aptly describe the culture of these students. I credit the addition of a genuine live-wire to our class, but I also see that, during this last marking period, the class actually appears to be enjoying the our time together.
In this marking period, we have used fewer individual assessments and more group assessment opportunities: a literature circle and a drama group project. The reults make me think I need a paradigm shift. When I was teaching the "eligible content" the first three marking periods: grammar, etymology, formal writing domains--- EVERY assessment, formative and summative, was individual. I missed out on tapping into my students' group dynamics.
Watching these guys at work is both interesting and entertaing. They slammed two tables together to have a "family meeting" about their upcoming production. The eleven elected to combine as one large group to produce a 4 minute scene from one of the five drama plays we read last month. The leaders rose to the occasion and policed the group. Group members were interrogated about the status of their job performance: "You do have props right?" They policed each other: "Stop being a dingus and pay attention!" and they attempted to motivate: "We've got two days--- settle down!" They were more on each other's case than I ever could hope to be--- micromanaging each distraction or individual distractor.
I do marvel. The energy that was lacking for thirty weeks has transferred to composing their last writing pieces. Students seemed more willing to write, give authentic feedback, and participate in fruitful and constructive discussions about revising than at any other time this year--- not bad for eigth-grade-itus. Students gave genuine praise to those who were deserving instead of just to those that they liked.
I'm basically talking about synergy. Team cohesion. With the year almost over, their transformation gives me pause. This group suffered from being as small as it was. I didn't do as many small group formative assessments because class often consisted of eight or nine students during cold and flu season. I drilled them to sleep.
This marking period, they are my most open and cooperative group. I am really looking forward to seeing their twenty-first century version of a scene from A Midsummer's Night Dream. I need to talk with my principal about taking pictures to share with the blog: legal concerns etc--- it's going to be a hoot. The script sounds good from their rehearsals and that kids are generally excited about costumes.
Dumb stuff makes this teacher smile--- like seeing a class finally come together after months of feeling disconnected.
That's my story. I'm sticking to it.
Fun? So my dazzling personality and student-centered lessons weren't fun enough?? I tried not to be offended. This group is also my smallest class: a whopping eleven students. The words I used in the previous paragraph no longer aptly describe the culture of these students. I credit the addition of a genuine live-wire to our class, but I also see that, during this last marking period, the class actually appears to be enjoying the our time together.
In this marking period, we have used fewer individual assessments and more group assessment opportunities: a literature circle and a drama group project. The reults make me think I need a paradigm shift. When I was teaching the "eligible content" the first three marking periods: grammar, etymology, formal writing domains--- EVERY assessment, formative and summative, was individual. I missed out on tapping into my students' group dynamics.
Watching these guys at work is both interesting and entertaing. They slammed two tables together to have a "family meeting" about their upcoming production. The eleven elected to combine as one large group to produce a 4 minute scene from one of the five drama plays we read last month. The leaders rose to the occasion and policed the group. Group members were interrogated about the status of their job performance: "You do have props right?" They policed each other: "Stop being a dingus and pay attention!" and they attempted to motivate: "We've got two days--- settle down!" They were more on each other's case than I ever could hope to be--- micromanaging each distraction or individual distractor.
I do marvel. The energy that was lacking for thirty weeks has transferred to composing their last writing pieces. Students seemed more willing to write, give authentic feedback, and participate in fruitful and constructive discussions about revising than at any other time this year--- not bad for eigth-grade-itus. Students gave genuine praise to those who were deserving instead of just to those that they liked.
I'm basically talking about synergy. Team cohesion. With the year almost over, their transformation gives me pause. This group suffered from being as small as it was. I didn't do as many small group formative assessments because class often consisted of eight or nine students during cold and flu season. I drilled them to sleep.
This marking period, they are my most open and cooperative group. I am really looking forward to seeing their twenty-first century version of a scene from A Midsummer's Night Dream. I need to talk with my principal about taking pictures to share with the blog: legal concerns etc--- it's going to be a hoot. The script sounds good from their rehearsals and that kids are generally excited about costumes.
Dumb stuff makes this teacher smile--- like seeing a class finally come together after months of feeling disconnected.
That's my story. I'm sticking to it.
Friday, May 10, 2013
...and That's Funny How?
"You're acting like an overweight black woman from the south!"
Seriously? Yep- that's just one of the "funny" things my students are saying to each other in class. Compound that with students who argue with each other over whether such comments are offensive and you have Spring Fever 2013. For the most part, these comments are not mean-spirited, but I know first hand, that they are still hurtful to those who hear it.
When I moved to the Tidewater, Virginia region that January in 1980, I was in seventh grade. I was still shell-shocked by the epic 1978 mini-series, Roots. Moving to the southeastern seaboard after seeing that, was the last thing I wanted to do. It was a bad move: full of spirit-crushing bullying. I went to military for 8th and 9th grade.
