Today, as a formative assessment, I started class with the request that students draw Bryon's big decision from Chapter 10. In the chapter, Bryon discovered that his best friend was currently a drug dealer. This happens at the heels of rescuing another friend from a drug den of a hippie house who was on a bad LSD trip. The friend happened to be the younger brother of Bryon's new girlfriend. The results of the activity were interesting.
In college we learned that everyone has schema, prior knowledge and history, and that schema colors the way we interpret information. The novel, That Was Then, This Is Now, is set in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Even after students conducted webquests about these eras and reported back to me about trends of that era in technology, many students still drew Bryon using a cell phone to call the police or a pushutton wall unit phone. I was tickled to see that on so many students' papers.
The message I gleaned from that is that students still see the world, past or present, as it is today. This means that we educators have to work harder to help students understand the time period we are teaching and what anachronisms are.The "how" is the big question.
Once, many years ago, when they were in their late 50s, I invited my parents to visit my class as guest speakers about life as an African American in the 1960s. The experience was powerful for my students, my parents and even for me. The power of having visitors speak to students about an era they were studying as witnesses to history was very strong. I cannot put my parents through that each year, but it does give me an idea--- skype? Video interviews. Live show n tell? I am getting an idea for a very cool lesson and project... stay tuned.
Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Monday, September 24, 2012
Why Are We Here?
Today's post title sounds like a metaphysical question of deep import, or a sarcastic rhetorical rant. I don't mean it to be either. It's a straight question. Why do we teach? Why do we teach where we do? Is it because there were no jobs any where else? Is it because there was nothing else to do with our lives or is it because we were called to it? Were you called to your profession? To your school district? To your grade?
I've been getting that message quite a bit lately indirectly. I am reminded that when I was a teen, my dad used to tell me: "Boy, if you never want to work a day in your life, do something you love. You won't believe people are paying you to do it." Yesterday I was listening to TD Jakes who said that if you are doing what you have been called to do, you will not be chasing money to do it, money will be chasing you. That resonated with me.
Not only do I do what I love, but opportunities to do more and get paid for it chase after me to the point where I now have to think about whether I have the time or the inclination to make more money as a coach, professor, tutor, or teacher. Naively (yeah, at 45, one can still be naive) I expect everyone to approach their job as their life's work. I think the responsibility to lay a strong academic foundation for a student's success to be an enormous responsibility. So when our adminstration encouraged us to embrace the idea of rigor in our classrooms, I smiled inside. Finally. I had not heard this message that clearly from administrators since I left NJ in 2004.
Dr. Downs put it this way: "Joel, the taxpayers of this district pay you a hefty salary to teach their students well. Make sure you give them their money's worth." At the time, while understanding the intent of the message, there was a part of me internally refuting the money part since I had a friend who was a high school dropout with a GED who was working as head mechanic of a medium sized Ford dealership for 25K more salary than I earned with an ivy league master's degree. But when he pointed out to me that teachers that create a rigorous learning environment for their students will often receive friction from parents who do not want their kids to struggle, he warned me: "Don't you dare give in." I got the message. High expectations, partnered with proper scaffolding is my job. That is how we help students grow from one grade to another.
It has taken me many years to find the balance between strong expectations, proper scaffolding, and manageable work load. I have found it through raising the bar for the product but lowering the workload to obtain the bar through more time on task in class with teacher guidance and less homework. Homework is not the great Satan that some parents have made it to be, but the instructional value is reflective. Homework should be practice of what you taught in class, not a place to attempt to learn new information independently. The instruction and exercises are not the final product, but the enduring understanding that the student gains from the endeavor is.
I had to shake the chains of time limits, grade grubbing, and close-ended lessons to get to the point where what is learned is more important than how long it took to complete the assignment. I first heard about curriculum that is a mile long and an inch deep at the beginning of the new millenia. That concept made sense, but I did not see the connection between that and trying to make a lesson always fit with closure when the bell rings or with writing projects being completed with in a fixed amount of time. Even the state writing tests are no longer timed because they got the message: quality takes time.
I was approached to become an adjunct professor after only 8 years of teaching because an elder teacher noticed that I already embraced rigor. I didn't really understand what the fuss was about how I operated. My directions were clear, and my expectations were that if a child earned an "A," it was because they had produced quality work. I took pains to spell out what quality looked like for each assignment by creating rubrics, distributing them in advance, and explaining them well in advance of deadlines. I didn't think that marked much notice, it was just what I learned to be best practices in pedagogy classes as a student teacher.
Unfortunately many did give into parent demands that a student receive the highest grade without earning it. That was as much of a revelation to me as learning that completing a project assigned by my upline at DuPont, a day ahead of schedule, was worthy of earning a plaque, a food processor, a reception in my honor, and a parking space just steps from the entry door. Is this the culture we live in as Americans in 2012?
I remember the re-runs of Star Trek I watched in the 1970s as a kid where Scottie, the engineer, would always overstate how long it would take to fix the starship so that he would come out a hero when he beat his own manufactured deadline. When did the bar of expectations get lowered so low that simply doing what was asked was outstanding work?
My attitude about state minimum proficiency exams was that I should expect more than what was necessary to pass from my students and that my student's goal should be excellence. On the PSSA's, that means advanced proficient. Passing should be a given, if I have taught my students well, because they should understand where the bar is for excellence. Legibility and quantity do not equal quality but the quality of that quantity can be measured.
When I write a rubric I look at my assignment and chunk my expectations into content, GUMS (Grammar, Usage, Mechanics, and Spelling) and whatever parameters were spelled out in the directions. For an essay, that could mean I was looking for a quality thesis, quality organization, quality supporting evidence, a quality introduction and a quality conclusion. I would ask myself what does an "A" look like and what does an "F" look like. Fleshing out the "B," the "C," and the "D" were always the tough part. Fs and As are easy to recognize.
I used to think everybody did this, but I find that there are still teachers who simply slap a grade on a paper with empty praise or commendation like "good job" or "please see me..." I thought the days of counting misspelled words died with the Gerri curl, parachute pants, and Wham UK. Some say rubrics are time-consuming. They can be, but after a while they become second nature-- like brushing your teeth before you go to bed. The practice keeps the dentist away and the rubric practice makes grade inquiries with parents easier to deal with. Ususally when an irate parent is face to face with the grading requirements that were distributed to their child at the beginning of an assignment, and shown where the student failed to measure up, the conversation changes its color.
