Who We Really Are As Teachers

I loved the two voice poems that we opened the day with. It was great to hear the interaction of the voices and the interplay between the words and perspectives. I don't do enough reading aloud and performance in my own classroom. I think maybe because so much of my own reading history revolves around my own silent reading, that when I think of reading, that's my default mental image of what reading is, even though it really is so much more than that.

Following that same idea of our own histories affecting our current actions and beliefs, I like that Nicholas had us reflect on our teacher identities. What a very fitting demo to wrap up SI. I think sometimes I forget to step back and examine why I teach the way I do and why I approach things the way I do in my class. I forget to step back and remember that school is a Figured World and that perhaps some of my students don't see themselves as fitting into the School world. Maybe acknowledging that attending school and being a student is just one facet of their identities (if it is at all) would allow students to share their other identities with me. Just like how I'm not Teacher 24/7 but also Daughter and Sister and Friend and Yoga-Attempter, maybe I also need to remember that my students are also Athlete and Friend and Marching Band Member, etc. but that again, I can't fall prey to the idea that one word can sum of their identity. That they are the sum of their parts.

Nicholas's demo and the Julian Baggini Ted Talk video reminded me a little bit of this New Yorker book review I read about Thomas Nagel's "Mind and Cosmos," where he describes mental thoughts as being "as irreducibly real as her brain waves are, and different from them." Very confusing but also very intriguing as well.

But the activity we did where we listed our memories, desires, beliefs, and knowledge did serve to remind me again of the awesome power of teachers to hurt or inspire. I think SI has really served to remind me that teaching is so personal because learning is so personal. It IS really hard to learn when you don't feel like someone is listening or that they care about you. It IS really hard to learn when you feel like what you say doesn't matter. I've been really inspired to go back and make my classroom a place where it matters who students are and what they have to say. I love that we've been shown how we can rethink or reinforce our own identities as teachers and as writers. I love that I've been shown how a writing group can make me want to write and share my work. I love that I can see how teaching doesn't have to be an isolating endeavor. Writing celebrates who we are and what we have to say and teaching writing can be so joyful and so exciting and so new!

Revision and Personal Connections

Tonya's revision activity made me feel like a detective editor, sifting through the paragraph pieces to find the flow and the main ideas of each. Both Tiffany and I had narrative pieces and I found it so interesting how we both arranged our cut-up paragraphs into a more chronological order. But as writers, we had crafted our pieces by dropping the reader into the middle and then used flashback and dialogue. It would be interesting to point out to students how writing can be crafted and approached from different perspectives depending on what effects the writer wants or if the reader is reading for just comprehension. I think this activity would improve my students' skills as actual editors. In the past, when they do peer editing, the changes they suggest are usually mechanically based and do not revolve around the deep structural analysis we did today.

Robin's demo made me reflect on what background, what characteristics, what assumptions I bring to my classroom and what my students bring as well. Working to understand the culture and background they come from will help me understand the individual. It's so necessary to remember that learning is personal and about how we connect to our students as people and sometimes I think that school as an institution makes us forget about the humanness of who we teach and who they are. I was loving the extensive amount of resources Robin collected and gave to us.

Wobblin' With the Worms

CC Image Courtesy of emily.aurel504 on Flickr

Sarah's demo opened my eyes to a harmful practice that I do in my classroom. I taught an argument writing unit where we brainstormed potential topics they could write about and then I handed out a graphic organizer for them to fill out. Some students groaned and asked if they could use something else besides the graphic organizer and I did say that it was fine. But the majority of them still filled out the formulaic graphic organizer that I created with another teacher. I like that Sarah put us in our students' shoes and we knew how it felt to be constrained in our writing process. Our group talked about how it didn't even feel like we were writing. We didn't feel like writers. Our writing is usually messy and all over the place and it doesn't fit into a nice oreo shape. We felt like we were just going through the motions to get this done. It's like we were doing a paint-by-numbers picture. Writing-by-numbers.