When I returned, no one but my closest friend remembered me, that was a good thing. High school was a fairly seamless transition from military school. Maybe it was because I was miserable in a military setting of endless regimentation and no arts and maybe it was because I was pleased to spend my extra-curricular and elective time in music. Unlike the junior high debacle, I found making friends a pretty easy exercise, but that's where the problems that relate to the beginning of this blog arose.
I returned to public school during the 1982-1983 school year. The Civil Rights victories of the 1960s were not even 20 years cold. This may account for the awkward situations I found myself in those years. Whereas at Western Branch Junior High School I found myself a pariah: yankee, upper middle-class, articulate and an avid learner; in high school I experienced overwhelming acceptance. I also found myself a niche' of similarly inclined outsiders. We called ourselves the import club because we were all from somewhere other than Tidewater.
These friendships in high school and even at the military acadamy had their pitfalls, however. Let me flip it and reverse where I am going with this: some of my best friends were biggots. Don't think that's possible? I wouldn't believe it if I had not experienced it.
In polite society, one should avoid talking about finances, religion, and politics, right?--- didn't most of us learn that from our moms? However, when you befirend someone, you start feeling each other out on these issues. That's where the comment comes from.
My friends would gleefully come to me to share a great joke they heard since the last time they last saw me. First, there were the black, white and red all over jokes: skunks in a blender-- but as I got older they turned darker. Jokes about blacks from my white southern friends.
When they saw I was offended, they would assure me "We don't mean you--- you're different." As if that was supposed to make me feel better about them finding humor in impugning members of my race with their stereotypes. What did they mean "different?" And then the other kicker "yeah, but you don't really act or talk black, you're more like us." Act black? Talk black?
I wish I could take the 46 year old version of me and teleport into the teen me. There are things I would say-- no, cussing a blue streak isn't on my mind. My friends were operating under stereotypes that were so entrenched that even our friendship could not dispel them.
Acting black? I don't need to act a color. I am the descendant of African slaves who kidnapped and shipped to the New World, --some as many as three centuries ago. The comment was a reference to my diction and elocution. Our home lives were similar. Both of our parents were college-educated and expected us to succeed in our studies, go to college, and become productive members of our communities. This meant that my folks were just as anti-slang, anti-regional dialect as theirs were. No one in my family spoke ebonics.
The same could not be said for many of my African American classmates at WBHS. I also was one of three African American students enrolled in advanced, honors, and accelerated classes-- where I met many of these friends. My school had a 60/40 white to black ratio demographic and there were well over 450 students in my graduating class alone.
For many of my friends, I would learn over the years, I was their first or only black friend. We played on sports teams together, hang at each other's houses playing video games, watched movies, crammed for tests, even visited each other's places of worship on a few occassions. We were friends, but since I lived in their neighborhood, was in their "hard classes," and did not live up to what they had grown up was true of "those people" I was "other," and like them.
I was offended by their jokes. It did not matter to me that they were not talking about me. They could have been talking about cousins who acted out a culture that they only had a cursory understanding of. This was decades before I would teach a course at the College of New Jersey called "Race, Class, and Gender," where we learn the socio-polical history of these assumptions and their economic, political, and educational rammifications.
When I hear these things. I cringe, I question, I try to gently educate. I believe it serves no purpose, as an educator, to react like a school-nun who overhears blasphemy. I try to get my point across subtlely.
Navigating these murky waters of human relationships impacted upon by racial, religious, and ideological differences has been part of my life story. I lived in white neighborhoods and predominantly white school districts most of my life. Most of my black friends that I had growing up, were relatives whom I only saw when I travelled to my grandparents' homes in Ohio. Many of my cousins had the same life experience because they were also born to college-educated, upwardly mobile and achieving parents. That was our family identity.
My paternal grandfather, a mason contractor, noticed that folks with college degrees struggled significantly less during the Great Depression than those who did not. He made sure all seven of his children went to college in the 1940s and 1950s.
The student who said the opening lines of today's blog? He is an avid reader who reads well above grade level. I gave him a choice of Having Our Say, Black Boy, and Selected Stories of Edgar Allen Poe to read during PSSAs. He devoured Poe and Wright. When he finished Black Boy, he came to me before homeroom to talk to me about it.
"I had no idea things were like that back then..." I looked at him.
"Do you understand why I had an issue with what you said to her?"
"Oh God! Yeah! Geez... I'm sorry." I hope I smiled gently, I was relieved he seemed to get it.
"Not everything is funny just because you think it is. Know what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"Cool."
That's it. No need for a write-up or call home. Other teachers were aware of what happened because other students immediately realized that he should not have "gone there" in front of me. My point-- no one should go there, regardless of in front of whom.
I'm caught in the middle. I understand when to pounce and when to wait for a teachable moment. I'm an educator, not a thought policeman. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Seriously? Yep- that's just one of the "funny" things my students are saying to each other in class. Compound that with students who argue with each other over whether such comments are offensive and you have Spring Fever 2013. For the most part, these comments are not mean-spirited, but I know first hand, that they are still hurtful to those who hear it.
