Speech: in honor of a retiring middle school principal

My speech in honor of our retiring middle school principal, Bruce Vosburgh, delivered to the middle school students and staff.  From the awards assembly on the last day of school--June 11, 2012.

Your teachers are used to change—every year the faces of the students change. Yet we find stability in the fact that the newness is often limited to the unique features of your faces. A twelve year-old boy is a twelve year-old boy; a thirteen year-old girl from 1974 is quite similar to a thirteen year-old girl from 2012. As it is, teachers understand how to hold the attention of twelve and thirteen year-olds.

Students—you too—grow used to change. Your life is built on change. Every year you grow taller, smarter, more talented. You walk into new classrooms each year to find new teachers; fortunately, for you, adults have grown pretty predictable. You learn what makes us cranky and what keeps us pleased—you’ve trained us well this year.

However, the one change neither teacher nor student can comprehend just yet: who will hold the door open next for us?

This 8th grade class is about to walk through those doors and they will be sweeping Mr. Vosburgh out with them and onto a new stage of life. And the doors will close behind them.

Yet, many of us remain here.

Understand me, when you hold doors open for people, you do it so others may enter first. Mr. Vosburgh has done that for all of us in this room—he has never reminded us of how great he is, how many hours he is here, or how hard he works. He simply thought enough about us and held the door open.

The good news is that people like Bruce Vosburgh only leave buildings, they never stop working for young people, helping young people—they never stop holding doors open so others may achieve.

So, here, holding doors is a metaphor for creating opportunities. For everyone.

I’m reminded of all of the doors held open for your teachers—whenever teachers wanted to try something new in the classroom, such as add technology like the newest graphing calculators, Smartboards, or iPads he supported it. When teachers wanted to travel to conferences to learn about what others were doing successfully in their classrooms, he has supported it. Many of your teachers, in this room, were given their jobs by him—we’ve been guests in his home—actually, he has been in my home.

When a teacher builds an outdoor classroom, or plants a vegetable garden so others may eat, or collects books so young people in struggling communities may read for pleasure; when a teacher inspires students to bake cookies and collect letters for soldiers fighting abroad; when teachers create clubs to gather clothes and toys so that some families can have a holiday; when these things happen, they happen because the doors are open—opportunities to be great have resonated all around this building. And these opportunities still can exist.

I’m connecting some dots for you—these things only happen because someone held the doors of opportunity open for us…and he won’t be here any longer. He is leaving.

I need to tell you a little secret about the private pleasure of holding doors—you may never be first, but you’re never forgotten. Holding doors means you were not only on-time, but you were early, considerate, and selfless. When you learn to open doors for others, you show others where opportunity awaits—and you never slam it closed in anyone’s face.

Mr. Vosburgh will leave our building this month—and to the 7th graders, 6th graders, and teachers who remain, hear me when I say our building. A man with quiet dignity is leaving Patton, and leaving it our hands—this is our building now. Who will create the next opportunities? Who will seize this opportunity?

We can’t assume; we can’t leave it to someone else; and we can’t miss this opportunity Change is here.

So, do we sit on our hands and wait for the next principal to tell us what to do, how to lead, before we respond to the change before us? Or do we resolve ourselves this summer to be a part of the change, positive change, and follow in Mr. Vosburgh’s example to be better middle school students, teachers, colleagues, and people?

Finally, the next time someone hold a door for you out in public, see it for what it is…not as a chance to go first, but as a moment to say thank you.

When Students Raise YOU up

Little gems like these arise from time to time--this student has no idea how much this reinvigorates me as a teacher. It makes me want to keep learning, keep getting better, and to keep writing myself.

It reaffirms the shared inspirations with the NWP and everything we read and discuss together. It underscore Fletcher, Atwell, Murray, Graves, Eood Ray, Bomer (and Bomer!)...and the list goes on.

In honor of all that is good about teaching writing, I am sharing something written yesterday by one of my 8th grade students on their final exam:


"This year in CW [creative writing] might have been one of my better years in English. I like how we weren't strapped down to worksheets and projects of research. I appreciated your kindness and willingness to let students discuss their writing with you. I also appreciate the amount of opportunities you gave us as students to be able to send our work out for publication. I think I grew as a person and a writer because you didn't constantly tell me or other students what was wrong with our writing but you told us what we could do to fix it and you showed us ways to bend the rules. I think the things learned and discussed in class this year will stick for many years to come. If not, I'm sure something will happen and it will all come crashing in like waves. It will all surround me and I won't be able to forget it."

