Rooting Around

Back in the late spring I had a big sweet potato on the counter that was beginning to sprout. On a whim, I chopped it into three pieces and buried it in a corner of the garden and pretty much ignored the vines as they spread their way across the plot all summer long. Today on my way home from school I harvested 15 pounds of sweet potatoes! How incredibly exhilarating it was to dig down into the soil with my bare hands and ease the giant roots from the ground-- one of them was two pounds by itself. It was more than a fair return for all the unwanted roots I dug up and tossed aside as I weeded all season.

Oh the potatoes I'll plant next year!

When I Was a Kid...

Our district offers an online course in Early Adolescent Development for middle school staff who are interested in an overview of the physical, cognitive, social emotional, and identity development milestones that are students are experiencing. This fall, I am facilitating the course for the second time. One of my favorite questions that participants answer as they work their way through the material is Are kids today really that different than they were when you were a kid?  because it requires people to grapple with how differences in environment affect children, as well as any greater impact that large-scale changes might have on society and culture as a whole.

Here's what a couple of people have written:

1. I really do feel that kids today are much more visually-oriented as many of them have grown up with TV and videos from a very early age. 
2. With so much technology and external stimuli readily available, there seems to be a much lower threshold for boredom. 
3. How many of us have seen a student using the computer, texting on a cell phone, and doing homework at the same time?  It makes me wonder how many college students are working diligently in a library carrels these days?  Or are they working with laptops sitting on their beds in their dorm rooms?
4.  Of course, with our modern fears, how many children are allowed to roam and explore freely through our neighborhoods?
5. How many kids today are comfortable with silence?

AND:

While it wasn't that long ago when I was the KID, I still have to answer "yes" to this question.  Just the other day I asked someone, how did we survive without cell phones?  Without the internet?  Without the immediate gratification of instant news, communication and feedback?  As I commented on my assignment guide, kids today are living in a multi-media, need-to-know-NOW, technology-rich environment.  I really feel that this type of "environment" has really played into how we teach and how we approach our teaching - in both positive and "not-so" positive ways.  In many ways, I wish I had the technology that kids today have - online databases with CURRENT research, Web 2.0 Media, cell phones, internet, Smart Boards.  But on the other side, I am very appreciate to how I grew up.  My sister and I invented games to play.  We built forts, played outside, rode our bikes, did arts & crafts... car rides included conversations with our parents & other family members, not playing video games & watching DVDs. 

What would you say?

Bonjour Paresse

It's the first three-day weekend of the school year and I've decided that every weekend should have three days. Of course in a few weeks, I'll tell you that every day should have 25 hours, too. (And for the record? Everyone should be off all summer, too.) Obviously, I should have been born French.

And I Am Not Making This Up

I stopped by the grocery store on the way home last night. As I came around the end of an aisle I was surprised by a six foot pig in a black teddy with garters and bustier. I nodded, smiled politely, and walked past, the oddness of the incident only fully registering a few steps beyond. With wrinkled brow, I turned to look again, but the pig had vanished.

I didn't really think that I had imagined it, but despite the fact that the store was sort of crowded, there were no other shoppers around for a reality check. Plus, the more I thought about it, what had it been doing there? At first I had assumed that it was some sort of product promotion, but that get-up really didn't fit with anything that they were selling at the grocery store. Also the pig wasn't doing anything other than standing there when I went past; it wasn't selling anything, nor did it approach me in any way.

I shook my head, only questioning my sanity slightly, and continued my shopping.

It was in the dairy section that I next encountered the pig. This time it was walking briskly toward me. There was a guy a few paces ahead of it, but if he noticed anything unusual he sure didn't show it. They passed me and disappeared around the corner. You can bet I was on my guard after that, but as I finished shopping and paid for my groceries, I did not see any more giant pigs. It was with relief that I crossed the parking lot, but as I approached my car a silver mini-van screeched toward me at high speed. I jumped aside and gasped as it careened away.

Riding shotgun? The pig.

Driving? The guy from the dairy aisle.

Really.

Perfecto

Conferences are over and they went well: I had a hundred percent participation; the kids did a nice job leading them, and only one other student cried. It was the last meeting of the day and, ironically, he was the kid with the highest grades. He had straight A's, but in the category breakdown, he had an 85% in homework for one of his classes.

I made the mistake of asking him about it, and he burst into tears explaining that he had misunderstood the directions on an assignment and had only received partial credit for it. That coupled with the fact that one of his teachers had commented that he should participate more had him literally sobbing for a good few minutes. His mother rubbed his shoulder and spoke to him in Spanish, "Usted no tiene que ser perfecto."

The day before, in preparation for the meeting, he had set two goals for himself. The first was to participate more in class and the second was to follow directions carefully. He and his mom were supposed to set one more together in the conference. "What do you think it should be?" I asked. He wiped his eyes and looked at his mother.

"Don't be so hard on yourself," she said and that is what he wrote.

All Conference Eve

Conference day isn't officially scheduled until tomorrow, but this afternoon I had a single student-led conference in order to accommodate a parent's conflict. Oooh, it was a good one! It had a little of everything-- obfuscation, disappointment, tears, scolding, recognition of personal strengths, pride in some tasks well-done, a promise and a plan for both improvement and continued success, and a hug at the end-- all in a little over 20 minutes.  Not bad for the first conference of the year. I wonder what tomorrow will be like.

Code Switching

I had the second session of my professional learning group on grammar today. Our assignment was to read the first three chapters of Catching Up on Conventions: Grammar Lessons for Middle School Writers by Chantal Francois and Elisa Zonana. This section of the book describes how they, two teachers committed to writing workshop, came to the conclusion that teaching grammar is important. Their main reason had to do with the fact that their classes were predominantly made up of ethnic minority students and they felt that it was necessary for them to master academic English, which is the language of power.

Our group talked a lot about this code switching. The reasons the authors described resonated with one of the other white teachers because she felt they applied to many of her students. For the teachers from our north county schools such an argument was irrelevant-- over 90 percent of their students speak the dominant language at home; they don't need to learn another vernacular. As for me, I thought it was hypocritical to make an argument like theirs without acknowledging that such an attitude perpetuates an unfair dynamic. To dismiss the necessity for some people to have to learn the language of the majority as simply a necessary evil does not address the underlying issues.

(Don't worry-- I'm not against teaching conventions-- I just think we should teach them to everybody, in the context of their writing, based on the individual needs of those particular students.)

The other teacher from my school, who is Black, affirmed the importance for people of color to learn to speak and write academic English but also pointed out the social complications that accompany such a choice. "It's sad to say," she told us, "but kids and even adults make fun of Black people who talk too White."

We also discussed proofreading marks, and one of the teachers confessed that she just never got the hang of using them: there were too many and she found the marks confusing. "It's just code switching," I teased, but when later the conversation turned to texting language, we discovered that of all the teachers there, I was the only one who doesn't use it, thanks to my trusty iPhone and perhaps my own resistance to code switching. In my experience, though, this is the exchange that is most difficult for students. Once they get hooked on shortening words and phrases and ignoring capitalization and punctuation, it is very difficult to get them to switch to standard conventions for school writing.

Maybe text talk is a minority dialect; it is a language that belongs to the young. The difference between that group and most ethnic minorities? One day young people will be in charge. r u rdy 4 dat?