The activity we did today with the story "Envy" really had a lot of layers to it. Going through and highlighting the words and phrases that stood out to us and then reading them out loud when we felt moved to was so expressive, collaborative, and unexpected. It made me look at the story in a different way. When I compare my freewrites from the night before to the freewrites or riffs we did today, I am more aware of Campbell's language, the lyricism and rhythm of her words. Yesterday I was more focused on the actual events of the narrative (who's saying what? what's happening? what's going to happen next). And even hearing people read their phrases out loud reiterated words that stood out to me, or even made me look again at words that I had missed.
I did like how the body biography kind of sneakily made us revisit the text over and over again (lots of close reading!). And the idea of symbolically representing character traits (along the spine, through colors, through poems) was very effective. I liked how there were so many different types of suggestions but also there was accountability through what the biography needed to contain. I can see this activity working well with my students.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
At the Kitchen Counter
I tried mincing garlic today,
but the pieces were uneven.
I know you’d frown if you saw them,
all scattered, ungainly, askew.
But the pieces were uneven—
(maybe right from the beginning)
all scattered, ungainly, askew.
I tried ignoring all the signs.
Maybe right from the beginning
My eyes should have been wide open.
I tried ignoring all the signs,
but they blurred in the heat of my thoughts.
I tried mincing garlic today.
My eyes should have been wide open,
but they blurred in the heat of my thoughts.
I know you’d frown if you saw them.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Revision
All the talk about revision today was so exciting! It really opened my eyes to what the idea of revision is all about and all we can do. The write into the day opener by Katherine Bomer was so different than the revision I'm used to thinking about. I never thought of revision as being about hope. I never thought of revision as forgiveness. I always thought of revision as something tedious, superficial, almost unnecessary. Perhaps part of this was laziness and another part fear. I am a BIG procrastinator and in high school and in college I remember putting essays off until the last day and then just sitting down to spew out an outline and then a draft. To be honest, my first draft was often my final draft as well, with only minimal, surface-level changes. I think after writing something down, I also wanted some distance. I didn't want to see it again, much less have to manipulate it. I didn't want to have to dig into it and maybe get rid of the words that I'd just gotten down on paper.
But I like the idea that revision is a process, it's a chance. Her emphasis on revision running through our lives (we can change our identities, we can change our teaching) is thrilling. Reinvention isn't just for Madonna; we can all do it.
Mary Ellen's demo played into this idea so well when she presented how we can look at regular objects in different ways. The revision strategies were wonderful. So concrete! Stepping outside the writing piece and playing around with it can be fun! i never knew revision could be so creative. I liked what Nick said about how revision, even if we don't use it in the final project, helps us to think about our subject in a deeper, more meaningful way.
But I like the idea that revision is a process, it's a chance. Her emphasis on revision running through our lives (we can change our identities, we can change our teaching) is thrilling. Reinvention isn't just for Madonna; we can all do it.
Mary Ellen's demo played into this idea so well when she presented how we can look at regular objects in different ways. The revision strategies were wonderful. So concrete! Stepping outside the writing piece and playing around with it can be fun! i never knew revision could be so creative. I liked what Nick said about how revision, even if we don't use it in the final project, helps us to think about our subject in a deeper, more meaningful way.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
What's in a grade??
I loved how the demos today and the essays we read and reflected on all moved everything to the personal. That the writing and the work done in the classroom is about the students as writers and as humans who all have different and varied reactions to literature, poetry, art. And that does raise the challenge that we kept bumping up against. That because writing is so personal, so subjective, it's really hard to grade. It's hard to assess or quantify the output.
Lil mentioned how hard it would be to read a student's heartbreaking memoir about her father dying and then to slap a C- on it. And I thought Wendy brought up a lot of excellent points about how hard it can be to reconcile all these great, creative activities into a system that still requires a number grade and a certain number of set writing pieces as dictated by the curriculum. How do we teach students those formal mechanical guidelines so that they can know them and then break them? Is this even a chronological sequence or can they break the rules while learning them?
Wendy said something else today that really stuck with me: "My students don't see themselves as writers." They have this mindset of completing an assignment just to get the grade and just the get it over with. I admit that even as a student who did think of herself as a writer and did love writing, I hardly went back and did any meaningful revision to my papers. My first draft was basically my final draft. How can I show my students that they are writers? How can I show them that revision is important and necessary? How do I dig into my own personal writing and learn to revise in a meaningful way?
Some possible solutions that were mentioned in the discussion included portfolios, providing space for teaching / peer commenting earlier on in the writing process, conferences, and fluid revision circles. I'd like to hear more about what those are. I also remember reading about a book called "Rethinking Rubrics" by Maja Wilson that I might try and take a look at. It might apply to what we've been talking about today.
