Writing WITH Them

This post finds me immersed in writing three papers WITH my students.  Yes, three.  As an literacy teacher, I should be continually engaged in the field of my expertise.  Otherwise, how I am a role model for my students?

Today, as I was teaching infinitives, I shared this quote with my students:

"To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society."
(President Theodore Roosevelt

Granted, practicing my curricular field is not a moral, but maybe reading and writing with my students is an ethical responsibility?

To imitate President Roosevelt's sentence, I would state:  To teach literacy is to model writing and reading, to make mistakes, to proof, to imitate, to...yes, the list is seemingly endless.  To do...that is the directive!

This week, as we continue reading The Crucible and Macbeth, we are writing thematic responses for each act.  I model a thematic response; then, I guide, scaffold, encourage, write another thematic response with my students.  To see my models (thus far), please visit these sites:

• English 11 - The Crucible
• English 12 - Macbeth

Yes, as we write, we also incorporate other skills being discussed, learned in class:  embedding quotes, writing phrases (so far, appositive, participials, and infinitives).  Yes, writing/reading workshop activated!

Ultimately, the students will choose two themes and trace their development throughout a text.  Check out this Common Core Standard:  

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.11-12.2 Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text. (Source)

Yes, that is the goal.  Honestly, in twenty-two years of teaching (which include obtaining a masters and National Board Certification), I have never written such a paper.  I am now, though!  I have chosen to use two themes in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death."  We'll see...learning right along with my students!  Shhhhh!

Credit for the above ideas must go to Penny Kittle's book Write Beside Them that I read several years.  I credit this book with one of the best changes in my teaching career. (Prior to this one, Step up to Writing...another huge positive change in my teaching methods.)  In other words, teachers need to always be learning and using the best practices that work best with your teaching style (that is another soap-box topic!).

The negative to this style of teaching?  I barely stay a step ahead of my students.  Or maybe that is a positive?  Students need to see that other writers struggle through the various writing steps.

Tell me:  To teach is to.....?  

The Empowerment of Multiple Reads

Today, I sat reading our assignment for this afternoon's class, and I saw myself and my students on these pages as author Penny Kittle discussed the power of rereading texts in her new book Book Love:  Developing Depth, Stamina, and Passion in Adolescent Readers in chapter seven "Responding to Reading."  "We know that rereading a text is central to deepening understanding.  Rereading is when we begin to think differently and see differently."

Yes!  This we are doing in my English 12 class (teaching this level for the first time in many years), as the other teacher and I deliberately chose to have our students view (and some read along) before analyzing the text.  For 'tis true, their lack of comprehension of the text would have been a dire detriment to their understanding of even the the plot, much less the lessons that either Shakespeare wanted us to learn or the lessons we learn based on our own background experiences.

This teaching method also illustrates the growth in my own learning process and teaching style, for once upon a time in a land not so far down the road, I would have assigned Act 1, administered a quiz, and then attempted to lead a discussion on primarily the plot and maybe a connection or two, but, no, nothing like the class I had today.

For a look into that class, please visit this lesson plan.  Then, if interested, you might visit here for a brief look into the next few day's thematic topics that I am confident will develop as we continue to "reread" this text.

This time, as we analyze Macbeth, my students and I are attempting to gain access to Shakespeare's brain instead, as compared to how I used to teach this drama, of my attempting to just pull out what little a few of my students had comprehended in their reading of the play.

Try this out sometime.  Read for pleasure or, in the case of complex texts, even for understanding.  Then, read on an analytic level.  The result?  You will have read two completely different texts.

"What if I don't like it?  What if I don't understand it?"

I was caught off guard by this question today in class.  I honestly had no good answer for her.  I tried to think of a time when I had to write on something I didn't like.  I could not think of something I didn't like.  

That is not to say that I did not understand it.  I have had many occasions where I had to write on a text I did not understand.  I still did not give her a good answer.  I am not sure I even gave her an answer.  I am sure this frustrated her.

I know when I run into having to write on a text I don't understand, I research it.  I find essays on the text and analysis written by other people on that text.  Sometimes I have to get a different translation of the text to understand it.  I have often had to listen to the text to understand it.  

With Shakespeare, I watch a theatrical production of the play I'm reading because I can interpret the subtle facial expressions and gestures by the characters to understand the text.  I allowed the students to watch a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  I thought this would help, but it obviously did not help her.  I have a feeling she may be one of those readers who only understands texts if it tells her exactly what it is about.  It would have to be a text where she would have to infer nothing!

God, help her!

A Japanese Model

As I pondered on our reading of Carol Jago's chapter six "Lesson Design for Classical Literature" from her professional development book entitled Classics in the Classroom, I just had to pause and comment on a few of her points.

First, what the coincidence that she uses Japan as an example of teacher professional development.  Right, Trent?

So very interesting how they provide professional development, pd based on the premise that "successful teachers are the best teachers of teachers."  True.  The teachers themselves identify a problem and then plan a lesson that addresses this concern.  One teacher demonstrates the lesson for the other teachers, who critique. Then revisions are made.  As Jago notes, "One of the most powerful outcomes of this lesson study process is that teachers develop a shared language for describing and analyzing classroom practices."

Just have to note here, that this, too, is the premise of Lyon College and this class.  When asked if would teach Methods for Secondary English, I had to acknowledge that my masters degree is not in English.  Quickly, the reply came, "You are in the classroom teaching English, aren't you?"

Yes, as a matter of fact, I am.

In my situation in my current school, I would love for this to happen, for I spend hours creating lesson plans for my classes.  Yes, hours.  "Americans ascribe virtue to individual effort and originality, but the longer I am in this profession, the more I am convinced that we need to spend more time working together toward a common goal."  Those are Jago's words, but they might as well be mine, for I wholeheartedly support this also.

Another echo I hear of Jago's is "I still can't write lesson plans for more than a week in advance."  Map out the skills to be taught?  Yes.  Create the big picture of a grading period?  Yes.  Begin with the end in mind?  Yes. But detailed, down-to-the-minute lesson plans?  No?  If I have learned anything in twenty-one-plus years of teaching, it's that every class is different, and interruptions are just the norm.

Our department is working closer than it ever has.  That I appreciate, yet I want more.  More for myself as a teacher and more for my students.  More.