There are generations of educators and adults who were students before rubrics. Grading was either arbitrary or a mystery. I remember having to guess with my classmates what the difference between a B+ and an A- was. Often it was the difference between whether your teacher liked you and took pity on you. I didn't want to be that teacher.
My bottom line is that I want to bring my students further, push them to achieving excellence, and empower them to achieve more than they believed was possible.
I've been getting that message quite a bit lately indirectly. I am reminded that when I was a teen, my dad used to tell me: "Boy, if you never want to work a day in your life, do something you love. You won't believe people are paying you to do it." Yesterday I was listening to TD Jakes who said that if you are doing what you have been called to do, you will not be chasing money to do it, money will be chasing you. That resonated with me.
Not only do I do what I love, but opportunities to do more and get paid for it chase after me to the point where I now have to think about whether I have the time or the inclination to make more money as a coach, professor, tutor, or teacher. Naively (yeah, at 45, one can still be naive) I expect everyone to approach their job as their life's work. I think the responsibility to lay a strong academic foundation for a student's success to be an enormous responsibility. So when our adminstration encouraged us to embrace the idea of rigor in our classrooms, I smiled inside. Finally. I had not heard this message that clearly from administrators since I left NJ in 2004.
Dr. Downs put it this way: "Joel, the taxpayers of this district pay you a hefty salary to teach their students well. Make sure you give them their money's worth." At the time, while understanding the intent of the message, there was a part of me internally refuting the money part since I had a friend who was a high school dropout with a GED who was working as head mechanic of a medium sized Ford dealership for 25K more salary than I earned with an ivy league master's degree. But when he pointed out to me that teachers that create a rigorous learning environment for their students will often receive friction from parents who do not want their kids to struggle, he warned me: "Don't you dare give in." I got the message. High expectations, partnered with proper scaffolding is my job. That is how we help students grow from one grade to another.
It has taken me many years to find the balance between strong expectations, proper scaffolding, and manageable work load. I have found it through raising the bar for the product but lowering the workload to obtain the bar through more time on task in class with teacher guidance and less homework. Homework is not the great Satan that some parents have made it to be, but the instructional value is reflective. Homework should be practice of what you taught in class, not a place to attempt to learn new information independently. The instruction and exercises are not the final product, but the enduring understanding that the student gains from the endeavor is.
I had to shake the chains of time limits, grade grubbing, and close-ended lessons to get to the point where what is learned is more important than how long it took to complete the assignment. I first heard about curriculum that is a mile long and an inch deep at the beginning of the new millenia. That concept made sense, but I did not see the connection between that and trying to make a lesson always fit with closure when the bell rings or with writing projects being completed with in a fixed amount of time. Even the state writing tests are no longer timed because they got the message: quality takes time.
I was approached to become an adjunct professor after only 8 years of teaching because an elder teacher noticed that I already embraced rigor. I didn't really understand what the fuss was about how I operated. My directions were clear, and my expectations were that if a child earned an "A," it was because they had produced quality work. I took pains to spell out what quality looked like for each assignment by creating rubrics, distributing them in advance, and explaining them well in advance of deadlines. I didn't think that marked much notice, it was just what I learned to be best practices in pedagogy classes as a student teacher.
Unfortunately many did give into parent demands that a student receive the highest grade without earning it. That was as much of a revelation to me as learning that completing a project assigned by my upline at DuPont, a day ahead of schedule, was worthy of earning a plaque, a food processor, a reception in my honor, and a parking space just steps from the entry door. Is this the culture we live in as Americans in 2012?
I remember the re-runs of Star Trek I watched in the 1970s as a kid where Scottie, the engineer, would always overstate how long it would take to fix the starship so that he would come out a hero when he beat his own manufactured deadline. When did the bar of expectations get lowered so low that simply doing what was asked was outstanding work?
My attitude about state minimum proficiency exams was that I should expect more than what was necessary to pass from my students and that my student's goal should be excellence. On the PSSA's, that means advanced proficient. Passing should be a given, if I have taught my students well, because they should understand where the bar is for excellence. Legibility and quantity do not equal quality but the quality of that quantity can be measured.
When I write a rubric I look at my assignment and chunk my expectations into content, GUMS (Grammar, Usage, Mechanics, and Spelling) and whatever parameters were spelled out in the directions. For an essay, that could mean I was looking for a quality thesis, quality organization, quality supporting evidence, a quality introduction and a quality conclusion. I would ask myself what does an "A" look like and what does an "F" look like. Fleshing out the "B," the "C," and the "D" were always the tough part. Fs and As are easy to recognize.
I used to think everybody did this, but I find that there are still teachers who simply slap a grade on a paper with empty praise or commendation like "good job" or "please see me..." I thought the days of counting misspelled words died with the Gerri curl, parachute pants, and Wham UK. Some say rubrics are time-consuming. They can be, but after a while they become second nature-- like brushing your teeth before you go to bed. The practice keeps the dentist away and the rubric practice makes grade inquiries with parents easier to deal with. Ususally when an irate parent is face to face with the grading requirements that were distributed to their child at the beginning of an assignment, and shown where the student failed to measure up, the conversation changes its color.
There are generations of educators and adults who were students before rubrics. Grading was either arbitrary or a mystery. I remember having to guess with my classmates what the difference between a B+ and an A- was. Often it was the difference between whether your teacher liked you and took pity on you. I didn't want to be that teacher.
My bottom line is that I want to bring my students further, push them to achieving excellence, and empower them to achieve more than they believed was possible.
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Drum Roll Please
Bless me blogger, it has been five days since my last post. These past five days have been busy ones. The weekend was packed with coaching, training, lifting, cleaning, shopping, and cooking-- typical weekend for me. The week has been equally challenging but finally I have an unexpected moment to write, so I'm taking it.
Last week I talked about some pretty cool stuff and grades. I am happy to report that focusing upon novelty and formative assessment has had the desired affect upon my students' performance on summative assessments. Grades are due this week and Tuesday was the first summative assessment I gave my students. The results were very encouraging.