Clearing the Way for Reading

My classes responded to a question posed by Nanci Atwell, [Since September] What 10-12 books do you love so much that you think they might convince an 8th grade girl/boy who's a lot like you--except that she/he doesn't read much--that books are great?  After compiling the responses of 120 students, over 460 separate self-selected titles, the chart above shows the most mentioned titles and/or authors--actually, many students were adamant that they be able to simply list Sarah Dessen, John Green, and Sophie Kinsella simply as authors since anything written by them is gold to my adolescent readers

The fact that kids, mine at least, are reading series stands out to me--yet, my classroom library is largely built on individual, stand-alone, novels.

By the same token, over 330 novels were only mentioned once--what a testimony to the varied tastes of our young readers!

It all helps underscore what I've read recently--it takes a few thousand titles to build a classroom library capable of serving the needs and tastes of our kids. While I continue to spend my own money the sheer numbers are daunting!  While I have the means to keep adding to my classroom library it makes me wonder how many other classrooms sit empty because teachers and schools do not have the means to help build these necessary reading zones.

Kids are reading--whether we want to qualify it as deeper reading, meaningful reading, doesn't matter to me in this moment.  My revelation in this moment is that they are reading--and will read if we give them a chance to read.

While some classrooms may not financially be able to provide the books for a reading zone, I lament when I read and hear is that educators do not have enough time to cover curriculum and promote independent reading--testing, curriculum, and our perceptions and individual beliefs as teachers that we are preparing students for the next grade twists upon and around itself.

Self-selected and independent reading is choked.

After 18 years I can reflect and know that I shared in all of those concerns and have allowed those concerns to be in the way...their way. Kids will read if we let them...if we encourage them.

My students took my Moodle poll this week--"How many books have you read since September?"

23 report reading fewer than 10 (19%)
42 report reading between 11-20 (35%)
33 report reading between 21-30 (28%)
13 report reading between 31-40 (11%)
7 report reading 41+ (6%)

With only light encouragement, guidance, and structure, my kids read.  I'm not perfect at it by any means, but I am aware that I can help my kids read...and I can be better at it next year.  I need to be better at it next year.

If I can help clear the way.

Money, Wedges, and Literacy: What the Common Core Missed

Abstract

"The Common Core" distracts educators away from a pressing need: training in digital literacy.  Access to technology is access to power.  Without training and resources education continues to drive a larger wedge between the haves and have-nots.  With, at best, a casual mention of digital literacy, the Common Core ensures only one thing—as the Digital Renaissance evolves we are all at risk of being left behind.

What the Common Core Missed

As Digital Literacy provides access to information—and access to power—this Digital Renaissance exposes the haves and the have-nots in our country.   While education must always remain pedagogy-driven, society’s immersion in technology can not be ignored by educators.  Without the correct training and focus on a Common Core built on the needs of this society, teachers will no longer be able to help students unlock their futures.

Teachers need immersion and training in technology in order that students may have immersion and training in technology.  Technology passes books as the access point to information and power.  In a 2008 PEW study, researchers learned that the primary source for research done at or for school is the internet: 94% of teens use the internet at least occasionally to do research for school and nearly half (48%) report doing so once a week or more often.  Without a revised Common Core, we are in danger of contributing to an even greater divide of haves and have nots—and it isn’t all about having the money to supply the technology.  Permitting a culture of teachers of haves and have-nots is my greater fear—those who have the comfort, experience, and training to immerse themselves and their classes in digital literacy and those who simply have not.

Technology is largely taught in isolation.  Computer rooms grow in our schools while other classrooms are lucky to house one or two computers.  This Sex Edification of technology contributes to an educator’s fear or resistance.  Rather than synthesize digital tools with real-world applications and core curriculum, the digital tools sit on tables like $1,000 encyclopedias or typewriters.  Just like Sex Ed, we tend to believe "someone else will teach it" and do so in isolation.

