What Happens to a Plan Deferred?

Alright. Today was freaking crap. I can't do anything right, ever.  I waaaayyyyyy overshot what my students could do in the amount of time they could do it.  Even though I had instructions printed out for students, I had to go around and completely re-explain almost every single station. Scratch that almost-- I  had to go around and completely re-explain every single station. I could tell that my students were frustrated and confused and overwhelmed. It was awful. Honestly, though, I could have dealt with all of that, but it was the students who started asking me about grades and the EOCT and midterms and finals and everything that overwhelmed me and made me want to cry.

It made me feel like I didn't have a plan. How are my students going to pass the EOCT? Is it over Freakonomics? Is it over A Raisin in the Sun? I'm teaching them stuff, but to them- not directly. And I need to teach it directly. I did do a day of cloze notes over rhetorical strategies/devices, but I didn't follow up on it exactly. I guess I just have a lot of thinking to do...A lot.

I'm getting discouraged at almost every turn. I'm so used to being good at everything I do that I don't know how to be bad at something.  I feel disorganized, unprepared, behind, overwhelmed. I know that I need to be looking forward to what I can do to change things, but right now I just want to sulk.  I don't even really want to write about it because it's making me freak out, all of the things that I need to write. If I wrote everything on here that I'm freaking out about and needed to do, that alone would take me at least an hour.

Anyway. I feel like this semester has been crap so far. I'm not sure if this is what I'm meant to do.

Looking Forward

I've been thinking a lot about writing.  I've never been a big writer at all.  I've always wanted to be a writer. I've always wanted to keep a diary.  I've never been able to.  The only time I consistently remember writing is during the Myspace and xanga era and then again when Facebook notes were a thing.  I've been told that I have a way with words (whatever that means), but I've never enjoyed writing on my own.  Social media was my motivation.  I like the attention.  I love when people see me in between classes and tell me how much they loved my facebook status the other day.  I love when my friends tell me they were laughing out loud over a piece I wrote on Tumblr.  I, like my students, need a real world purpose.  

Recently, reflecting on my teaching, I realized that I am not a huge proponent for writing.  In my early essays and teaching philosophies, I stress that all aspects of English are equally valuable for students-- they need to be able to read, write, and discuss in order to fully grasp the content.  In practice, however, I find myself gravitating towards fun activities and Socratic Seminars, mostly because my students hate writing.  This is not a good approach, though.  That is why, in planning my first unit for next semester, I made a conscience decision to include writing in a big way.  The unit is Freakonomics, a very interesting book with just about zero unifying themes-- the perfect book for blog posts.  I've comprised ten tough statements to discuss in a pre-reading activity.  My idea is that students will continue to examine these ten statements throughout the reading of the text and discuss them in blogs.  I want them to be able to pull quotes from the text to support their opinion on either side (the statements are things like, people will do anything if the incentive is big enough).  This way, hopefully, the writing will be interesting for them because they will be expressing their opinions and they will have the real world audience of their peers and the rest of the internet.  Like in this class, students will have blog partners and will be required to reply in some way to their partner's blog.  Students will know that people other than me are reading their blogs.

I've also been getting into Thought Catalog a lot recently.  I love the short, hilarious, non-fiction pieces and plan to incorporate this into one of my units (probably my Into the Wild unit).  I think that the idea of getting their writing onto a real website is a cool motivating factor for my students.  However, Thought Catalog is pretty selective, so there will need to be a lot of conferencing to make sure the pieces are good enough.  I have anticipated, though, that if the students feel they've done a really good job on their piece and it doesn't get onto the website, it may be discouraging.  I'm toying with the idea of creating my own class tumblr where I can put up students' exceptional writing.  Students will still want to be good enough to get on the website, but it's less constrained. 

Creative writing is what I'm most passionate about, though, and am so excited to incorporate poetry (especially spoken word) into my Raisin in the Sun and Great Gatsby units (as well as in my informational units, just not as prominently).  The fact of the matter is, spoken word is freaking cool.  I want to show my students that there are people out there doing this still, people their age, and encourage them to record their poems.  I'll also create a youtube channel for that work.  I really think that social media is a fantastic motivating factor for students of this generation.  

