On the Shoulders of Giants

My Co-Teachers Weigh In On Whole Novels

I'm writing a chapter of my book on Whole Novels--in which students read an entire novel more or less on their own before having substantive discussions about it--about support and differentiation for diverse learners. The classes at my school could not be more diverse, with reading levels spanning from second or third grade through first year college.  It's rewarding and mind-blowing!  Anyway, my writing was just getting stale.  I was tiring of the sound of my own voice... 

I have co-taught two or three out of four classes for 3 years now.  My co-teachers know more than anyone else about how the program works for our students. Their voices were virtually missing from my book!  So I called on them to weigh in about the planning process, how we support our students with learning disabilities, and their thoughts about the strengths of the program and new directions to explore. 

And... I learned so much!  I got tons of good content to quote from in my book, but I gained new perspectives on the method. 

Marcia Stiman-Lavian, for example, pointed this out--

“I think the whole novel study is a great opportunity for diverse learners. It allows kids, especially with learning disabilities, to go at their own pace and access the book in a way that works for them, without the pressure of feeling like their peers are ahead or understanding the book better or differently than they do... By not discussing fully until the end, students can access the book their way, and then feel really ready when the book is over.  Especially since they know the discussion is coming, and they know the date, they can get prepared to be involved. Since all kids must participate, students know they have to be ready with something. This often motivates kids who are normally not comfortable sharing their responses, to get ready. Then they can participate fully in the group discussion, often for the first time in a while."

I had never noticed this benefit of the Whole Novels process for special education students.  This made me realize that the aspects of time and independence also helps academically gifted students, who may read very quickly. In a Whole Novel study they aren't held back by the fact that the rest of the group doesn't read as fast as they do.  They can read quickly, and then often reread for deeper meaning.  Then I have them use the extra time to explore more of the author's writing, or thematically related texts--both fiction and non-fiction--by other authors.  

Everyone meets up at the appointed due date for discussions, and all students are able to bring their experience to these sessions. 

Daniel Brink-Washington, chair of the special education department at Brooklyn Prospect, whom I worked with for the past two years, pointed this out:

"One thing I really enjoyed working with you on, was thinking about what opportunities and challenges kids might meet in terms of content, not just reading skills. I think about the themes in the novels we chose. Some will be an opportunity to build on what I know a kid is already interested in, and in other cases, a novel exposes kids to things that might be new to them. Those things can present challenges as well. Often times those challenges—and the process of overcoming them—is where a lot of the learning happens in studying literature. I think about the thematic challenges in the novels we taught in ELA8--challenges of diversity, power, and conflict in all of its forms.  When you read about these ideas, it causes students to have to confront a lot of the conflicts in their lives. It becomes a learning opportunity for them." 

Danny also shared how important it was that special education students be a part of these studies and the discussions, and not be excluded from reading grade appropriate content, even when their reading skills make this a great challenge.  We have worked together to devise ways to bring all students into the whole novel studies. Being a part of the novel community has been a powerful motivator for struggling readers to put in the time it takes to develop the reading skills and strategies they need--so in a way, it's a circular process, one hand (whole novel studies) feeding the other (reading remediation), and both becoming stronger for it.

Looking forward to sharing this work when the book is published!

 

[image credit: catholicblogger1.blogspot.com]



Bank Street Blogs: Sharing Wisdom with Wider Audience

I loved and benefitted from my teacher education at Bank Street, but I was always frustrated at the fact that more people did not know about Bank Street's approach.  So I'm really excited to see that the graduate school of education is now blogging! Now anyone who wants to can benefit from the thinking at Bank Street about developmentally meaningful education for children and the teaching practices that create it.

In a blog titled, Fair Is Not Equal: a Differentiated Approach for Supporting Behavioral Growth in the Classroom, faculty members Pam Jones and Valentine Burr share observations, relevant theory, and stories from the classrooms and teachers they help support. This is great for new teachers or anyone just looking for a fresh voice around student behavior issues (though it is most geared toward elementary education).  An example of some great post: A Case for Gum Chewing, explains how gum chewing can be a benefit to students during school. In Part II: What's Your Trigger? Valentine Burr writes about teaching students identify and respond to their own triggers for anger.

There is also a great Alumni Blog. It includes some news about Bank Street events aimed specifically at alumni (though many events are open to the public).There are also posts contributed by Bank Street alums (including Bill Ayers, myself, and many others) with reflections on their work in the field, related to their Bank Street experience. It's quite powerful to be able to connect these voices from different parts of education, united in the type of teacher training we all had.  Here's a good post from an alumni: Experiential learning: Play By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet.  And here's one I contributed about the debate around constructivist learning: Raising Students Not Test Scores: Why Engel Has it Right

At Bank Street, teacher training is more than just technical preparation for the classroom.  It tends to translate into a way of thinking about children's development and a mission to education kids in academically and developmentally meaningful ways. I hope Bank Street continues to share their work in blogs!  