The fact is, we are online.  We are digital readers.  We are digital writers. All roads intersect and we have redefined Digital Reality with people.  Within the last decade Digital Reality shifted from a game played on an LED battlefield to a way of life.  In many ways, we live every moment of our lives in a digital reality because the world is making more land—a digital landscape.  Yet instead of training educators, young and old, to engage inspiration and inventiveness, American politics burns the digital landscape right from under our feet, almost as fast as it can be created, with the oversights of the Common Core.

The axiom good writing is good writing will never be displaced.  Whether we teach with chalk, white board markers, or Smartboards (which some will consider outdated by the way), the fundamental truths of reading, writing, and arithmetic remain among the few constants in education, yet we stand on the frontier of a Digital Revolution and the national plan is fragmented and weak...actually, there is no plan. With only a too casual yawn and nod at technology, the Common Core nudges educators to rewrite curriculum built on international testing standards.

We can’t just leave using technology and digital literacy to the whim of individual teachers—yet this is what the Common Core establishes.

Common Core Oversight #1: No specific mention or acknowledgment of digital literacy

Without the appropriate level of leadership and training, computer labs can best be labeled technology dumps as educators are left to decide for themselves—depending on their school’s budget and climate—how best to incorporate technology in the classroom.  For what we do and produce in our American classrooms, Underwoods, hardback encyclopedias, and tri-folds are currently just as effective as computers—given two classes, one with technology and one with typewriters, books, and cardboard, we would see little difference in the products between the classes.

Until there is a common training program and goal built on digital literacy, educators will continue to use new technology in old ways because the old ways are rooted in the financial soil of testing and achievement.  What message is reinforced when our schools receive Race to the Top funds and selective waivers from the No Child Left Behind requirements all in the name of carrying the torch for the Common Core?  What incentive exists to grow with the technology?  How will we ever expect educators to see new technology as anything other than a digital poster, encyclopedia, or way to type and print? 

In reality, we will fail our students when it comes to digital literacy and this new access to power.

Education is failing—we are failing to be led.  We are failing to be supported.  We are failing to be recognized for all that we achieve with technology in spite of the “you’ll figure it out” model.  Buttressed by the financial obligations of Achieve, Inc., the ACT, and the College Board,  the Common Core supports the testing business.  Who is in the business of supporting, leading, and recognizing educators? Who is in the business of supporting and leading technology use in education?  Educators.  I assure you, we will figure it out.  Yet, along the way, we fight district by district for what we need, to overcome the inequities from school to school, and only if we’re lucky and blessed some of us fight to bring American education into the Digital Renaissance.

Common Core Oversight #2: Reading

The Common Core does little to encourage adequate growth and progress of technology use in the K-5 Reading Plan.

Listing no formal digital reading expectations among its Foundational Skills, the Common Core mentions in its Reading Standards that students should analyze how writing is affected by different modes, particularly multimedia.  A modest, but promising start considering “multimedia” does not explicitly mean digital.  Multimedia can mean photography, a poster, a set of slides.  Depending on the whim, comfort, or training of the teacher, an informed exposure to digital reading may never occur for many students.

Additionally, and equally as distressing, in the Common Core Reading Plan, from the 6th through 8th grades, students are asked to compare and contrast different forms, including multimedia. Even if I imply “multimedia” as digital and online, it does not mean others teachers will—education outgrows that word on a daily basis. 

Digital reading for citizens and consumers in our society is a non-negotiable skill. It is a must-have. Perhaps this dearth of digital reading is a reflection of the comfort level that our Common Core designers have with the K-8 age range handling costly digital hardware.   Perhaps they have well-founded fears of elementary and middle school students seeing pornography or graphic violence on the internet.  Perhaps the focus in K-8 should be more on the skill of analysis than the digital vehicle through which the analysis occurs.  This is plausible until we consider the next phase in the Common Core progression.

Sadly, from 9th-12th grade there are no digital (or multimedia) reading expectations.  There are no expectations for students to interact with what they read digitally.  There are no expectations to instruct students in how to be a savvy digital reader and consumer.  None.  Zero.  Digital reading, disguised or misinterpreted as multimedia, ends at the 8^th grade.  In our Common Core, digital literacy may never develop for some of our students. 