Maybe the whole process of how we approach these genre unit blocks are too constraining. Lil said that she never sits down and tells herself that she's going to write a persuasive piece. It is unnatural and strange to write with the format in mind, instead of a message. I think I need to either ease students into the process with a lot more freewriting beforehand, or show them a lot of models of different types of brainstorming (Ashley's idea), or incorporate what Lacy was saying about asking students to think about what is being valued in this type of writing (translingual?). I think I also need to bring in a lot of model texts of persuasive texts so students could know the possibilities (like a modified, more specific version of Kendra's demo--asking 'what is good persuasive writing?' and ). Lots of swirling thoughts in my head about this topic.

P.S. Worms should be eaten for dinner by vikings who won't be brushing the teeth of their pet alligators who own only one T-shirt collectively.

Multigenre & Persuasion

Erika's demo on multigenre projects was exciting and also made me think of how putting constraints or parameters around things produces really creative work. It seems paradoxical and counter-intuitive to me. But having to think of the questions about democracy in terms of the genre conventions of a personal ad or a restaurant menu made me think deeper and in more flexible ways. But then having all of those choices of different genres was exciting too.

I really liked that Erika gave listeners a specific task when we were sharing. I find that my students often seem to only listen with one ear or don't listen with purpose. But having us write down words or phrases that we heard from our partner's genre piece gave us concrete feedback for us to share.

With Sarah's demo, I loved the progression of seeing and interacting with so many different pieces and identifying purpose and audience for each. Starting off by being able to see student examples (the two videos) and analyzing the purpose and audience segued nicely into identifying the persuasive devices in the print ads.

I thought that the discussion around everyday situations and the purpose and audience of those helped illuminate the distinctions between genre, purpose, and audience. Erika described how the cookbook authors (genre) could write to beginning bachelor cooks (audience) or to more knowledgeable cooks (Julia Child's books) and how the purpose would look differently for each. Wendy described how as a customer, a retail store focuses on so many details like the store layout and what store employees say, etc. That opened my eyes to how prevalent those ideas of genre, audience, and purpose are in the world around us. It's not just something specific to a small type of writing. I used to complain and think that the RAFT (Role, Audience, Format, Topic) acronym was so formulaic and artificial but apparently I was the one that was thinking too narrowly.

Working in our small groups to act out our PSA skits was fun and engaging and watching them was hilarious as well! I felt like we could really get into bringing these persuasion devices to life. This would work so well to tie into a Civics unit / Animal Farm unit as well.

Journaling, theme songs, open mic, oh my!

Both demos on Friday gave me so much food for thought and lots of great new activities for my classroom. I enjoyed the specific sacred writing rules that Tiffany uses in her classroom and I think I need to adapt similar rules for my class. Oftentimes during journal writing time I would see students half-heartedly write for maybe a minute or two and then spend the rest of the time looking off into space. I think having those parameters and starting them off with only 2 minutes or so of writing for each prompt is easy and low-stakes.

I like the idea of devoting a whole day to journaling writing in response to different prompts. I'm so grateful for Tiffany posting all of our prompts that we came up with! I think my students would also love coming up with their own prompts and adding to them throughout the year.

I loved how Wendy's demo started with something we are all familiar with: TV theme songs. I think it's a great way for students to start thinking about themes. I also really enjoyed how we were then to come up with theme songs for each super short story. I love how it causes us to think in so many ways (what's the main idea of a song and how does it apply to a work of literature). Looking at a genre through the lens of another type of genre! And students would be so excited to share the songs they know and love--which made me think of how it's tapping into their interests and culture (something that Delpit encouraged in her piece).

Thanks Sarah for sharing the details of her Romeo and Juliet playlist! I teach Romeo and Juliet as well and I want to use this next year!

Then the discussion about the concept of universal themes and whether or not they are even universal was very thought-provoking too. I don't think I had really questioned the validity of "universal" themes and how much they are socially constructed. Even when we think about emotions like love, there are counterexamples of societies with arranged marriage that do not subscribe to our Western idea of romantic love. Lots to chew on.

And it was so wonderful to hear the different pieces everyone has been working on in their writing groups. Poignant, hilarious, reflective.

I can't believe it's our last week! I've learned so much about writing, teaching writing, my own identity as a writer. And I have so much to bring back to my classroom!