Before focussing upon formative assessment and incorporating novelty in the classroom, students would routinely crash and burn on Monday morning 10-point quizzes. The class averages would at best be 6/10 and at worst 5/10. This isn't even a bell curve. Tuesday's quiz was however a 25 point quiz that asked students to demonstrate vocabulary recall of ten Greek roots, to demonstrate comprehension and recall of specific events in their novel by answering fifteen multiple choice questions about the plot of the first half of the novel, and to identify 5 prepositions from an excerpted paragraph in the novel.
The results are in. When I announced the class average for each class, after returning the graded quizzes, I encouraged my students to act like eigth graders. They gave me a drum-roll on their desks. Most of them did. First period averaged 85.7%, Second period 88.6%, Fourth period 87.7%, Fifth period 97.9% and Sixth period 84%. The average grade for all five sections, 88.78%. As anyone who works with averages knows, this does not mean that all my students performed well, but obvioiusly most of them did.
The best comment I received from a student, "That was an easy test, I knew all the answers." I smiled, thinking to myself: "All my tests are easy when you are prepared." I prepared them. Everything I had them do was calculated to make sure they had the recall and ownership of the material to perform well. The pictures reinforced the plot, the articles we read in the computer lab looking for root words reinforced the root words. Scouring a chapter for examples of prepositions reinfoced their ability to recognize prepositions.
Last week, I wrote that if this stuff was working, the kids grades should not sllip once we began formative assessments. I guess its working but my new goal is to see my classes average over 90 percent on the next assessment, the quiz about the second half of the novel next week.
Just like my dog Juggernaut, this old dog is learning new tricks.
Last week I talked about some pretty cool stuff and grades. I am happy to report that focusing upon novelty and formative assessment has had the desired affect upon my students' performance on summative assessments. Grades are due this week and Tuesday was the first summative assessment I gave my students. The results were very encouraging.
Before focussing upon formative assessment and incorporating novelty in the classroom, students would routinely crash and burn on Monday morning 10-point quizzes. The class averages would at best be 6/10 and at worst 5/10. This isn't even a bell curve. Tuesday's quiz was however a 25 point quiz that asked students to demonstrate vocabulary recall of ten Greek roots, to demonstrate comprehension and recall of specific events in their novel by answering fifteen multiple choice questions about the plot of the first half of the novel, and to identify 5 prepositions from an excerpted paragraph in the novel.
The results are in. When I announced the class average for each class, after returning the graded quizzes, I encouraged my students to act like eigth graders. They gave me a drum-roll on their desks. Most of them did. First period averaged 85.7%, Second period 88.6%, Fourth period 87.7%, Fifth period 97.9% and Sixth period 84%. The average grade for all five sections, 88.78%. As anyone who works with averages knows, this does not mean that all my students performed well, but obvioiusly most of them did.
The best comment I received from a student, "That was an easy test, I knew all the answers." I smiled, thinking to myself: "All my tests are easy when you are prepared." I prepared them. Everything I had them do was calculated to make sure they had the recall and ownership of the material to perform well. The pictures reinforced the plot, the articles we read in the computer lab looking for root words reinforced the root words. Scouring a chapter for examples of prepositions reinfoced their ability to recognize prepositions.
Last week, I wrote that if this stuff was working, the kids grades should not sllip once we began formative assessments. I guess its working but my new goal is to see my classes average over 90 percent on the next assessment, the quiz about the second half of the novel next week.
Just like my dog Juggernaut, this old dog is learning new tricks.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Fun?
Last year in our district formative assessment committee, we examined, experimented with, and critically analyzed a variety of new tricks of the trade to gauge student readiness to learn, student acquisition of knowledge, student schema, and generally some cool stuff (LOVE using illegal words!) The most enduring revelation I received from all of it effective feedback. I have always commented on papers--- sometimes I have more comments about my students writing than the actual writing they produced. I learned that some of what I was doing for years may not be that helpful to learning after all.
The hardest thing I had to learn (and now continue) was asking questions rather than pointing out mistakes. I did what every English teacher has been trained to do. I took out my marking pin and made editing suggestions to their work. Bad idea. Why? I was doing all the work, thus making my students dependent upon my editing and not responsible for their own.
The new strategy was to ask questions rather than point out grammar errors, misspellings, fragments and gaffes in fluency. So I'm taking a break after plowing through half of last class's Write Your Think. We just finished chapter 5 of That Was Then, This Is Now with five minutes left of the class period. Rather than talk about our reactions to Charlie's murder, I asked the question: "Whose fault is it that Charlie is dead?" Students wrote paragraph-long responses to the prompt.
It is getting easier to ask rather than direct. Everytime I saw a proper noun that needed capitalization, I underlined it and drew a line from the word to the margin where I wrote "What must we always do with the first letter in a specific name?" Where students neglected apostrophe "s" I asked: "How do we show possession when we write a person's name?" For incomplete sentences I asked: "How could you make this a complete thought?" For misspelled words or misused homonyms I would ask : "Is this the correct spelling of the word for this sentence?" There is a pragmatic benefit to this paradigm shift.
After writing the same questions over and over again, I received a direct message from my students. "Mr. Logan, we need to be reminded how to capitalize proper nouns. We need a refresher about how to show possessive in our writing. We need to keep a log of the words we misspell frequently so we know to pay attention to them. We need to look at how to writing complete sentences." See? Now I know what writing issues to focus upon next week to complement their reading assignments.
Novelty is a message I latched onto from an in-service last year. I have a tendency to be a goof or overly dramatic in class. I have fun in class, nearly every day. How-- try being a goof with 8th graders and watch their faces. Priceless. From that point, you have their cooperation and attention-- they want to know what other crazy stuff you're going to do. I once told a friend that what I like about teaching is that it takes everything I have and asks for more. In elementary school, junior high, high school, and college, I was a singer and actor. I now use those skills when I teach.
Sorry Justin Timberlake, you might be bringing "Sexy Back," but I'm bringing "Grammar Back." Smiles, eye rolls, rib jabbing, perplexed stares and mild amusements that crawl across their faces. Priceless. Some parents come to parent teacher conferences singing my versions of pop songs that thair kids sing to them on the way to soccer practice or whatever. You never know what lingers with kids or what they are taking home. Do you know: "Two types of nouns/Only Capitalize One/Proper, proper, proper nouns please?" I'd probably be in trouble with Lady Gaga if she knew my students know my lyrics better than hers.... Fun with grammar. What a concept.
