AI

No, no. I am far too much a sucker for pop culture for this to be about artificial intelligence. I am, however, going to post an actual teaching strategy on here; finally. I must preface this with a copyright disclaimer that it is not mine. I got it from my roommate, who teaches Math in NWA.

I gave the kids a District Common Assessment, which basically translates to a practice Benchmark writing prompt where they actually write on the answer sheets and observe all the rules of testing and then the data are reported to the district office where something (useful, helpful, anything at all? I have no idea.) is done with it.

After I spent three nights grading the essays, I knew I needed to do some going-over with them and really wanted to get these students used to the Bloom's level of "evaluating" (which is VERY difficult for 6th graders who are still on the brink of abstract thinking). I had envisioned standing at the overhead with a copy of a couple good and bad essays and pointing out good and bad qualities of each and describing how I would have evaluated them according to the rubric that we all know and love. Then I woke up and realized that was a nightmare.

Instead, we played American Idol. I setup a judges' table with four seats, each with a name tag and a rubric with one criterion highlighted. When the kids got there, we went back over the prompt, analyzing what the question wanted us to do. Then I drew numbers for who got to be on the judges' panel and played some Top 40 music to get us all in the mood, all the while putting on my best Ryan Seacrest impersonation. I quickly briefed each of the judges on what the personality was of their character for those who didn't know. Then I displayed a "bad" example of an essay (from someone in another class or "another school" if you're talking to the kids) and I read it aloud to the kids. The judges had a few minutes to formulate their opinion on the criterion they had been assigned and then deliver their verdict in character.

To keep the audience engaged, I told them from the beginning that I would be taking "audience comments" frequently throughout the program and when I did, they needed to be able to give me a score for the essay and a reason from the text to justify.

Overall, this worked out really well. It is kind of cheesy, but I put a sign on the door outside that said "Welcome to American Idol (Writing Style)" and 6th graders really got into it and were literally squirming in their seats as I drew numbers to be judges. We did at least 2 rounds in each class so that 8 or 10 people got to be judges. It was a fun way to turn something mundane and seemingly thinking-less (going over a writing assessment) into something exciting and engaging for the kids.

I doubt that they came away being fully qualified essay evaluators, but I think they learned significantly more than they would have by listening and watching!

Rewards and Consequences

How effective are they, really?

I heard a lot of discussion this week about teachers' reward-based motivational strategies. You know, "Get a 100 on the quiz and get some candy." Teachers either love it or hate it. I can't decide. I doubt that I hate it - it's not something I am inclined to feel that strongly about either way. But it brings me back to an idea I have wrestled with all year: how the heck do we motivate these people??

To me, these extrinsic rewards only confuse kids; they make the students assume that anything worth doing in life will have an immediate, gratifying, and tasty reward at the end of it. Not to mention that I think it kind of borders on bribing them to make you look good as a teacher. (Don't get me wrong - I have definitely bribed kids when observations, etc... are on the line; I'm not THAT far above it.) However, this type of motivation is so temporary, I fear that they will become dependent on it.

I haven't found a solution to this problem...and if I do, I'll write a book and some curriculum on it, make my first few millions doing workshops and PD for schools, and move to Tahiti to be philosophical...or maybe just tan.

It does bother me, though. I can teach fantastically all day long and if my students aren't motivated to learn, it's a one-way exchange. Yet, the consequences of employing the most obvious motivational techniques seem far more dangerous than they are helpful.

Who I Is

I guess this will be on Corndancer.com eventually, but I sort of had fun doing this, so I thought I would post it here, too. Usually I see these assignments as more of crosses to bear than entertaining, but maybe I'm turning into a softy...yeah, right...

The assignment was to create an A,B,C poem that describes my beliefs and values with special respect to the main cultural identifiers. Here's what happened:

Advocacy

What I hope to do for my students who have no voice

Beatles songs

I echo the lyrics’ cry for love, peace, and tolerance; they speak my language

Community

A belief that individuals function best in the context of loving, supportive people

Daughter

As much as I try to not be like my dad, I value his love and opinions

Education

I believe it’s the path to a better, happier, and healthier life for every person

Fun

The times that I lay structure aside and pursue laughter are most critica

Growth

Stretching outside of comfortable in pursuit of better

Hog Fan

I proudly donned a 1994 Championship shirt that was two sizes too big for years after it was acceptable.

