Warm and Cool

One great thing about our school is that, in support of writing across the curriculum, we use one of our professional development early-release days for the entire teaching staff to holistically score expository writing samples from every student. Everyone is familiarized with the state rubric and team teachers meet to read and evaluate their students' writing.

Perhaps, as an English teacher, I'm biased in my perspective on this; no doubt some of my colleagues in other content areas might express another opinion. I have the sense that many non-English teachers feel that writing has a very limited place in their classes, despite lots of research confirming writing across the curriculum as best practice for instruction in both writing and content. (Bottom line: Like people who can read well, people who can write well are generally more successful in all academic areas than their peers who cannot.) Even so, every year we experience some push back and even resentment when it comes time to read and score those essays.

This year the English department was presented with a request from our colleagues. Since they are asked to not only rate each writing piece from 1-4 in composition, written expression, and correctness, but also to provide the student authors with a comment both praising them and offering a suggestion for improvement, our fellow educators wanted a comment bank from which to draw their remarks for the kids.

Hm...

Oh, wait! I have one:

Nice initiative in trying to make this as easy and thoughtless as possible! Next time, try actually engaging with the task at hand to give our kids some authentic feedback.

What a Difference a Year Makes

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about the amazing new group of students we had. Flash forward-- for the first time in my career, there has been no personnel change at the sixth grade level since then, but this beautiful fall day found several of us veterans reminiscing about last September.

Don't get me wrong-- the kids this year are sweet and age-appropriate, they just aren't the kids from last year. Tuesday is the day when we meet with the counselor to discuss student concerns, and she left with a list of at least 20 kids who aren't doing their homework, aren't coming prepared, don't follow directions, can't open their lockers, can't make it on time, can't make it all. Oh, they love middle school, all right-- they say so all the time-- but middle school is sort of a challenge for them right now. Sigh.

At the end of the meeting, one teacher who has been on the team for seven years, but has thirty-plus years of teaching experience made an announcement. "Well," she said, "this makes me feel much better." We looked at her, momentarily perplexed. She shrugged. "I thought it was me," she laughed. "I was sure I had lost my sixth grade mojo."

Pinwheels for Peace

The awesome art teacher at our school introduced a cool activity last year: Pinwheels for Peace is an art installation project conceived of by two art teachers in Florida in 2005. Every year millions of windmills are created and displayed on September 21, in observance of the United Nations World Peace Day.

This year, our new Tolerance Club took the lead on the project, helping to organize materials and set up the display of over 350 pinwheels in front of our school for World Peace Day tomorrow. Tonight as I left the building, hundreds of colorful handmade pinwheels twirled in the soft breeze. Our school is a mixed-use facility, and I saw dozens of people there picking up their children, attending night classes, riding bikes, walking dogs, and jogging past. Few could fail to smile at the pinwheels spinning in the setting sun, especially after reading the banner...

Visualize Whirled Peace

Bunny Ears

Our school system subscribes to a password-protected academic internet service. Each teacher has a "course" with tools like a discussion board, blog, wiki, online assignments, etc. that students can access from anywhere they have an internet connection. One part of my English class involves giving my students the chance to write informally for an audience of their peers on our course's discussion board. I put up topics of interest like sports, music, pets, and video games and invite the kids to post at will. There are other more structured writing assignments, too, and we start the year with introductions. Each student has to write a couple of paragraphs introducing him or herself to the rest of the group. As a follow-up, they are asked to read and reply to at least five other kids.

Anyway, we were in the computer lab on Friday to kick off this activity, and so I've spent a good chunk of my weekend reading sixth grade writing, some of it rather silly indeed. Not that I mind-- I find what they have to say to each other pretty interesting, and this assignment can really provide a lot of insight into their personalities, interests, concerns, and of course, writing skills. Sometimes what they write is hard to understand, which is a good lesson for them, because quite often, whomever it's addressed to will reply in confusion, giving that writer incentive to revise the message.

Today, I read a post that temporarily stumped me. It was in reply to a girl who had written that she was excited about all the field trips we might take in sixth grade. To that another student responded, REALLY, REALLY, Kim Positive can't wait for the exciting (with bunny ears) field trips? WOW! I understood the teasing sarcasm-- it was the bunny ears that got me. I read it again and was just about to click away with a shrug and a note to self to ask him about it tomorrow when I realized what they were... He meant air quotes! I was fascinated by the implication: he didn't realize that the bunny ear gesture actually stands for punctuation marks, much less that he could have written them directly into his reply.

Now, that is going to make a good mini-lesson.

Impulse Purchase

Today while out and about on weekend errands, we noticed that a new shop was opened not so far from our home. It's actually the second location of a place devoted to all things doggie, and since we've driven to the other side of the county to visit its sister store, we were delighted to drop in and browse a bit this afternoon. They had a fun assortment of things we really don't need-- dog beds and t-shirts, collars and leashes (remind me that one day? I really must write about Isabel's extensive collar wardrobe), but as we made our way to the back of the store, we stopped by the small book collection, and there it was... a book on teaching your dog sign language!

We laughed to begin with-- we have many friends who have taught their pre-verbal children to sign, and based on that alone, this seemed like the ultimate scam targeting DINKs like ourselves-- but as I've written before the desire to truly communicate with your pet can run deep. We decided to buy the book.

Our dog has a pretty good repertoire of tricks, none of which I can take credit for teaching her, and she is nothing if not a willing student, so as we plunked our hard earned cash on the glass top boutique counter, I knew that if any dog could learn sign language, it is Isabel, and if anyone could teach her, it is Heidi.

We'll see.

More Than a Rhetorical Question

I heard someone on the radio today describe teaching as being like a salesperson for a product that nobody wants but everyone is forced to buy. That made me a little sad, but I realized that it does speak to one of the most common pitfalls of teaching-- how to make the curriculum relevant to people who are not necessarily present in your class by choice.

The answer must lie in the fact that although no one loves every minute of school, everybody has experienced the utter exhilaration of learning something totally awesome. How can all of the stakeholders work together to make school like that?

Be Prepared

Today was the day when we set up English binders in my class. Last week, each student was asked to procure a 1-1/2" binder and five dividers to store and organize all the reading and writing work they will do in class this year. Last night, I went to the office supply store and purchased 10 binders and 20 sets of dividers. My deal is simple-- I'll lend those students without what they need today in exchange for a replacement as soon as possible. I ran out of supplies in the fourth of my five classes, despite scrounging through all the spare binders I've collected over the years as well as the generosity of the students who bought 8 divider sets and donated the extra 3 to their classmates.

This practice is considered wrong by some. To them, it is harmful to the students because it is enabling: as the theory goes, if students have enough advance notice for any given task, then accepting anything less than full compliance is reinforcing the idea that requirements aren't mandatory. Hm.

To those folks I say: Look. My students are ten and eleven. They are in a new school in a new position of greatly increased responsibility and independence. I think they're doing the best they can. Many of their parents work long hours and some have limited access to transportation. Add to that that today, new figures were released showing that one out of seven people in the US lives in poverty. I suspect that statistic applies to the families of some who come to my class every day.

Not one student turned down my offer; they want to have what they need for the class. I know I'll get back a few binders and some sets of dividers, too, but I won't break even, and I don't really care. We have our English binders ready to go!