Not really. Sister Eleanor Grace Spirodozzi, at Saint Mary's School in Baldwinsville, NY, used to host spelling relays every Friday. She would divide the class into two groups. We would get in line at one end of the room. The middle of the room was cleared so we could do the relay. Someone would keep score while we played. Sister would call the spelling word from our list and we would try to beat our opposing runner to the chalk board on the other side of the room and spell the word correctly. The person who spelled it correctly first earned her team a point but then she had to run back to the end of the line so the next word could be called and the teams were literally off and running again. How fun is it for kids? I still remember it 34 years later... and I can spell.
The hardest thing I had to learn (and now continue) was asking questions rather than pointing out mistakes. I did what every English teacher has been trained to do. I took out my marking pin and made editing suggestions to their work. Bad idea. Why? I was doing all the work, thus making my students dependent upon my editing and not responsible for their own.
The new strategy was to ask questions rather than point out grammar errors, misspellings, fragments and gaffes in fluency. So I'm taking a break after plowing through half of last class's Write Your Think. We just finished chapter 5 of That Was Then, This Is Now with five minutes left of the class period. Rather than talk about our reactions to Charlie's murder, I asked the question: "Whose fault is it that Charlie is dead?" Students wrote paragraph-long responses to the prompt.
It is getting easier to ask rather than direct. Everytime I saw a proper noun that needed capitalization, I underlined it and drew a line from the word to the margin where I wrote "What must we always do with the first letter in a specific name?" Where students neglected apostrophe "s" I asked: "How do we show possession when we write a person's name?" For incomplete sentences I asked: "How could you make this a complete thought?" For misspelled words or misused homonyms I would ask : "Is this the correct spelling of the word for this sentence?" There is a pragmatic benefit to this paradigm shift.
After writing the same questions over and over again, I received a direct message from my students. "Mr. Logan, we need to be reminded how to capitalize proper nouns. We need a refresher about how to show possessive in our writing. We need to keep a log of the words we misspell frequently so we know to pay attention to them. We need to look at how to writing complete sentences." See? Now I know what writing issues to focus upon next week to complement their reading assignments.
Novelty is a message I latched onto from an in-service last year. I have a tendency to be a goof or overly dramatic in class. I have fun in class, nearly every day. How-- try being a goof with 8th graders and watch their faces. Priceless. From that point, you have their cooperation and attention-- they want to know what other crazy stuff you're going to do. I once told a friend that what I like about teaching is that it takes everything I have and asks for more. In elementary school, junior high, high school, and college, I was a singer and actor. I now use those skills when I teach.
Sorry Justin Timberlake, you might be bringing "Sexy Back," but I'm bringing "Grammar Back." Smiles, eye rolls, rib jabbing, perplexed stares and mild amusements that crawl across their faces. Priceless. Some parents come to parent teacher conferences singing my versions of pop songs that thair kids sing to them on the way to soccer practice or whatever. You never know what lingers with kids or what they are taking home. Do you know: "Two types of nouns/Only Capitalize One/Proper, proper, proper nouns please?" I'd probably be in trouble with Lady Gaga if she knew my students know my lyrics better than hers.... Fun with grammar. What a concept.
Not really. Sister Eleanor Grace Spirodozzi, at Saint Mary's School in Baldwinsville, NY, used to host spelling relays every Friday. She would divide the class into two groups. We would get in line at one end of the room. The middle of the room was cleared so we could do the relay. Someone would keep score while we played. Sister would call the spelling word from our list and we would try to beat our opposing runner to the chalk board on the other side of the room and spell the word correctly. The person who spelled it correctly first earned her team a point but then she had to run back to the end of the line so the next word could be called and the teams were literally off and running again. How fun is it for kids? I still remember it 34 years later... and I can spell.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Borrowed Cars and Discovery Learning
It maybe because I was trained to think about research qualitatively as an ethnographer instead of quantitatively as a statistician, but I think when talking about students, letting their words do the talking is more powerful than insightful commentary. And that is how I want to begin this blog, with the kids speaking:
Dear Mr. Terch,
We are reading That Was Then, This Is Now in English class with Mr. Logan. Have you read it? Well there is a part in the book where Mark takes the principal's car somewhere but brings it back. The principal wasn't mad. He actually thought it was funny. How wouild you feel if I stole your car sometime? I debated with the class that you would be fine with it. Well anyway. I'm gonna go.
Bye
McKenzie R
Dear Mr. terch
Could I borrow your car to run to the York County prison to go sing to the inmates. LOL
From: Julie M.
Dear Mr.Church terch -
I think i could hotwire your car is ok i would give it back ok
Dear, love
Charles
OK editing mistakes should be ignored. I typed the notes to our principal exactly as they wrote them to maintain their integrity. There is a lot to learn here from my students in this 3 quick notes. I learned how they view the world, what writing issues we need to conquer this year, and some insight to their personalities.
Where'd all this come from? Like McKenzie wrote to our principal, we were discussing chapter 4 of That Was Then, This Is Now and I was attempting to connect the story to their own lives by asking the question: how do you think Mr. Terch would react if he discovered one of you driving his car into his parking space after frantically looking for it. Several students wanted to argue that our principal would have been "fine with it." I encouraged them to write to him. The above were their responses.
Finally, I was able to incorporate the text from the novel for my grammar mini-lesson today. I called it a Preposition Quest. The students were supposed to work in their groups to find a sentence from chapter 4 that features a preposition and another sentence featuring a compound preposition. I reminded them that, since I had already instructed them to put the definitions of each into their notebooks, they should be able to find the definition in their notebook.
Do you remember I told you I was a Murphy's Law kind of guy? I left a copy of our writing and grammar text on each desk, just in case. You see, just because they wrote the definitions in their notebook is no guarantee they remembered to bring the notebook to class. Sometimes they bring the wrong notebook, come with no notebook, or were absent the day of the lesson. No problem. I encouraged them to use the texts if they neeed to and also reminded them how to find discreet information in a textbook. Use the index. We also discussed that if there was a chapter about prepositions, whether the index would list the chapter by a single page or a range of pages. Some kids still went to the single page reference that only obliquely referenced a prepositional phrase without defining it.