When I moved to the Tidewater, Virginia region that January in 1980, I was in seventh grade. I was still shell-shocked by the epic 1978 mini-series, Roots. Moving to the southeastern seaboard after seeing that, was the last thing I wanted to do. It was a bad move: full of spirit-crushing bullying. I went to military for 8th and 9th grade.
When I returned, no one but my closest friend remembered me, that was a good thing. High school was a fairly seamless transition from military school. Maybe it was because I was miserable in a military setting of endless regimentation and no arts and maybe it was because I was pleased to spend my extra-curricular and elective time in music. Unlike the junior high debacle, I found making friends a pretty easy exercise, but that's where the problems that relate to the beginning of this blog arose.
I returned to public school during the 1982-1983 school year. The Civil Rights victories of the 1960s were not even 20 years cold. This may account for the awkward situations I found myself in those years. Whereas at Western Branch Junior High School I found myself a pariah: yankee, upper middle-class, articulate and an avid learner; in high school I experienced overwhelming acceptance. I also found myself a niche' of similarly inclined outsiders. We called ourselves the import club because we were all from somewhere other than Tidewater.
These friendships in high school and even at the military acadamy had their pitfalls, however. Let me flip it and reverse where I am going with this: some of my best friends were biggots. Don't think that's possible? I wouldn't believe it if I had not experienced it.
In polite society, one should avoid talking about finances, religion, and politics, right?--- didn't most of us learn that from our moms? However, when you befirend someone, you start feeling each other out on these issues. That's where the comment comes from.
My friends would gleefully come to me to share a great joke they heard since the last time they last saw me. First, there were the black, white and red all over jokes: skunks in a blender-- but as I got older they turned darker. Jokes about blacks from my white southern friends.
When they saw I was offended, they would assure me "We don't mean you--- you're different." As if that was supposed to make me feel better about them finding humor in impugning members of my race with their stereotypes. What did they mean "different?" And then the other kicker "yeah, but you don't really act or talk black, you're more like us." Act black? Talk black?
I wish I could take the 46 year old version of me and teleport into the teen me. There are things I would say-- no, cussing a blue streak isn't on my mind. My friends were operating under stereotypes that were so entrenched that even our friendship could not dispel them.
Acting black? I don't need to act a color. I am the descendant of African slaves who kidnapped and shipped to the New World, --some as many as three centuries ago. The comment was a reference to my diction and elocution. Our home lives were similar. Both of our parents were college-educated and expected us to succeed in our studies, go to college, and become productive members of our communities. This meant that my folks were just as anti-slang, anti-regional dialect as theirs were. No one in my family spoke ebonics.
The same could not be said for many of my African American classmates at WBHS. I also was one of three African American students enrolled in advanced, honors, and accelerated classes-- where I met many of these friends. My school had a 60/40 white to black ratio demographic and there were well over 450 students in my graduating class alone.
For many of my friends, I would learn over the years, I was their first or only black friend. We played on sports teams together, hang at each other's houses playing video games, watched movies, crammed for tests, even visited each other's places of worship on a few occassions. We were friends, but since I lived in their neighborhood, was in their "hard classes," and did not live up to what they had grown up was true of "those people" I was "other," and like them.
I was offended by their jokes. It did not matter to me that they were not talking about me. They could have been talking about cousins who acted out a culture that they only had a cursory understanding of. This was decades before I would teach a course at the College of New Jersey called "Race, Class, and Gender," where we learn the socio-polical history of these assumptions and their economic, political, and educational rammifications.
When I hear these things. I cringe, I question, I try to gently educate. I believe it serves no purpose, as an educator, to react like a school-nun who overhears blasphemy. I try to get my point across subtlely.
Navigating these murky waters of human relationships impacted upon by racial, religious, and ideological differences has been part of my life story. I lived in white neighborhoods and predominantly white school districts most of my life. Most of my black friends that I had growing up, were relatives whom I only saw when I travelled to my grandparents' homes in Ohio. Many of my cousins had the same life experience because they were also born to college-educated, upwardly mobile and achieving parents. That was our family identity.
My paternal grandfather, a mason contractor, noticed that folks with college degrees struggled significantly less during the Great Depression than those who did not. He made sure all seven of his children went to college in the 1940s and 1950s.
The student who said the opening lines of today's blog? He is an avid reader who reads well above grade level. I gave him a choice of Having Our Say, Black Boy, and Selected Stories of Edgar Allen Poe to read during PSSAs. He devoured Poe and Wright. When he finished Black Boy, he came to me before homeroom to talk to me about it.
"I had no idea things were like that back then..." I looked at him.
"Do you understand why I had an issue with what you said to her?"
"Oh God! Yeah! Geez... I'm sorry." I hope I smiled gently, I was relieved he seemed to get it.
"Not everything is funny just because you think it is. Know what I mean?"
"Yeah."
"Cool."
That's it. No need for a write-up or call home. Other teachers were aware of what happened because other students immediately realized that he should not have "gone there" in front of me. My point-- no one should go there, regardless of in front of whom.
I'm caught in the middle. I understand when to pounce and when to wait for a teachable moment. I'm an educator, not a thought policeman. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
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