Is this plan driven by pedagogy and the needs of an emerging societal shift?  Or is it the architecture of a financially asphyxiated team regarding education through test-colored lens?

Common Core Oversight #3: Writing

Heroically, the anchor standards for writing in the Common Core ask students from the fourth grade through high school graduation to “use technology, including the Internet, to produce and publish writing and to interact and collaborate with others.”

The focus words are produce, publish, interact, and collaborate—no explicit mention of achieving these things digitally other than through use of the Internet.  While the Internet is one important acre of the emerging digital landscape it does not cover everything.  Suggesting Internet equals digital literacy is already an old-fashioned understanding of technology; I’m reminded of Rupert Murdoch sounding out of touch recently as he railed against Google as an Internet pirate.  An illustration of just how confused people in power can become; we so often mistake the size of someone’s bank account for the breadth of one’s knowledge.

Educators are forced to imply the word “digitally” within the expectations of the Common Core—but what happens when that is not implied?  The problem with the language in the Common Core is that “digital” is implicit and therefore this aspect of the Common Core is open to the vagaries of a teacher’s digital comfort level. 

For example, if I show my students a sample of an essay (on the internet), and then students brain storm ideas face to face while hunting for topic ideas (on the internet), then type a paper on a laptop while checking my requirements for the assignment on our school website (on the internet), then save the essay to the school server (on the internet) and print it wirelessly in order that I might tack their essays across the walls in my classroom, haven’t I then fulfilled the expectations of the Common Core: produce, publish, interact, and collaborate?  I included the internet and I can complete that assignment in less than a week.

Fundamentally, I’d hope the Common Core meant to express that our students also digitally produce, digitally publish, digitally interact, and digitally collaborate.  Embedded in what it means to be alive in 2012, much of the world communicates through digital means—if we leave these emerging digital tools to the next Angry Birds or just to keep in touch with family and friends then we lose—and you can point your fingers right at us, the American educators, because we will be working in a system which fails all of us.

It is not too late for American education to right itself and become active participants in the digital literacy renaissance.  We belittle the tools of technology when we do not actively reach to train our teachers and then our students to use them.  Otherwise, computers are little more than toys, typewriters, encyclopedias, or delivery systems for web-based supplemental tools such as Study Island (which provides little more than supplemental worksheets and activities on-line).  Technology in education often suffers beneath the yoke of simply pulling the same lessons built on the same expectations of tools-gone-by.

Why?  Because that is all we know—it’s what we were raised on.  A computer works like a typewriter, works like an encyclopedia, works like a tri-fold; therefore, that is all I’ll expect of it.

It is no longer enough to put computers in schools and roundly call it a success.  Educators need training in digital literacy, but that takes having a plan.  Currently, teacher training programs such as the National Writing Project are under the gun to have its funding eradicated.  If we ever really want to see our young people grow into creators and innovators, then we need teachers trained and constantly practicing and talking all aspects of the art of teaching—added to this is the digital component all teachers need training in digital literacy.  

We seem to be working backwards—the talk is that teacher training is a target of upcoming economic cuts and yet we roll out a Common Core entrenched in testing.  Write your Senators and Congressmen to take a long hard look at the Common Core and then at the digital landscape.  They won’t have to look far to see it—its inspiration is burning all around them.

Common Core Oversight #4: Assumption

Now there is a caveat for the Common Core—intended as merely a guide it assumes that districts can add and modify as they see fit.  This is a big assumption by our best and brightest.  Irrespective of neglect born from pedagogy or finance, we as educators can’t in good conscience leave this emerging and critical skill to the hope and discretion of “do as you see fit.”  Digital literacy skills are a must have for every child.  We can’t assume that it will get done.   We can’t assume that all kids have access to it at home—we have to demand training, resources, as well as the leadership.  We need to demand a better plan—we can measure training.  To the educational leadership, raise up your teachers, expect more—and arm them with the tools to do more.

Today, the Common Core leaves our young people digitally unarmed.  Students will file out of graduation and into a world milling and seething with technology…and we will have barely touched on it unless a rogue teacher exhibits the comfort and expertise to use it and teach with it.