I remember having a new teacher I was charged with mentoring a few years back. He'd be irritated about something a middle schooler did and demand I explain the unexplainable: "Why'd he do that?" The answer was simple: "He's 13." My answer to everything. The mantra achieves calm for middle school teachers and it works for both sexes and all middle school ages. Repeat after me. "She's twelve." "He's fourteen" "They're eigth graders." After years of fighting the natural behaviors of early adolescents, somewhere around year 8 I figured out that instead of fighting it, I should accept it and redirect it. That's the year I traded rows for pods and silence for an unquiet pedagogy (yes, I read that book in grad school too.)
A chattering class focused on a task and slipping in references to last night's game or the latest middle school gossip is a healthy one. It was fun to bounce around the room eavesdropping on kids arguing whether the sentences fit the bill of a compound preposition while trying to slip in some off-topic conversation. You know what's funny about teachers who are obsessed with off-task dialogue? They are the exact same people who irritate me when I'm trying to listen to directions from our administrators in faculty meetings and in-service meetings. If they can do it what makes them think their kids can't? I trust my students to meet or at least attempt to meet my expectations. Ironically, I cannot carry on a conversation and listen to instructions simultaneously, so I appear to be a model audience member in those situations. Unlike their teachers, students have a tendency to police themselves when they're focused on the task. Often before I have a chance to redirect, the kids themselves remind each other "We gotta get this done!"
I can't decide which I enjoyed more today-- the letters to Mr. Terch or the 4 panel comic depicting Mark's car story. Supposedly, there is a way to embed photos onto the blog articles themselves. I am going to see Mr. Terch and Mrs. Spangenberger to investigate how to do it. Some of the cartoons were pretty cool. The lingering future assignment kept students motivated to finish the grammar assignment. My kids like drawing this year. I heard many "We gotta get this done so we can draw!" numerous times today."
That's my story. Lesson learned today--- don't let the kids know which car is yours-- they might borrow it. <grin>
Dear Mr. Terch,
We are reading That Was Then, This Is Now in English class with Mr. Logan. Have you read it? Well there is a part in the book where Mark takes the principal's car somewhere but brings it back. The principal wasn't mad. He actually thought it was funny. How wouild you feel if I stole your car sometime? I debated with the class that you would be fine with it. Well anyway. I'm gonna go.
Bye
McKenzie R
Dear Mr. terch
Could I borrow your car to run to the York County prison to go sing to the inmates. LOL
From: Julie M.
Dear Mr.
I think i could hotwire your car is ok i would give it back ok
Dear, love
Charles
OK editing mistakes should be ignored. I typed the notes to our principal exactly as they wrote them to maintain their integrity. There is a lot to learn here from my students in this 3 quick notes. I learned how they view the world, what writing issues we need to conquer this year, and some insight to their personalities.
Where'd all this come from? Like McKenzie wrote to our principal, we were discussing chapter 4 of That Was Then, This Is Now and I was attempting to connect the story to their own lives by asking the question: how do you think Mr. Terch would react if he discovered one of you driving his car into his parking space after frantically looking for it. Several students wanted to argue that our principal would have been "fine with it." I encouraged them to write to him. The above were their responses.
Finally, I was able to incorporate the text from the novel for my grammar mini-lesson today. I called it a Preposition Quest. The students were supposed to work in their groups to find a sentence from chapter 4 that features a preposition and another sentence featuring a compound preposition. I reminded them that, since I had already instructed them to put the definitions of each into their notebooks, they should be able to find the definition in their notebook.
Do you remember I told you I was a Murphy's Law kind of guy? I left a copy of our writing and grammar text on each desk, just in case. You see, just because they wrote the definitions in their notebook is no guarantee they remembered to bring the notebook to class. Sometimes they bring the wrong notebook, come with no notebook, or were absent the day of the lesson. No problem. I encouraged them to use the texts if they neeed to and also reminded them how to find discreet information in a textbook. Use the index. We also discussed that if there was a chapter about prepositions, whether the index would list the chapter by a single page or a range of pages. Some kids still went to the single page reference that only obliquely referenced a prepositional phrase without defining it.
I remember having a new teacher I was charged with mentoring a few years back. He'd be irritated about something a middle schooler did and demand I explain the unexplainable: "Why'd he do that?" The answer was simple: "He's 13." My answer to everything. The mantra achieves calm for middle school teachers and it works for both sexes and all middle school ages. Repeat after me. "She's twelve." "He's fourteen" "They're eigth graders." After years of fighting the natural behaviors of early adolescents, somewhere around year 8 I figured out that instead of fighting it, I should accept it and redirect it. That's the year I traded rows for pods and silence for an unquiet pedagogy (yes, I read that book in grad school too.)
A chattering class focused on a task and slipping in references to last night's game or the latest middle school gossip is a healthy one. It was fun to bounce around the room eavesdropping on kids arguing whether the sentences fit the bill of a compound preposition while trying to slip in some off-topic conversation. You know what's funny about teachers who are obsessed with off-task dialogue? They are the exact same people who irritate me when I'm trying to listen to directions from our administrators in faculty meetings and in-service meetings. If they can do it what makes them think their kids can't? I trust my students to meet or at least attempt to meet my expectations. Ironically, I cannot carry on a conversation and listen to instructions simultaneously, so I appear to be a model audience member in those situations. Unlike their teachers, students have a tendency to police themselves when they're focused on the task. Often before I have a chance to redirect, the kids themselves remind each other "We gotta get this done!"
I can't decide which I enjoyed more today-- the letters to Mr. Terch or the 4 panel comic depicting Mark's car story. Supposedly, there is a way to embed photos onto the blog articles themselves. I am going to see Mr. Terch and Mrs. Spangenberger to investigate how to do it. Some of the cartoons were pretty cool. The lingering future assignment kept students motivated to finish the grammar assignment. My kids like drawing this year. I heard many "We gotta get this done so we can draw!" numerous times today."
That's my story. Lesson learned today--- don't let the kids know which car is yours-- they might borrow it. <grin>
Floppy-eared Children
Yesterday was a hectic afternoon, Hannah, my adorable four and a half month old yellow labrador retriever, had her second vet visit at 4:15pm after school. School dismissal for teachers was at 2:50pm and I live about 15 to 20 minutes away from school. Plenty of time right? You'd think that if you also believe that all things are equal and plans always turn out the way you expect.