Lil mentioned how hard it would be to read a student's heartbreaking memoir about her father dying and then to slap a C- on it. And I thought Wendy brought up a lot of excellent points about how hard it can be to reconcile all these great, creative activities into a system that still requires a number grade and a certain number of set writing pieces as dictated by the curriculum. How do we teach students those formal mechanical guidelines so that they can know them and then break them? Is this even a chronological sequence or can they break the rules while learning them?
Wendy said something else today that really stuck with me: "My students don't see themselves as writers." They have this mindset of completing an assignment just to get the grade and just the get it over with. I admit that even as a student who did think of herself as a writer and did love writing, I hardly went back and did any meaningful revision to my papers. My first draft was basically my final draft. How can I show my students that they are writers? How can I show them that revision is important and necessary? How do I dig into my own personal writing and learn to revise in a meaningful way?
Some possible solutions that were mentioned in the discussion included portfolios, providing space for teaching / peer commenting earlier on in the writing process, conferences, and fluid revision circles. I'd like to hear more about what those are. I also remember reading about a book called "Rethinking Rubrics" by Maja Wilson that I might try and take a look at. It might apply to what we've been talking about today.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
A Single Story
The theme of dominant stories was one that resonated with me. The Literacy Dig activity put all the messages we get about being a teacher together in one place. I do get frustrated that pop culture always sends the message that teachers need to be hugely charismatic, overly involved, and burnt out in order to make a difference in their students' lives. People gave different examples of pop culture teachers that are depicted as martyrs (Mr. Holland's Opus and Freedom Writers) where their students and their school lives come before their families and personal lives.
It gives an unrealistic goal where I feel like I can never measure up to the idea teacher. My lesson plans don't make students stand up on their desks and I don't see those dramatic, life-changing revelations every day in my classes.
Maybe movie makers and TV writers focus on the inspiring teacher because it makes for a more effective narrative arc and then, like Steve said earlier, it is easier to place the blame on ordinary teachers, who aren't giving 110%. Maybe it's easier to ask why individual teachers aren't living up to their movie counterparts than to ask what we as a society need to change in order to alleviate the poverty and inequality that contribute to student struggles in school.
Watching the TED talk this morning, I feel like I am both subject to and a perpetuator of single stories. I often find myself making assumptions about people based on the little information that I know or expanding ideas about a whole group of people based on one person.
Personally, I used to rebel against the automatic assumption people had that if I was an English major the only thing I could do with my life was to teach. It used to really aggravate me that people thought that was the only thing my degree was useful. I would vehemently say that I was not going to be an English teacher. I don't know if I felt so obstinate because that was the refrain I kept hearing again and again. I decided to double major in both English and graphic design, which was through the journalism school.
As a requirement, I took a copy editing class my senior year in college and loved it. The professor was very passionate and told stories of working in news rooms around the country. I had an internship after graduation in a news room but not before a ten-day training session at Temple University. The professor who trained us was intimidating with dark eyebrows below his white hair. He seemed seven feet tall and tested us on world capitals and even made us draw a map of South America on an entirely blank sheet of paper (I think mine ended up looking like a squished comma).
I really felt inspired by his high expectations of us and his constant reiteration that copy editors had to constantly question the story. What's the other side? He would tell us that there were stories in all the objects around us. He pointed to a banana on the table and asked us what we saw. We stammered all kinds of matter-of-fact, inane statements but he continued and asked, "Where is this banana from? What country? Who picked it? What were the labor conditions like? How do we trade with that country? and so on and so forth. I started to realize how often I took things for granted, just accepted the status quo without trying to dig any deeper, just like how often we default to the single story.
After the internship and struggling for a few months to find a copy editing job, I landed one at a small paper in Texas. But the day I went to find an apartment, the job was gone because of budget cuts. I was back to square one. And I asked myself, "Why didn't I want to become an English teacher?" Was it just because I wanted to be ornery? I loved to read, I loved writing. Why not push past my own hang-ups? So I went back to school and discovered how challenging and rewarding teaching can be.
-------------
I'm reminded again of the exercise we did this morning where we wrote down the words that came to mind when we think of "doctor," "mother," and "teacher." I remember sitting in my classroom one afternoon my first year of teaching. A student I didn't know rushed into my room.
"I HEARD there was an ASIAN teacher here now! Wow, it's true!" (the student was Asian herself). I was so taken aback. Should I feel flattered? Confused? Saddened? The high school did not have a lot of Asian students, and it's true, I was the only Asian teacher there. I guess "Asian" wasn't really something that came to her mind when she thought "teacher," even though she was Asian herself.