The one thing that education should have going for it is technology—the depth and quality of our nation’s education should rise along with the continued evolution of technology.  We’re in the infant stages of a Digital Renaissance— and while our biggest and brightest sleep on this issue, we have a professional responsibility as educators to make ourselves digitally literate. 

I also hold the mirror up to myself.  We need to take the responsibility for the digital literacy that this generation will need to thrive and survive not only in the workplace, but in the family unit.  Digital literacy has infiltrated our television screens, our smart phones, and in our daily moment to moment communication with our family and friends—all of which sits in many of our pockets or bags.

Digital literacy is about more than recognizing the Twitter or Facebook icon at bottom of a commercial, it is bigger than the fear of graphic imagery that our young people could be exposed to on the internet.  You know they print pornography with paper and ink too, but that never stopped us from going to the library, bookstore, or handing out paper and pencil.  Avoid the luxury of excuses—make yourself more digitally literate.

Common Core Oversight #5: All Teachers Left Behind

Recently I wrote a grant for technology so that my students could be digital writers and readers more consistently and found myself presented with a concern that technology would replace pencil and paper.  The insinuation slanted technology more towards fun or idle time and pencil and paper as the emblem of diligence and getting our knuckles dirty with graphite.  Every adult in education is responsible for that perception.

Digital writing still requires that writers move through the recursive phases of planning, reflecting, drafting, and revising—the skill is still the skill, and, no, technology is not essential to the core of that skill, but we can't simply bring only traditional mindsets to current literacy practices.  The day is coming when reading and writing on paper will not be good enough in our world.  The definition and cultural concept of a textbook is about to be exploded by Apple and its competition.   Digital technology creates new skills and redefines old skills—life is about growth and change.  Depending on your perspective I suppose it is also about withering and dying…and being left behind.

I came across the anecdote that a group of teachers, instructed on some advancements to school email, learned students would also have their own school email accounts.  A concerned teacher questioned why we would give middle school kids this kind of access—how could we possibly trust them?  Can’t they abuse this?  What about if one kid cyber bullies another through the email we handed to them?  The teacher leading the group retorted, “Why would we ever trust them with pencil and paper?”

These concerns illustrate the boogeymen that can be conjured without the proper exposure and training to just what these tools are, what they can do, what they can’t do, and how they improve education and our collective quality of life.   It also demonstrates how far behind some of us are—eh, Rupert?

 If we allow the innovations of technology to serve merely as distractions or vehicles of our social lives then that is all we are going to get out of them.

Digital tools aren’t used in schools because they are cute or the latest thing or a vehicle to produce a sexier reproduction of a tried and true lesson, but they should be used because they, and only they, address the specific and unique skills emerging in today’s world. 

We underwhelm ourselves sometimes.

Politicians, parents, and educators need to share in a common core.  Our core should be built on the recognition that the digital age is here and it is a renaissance that we need to engage.  We can’t continue to be so casual about it.  We need to expect more of each other and become active members of the current Digital Renaissance in order that our students have a chance to grow into active creators and innovators who network professionally and socially as easily as they speak. 

If we want measurable results, train your teachers with an eye on the specific needs and evolution of society.  Being an adolescent in the early stages of the 21st century looks little like the early stages of the 20th century—when typewriters, the New England Primer, and paper flourished. 

You cannot teach what you have not made your own. You cannot inspire unless you too are inspired.  Quite frankly, the Common Core does little to inspire any of us, and in the end, may only serve to leave all us behind.

art by Sarah Louette

Great Inches in Art

Inspired by Thomas Newkirk's The Art of Slow Reading, I worked with my 8th grade students on individual lines from Anne Frank's text.  In our writer's notebooks, we created short lists of self-selected lines of text that we liked or found interesting.

Lines of text could be a full sentence or two to anything clipped from within any piece of text written by Anne Frank.

The challenge was to treat one of Anne's line as a "golden line" of text, to borrow from Kelly Gallagher's Teaching Adolescent Writers.  In the past, we have extracted our own lines of texts where we explore what idea, concept, big picture, we were really writing about.  Now, we are asking ourselves what idea, concept, big picture, Anne was really writing about.

I asked the students to create a bumper sticker of the selected line of text written by Anne Frank.  With this, use imagery to help the reader see the line through your eyes.  Avoid imagery that is decoration or window dressing--find a way through imagery, color, text manipulation, to show the reader how you feel, interpret, think about the line.

