Dylan

So recently, I made an assignment where students had to create a Wikipedia page for a song. Then, to get an A, they have to post it on Wikipedia. For posterity, I also posted my sample paper on wikipedia.
Here's the project: https://sites.google.com/site/english11odlh/assignments/duethisweek411through415

Drivel

This evening, Tisa and I drove up to Merced while listening to Yann Martel's Beatrice and Virgil, which had this strange part where the narrator reads a play with the two title characters discussing a pear. It was incredibly descriptive, if a little overwrought, but I enjoyed the description because it helped me imagine the role I would like writing to play in my classroom. I'd like to start including "Writer's Workshops" in my classroom. This is the result of several things...

Two weeks ago, I read an article about hands-on learning in The Atlantic. The article talked about the students who competed in an annual showcase for innovation, emphasizing learning by doing philosophy in the classroom. It made me slightly sad; I began my career as a teacher with the intention of developing a hands-on approach to teaching students. I even wanted to work at an educational learning camp similar to CELP, which is apparently not spelled "Kelp" as I always imagined it. It's really frustrating trying to meet the needs of my current school environment due to the focus on Standardized Testing. I believe that standardized testing has actually made me a worse teacher... I am trying so hard to gear my lessons towards the tests that it is taking away from some of the interactive learning environment that I originally envisioned. Reading this helped me start questioning what I was currently doing in the classroom.

So, I'd like to try to give my students a slight sense of "learning by doing" in my classroom. Specifically, Tisa and I talked about using writer's workshop as an experiential learning model for teaching writing. Here's what I imagine it looking like:

1. Each block class, I'll have students write for roughly 20 minutes (at first, perhaps increasing the duration to 30 minutes or so later in the year).
2. I'll try to map out the year with a different writing genre each month, similar to the genres outlined by Kelly Gallagher (descriptive, comparison, argumentative, expository, narrative, etc.).
   
3. I'll try to provide one strong example of the genre to help begin the month (like using the piece by Yann Martel to introduce descriptive writing).
   
4. Students will write a minimum of two pages per week (roughly a page per day)
5. They'll keep all the writing of the unit in a portfolio folder.
6. I'll introduce multiple ways follow up activities as we go... peer editing, revision, read alouds, etc., so that each day, students can choose what they want to do after the reading.
   
7. They'll pick one piece of writing to revise and publish at the end of the month.
   
8. As we go through the month, I'll pull student samples to show them how to make writing interesting and unique.
9. And I'll use the sample texts to also highlight grammatical usage such as semi-colons, parallelism, and repetition for effect.
   
10. And overall, I'll just try to foster an appreciation for valuing one's own writing as a process for developing thought and presenting one's unique perspective to an audience.
    

Well, I'm going to try it out. It's tough to reconcile my desire for student success on standardized tests with a model that's more flexible than the typical standards based lesson. But, this is a good year to try it out as it will be my last year with Green Dot. And based on the abysmal jump in Far Below Basic kids I had last year despite my thoughts that it was the best teaching year I'd had so far. It makes sense to try something new this year.

Never thought this day would happen...

But, teaching today has been literally boring. Students are all working, they seem relatively motivated, and they're dissecting "Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allen Poe, which is one of my favorite stories of all time. And, yet, for some reason, they're all working almost independently, and there's no behavior issues. I have nothing to do. It's like I'm not even needed here. I could walk out and go get coffee and come back, and everyone would have finished their work then fallen asleep. That's just how boring it is in here.

I put on the Rolling Stones to liven things up. It makes me feel more excited, but everyone else is boring.

Later in the lesson it gets more exciting... we'll be stealing poe's language and creating our own "gothic" creative writing pieces. I'll post my "gothic" beginning soon.

F'ing Aple

Finally called my old financial aid office at LMU to discuss the application for the Aple grant -- a forgiveness program to help me pay off my loan because I teach at an urban high school. Fucking... shit. Found out that the only way to apply for the APLE grant is WHILE enrolled for the credential. So, because I didn't apply three years ago, I can't get my giant student loan forgiven at all. Really shitty. I'm really happy I decided to go to grad school at a private university, so that I could owe a bank 40 or more thousand dollars for the next thirty years of my life. Just to get a teaching credential. So, yeah, moral of the story... whoever my financial aid advisor was will be sore tomorrow.

Kelly Gallagher = Genius

Just had to say. Used some of his techniques for teaching writing today, and I'm excited by my students' work. Gave them a revision assignment, and EVERYONE got silent, totally "pimping" their writing (as I call it in class). Such a great practice, and so good for my students.

Reading and Writing

So, just a quick vent for today. I spent the last few weeks reading Kelly Gallagher's Teaching Adolescent Writers. The author is pretty much THE english teacher that I wish I could be... he's really intelligent, and his books taught me more about teaching English than any of my Master's coursework. In any case, after completing the book, I am realizing one of the major faults with our system is the idea that reading and writing should both be taught in the subject called English. This is absolutely ludicrous. The two are completely different skills, and even though writing makes a person a better reader, and reading makes a person a better writer, there is no way to sufficiently teach both of these skills within a school year. I think that it would be far better to split the two, and instead of having a block class, have a different writing and reading class. Of course there would be overlap; students need to read models of what they are trying to write. And, students need to write to help process their thoughts about literature. But man, it would be phenomenal to actually divide up these skills and make them taught in separate classes in high school. Thoughts?