 

What's Working: The Silence of Everyone Reading

The silence of everyone reading 

at once

is not a fearful silence,

but one more like flying... 

breathing air of the same room/ 

different worlds;

the language is more influential

even than our eyes.

Who does not belong here?

Only maybe me--

standing at the runways

directing lift-offs and landings

and staying out of the way

of the silence of

everybody reading

 

[image credit: yourdictionary.com]

 

 

 

Demand for Great Teachers

I just read this write-up of a presentation Barnett Berry gave recently at the Clinton School of Public Service.  I was struck by the final quote from Barnett the reviewer shared:

“The problem is not the supply of great teachers, it’s the demand for them. … Everyone wants schools to get better, but there are too many people who don’t want schools to look any different than they were when they themselves went to school,” he said.

Wow, can this be true? That there is not enough demand for great teachers? I have seen what happens when a school doesn't have a critical mass of great, experienced teachers. The center does not hold.  

The demand from students and families for great teachers could not be more apparent to me--but is this clear to outsiders? 

I have also felt the almost negative gravitational pull out of the classroom... like, congratulations, you've hit year four. You may now float away from all of this.

No--must resist! Looks like I did. Here I am, deep in the throes of year nine and not looking back! 

 

[image credit: bonezoneblog.blogspot.com]

A Cure for the Mania of Multiple Drafts, Multiple Formats, X 100

In my last post, I described my utter failure to effectively organize and manage my students' drafting process for writing projects.  This job has become much more complicated over the years with the availability of various technological tools for writing.  New, clear parameters are definitely necessary.  

I turned to Maia Heyck Merlin, author of The Together Teacher, for help. In an incredibly helpful phone conversation, Maia helped me come up with some solutions, customized around my students, classroom resources, and my own preferences and needs. 

The Cure: 

 One: Drafts must be submitted in hard copy.  

There's really nothing wrong with requiring this, especially when it makes such a huge difference for me later. Students do need to be able to conform to the needs of specific teachers. I know some teachers who like to comment on student work via Google Docs comment function.  That is great if they can manage it. For me, I've decided I need the hard copy.  I do sometimes type my feedback into a rubric on Word, because typing can be faster and neater.  However, I still print this out and hand it to students in hard copy. 

In order to facilitate this, I am working with my school's technology coordinator to create printing stations for students, since we do not have a computer lab for students, only laptop carts (student laptops are not networked with our printers).  Once I brought the idea up, it turned out many other teachers saw the same need, and have frequently have students emailing them to print their work. 

Two: Students must decide if they are handwriters or typists. 

In my classroom, students need to be able to work on writing projects in school and at home. If a student has typing capability at home, I want to allow them to type at school. However, if the student does not have reliable typing capability at home, typing in school creates problems.  For students who strongly prefer typing, but do not have reliable computers at home, I will allow them to decide to be typists IF they agree to coming to my office hours after school on designated days during writing projects to get the work done. 

Three: Students are responsible for bringing writing materials to and from school.  

Managing materials is also a real life skill. In life, there are real consequences for failure to manage important materials.  I, for example, need to bring my wallet, house keys, and laptop to and from school every day.  If not, I will encounter serious challenges. 

Handwriters must store their drafts in their ELA folders.  If a student loses a draft, he or she is still responsible for turning in the assignment on time and must do the unfortunate work of recreating the piece.  The same goes for typists, and shaky internet cannot be an excuse.  

There are two ways typists can ensure that they have what they need to work on their writing at home and at school:

1. I allow students to bring personal Ipads or laptops to ELA class to use during writing projects. That means they always write and save in the same place and Internet is not a factor.  (I consider this a big privilege and students know they don't get a 2nd chance with this one. As with E-readers that have Internet, any use of the technology for non-ELA actvities without permission results in a loss of the privilege.)
2. Typists may use school laptops if they have their flash drives with them.  My school provides incoming 6th graders with a school flash drive, which some still have as 8th graders.  Otherwise, flash drives cost very little these days and lots of businesses give them away for free.  The flash drive allows students to write in Word or Pages, and loss of internet connectivion does not hinder them.  It also means that students can write on different laptops from day to day with no problems. 

Four: Students set goals and track their progress through the drafting process.

Maia asked me about the benefits of having students use Google Docs to see if we could achieve some of these without relying on the Internet. One benefit was that if students shared the Doc with me, I could see their progress at any point.  However, the reality of me opening and checking up on 100 students in separate Google Docs after a day of in-class writing was simply not practical.  I didn't end up doing it, except in a few, select cases.  Also, by 8th grade, I don't want to have to check up on students in that way. I want to teach them to keep track of their own progress toward a deadline and seek help when they need it.  