In his book, Newkirk shares the anecdote about a colleague who, when reflecting on the practice of students focusing on one small piece of a novel asked, "What's next, great inches in art?"  I laugh--I'm really fond of that line.  However, I have found that by slowing down and opening up the conversation to hear, read, and see what my students hear, read, and see in the text we have found a rich and meaningful experience (in my mind) accessible to all.

 

My mentor text / bumper sticker (above) included a spelling error in the word "contradiction" that I completely missed!  An eagle-eyed student pointed it out to me.  Another told me to pass it off as an intentional contradiction. That gaffe aside, my piece includes drawn faces of many different emotions and lines of text behind them--I included many of Anne's emotional statements.  It was intended to be a reflection or study of her wide mood swings and tender temperament.

On the back, I included a reflection of the line and the imagery I chose--essentially I am trying to make connections for my readers.  I'm digging deep into why this line matters...to Anne...to me...to all of us.

I learned, through a mixed bag of final products, that some of my students struggled with the concept of using imagery, manipulated text, and color as a way to work with the text beyond just decoration.  Of course, this leads into all kinds of discussions about media and the influences we encounter everyday online, in the car, on television...everywhere.

In the mix of student work samples below,  I included five sample that I felt achieved at least some success visually.  You'll find a mixed bag regarding the reflections included on the back of each piece:

It only takes one bomb...

This bumper sticker caught my attention for the possibilities beyond the cranky scrawl of a boy for a couple of reasons--what he observed and the connections he made.  The starkness of his lettering on the front feels so appropriate for the plain, somber, message.  Furthermore, the student equates the term bomb as a potential metaphor for mistake.

(segment of student text) I choose this quote because it represents something more than a single bomb.  Any one movement, one noise, one accident or even as the quote suggests one bomb could spell doom for them all.  A movement or noise could alert (illegible) in the shop below, who would turn in the Franks to Nazi S.S. forces.

When will we be granted the privilege of fresh air...

 I found myself really pleased with the focus on the lush green nature of this bumper sticker.  It feels soft.  It looks pleasant.  And there, dominating it all, the word "privilege" looms and puts nature and fresh air into a fresh perspective.  To be fair, we had been discussing this concept (Anne and nature) and had looked at this quote as a class.

(segment of student text) This quote hit me because we don't normally think of trees and grass as a privilege.  We take advantage of things like this and its weird to think that it takes being trapped inside for 2 years for someone to realize this.

 

I firmly believe that nature brings solace to all troubles...

Here I found myself drawn to the image of the girl, alone in nature, complimented by the bold text of "believe" and "solace"...when I think of Anne, I return her longing for someone to hold onto and her profound conviction that happiness can be found through the sun, the trees, the air...finally, I love the clouds.  How often do younger students include fluffy white clouds into an outdoorsy image?  These are like puddles of eggplant, oil slicks...they move, in my mind, across the gloaming.

(segment of student text) This quote reminds me of every sunset I've ever seen.  I imagine the sliver of the oranges, yellow sun in the center surrounded by the reds and pinks that blend together until they fade into purples and black.  I am reminded of all the places that  have the best sunsets, like the beaches in the Outer Banks and the shores in Hawaii and the Chesapeake Bay.  As the memories come flooding back I remember the sense of comfort and warmth that sunsets have always given me. 

Himmelhoch jauchzend und zum tode betrubt. - Goethe

On top of the world or in the depths of despair.

 The image speaks to beauty and destruction, freedom and containment, fragility and severity.  Inside the bird, the student wrote "On top of the world." Hugging its feet, the words "or in the depths of despair seem to cling to barbed wire themselves.  Adding to the feel of the piece for the reader is the simple tone of the colors of graphite and paper along with the text written in German.  It  makes me feel uncomfortable and wary--yet, a sense of longing exists as my eye, after tracing the line of barbed wire back and forth, constantly comes back to the bird with its back to us...looking off to its right, off the page, unaware of us behind him.  Is it looking in, or out?  My gut tells me...out.