That's not my experience at all. I'm kinda a Murphy's Law guy. The vet wanted a stool sample. Hannah wouldn't produce one for me yesterday morning which meant I had to hope she didn't make when she was let out that afternoon before I came home--- I used to think dog poop was gross, now neither the smell, shape or consistency bothers me-- it's just part of being a doggy's daddy. Skewering a fresh poop pile with a discreet little green plastic device didn't bother me at all. How did that happen?
Did Hannah give me the stool sample I needed? Eventually. My mother warned me that Hannah was her own person and had her own head before I even met her this summer. Hannah wanted to play. The clock was ticking. She had been in her crate all morning and a few hours that afternoon, so I gave in and let her play. All the while, I was nervously watching the time slip away on my flip phone--- yeah I don't do the smart phone yet. I didn't even have a cellphone until 2004. But I digress.
While Hannah played fetch and keep away with Daddy, Daddy almost wiped out discovering her afternoon stool sample had been hidden between the ivy covered volleyball court bowl and the court border. "Great, she already went this afternoon and I'll have to go to the docs without her stool sample again--- they're going to think I'm an idiot.." The bottoms of my shoes were fragrant with my doggy daughter's deposit but there wasn't enough there for me to scrape off for a sample.
It was 3:45 now and I was getting worried. I really didn't want to show up empty-handed again, but Hannah normally doesn't need to go number 2 in the middle of the day. Resigned to "daddy-epic-fail," I brought my happy panting puppy back inside the house. We walked by her food bowl and her crate and I noticed something. Fortunately, Hannah hadn't finished her breakfast and there were still a few handfuls of it in her bowl. I discovered the hard way that my little girl will leave presents if she eats after a vigorous exercise when I forget to let her out again.
We practiced "sit-ups" using her leftover breakfast. I took the feed by the handful and we practiced sitting, sitting down (like a sphinx,) and sitting up again. Each time she completed the exercise I fed her feed from my hand. When she finished the rest of her breakfast, I changed shoes, put on her car harness and took her for a lap around the house. Bingo! It was 4:10 and the vet's office was 15 minutes away.
Laugh if you want to at my not-so-smartphone, but it has bluetooth and so does my car so I called them from the road letting them know that we were running late. "It's Hannah's daddy's fault, but at least we have a stool sample."
All that and the visit lasted 10 minutes--- She's 35 pounds now-- 5 pound gain from her visit 2 weeks previous. She had another round of shots-- she didn't bark or growl but she didn't like them. The vet said "bee sting" Hannah shot me a look like "Evil trick, Daddy!" Like I said, 10 minutes and it was over.
I'm always exhausted after work. Before Hannah, I could crawl in my bed or lounge on the couch and fall asleep for 30 minutes when I got home. Hannah will sit at the foot of the couch and watch tv with me, but if I fall asleep, she will use her "big girl" voice and bark me awake. The tone is unmistakably insistent like "Hey! You left me home alone all day, you can't fall asleep now. Pay attention to me. Hey!" If I taped her barking rant, you could insert the words for the syllables of her barks. I know-- dog parents are nuts, right?
After dinner, I was awake enough to play with my pup some more. She loves to squirm on her back with her favorite toy in her mouth and playfully push my hands away with her paws as I try to play "Rubdabelly" with her.
It used to be "Rub the belly." If you saw us play--- you would see a grown man on all fours talking baby talk, nuzzling his puppy's neck and rubbing her belly. Hannah eats it up. She just grins and rolls on her back playfully.
When we were finished. Juggernaut, my ten year old English Springer Spaniel, squeezed between Hannah and I, plopped on my foot ,and leaned his head back against my shin-- his not so sublte way of letting me know he wants his neck petted. So I pet him and told him what a good boy he was and he was in doggie nirvanna,
Unfortunately, Hannah is jealous of anyone else getting my attention. She walked back up to us and started kissing Juggernaut's face. He went ballistic. First, he growled and, of course, Hannah paid him no attention and kept trying to get in on the lovefest. He then barked, chased after her, and even when she fell to the ground in supplication, he nipped at her side. She squealed that mournful, heartbreaking yelp that makes puppy-daddies die a little inside.
I was horrorified that he was hurting her. So this voice I did not recognized erupted from me. "No! No!No!No!Nonononono!" Juggernaut got off her and the baby scurried between my legs, shielding herself from her brother-turned-Cujo.
I spent the next 30 minutes cradling my puppy in my arms, petting her, assuring her she was safe, and that Daddy would not let anything happen to her. I noticed she avoided Juggernaut when we walked back in the room. I could not put her to bed yet.
We have a flea issue with Juggernaut, so all the linens and towels were being washed. This included the Hannah's bed linens. MamaDear made Hannah a mattress out of batting and boat cover material. She made a mattress linen for her with leftover material from curtains for the living room. I was not going to put the puppy in the crate to rest on a metal floor after she had become accostomed to more luxurious accomodations.
TV night was spent watchfully monitoring Hannah's interaction with Juggernaut. When the load was finally dry, I made my little girl's bed, placed her chew toys inside, and set her down. When I finally retired to bed at 11, I thought I would sleep til 5:00am as always. Wishful thinking.
At 12am Hannah started her whinebark. For those of you without dogs, its the whine that starts like a yawn and drawls until the pup is nearly out of breath and ends in an insistent bark. I remembered my mother warning me not to jump out of bed everytime Hannah called me and that I had to remain in control. I also had to get to sleep. After an hour and a half of attempting to ignore her intermittent pleading, I roused myself out of bed and went into the great room to see about her.
I took her out. She had to urinate but nothing else. She obediently got back into her crate and I went back to bed after saying good night. This time it was straight out barking from about 1:20 to 2am. I couldn't take anymore, so I went to see about her again. Did she urgently need to pass a stool sample? I took her out again and all she wanted to do was play "keep away." Heck no. Not at 2am! I squashed her keep-away fun, tackled her, wrestled her back into her crate, and told her: "Good night, Hannah Chase. Daddy needs his sleep!"
Again with the barking. What the heck? Finally I took her out of her crate at 4am, lay clean blankets and a couple of her chew toys on the floor in my room beside my bed. Peace. One hour of sleep. Awesome.
Funny thing about all that. The day turned out to be ok. We were in the library. Mrs. H. booktalked some new books and let the kids know about some free kindle downloads available that they may want to investigate. We used today's meet to post answers to my grammar question: "What is the difference between a preposition and a compound preposition?"