Students will track their own progress in 2 ways:

1. Maia suggested having students set daily goals of a certain number of words. I thought that sounded cool, because it's something real writers do and find helpful.  I plan to have students set their goals and share them with their writing partner, who they sit next to.  Students who hand-write can count how many words they write on average on a page and use that to estimate the number of words they've written each day (rather than counting each time). 
2. My co-teacher and I are working on a bulletin board that visually represents each stage of the writing process.  Students will each have their name with velcro on the back.  They'll be able to go and move their name along the continuum as they finish a piece of the project.   

I am still working a few pieces--the printing stations and the visual tracking system--to fully put this system into practice.  I look forward to updating you soon when I get the full system in place.  In the meantime, check out Maia's post--Thumbdrives, Google Docs and Longhand, Oh My!--with tips from our conversation.

Maia, thanks for helping me cure this mania!  

 

[image credit: articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com]

The Nightmare of Multiple Drafts, Multiple Formats x 100

I was getting ready to assign my first writing project and visions of myself last year, struggling to keep track of 100 students' various drafts in various formats, came flying through my brain...  

The Nightmare: (This is not for faint of heart.)  Imagine, you've just graded a stack of essays or stories, but notice a staggering amount of blanks in the gradebook, from students you know have done the assignment.  

You search your email for a student's name and find an email in which she sent you her first draft.  You search for another email and look through your Google Docs folders, but find nothing else.  You print out the draft and move on to the next student.  You search his name and find a Google Doc he shared with you.  You open it and print it (this takes a little while, because the computer has to convert the Doc into a printable format.)  You have no first draft to compare it to, because he has updated the Google Doc.  To view previous drafts, you'd have to go through draft history. No time for that. You find no emails from a third student and assign her a zero.  Later, her mother emails asking why her grade is low.  You explain why, only to find that she did email her 2nd draft, but from a different email address that doesn't come up when you search her name...

Is this really my job?  Just finding and printing 40 essays alone takes over an hour.  

On top of this mania, the writing process in the classroom is no walk in the park either.  Students save their work on one laptop, and the next day, we get a different laptop cart, rendering the student unable to make progress.  Students who write in Google Docs are immune to this problem, but the Internet goes in and out, making Google Docs unreliable as well.  Another student saves on a flash drive and then forgets it at home the next day. She begins a new draft in class, only to discard it at the end of the period, in favor the better one she has at home on the flash drive. Another student carefully hand writes his first draft and then loses it, along with your feedback from a writing conference.  Paralyzed, he never writes a next draft.  You take pity on him and don't enter any grade for the assignment, one way or the other. 

***

I wrote to my friend Maia Heyck Merlin, author of The Together Teacher and organization guru, with this organizational nightmare.  After I wrote to Maia with my problem, she suggested we talk on the phone. The solution would need to be customized around my needs, preferences and capabilities.

Maia was great at listening and helping me identify the pieces of the problem.  She asked good questions that led us to some clear, uncomplicated structures that would create order around the drafting process, and allow me to focus on the important work of giving students feedback on their writing.  

Maia has written a great post with 3 general rules for managing this issue in any classroom, called Thumbdrives, Google Docs and Long Hand, Oh My!  

In my next post, I will share the specific ways I am implementing these rules in my 8th grade ELA classroom.

 

[image credit: tx.english-ch.com]

The Language of "Expectations" in Education: Hope or Control?

I was writing a chapter for my Whole Novels book about setting up clear expectations, structures, and systems for accountability and support for students during the reading process.  In this chapter, I found myself repeating the word "expectations," especially in subheadings.  In effort to get away from that one word, I checked the thesaurus on my computer.  What I found gave me pause, revealing a tension in the way the concept of expectations is often applied in education these days.

According to the Microsoft Word thesaurus, "Expectations" is synonymous with prospect, outlook, potential, opportunity, and hope.

According to the thesuarus on my Mac laptop OS, 

(1) her expectations were unrealistic: supposition, assumption, presumption, conjecture, surmise, calculation, prediction, hope.

(2) tense with expectation: anticipation, expectancy, eagerness, excitement, suspense.

In Spanish, the verb, esperar, means equally, to expect or to hope. 

The general connotation of this word seems to be positive and hopeful, and that's how we want to approach our students.  We want students to do well in our classrooms, in part because we are hopeful, expectant and eager to see them do well, and because we want them to be similarly optimistic and excited to learn.  

At the same time, I also hear the word being used in a way that signifies authority or control--I think that's where the "prediction" part of the word comes in.  We expect things of our students and are encouraged to prescribe and predict outcomes. What if the student's response differs from our expectations?  Is that difference necessarily seen as a negative response? If so, we are using the notion of positive expectations as a tool of control.  In fact, in a learning environment that relies on punitive measures to respond to student behavior or lack of achievement, what we may refer to as "high expectations" can easily become inflexible demands.   

Back to my writing...  In a student-centered classroom, the expectations of the teacher are extremely important, and influence students' learning experience.  It is equally important that teachers be reciprocally influenced by the students' experience and response to conditions or tasks.  That dialogue is how positive leadership can empower an entire group.