 (segment of student text)...Anne is torn between whether she's lucky or in a deathtrap.  The picture I drew "the bird on the barbed wire" symbolizes how the bird is free and on top of the world but if he takes the wrong step and isn't careful he could die.  In German "zum tode betrubt" translates into "in total silence."  Throughout Anne's diary she is conveying her sadness and longing to be free and happy once again.

What I could be if...

The manipulation of "if" strikes a melancholy chord.  I love the sunrise (or sunset?) behind and framing "if" and the fact that the long narrow lane fading into the horizon almost perfectly splits the dark and light diving the sky also seems appropriate.  The overall image makes me contemplate the line, for sure, but the combination of the sky and the word "if" asks me to dwell on the melancholy.

(segment of student text) Her usual hopelessness puts a great weight on five words that sometimes are used for trivial things, but in Anne's world she clung to a perfect place she would live in after being in hiding, that was, if she lived, if she would not be tortured, if she could make it past this traumatic experience mentally sound, but she didn't.

There is no smoke without fire...

Perhaps my favorite visually, the student looked surprised when I praised it.  A difficult task is to take a cliche such as "Where there is smoke there is fire" and create imagery with a relevant connection to the literature.  Although the image is only smoke and fire, there is something enormous, out of compass, and untenable about the message behind the image.  It elevates the line beyond the cliche and provides a slice of the horrific and shameful.  It makes me want to look at it.  It makes me think about the line of text as it pertains to Anne's situation...and then I read the student's reflection on the back.  And I am surprised again--the line comes from disagreements with Mrs. Van Daan over Anne's skirt length.  And I reflect again on the image and love it even more--the toothsome ranklings of a fourteen year-old girl!  I felt Anne's spirit when I read this student's reflection (below).

(segment of student text) In Anne's case, she is "immature" because her skirts are too short and she is too loud.  It shows you just easy it is to label someone personally wrong.  This quote connects to me because sometimes I feel the same way as Anne.  Some people see me as irresponsible because I like to have fun while doing something serious.  Its like someones personality affects on how other people see them, but then nothing happens without a reason, so sometimes I say if those people don't like me, then maybe its a sign that we weren't supposed to be friends.  Because if they do judge me without knowing me, that it isn't meant to be.

Adolscent Connections with Nature

Asking my students to write reflections about their connections with nature made me consider my own connections. A portion of the Literacy in Bloom course I am currently taking through West Chester University and Longwood Gardens has exposed me to the writing of Richard Louv who is a proponent of encouraging children to be outside, to play in nature.

When my students wrote about how their connections with nature have changed dramatically over recent years, even though they are only thirteen, I was really touched by their sincerity. So often, they believe that they do not have enough time for nature.

I thought of my own experiences as an adolescent and found that my relationship with nature as an adolescent was anchored in several truths:

a. grass meant athletics—dry, patched with clover, pocked with dandelion—the only time we came together was through baseball or football—which my mother had to pay for from the combined salaries of two jobs.

b. the air carried mostly disagreeable smells—my neighbor made homemade wine in his basement; the acerbic, pungent smell broke through the thin walls of our row home—on a twelve year-old nose that can be harsh—I remember the stale scents of pollution; the sour rot from sewers; and the chalky vinegary inhales of exhaust—I don’t recall flowers or dew.

c. we drove great distances to the beach--in stalled traffic, the excitement swirling all around the interior of a simple, economy car—we were so happy going to the beach together in that car in that traffic—I remember anticipating the smell of the salt air—as we neared the beach my mother would ask me after she inhaled, “Can you smell it, can you smell the sea?” I smiled with my face turned out through the window.

d. snow creates barriers in the city—it walls-in parked cars in and makes walking treacherous and sloppy—and the graying slush and the thickening skins of lumpy ice clinging to concrete for days and days always overshadowed the universal beauty of snow in a city. Snow in a city is a breathless invasion—everyone pauses, even a moment, when tired eyes first lay on the snow shook through the sooty sky.

e. My cousin, then a grandmotherly 80 years old from Reggio Calabria, Italy, loved a burgeoning fig tree in her claustrophobic concrete back yard—I climbed its branches--its canopy filled the yard and bore hundreds of brown fuzzy figs with blood red centers—reclining on a sturdy limb I plucked them and ate them right from the branch. She smuggled it with her on a ship at sea for twenty days and then through Ellis Island. They fled a typhoon and an earthquake that leveled the towns of Messina and Reggio Calabria 1908. Her family hid in caves high in the mountains—those who remained below perished. Not much withstood nature’s fury—all I knew was the fig tree survived and church records did not... anything I wondered about between those extremes she refused to speak of. In America, she still swam in the ocean but knew friends and relatives who would never place a foot in it—for the ocean was forever evil to them.