ISTJ

Meyers-Briggs describes me to a "T"

Justice

I want it for my students - the victims of a harsh and unjust societal culture

Keeping up

How I have always known finances – head above water and a little for a rainy day

Literacy

My belief in its power is why I’m a teacher

Musicals

Seeing Rent on Broadway is one of my most treasured experiences

Naptime

Where I recharge my batteries whenever I can

Opportunity

Something I’ve never lacked and always taken for granted

Personality types

Knowing them helps me understand people so much better

Quality

I look for it in friends, work, and time

Reader

An hour before bed is always my goal

South of the Mason-Dixon Line

Where I was born, raised, and my only real stipulation for re-locating

Traveler

The places I’ve been are part of who I am

Underdog

I’m always drawn to them

Vertically challenged

When I say I’m short, I mean really short

Western

Not just my pigment; these ideals permeate all of my life – as my ABC’s are showing me

eXamination (of self)

On a regular basis – through a good book, quiet meditation, or intimate conversation

Yahweh

My rock and redeemer, whose voice I want to follow

Zest

When I lose the youthful fire – for teaching, especially – I’m out!

Weekly Update

1) The kids picked some commercials and paper advertisements apart to see advertising techniques and then made their own ads for a product of their choice.

2) 2/3 of the team went on a field trip yesterday, so the 20 or so we were left with got to turn their advertisements into commercials. It was FANTASTIC! One of them is in the process of being uploaded to some school youtube-ripoff website, so hopefully I can post a link soon!
http://www.schooltube.com/video/22977/Commercials

3) Common assessment. The kids did a practice reading Benchmark test, I got to grade them, and it was a fascinating experience. I spent a good twenty minutes with the Literacy Specialist just trying to figure out how to grade the things, because the two of us together couldn't even figure out exactly what the prompt wanted them to do. Sheesh. And they expect 6th graders to ace these things????

4) The benefits of having two teachers in a classroom - today I got to spend most of each class period pulling kids in the hallway for individual meetings about their reading responses (from #3) where we discussed one specific thing they could work on the next time to get scores up or else talked together about how they struggled with understanding what the question was asking of them. It was painless - for everyone involved, I think. I had a lot of fun. These are the times and as much as we hate them, we have to find some way to help them succeed on the tests. I won't ever spend an entire year doing prep for these things, but I am willing to take some meaningful time every now and then and work individually with kids - it's one of my favorite things!

5) Writer's notebook quotation of the week: "Today I learned Ms. Griner is very nice and she is going to be a great teacher, becuase she will help me whenever I need it." -LH

Love, Love, Love...Love is All You Need

Too bad this isn't the typical mushy, gushy Valentine's Day post, because that would be fantastically cliche. Or the typical anti-Valentine's Day, I'm-wearing-black-all-day post, because that would be equally predictable. Or any Valentine's Day post at all. It just so happened that the events of my week lent themselves well to the theme of the weekend.

I both had the first student in a current class get expelled and learned of the first student from a former class having been expelled this week. It is devastating in a way - more so for the second than the first, who I have only been with for a little over a week and hadn't built much of a relationship with, yet. Although, I also must admit that everyone saw it coming with the second student. He was on a crash-course in that direction, heading fast.

He must have been a kid doomed to end up in an alternative school. I mean, all the teachers he's ever had say things like, "He's worthless. He might be an okay person, but he's a terrible student." and "He belonged in the principal's office; not in my class." About the sixth grader, the comments were milder; after all, he really is still a kid. "It happens sometimes" and "We can't help them all."

I just don't think I can agree. Maybe I'm still fresh, green, and starry-eyed, not yet disappointed and jaded by the world of teaching. The fact remains, I hold myself to a higher standard when it comes to relating to my students. When they mess up, I have a role to play and it's not to kick my feet up, throw up the defenses, and say, "I did what I could; he was on his way there." While those facts might be entirely true, I am still his teacher.

In dealing with these two students this week, I discovered that I still love kids who mess up. I have to. I can't save them, but I can still love them, smile, and tell them goodbye with kind words as they walk in to pick up their personal belongings, to be escorted out by a resource officer. I can strike up a conversation, try to offer some advice, and call my teacher-friend who works at the alternative school to have her watch out for him.

I don't have to be defensive, because it was their choice to break the rules. I don't have to write them off, because it was not my responsibility to save them. It is my job to love them - when they're good, bad, right, wrong, behavioral dreams, troublemakers, enrolled, or expelled.

Now talk to me in five years and it will probably be a different story and I'll have a much harder time saying these things...

Bragging on Kids

My sophomores that read Antigone with me and participated in my research, making song connections to the text, had to (got to?) do a project (or, if you must, a 'performance assessment') for the end of the unit. I gave them several choices of what they could do - each with some level of a creative element as well as a written element. One of the choices was to take a song connection that they made and explore the connection between the two texts on paper and either a poster or a Power Point. I just have to say that the kids who picked this option (only 4, but worth it) totally ROCKED IT! I honestly have never been so impressed and proud of my students for the work they created.

One student connected to Fabolous, one to old-school Tim McGraw, one to Alicia Keyes, and another to Evanescence. Each of them either alluded to the idea or straight up said that they didn't expect to be able to connect ancient Greek drama to anything from their own modern, cultural experience. Yet each of them did just that. They made substantial text-to-text connections, pointing out places where they matched up and places where the connections broke down, but also added some awesome creativity, art, and graphic design skills to make a rockin' awesome project.

