Category: Advice for Teachers

A Case for Reading…

TL:DR teacher friends, if you want to discuss how to get inspired again, I’m here for us all.

This afternoon, I am struggling not to fall into cynicism, and I think I’ve found an answer for myself, at least.

It’s not like we teachers haven’t been sounding the alarm for years: trauma, depression, COVID, misinformation, disinformation, and now the frightening political future that was planted decades ago is now reaching its climatic destiny, and its poison apple fruit is ready for picking. (Well, climatic in the sense of this is our generation’s boss fight, and we’ll either go down in history as just another democracy who caved to fascism or we will get it together.)

Here is where some of my hope lives, the well I’m drawing from: I’m a pretty good teacher.

I’m creative, resourceful, and care about students.

It’s been interesting to see how this care and concern now includes parents who believe, with their whole minds and hearts, the lies and disinformation: I am concerned about these students, and also there is nothing I can directly do. If some students, a small minority, but they exist, even get a whiff that I am sharing my personal political views they will go to their parents.

This is where we are now.

And the best advice when one is lost in the woods, or in this case, my own entanglement with events, is to stay put. And staying put means to look over the metaphorical map, and remember what steps worked in the past:

  • Creative writing assignments: use RAFTS
  • “Dogfooding” the lesson: anything you create or try for students, do it with them. Over winter break, I wrote an essay on To Kill A Mockingbird, kind of hated the process, so I came up with another prompt that is related but much more engaging.
  • Read and write: notice how it feels, and share with students. I’ve shared that reading has been a struggle for me during times of grief, stress, and distractions, and how I’ve gotten out of my slumps. The reading lesson above is what I created for both my American Lit Juniors and will share with the ELA 9th freshmen.

Angela Stockman recently posted this — she is brilliant. Ask students to document and create their own learning journeys.

Book Links:

Give Me Some Truth: https://a.co/d/9ZO9MPp

Stamped: https://a.co/d/74lLgtU

Teaching in the Time of Cholera

“She felt the abyss of disenchantment.”
― Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

My brain feels like soup with small chicken bones lurking behind dumplings and carrots, just waiting to splinter and choke. I worked hard for calmness, for strength, and it’s fragile. I had this intrusive, nightmarish thought while trying to sleep that my _______and ______have plans to travel to ________and _____is pregnant. What if what if what if what if what if what if what if

What if we are not going to make it?

Wait, I can’t do better than that? Apparently not.

Writing is therapeutic, yet I procrastinate to the point of sabotaging the 19+years of keeping this blog, this blog that has gone nowhere, sputtered out, out of gas, while others have monetized, gained traction, followers, fans, and my creativity chokes on the weeds of envy and slime.

Well, that got dark fast.

I will do better, I say. I will. I will write more consistently and offer something of value to folks who read this.

While I am not sure how I can encapsulate this moment — there are far more qualified scholars, journalists, and writers than I, but I am a darn good bullet list maker, so here it goes.

A Non-Exhaustive List of the Things That Are in Constant Rotation In My Brain:

  • Since #gamergate hit in 2014, a targeted attack against Anita Sarkeesian and other women in the gaming field, boys have been fed a steady diet of trolling lessons, toxicity, and indoctrination.
  • Boys were and are under a barrage of toxic messages from men: men who seem wealthy, abuse and objectify women, and break the law and never seem to pay or have a consequence. Now I get boys mentioning Jordan P, Andrew T, and others. They defended PewwwwdEEEE Pi years ago, too. They showed students images of Hitler and “trains” and laughed.
  • We’re up to four women (and of course it’s more) in our nation who have been murdered for the act of losing a pregnancy. This particular nightmare swims in my brain– the idea that they are in a hospital parking lot, and inches away from care, and no one helps them. Not one brave medical staff goes out to HELP THEM.
  • And I can’t warn students and their families because teachers have been censored.*

*So, let’s talk about this.

Long story short, I had to talk with admin about some recent…events. It’s okay, everything is fine, and it did shore up my resolve to continue to teach critical thinking skills. And if anyone thinks this is simple, easy, or engaging in this day and time of misinformation and disinformation, that is the very air we breathe, the Bird-Boxing of us all, it is not. It’s not healthy, it’s heartbreaking, and it doesn’t matter. I have to do this. I have to do it so carefully, cautiously, and with huge amounts of wisdom and grace that some days I just don’t have. I don’t trust many adults now. I don’t trust them with their own children. And I have to get over that, now. Like, right now. Reflecting on what it means to trust means to let go of control. It is not my job or purpose to control or coerce. In actuality, I’ve never been one to try to control others — seriously. I believe in respect, self-respect, reciprocity, and love. And that my internal dialogue says is I am deeply grieving — we all are. Even if some don’t realize it yet because they think they “won.”

But even a forest fire generates new growth. I can plant seeds and hope for a new forest.

Some seeds:

https://www.comm.pitt.edu/argument-claims-reasons-evidence

Next post will be more ‘seeds’ of critical thinking ideas.

Advice for Teachers: Standards, Skills, and Strategies

In late July, I called my ELA besties around the country to weigh in on some ideas for American Lit. There is an existing district scope and sequence, and from what I’ve gathered, there have been some needed tweaks and adjustments to the common assessments: mostly scheduling and cohesion, but some adjustments nonetheless.

One of my skill sets is backward planning, and I am forever a fan of UBD (Wiggins/McTighe), so I put together, with their help, a curated list of materials, and planned to incorporate the district’s scope and assessment focus/questions. I mention UBD because I can absolutely plan the beast out of PLC work and common assessments. This is going to be my 19th time at the rodeo.

I love working with my department head on these ideas; she’s receptive and collaborative and helps add focus. We both laughed when we met and agreed we are verbal processors, and she is skilled at listening to my processing. She understands the notion of “work in progress” and how my drafts are designed. We will interweave the skills necessary and develop assessments that are authentic and hopefully, engaging.

And here is the thing: if I could really get new and veteran ELA teachers to understand one important concept, the text is somewhat immaterial. What matters is the combination of skills, strategies, and standards working cogently and effectively for students’ growth and learning. These must be transferable, quantifiable, and reflective processes for students to make learning stick. Whether or not one spends six weeks on “The Crucible” or one week on The Great Gatsby isn’t the priority: when developing continuity and robust instruction in curriculum, always circle back to the three S’s.

I’m currently listening to (and then checking back in with the text) of How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr. Chapter 17 which discusses measurements and standards. And while the United States is still not on the metric system, part of that global domination plan (colonization is so 1700s) is to make the world standardized. For better or worse, the CCSS did make an attempt to standardized instruction. Many states didn’t adopt the Common Core, and many parents and school boards unfortunately conflated the Core with standardized testing. TL:DR high-stakes testing sucks. The standards aren’t bad. They’re vague enough so that educators can put their spin and instructional design on them but clear enough to give focus and direction. His writing reminded me of educational standards, the Science of Reading debacle, and how research can support or defame just about any topic in education. It’s messy.

If we want to clear up this mess, we focus on the skills, strategies and standards in our content areas and create these as our framework.

That’s it. Make the bolts fit the nuts. Or something like that.