Even though I rarely set foot on grass and had to ride patient distances to feel the sand in my toes, I could climb and eat from a fig tree any day that I wanted. A fig tree that withstood a typhoon and an earthquake, an immigrant’s journey, and a replanting in an American landscape safe from typhoon, but severe with concrete, brick, and sun.

The Reflection of #s, @s, and numbers.

Since November 3rd, 2010 this will be my 185th blog post related to teaching or writing in one way or another.  One hundred and eighty-five blogs in four hundred and seventy-seven days or one blog entry every two and a half days.

I'm a better teacher (and my classroom is a better learning environment) because of this simple effort.  Blogging was my gateway into professional development opportunities I could not  have predicted.  First of all, blogging about my practice or curiosity is professional development.  It forced me to reflective, but on my own terms in my own time in my own space.

One reflection every two and a half days is hardly an inconvenience--it has changed my job into a vocation.

Since being engaged online as an educator in late 2010 I have:

a) read 61 books (one book per week on average)
b) had 25 Skype conversations with 25 different authors  (plus 2 who visited in person) including one living in India.
c) Tweeted 380x about education, writing, or teaching and read or engaged in message exchanges with educators around the world (and shared in their ideas) including published pioneers Kelly Gallagher, Carol Jago, and Troy Hicks
d) engaged with educators around the world on English Companion Ning
e) reflected on my own teaching more and more deeply than in my previous 15 years
f) allowed me to share in the expertise of writers, publishers, literary agents, editors--all who share their reflections about writing
g) I submitted an article for publication with the Journal of Media and Literacy Education (still pending)
h) Three of my students have been (or will soon be) published by our local paper.

These things were not happening for me before I became more engaged online.

What brought on this current reflection of the big picture was a Tweet from yesterday.

My first tweet about teaching or writing was February 8th, 2011.  I was actually on April 12, 2009 but it took me almost a year to see understand how Tweeting might be useful for me as a teacher or a writer.  My early tweets were comments about entertainers or local professional sports.  After the "get comfortable period" I saw how Twitter and my blogging could complement each other--it seems Twitter has taken over my time previously spent on the English Companion Ning (EC Ning) where I would read and participate in conversations about topics built on the teaching of Language Arts.

The EC Ning brought me to other professionals around the world--as Twitter has done more conveniently.

Back to yesterday...I sent a tweet to Carol Jago (past president of the National Council of Teachers of English; and currently with the Reading and Writing Project at UCLA) who is one of the contributing editors of the newly purchased textbook my district is buying for the middle school.  So, in the middle of writing curriculum and aligning it with the Common Core, I read her book With Rigor For All: Meeting Common Core Standards for Reading and Writing.  She wrote about some novels and their ability to fit into the tenets of the Common Core--Richard Wright's Black Boy was one of those novels.

My tweet: @CarolJago read Rigor4All (very helpful)-do you think Black Boy could fit as core text in 8th grade?  Thank you.

Carol's reply came back in less than 2 minutes: @_briank_ Black Boy would be a rich, challenging text for 8th graders.  I taught it at Gr10 but think younger students would like it.

I never had that kind of access before, and I am only just beginning to understand and use online tools as a benefit to my teaching.

One of the number one laments I hear from colleagues is lack of time to engage online.  Honestly, after having done it for some time now, I do not think it has much to do with finding more time but being more efficient with the time we currently have.  Being online, being connected, is becoming a way of life--our brains our changing, the cultural landscape is changing and altering at the same rate that Mother Nature tweaks her canopy.

Your computer is in front of you.  Your smart phone is in your hand.  If it isn't then it is close by.  It is ready and there is a world of access in our pockets in our hands to better teachers, writers, plumbers, poets, bakers, market analysts, editors, artists...

Yes, you can put it down and walk away anytime you want.  I dare you.