Language, Identity, Code-Switching

Wow. So many emotions today about the impact, the identity of language. It was powerful to hear Robin's reaction and Tiffany's reaction to what Delpit was arguing about in her piece. And the fact that this piece of argument writing is so personal and compelling and creative is astounding to me. I do tend to think about nonfiction, informational, or argument writing as something that is drier than fiction or poetry. I forget that when the author really feels for her subject that argument and persuasive writing can be both personal and universal.

Robin said that really listening to a student, creating that safe place for her is important before trying to say something. That we shouldn't just jump in and try to interpret what someone is saying. Delpit's point that language is culture and identity, and that we are denigrating someone's mother tongue when we focus only on correcting and standardizing their language.

At first I was really puzzled too by the question that Delpit raised: If children pick up different languages or dialects or are able to code-switch so easily, why is it so hard to get students to adhere to the standard English dialect. But it makes so much sense that children pick things up easily when they identify and like the people who speak the adopted dialect. Standard English with its rules and grammar edicts isn't affirming or positive for most people. This really fits in well with my inquiry of how to make a classroom a safe, inviting place where students feel comfortable sharing their writing. How can they feel safe or want to share when they don't feel valued. I liked Delpit's line, "Those of us who teach must first make our students recognize their potential brilliance."

Delpit's piece also made me think about my own code-switching abilities, about the English I speak at school and most places and the Chinglish (Chinese + English) I speak at home. I also thought about growing up, how I would often translate for my mother at the doctor's office or at the grocery store and how I would feel embarrassed by her broken English. Why was I so embarrassed by my mother tongue? By my mother's tongue? How has that influenced how I feel about language?

Technology Thoughts

I thought that the quote that Ashely picked out for group discussion was very thought provoking: "Never before have we had so many forms of communication at our disposal, and yet rarely has our sense of loneliness and alienation been so profound." --Jonathan Martin, Prototype. It sparked such a passionate and wide-ranging conversation. People brought in so many pertinent examples from their lives about how technology is something that connects or something that isolates.

I feel like I can see how it can be both but that I do tend to lean towards the idea that technology isolates. It does allow people to connect in so many ways across great distances and I think it's amazing to see how many supportive online communities have cropped up to serve people in many different situations. I think I remember reading an article about how caretakers of sick relatives often spend time online connecting with people in the same situation. Likewise, people with different diseases often find support online as well. And I know that those types of online relationships often become in-person relationships as well.

One question that Meredith brought up in describing discussions she's had with her middle school students was, "Do you have friends who are different online versus in person?" And I found that intriguing, especially as I skimmed over part of an article in the Research in the Teaching of English journal later on during inquiry time. The article was entitled, "Examining Digital Literacy Practices on Social Network Sites" by Amber Buck (Volume 1: Number 1, August 2012) and it described a college freshman who was a member of different sites like Twitter, Facebook, Blogger, Myspace, Tumblr, Flickr, YouTube, Linked In, LibraryThing, etc. The description of his digital self was more positive; he saw himself as a creator and "publisher" and was very savvy in navigating between the different sites and what they represented. He described Twitter as being more 'stream of consciousness" and his Facebook was more focused on his college activities. It reminded me of the phrase "conventions of genre" that Lil brought up earlier. [I also loved the idea that Wendy suggested of how we can have students play with putting on character personas, like blogging from Hester Prynne's point of view."

It makes me think that technology can shape our thinking and maybe also our view of ourselves as writers. That technology can allow us to expand who we influence with our words and thoughts and that it can make us more compelled to write. It's exciting to have people tune in and listen to what we say and even more exciting when they can respond right away. That continual digital conversation promotes writing and writers. I liked what Erika said this morning about how technology allows people to address presidents and people in power. How it democratizes (?)societies more. Why else do oppressive governments try to control digital output or in general, any type of communication?

But when does it become debilitating? I know that I often seek out digital spaces that reinforce my own beliefs, my own thoughts. I don't often search out websites or forums that disagree with my own opinion. When does it move from support and connection to groupthink?

In terms of how digital spaces influence language, I think it's exciting but also sometimes strange to come across unfamiliar slang or abbreviations that quickly become commonly used. It's also disconcerting to hear these things being spoken out loud or written down on paper. I've had students write down "tbh" and "lol" and hashtags on written reflections. I've even had a friend say "shaking my head" out loud during an in-person conversation with me instead of actually shaking his head!