I received the feedback I needed about last week's lesson. I know. There was no qualitative or quantitative grade to put in my gradebook, but I got the information I needed. Isn't that what counts? Grades have to be uploaded on the 20th of September for mid-marking period reports. To satisfy the grade grubbing, I am giving a quiz on prepositions and the first three chapters of our novel on Tuesday.
If all this formative assessment and progressive feedback I have been working with works. The kids grades should remain relatively unchanged. Most kids have As at this point. They are doing their homework, they are productive in class and they seem to have a grasp on what is happening so far. Does every class always have to generate a bell-curve to be challenging and rigorous? I used to think that, but not anymore. Isn't the goal to see everyone successful?
Or is that the lack of sleep talking?
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Now That Was Some Cool Stuff!
The title is not my own, it's a canned message that our librarian, Mrs. H., used with the video production team for daily announcements a few years back. The announcer reminded me of Max Headroom (am I the only one who remembers that virtual reporter?) Anyway, it sums up the morning I'm having. Gotta love a morning that starts well.
At the end of the 2011-2012 school year, I lost a close friend and mentor to another building assignment. You see, I spent ten years teaching Reading/Literature. I was still an English teacher, but my focus was on comprehension, extending literature to student's lives, literary terms, and decoding words. The LA teacher focused on grammar and writing. I never considered myself too much of a grammarian. There were stellar people in my building who fit that bill much better than me. Then, the curriculum changed and I was teaching writing and reading (yikes!)
As a student, grammar was never a focus of instruction except in 6th and seventh grade. In high school, I found myself in classes with other students who "wrote naturally." They also grew up in households where both parents owned degrees and experienced at least some post baccalaureate studies. In teacher-speak, we all came from literature rich environments, so its probably not true that we wrote naturally or just understood grammar by osmosis. We grew up in homes where mispeaking grammatically, and making writing errors were instantly corrected. --any wonder we were in honors and accelerated English classes?
When I came to South Eastern, I was hired as "Communication Arts" teacher. That meant teaching writing, reading, speaking and listening skills. Fortunately I had Mr. H. as my friend and unofficial mentor to run to with questions about gerunds, participles, infinitives, and other technical bumps in the road. I used to tease him with the dictate that he wasn't allowed to retire until I learned all I could from him. I was kidding, but a far greater part of myself meant that than I would let on.
Well, today I was greeted with an email from a former students who is now at the high school:
Dear Mr. Logan,
Good morning,
The clause in question is an adverb clause because it is describing how Frank stepped to the microphone. You made my morning. It is nice to know former students still think of me when they have a grammar conundrum. I hope you are having a great beginning of the school year. Are you a sophomore this year? Am I keeping the years straight in my head?
Have a great day!
Sincerely,
Mr. Logan
Robert Burns wrote a poem I fell in love with in Mrs. Dixon's Junior Honors English class, "To A Louse." Funny title, right? Even better was this line from it:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
Rough translation: I would like the power as a gift he'd give us [God] to see ourselves as others see us!
The message has become even more poignant to me the further I get in my career and the older I become. My former student did not know that, in order for me to teach grammar to her at such an explicit and discreet level, I had to take the books home and teach myself what I was never taught in school. She did not know that I ran to my mentoring friends for help with understanding enough the future pluperfect tense well enough to explain it to a group of 13 and 14 year olds who, only the year before, were vaguely understanding the difference between nouns and verbs. She saw me as an authority whose learned opinion she trusted. What a powerful responsibility to uphold. That was the first gem of cool stuff to start off my day.
The second piece of cool stuff was today's formative assessment. After writing the journal entries yesterday about Connie and the video, I asked my teams (the class is set up in 6 tables of students consisting of 4-6 students) to brainstorm a skit showing how they believe Mike should have dealt with his friends in drug store. As impromptu skits have the tendency, the results were comical, informative, and insight-provoking. One group had Mike sock his buddy who would not stop harassing Connie. Another group chose to have Mike stop his friends just when they announced their intent to bother her. Still another group had Mike pontificate like a hip-hop Messiah about not being a gang and "That's not who we are!"
The kids had fun with the activity and gave some feedback to the groups that performed. This is the teacher I want to be, one with kids engaged, having fun and while learning in unconventional lesson. It's fun to come back to my roots. We concluded the exercise with talking about how hard it is to go against your friends sometimes. I offered my own thought to linger in their minds--- "If your friends don't repect you enough to listen to you when you disagree, are they really your friends? Adults say friends are the family you choose. Why would you spend time with friends who would bully you into silence?" I didn't script it, the words just came to me. Teaching is awesome.
The third piece of cool stuff? Students learned in an article written shortly after Rosa Parks death in 2005, "Kids on The Bus: The Overlooked Role of Teenagers in the Civil-Rights Era," by Jeffrey Zaslow, that she was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat in Birmingham. The kids learned a new name, Claudette Colvin. She was 15 and she "refused to give up her seat and was arrested" (http://www.sites.si.edu/press/Montgomery%20Bus%20Boycott_Wall%20Street%20Journal.pdf) nine months before Mrs. Rosa Parks. Zaslow told my students that the movement did not rally around Colvin because she was a teen and because she became pregnant. The leaders feared that those who opposed them would attack her moral character and make that the focus, taking away exposure to the injustice of Jim Crow. We talked about the fairness of all of that.
We also talked about the revolutionary nature of being an a young person. The article talked about the civil rights movement being a "story of teenage revolt." When we recounted the video clips of the protestors and others in the Civil Rights Movement, I reminded them how many of those faces belonged to young. We remembered the college students who gave their lives for the cause as martyrs.
The technology boom is this generation's teen revolt. I'm a liberal arts geek and math stopped being a strength academically when I ran into Algebra I, but even though I'm the son of an electrical engineer, the digital clocks on the stove, VCR, and microwave blinked until I came home from college. My parents marvelled at how quickly I could reset the clocks and navigate the layered functions. It just made sense to me and it baffled me that they found something so simple so complex.
Now its my turn. Texting, blogging, social networking, tweeting--- all were Greek to me only about 5 years ago. I asked if students ever had to teach their parents how to upload a video or post a picture online. Many grinning heads nodded at me. I pointed out to them that just like the youth of the 1950s and 1960s changed the racial landscape of the US, they (as a generation) are changing how the world interacts with itself. They loved that message of empowerment--- think I'm overstating?