These are all just ideas, but I want to make sure that I'm not neglecting writing.  Hopefully I find ways like these to make writing interesting and meaningful for my students!

Please please enjoy some of my favorite spoken word videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgxU73Eifgs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVD-HsHoUNM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0QiFy8dmX0

Rough Draft

Storm LOVES KPop and Psy

• "I don't like to think about that because I don't like compliments, so it's weird.  And I don't want people to think I'm like, "let's go to school!" because I hate school. I hate school. I don't really like the idea of school. I go cause it's required and you can get a good job and stuff but I don't like coming off as someone who's enthusiastic about the idea of learning...even though I kind of am...but I like to get my ideas out. I feel like the way people perceive you, no matter if it's true or not, that is what you are because the world is how everyone sees something. So even if I'm not stupid, if everyone thinks I am, I am because that's how it's determined kind of. So I feel like I need to be very clear with everything- if I have an opinion or something, I need to get it out there cause I don't want someone to get the wrong idea about me. It's kind of self-conscious on my part, but, you know..."
• Motivation- reading from Beers
  • Doesn't like to read things people tell her to read
  • Doesn't enjoy school even though she's "good" at it
  • Parents care about grades, she cares about learning/bettering herself/the way others perceive her
  • Her level of motivation depends on the amount of boredom/other factors
    • If her parents are trying to talk to her, she'll pick up anything to read in order to avoid talking to them
• Interested in
  • foreign language
  • fashion
  • photography
  • psychology/informational readings
  • art
  • Korea, specifically
• Likes to read
  • psychology books
  • fashion blogs
• Does not like to write anything
• Procrastinator
• Perfectionist
  • never feels like any of her work is even relatively good, even if it warrants a 98
• Is friends with the top ten students of her class, so she doesn't feel smart compared to them
• Her favorite English teacher is Mr. Barner because he lets them do whatever they want. She just wants to do her work at home at the last minute and spend time in class doing whatever she wants
• Wants to be a fashion photographer when she grows up
  • another puzzling question as to why she's so motivated to do well

Storm's Motivators

Storm and I had such an interesting talk about her and school.  After observing her, I realized that Storm is one of the top students in all of her classes, not just in ours.  I was adamant to get to the point of what motivates Storm to get such good grades and participate so actively in classes.  Her answer: nothing.  She said she hates school, she doesn’t particularly like writing, and she couldn’t care less about grades.  Until this point, I won’t lie, I had seen almost all of my past self in Storm.  When Storm told me that she didn’t care about grades, only her parents do, I was baffled.  She had said it before, but she really meant it!

We went on with the interview and we came to a question about where she thinks her abilities lie in comparison to her other peers.  She answered truthfully that she felt she was ahead of most of her peers, but that her friends are the top ten of the class and she’s thirteen, so in comparison to them she never feels above average.  At this point, I pointed out to her that she is ahead of most of her peers and I also mentioned that she actively participates even when the teacher doesn’t ask for anyone to.  I asked her what her motivation was. What follows is one of the most insightful things to ever come out of a fifteen-year-old’s mouth ever in all of time:

"I don't like to think about that because I don't like compliments, so it's weird.  And I don't want people to think I'm like, "let's go to school!" because I hate school. I hate school. I don't really like the idea of school. I go cause it's required and you can get a good job and stuff but I don't like coming off as someone who's enthusiastic about the idea of learning...even though I kind of am...but I like to get my ideas out. I feel like the way people perceive you, no matter if it's true or not, that is what you are because the world is how everyone sees something. So even if I'm not stupid, if everyone thinks I am, I am because that's how it's determined kind of. So I feel like I need to be very clear with everything- if I have an opinion or something, I need to get it out there cause I don't want someone to get the wrong idea about me. It's kind of self-conscious on my part, but, you know..."

So yes. So. Much. Insight.  I’m not sure that many average teenagers think this way, which is why it was so cool to have this little window into Storm’s mind.  The thing that is even cooler is that that night I went home and read Beer’s chapters about motivation and basically connected everything to what Storm said.  Storm’s motivators are internal so they’re very strong and, lucky for her, they correlate directly with school. 