When she left after chatting with me for a while, it reminded me that my students were curious too and would ask me where I was from or even "What kind of Asian are you?" (she was rebuked by other students who whispered, "You're not supposed to say that kind of stuff!"). My own high school that I attended was pretty diverse and a lot of my fellow classmates were Asian but my middle school and earlier years were not as diverse. I remember hearing things like, "Oh you must be related to *other Asian student.*"
I've even had other people of my nationality express surprise that I'm an English teacher, instead of someone who teaches math or science. Even my mom shakes her head and wonders why I prefer English.
I like sharing the poem, "Can I Ask You A Personal Question?" with my students because they can all relate with the situation where people make assumptions about them--where they are defined by a single story. They can see the absurdity of that kind of limited thinking.
It gives an unrealistic goal where I feel like I can never measure up to the idea teacher. My lesson plans don't make students stand up on their desks and I don't see those dramatic, life-changing revelations every day in my classes.
Maybe movie makers and TV writers focus on the inspiring teacher because it makes for a more effective narrative arc and then, like Steve said earlier, it is easier to place the blame on ordinary teachers, who aren't giving 110%. Maybe it's easier to ask why individual teachers aren't living up to their movie counterparts than to ask what we as a society need to change in order to alleviate the poverty and inequality that contribute to student struggles in school.
Watching the TED talk this morning, I feel like I am both subject to and a perpetuator of single stories. I often find myself making assumptions about people based on the little information that I know or expanding ideas about a whole group of people based on one person.
Personally, I used to rebel against the automatic assumption people had that if I was an English major the only thing I could do with my life was to teach. It used to really aggravate me that people thought that was the only thing my degree was useful. I would vehemently say that I was not going to be an English teacher. I don't know if I felt so obstinate because that was the refrain I kept hearing again and again. I decided to double major in both English and graphic design, which was through the journalism school.
As a requirement, I took a copy editing class my senior year in college and loved it. The professor was very passionate and told stories of working in news rooms around the country. I had an internship after graduation in a news room but not before a ten-day training session at Temple University. The professor who trained us was intimidating with dark eyebrows below his white hair. He seemed seven feet tall and tested us on world capitals and even made us draw a map of South America on an entirely blank sheet of paper (I think mine ended up looking like a squished comma).
I really felt inspired by his high expectations of us and his constant reiteration that copy editors had to constantly question the story. What's the other side? He would tell us that there were stories in all the objects around us. He pointed to a banana on the table and asked us what we saw. We stammered all kinds of matter-of-fact, inane statements but he continued and asked, "Where is this banana from? What country? Who picked it? What were the labor conditions like? How do we trade with that country? and so on and so forth. I started to realize how often I took things for granted, just accepted the status quo without trying to dig any deeper, just like how often we default to the single story.
After the internship and struggling for a few months to find a copy editing job, I landed one at a small paper in Texas. But the day I went to find an apartment, the job was gone because of budget cuts. I was back to square one. And I asked myself, "Why didn't I want to become an English teacher?" Was it just because I wanted to be ornery? I loved to read, I loved writing. Why not push past my own hang-ups? So I went back to school and discovered how challenging and rewarding teaching can be.
-------------
I'm reminded again of the exercise we did this morning where we wrote down the words that came to mind when we think of "doctor," "mother," and "teacher." I remember sitting in my classroom one afternoon my first year of teaching. A student I didn't know rushed into my room.
"I HEARD there was an ASIAN teacher here now! Wow, it's true!" (the student was Asian herself). I was so taken aback. Should I feel flattered? Confused? Saddened? The high school did not have a lot of Asian students, and it's true, I was the only Asian teacher there. I guess "Asian" wasn't really something that came to her mind when she thought "teacher," even though she was Asian herself.
When she left after chatting with me for a while, it reminded me that my students were curious too and would ask me where I was from or even "What kind of Asian are you?" (she was rebuked by other students who whispered, "You're not supposed to say that kind of stuff!"). My own high school that I attended was pretty diverse and a lot of my fellow classmates were Asian but my middle school and earlier years were not as diverse. I remember hearing things like, "Oh you must be related to *other Asian student.*"
I've even had other people of my nationality express surprise that I'm an English teacher, instead of someone who teaches math or science. Even my mom shakes her head and wonders why I prefer English.
I like sharing the poem, "Can I Ask You A Personal Question?" with my students because they can all relate with the situation where people make assumptions about them--where they are defined by a single story. They can see the absurdity of that kind of limited thinking.
Found Poem
-->
Who’s OK Here?
“The nail that sticks
out gets hammered in.” –Japanese saying
Soft-spoken
with sleepy eyes
slurping noodles and soup
talking movies and music for a miserable year.
Cooped up inside their rooms and inside their heads—
heads as thick as an astronaut’s helmet.
Three holes in the wall—the size of fists.
“To hell with it. I don’t like it and I don’t do well,”
he said with the intensity of a hungry college freshman.
(From “Shutting Themselves In” by Maggie Jones, The New York Times, January 15, 2006)
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