Could you have read my teachers' daily professional diary entries online in 1981 when I was an 8th grader? As a matter of fact, could you have read my online blog in 1993 when I was a student-teacher, and keeping a diary was a requirement for my ethnological research at UPENN? Who made that possible, ladies and gentleman? The revolution continues and that is some cool stuff.
At the end of the 2011-2012 school year, I lost a close friend and mentor to another building assignment. You see, I spent ten years teaching Reading/Literature. I was still an English teacher, but my focus was on comprehension, extending literature to student's lives, literary terms, and decoding words. The LA teacher focused on grammar and writing. I never considered myself too much of a grammarian. There were stellar people in my building who fit that bill much better than me. Then, the curriculum changed and I was teaching writing and reading (yikes!)
As a student, grammar was never a focus of instruction except in 6th and seventh grade. In high school, I found myself in classes with other students who "wrote naturally." They also grew up in households where both parents owned degrees and experienced at least some post baccalaureate studies. In teacher-speak, we all came from literature rich environments, so its probably not true that we wrote naturally or just understood grammar by osmosis. We grew up in homes where mispeaking grammatically, and making writing errors were instantly corrected. --any wonder we were in honors and accelerated English classes?
When I came to South Eastern, I was hired as "Communication Arts" teacher. That meant teaching writing, reading, speaking and listening skills. Fortunately I had Mr. H. as my friend and unofficial mentor to run to with questions about gerunds, participles, infinitives, and other technical bumps in the road. I used to tease him with the dictate that he wasn't allowed to retire until I learned all I could from him. I was kidding, but a far greater part of myself meant that than I would let on.
Well, today I was greeted with an email from a former students who is now at the high school:
Dear Mr. Logan,
Today in English class, we came across a sentence that my teacher and I did not agree on so I was wondering if you could help. In the sentence, "Without any hesitation, Frank stepped to the microphone.", what is "Without any hesitation" modifying? Is it an adjective clause or an adverb clause, and why?
Thanks,
H.H. (identity protected)
I wrote her back:
Good morning,
The clause in question is an adverb clause because it is describing how Frank stepped to the microphone. You made my morning. It is nice to know former students still think of me when they have a grammar conundrum. I hope you are having a great beginning of the school year. Are you a sophomore this year? Am I keeping the years straight in my head?
Have a great day!
Sincerely,
Mr. Logan
Robert Burns wrote a poem I fell in love with in Mrs. Dixon's Junior Honors English class, "To A Louse." Funny title, right? Even better was this line from it:
O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
Rough translation: I would like the power as a gift he'd give us [God] to see ourselves as others see us!
The message has become even more poignant to me the further I get in my career and the older I become. My former student did not know that, in order for me to teach grammar to her at such an explicit and discreet level, I had to take the books home and teach myself what I was never taught in school. She did not know that I ran to my mentoring friends for help with understanding enough the future pluperfect tense well enough to explain it to a group of 13 and 14 year olds who, only the year before, were vaguely understanding the difference between nouns and verbs. She saw me as an authority whose learned opinion she trusted. What a powerful responsibility to uphold. That was the first gem of cool stuff to start off my day.
The second piece of cool stuff was today's formative assessment. After writing the journal entries yesterday about Connie and the video, I asked my teams (the class is set up in 6 tables of students consisting of 4-6 students) to brainstorm a skit showing how they believe Mike should have dealt with his friends in drug store. As impromptu skits have the tendency, the results were comical, informative, and insight-provoking. One group had Mike sock his buddy who would not stop harassing Connie. Another group chose to have Mike stop his friends just when they announced their intent to bother her. Still another group had Mike pontificate like a hip-hop Messiah about not being a gang and "That's not who we are!"
The kids had fun with the activity and gave some feedback to the groups that performed. This is the teacher I want to be, one with kids engaged, having fun and while learning in unconventional lesson. It's fun to come back to my roots. We concluded the exercise with talking about how hard it is to go against your friends sometimes. I offered my own thought to linger in their minds--- "If your friends don't repect you enough to listen to you when you disagree, are they really your friends? Adults say friends are the family you choose. Why would you spend time with friends who would bully you into silence?" I didn't script it, the words just came to me. Teaching is awesome.
The third piece of cool stuff? Students learned in an article written shortly after Rosa Parks death in 2005, "Kids on The Bus: The Overlooked Role of Teenagers in the Civil-Rights Era," by Jeffrey Zaslow, that she was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat in Birmingham. The kids learned a new name, Claudette Colvin. She was 15 and she "refused to give up her seat and was arrested" (http://www.sites.si.edu/press/Montgomery%20Bus%20Boycott_Wall%20Street%20Journal.pdf) nine months before Mrs. Rosa Parks. Zaslow told my students that the movement did not rally around Colvin because she was a teen and because she became pregnant. The leaders feared that those who opposed them would attack her moral character and make that the focus, taking away exposure to the injustice of Jim Crow. We talked about the fairness of all of that.
We also talked about the revolutionary nature of being an a young person. The article talked about the civil rights movement being a "story of teenage revolt." When we recounted the video clips of the protestors and others in the Civil Rights Movement, I reminded them how many of those faces belonged to young. We remembered the college students who gave their lives for the cause as martyrs.
The technology boom is this generation's teen revolt. I'm a liberal arts geek and math stopped being a strength academically when I ran into Algebra I, but even though I'm the son of an electrical engineer, the digital clocks on the stove, VCR, and microwave blinked until I came home from college. My parents marvelled at how quickly I could reset the clocks and navigate the layered functions. It just made sense to me and it baffled me that they found something so simple so complex.
Now its my turn. Texting, blogging, social networking, tweeting--- all were Greek to me only about 5 years ago. I asked if students ever had to teach their parents how to upload a video or post a picture online. Many grinning heads nodded at me. I pointed out to them that just like the youth of the 1950s and 1960s changed the racial landscape of the US, they (as a generation) are changing how the world interacts with itself. They loved that message of empowerment--- think I'm overstating?
Could you have read my teachers' daily professional diary entries online in 1981 when I was an 8th grader? As a matter of fact, could you have read my online blog in 1993 when I was a student-teacher, and keeping a diary was a requirement for my ethnological research at UPENN? Who made that possible, ladies and gentleman? The revolution continues and that is some cool stuff.
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