Storm surprised me again when we discussed reading.  It makes sense in the context of the above quote, but before I understood her motivations I was surprised.  She told me that she hates to read anything someone gives her to read.  If she’s not required to read, she’ll read anything, apparently.  This goes back to different motivators.  It’s really good to know this about Storm! I know that she’ll read the books, though, because she doesn’t want to appear dumb. 

Enough about motivators.  I should throw in here quickly that Storm and I also discussed the possibility of her being a fashion blogger.  This, she claims, is the only time she would ever want to write outside of school.  She is already thinking of creating media (something Jenkins mentions as being essential to technological literacy).  

A Day With Storm

This is what I felt like following Storm around all day

Today I had the chance to observe my student (and by observe my student I mean follow her around and record every action she made and every word said).  Unfortunately, all of Stormageddon’s classes were extremely busy today—one had presentations of multimedia projects, one had a mock trial, and one had necessary group work.  In between all of the hubbub of the day, I was able to ask Storm just a few of the questions that I hope to ask her about her attitude toward school, reading, and writing.

I already know from last week that Storm takes school kind of seriously but her parents take school very seriously.  From today’s observation, it is clear that Storm is one of the smartest, if not the smartest, student in all of her classes.  She’s one of those students that’s just worlds above cognitively.  When I asked her if I could make a copy of the essay she just got back for my mentor teacher’s class, she replied that of course I could but, “it’s not very well written. I mean, I got a 98 on it, but I don’t think it’s any good.”  Even when Storm is slacking, she is excelling.

While in my mentor teacher’s class, during a short break, Storm asked me what I had been typing all day.  I told her I was typing every time she did anything or got distracted or said anything, etc.  I mentioned the distraction because it is something I’ve noticed in our English class and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.  After our conversation though, when Storm heard me start typing while she was talking off topic with her friend, she reacted, “No! Dangit! I have to pretend that I stay on task because I hear you typing!”  I told her not to change anything she was doing because I wanted to see a true representation of how she behaves in class, so she went back to talking.  Later, she explained to me what I already kind of suspected, which is that if she is talking it’s usually because she is bored or because the teacher or a student or activity is annoying her.

When I did have a chance to ask Storm a quick question about school, I decided to ask her what she would change about her school experience if she could.  She replied that she would like for each teacher to give each student one free day a semester.  One day where if that student had a lot going on, they could skip their work without penalization, as long as it’s not a big project.  I think that this is a good insight into the mind of Storm as well as the difference between her and other students.  She didn’t jump to “no reading” or “no math”, but a reasonable solution to a problem that truly affects her life—too much homework.  She also mentioned, in not so many words, that teachers could collaborate to make sure assignments didn’t overlap as much as they do.

Today was an interesting day with Storm, definitely. I’m looking forward to getting more of her insights on reading and writing, but for now I’ve learned a lot about her attitudes towards school already.

Stormageddon Dark Lord of All

I’m so happy to finally write about something happy and not something that stresses me out! Yay!

I got a chance in third block to interview the girl I will be doing my case study on. Yes, the student I am following around and prodding with personal questions is in fact a girl, despite the misleading pseudonym.  At the end of the interview, I asked her if there was any particular pseudonym she would like to go by and this was her reply.  Apparently, it is a Doctor Who reference and apparently, that baby really is Stormageddon.  The Doctor, who claims to speak baby, meets a baby named Alfie who, he says, likes to call himself Stormageddon, Dark Lord of All.  So there we are.

Already, I have learned something about my student.  Stormageddon Dark Lord of All (whom I will refer to as Storm for short) is a very active participant in class and an avid reader, so I was excited to interview her.  I knew from our previous interactions that she loves fashion.  She comes decked out to class every day and most of our conversations consist of us commenting on a piece of clothing the other is wearing.  When I asked her what she enjoys, though, fashion didn’t even make the list.  Storm loves photography, art, foreign languages, theatre, and singing, to name a few.  This surprised me because I knew Storm reads psychology books for fun, so I was expecting a more science, less art based person.  When I asked her what she wants to do in the future, though, it did not surprise me that she said she would like to be a fashion photographer or an interpreter; I already know that she speaks fluent Korean and is very passionate about fashion.

I also learned about Storm’s family.  I learned that her mom is from Trinidad and that her dad works in D.C. for the Navy.  She has a sister who’s a senior at Clarke Central and they kind of get along. 

Probably the most interesting thing to me, though, is the fact that her parents do not accept mid-level A work. A 95 is unacceptable.  We talked about whether or not grades are a motivation for her and she said not really.  She would be happy with a mid-level A, but her parents are focused more on her doing her absolute best and pushing to higher than what is expected of her. 

I see a lot of the characteristics of an independent reader in Storm.  She’s the kind of student who enjoys, I mean actually enjoys, the classics.  I’m not sure that any of the YA books on Melissa’s list would challenge her enough. She’s that kind of reader.  But she doesn’t write much (I’ve learned from previous conversations).  Storm doesn’t do any writing outside of school writing, but she also can’t complete writing at school.  Every time we give the students in class writing time she does other homework and says she’d rather finish it at home.  Therefore, I’m also not sure a writing workshop would benefit her.  Obviously I have a lot more to learn about her learning styles, but this is a good start I think.

Major Coronary

(I got this picture by googling screaming at books. Pure. Gold.)

Okay guys. Here come the mini heart attacks again.  All of this reading for all of these classes is converging at once and I have so many conflicting ideas that it’s crazy.  We’ve been talking a lot about assessment and what matters when you assess and I’m not going to lie—I have never thought about assessment.  When I picture my classroom, I picture everything but assessment, in fact.  Now it’s all I can think about.  It consumes my mind.  Here is the big question—what is important to assess?  The content, the presentation, both? If both, at what proportions?

Before I freak out, though, I should probably explain what I got from the readings.  According to the Digital Writing Workshop, “what we’re really after is helping [students] compose more substantive texts, both individually and collaboratively” (page 35).  Okay, good. This is a concrete definition of what we are aiming for.  I feel like we haven’t had one in a long time.  All of these philosophical questions about our teaching, planning, and assessment styles are awesome, but not knowing the answers is killing me and what’s killing me even more is that I probably won’t know the answers to them until I’m actually in the classroom.  So of course when I read in Chapter 6 of Hicks that “instruction and assessment are intertwined and that digital writing makes that relationship even more complicated” (page 105), I don’t feel a million times better (can you blame me?).  

Aside from the assessment strategies of Hicks, which seem at the least to quicken my pulse to an nth degree, Pathways to the Common Core actually kind of calmed me.  (I’m about to quote a large piece of text, but it’s really important to me, so we’ll all just have to deal.)

The image of a routine for writing is not just about sitting down to write, however. A writing routine involved understanding what it means to work at your writing. Writing anchor 5 states that writers will “develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new approach” [18].  The CCSS are closely aligned, then, with the practices researched by Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist Don Murray, documented in a Writer Teachers Writing (2003). Murray described how journalists learn, even when writing to deadline, to revise on the run, to try out different leads and endings, to consider and reconsider each word, comma, sentence structure in order to convey precise meaning: they know that writing is a process. (page 106) 

So what does this have to do with my assessment concerns? I’m so glad you asked! This is another clear example of what to assess.  Although I don’t see myself as the kind of teacher who fits a goal to a standard, I think that as a beginning teacher with so little definition of my philosophical views, it is important to have an idea of what other educators think is important.  As I was composing my goals/assessments chart for Peg, I would be happy with my goal and then panicked when I couldn’t find a standard to fit it.  Add in the digital component of goals and assessments and I’m a goner. 

Unfortunately, my mentor teacher does not use any form of digital literacy. As Hicks says on page 38, “’Couldn’t I do this with journals or writing folders?’ Indeed you could.”  This is my mentor teacher’s approach.  For his on-level classes we keep writing journals, including daily writing examples.  He does not seem though, to be “conferring outside of class time […] building relationships and responding to writers at their point of need” (page 38).  I know that he definitely does not confer outside of class time.  He may be building relationships based on the advice he’s given me about forming relationships with students.  As far as responding to writers at their point of need—he gives feedback on the journals every few weeks.  I think that he’s given feedback twice on the journals all semester when they write every day.  And these are struggling writers.  I have no idea what the students do with this feedback.  It makes me wonder if there’s something we can do to make the feedback more meaningful? Can we make revisions required? Or some reflection on the feedback? I’m not sure. More assessment to think about…and you know how excited I get about unsure assessments…