That's all - just had to say the 10th graders gave me a fantastic going away present!

Readjustment and Sixth Grade

The first week at each new rotation has been hard - between learning new kids, a new schedule/routine, a new wake up time, a new bedtime, and coping strategies for a new age group, it's difficult to think straight, let alone get enough sleep to process it all. This one was especially difficult, as I am still living in the second rotation - trying to finish grading papers, going back to meet guest speakers, and say goodbye to the kids (with 150 homemade chocolate chip cookies in tow, I might add).

I have loved getting to know the sixth graders, though. I think they're way more up my alley than anything I have had so far. I have had to seriously start to readjust my ideas about classroom management and environment, though. Partially because of the types of classrooms I have been in and partially because of the older kids I have taught thus far, the general climate of the rooms I have taught in has been pretty orderly, noise kept to a minimum unless we're specifically doing group work, and energy level fairly calm.

HA! Not so for sixth graders - EVER! I think this is really fine with me, though. When I think back to the summer and how I envisioned my classroom, it was much closer to where I am now than where I have been in rotations 1 or 2. I loved them, don't get me wrong - but like I said, these kids and this style is much more what I like. These kids are loud, they need to make jokes, they need to talk to friends, they need to make jokes and call me "Tina" (yes, as in the llama from Napoleon), they need to be prodded sometimes (scratch that, constantly) to get back on task, and difficult as it is for me to admit, they need to put the stuffed animals in the library in compromising positions from time to time. True story.

I just have to figure out where the lines are between letting them be who they are and do what they need to do and putting down the hammer when it's time to get things done and be 'the teacher'. I do know that if I tried to maintain the level of control I have experienced in junior high and high school with these kids, it would be disastrous and would end in constant nagging, kids who would never be on my side, and a massive headache.

They're still so fun in the sixth grade and so not-yet-jaded. The world is coming at them fast and hard and they'll start to see the injustices soon enough without me making their last few months or weeks of 'kid-dom' and free-spirit disappear any faster than it must. If they've gotten by thus far in a loud, mean, and disinterested world and can still laugh and joke with me, I better soak that up and love it, not steal it away. So I think it's better to just let things go and ride it out - let kids be kids.

Use This Word at Least Three Times Today

My students learned the word "anecdote" this week. This blog entry is going to be anecdotal. Way to put your vocabulary words into practice, Ms. Griner!

So we (my senior class and I) read "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" this week and as I learned from the anecdote (#2!) in the margin of the good ole Arkansas Teachers Edition of the textbook, the clock as we know it today was invented around the time this poem was written. Hence the references to making the most of our "time" and "Old Time flying" all over the poem. If you'd never been really aware of what time of day it was based on anything more than the angle of the sun in the sky (which you couldn't calculate if you weren't rich enough to have taken math), and all of a sudden clocks were tick-tock-ing all over the place everywhere you turned, I can understand a little bit of obsession with it slipping away.

I digress. So the kids were working in groups going through questions about the poem and the last one asked them to guess, based on the content of the poem, what might have been invented around this time. One of the most entertaining students in the class, we'll call him Elvin, had the most brilliant guess. "Ms. Griner, I was wondering if since the poem is about needing to get married quickly, if maybe the invention was the discotheque." Well, Elvin, since my grades have to be based on accuracy and facts and not my own personal entertainment, I can't give you the bonus points for this one. But oh, how I wish I could, because sometimes my personal entertainment is quite valuable...

I must also thank this student for providing me the opportunity to relate the first amusing classroom anecdote (#3! Yes!) on my blog.

How Responsible Am I...

...for student conversations that take place in my room before the bell rings or during independent work-time?

I should preface with the following statement: I'm pretty sure high-schoolers have issues that are too big for me to know how to handle.

So I guess for the last couple of days a student in my class has been being threatened (in the way that high-school girls can do so well, but also is deeply concerning) by another of my students. The conversations took place before the bell one day while I was in the hall talking to students/another teacher and another day while I was taking roll/getting ready to start class. It left the threatened student very disturbed and has since been reported to a principal (whose diligence I'm not sure whether to feel secure about), so I am certainly not the primarily responsible party any longer.

In my generally powerful logical mind, I know that there is no way I can know what every student is talking about for each moment he or she is in my room. However, in light of a fellow intern's recent experience in the classroom, I am left very curious as to how much responsibility I have to each student in my room during the 48 minutes they are mine. When there are 30 warm bodies and desks smooshed into a space smaller than my living room, it is unlikely that I will make personal contact with each student or even get in many of their general vicinities.

Yet, as we strive to care for each student in our classes, we will automatically feel a certain level of responsibility for each of them. As teachers, we want our rooms to be a place where students feel comfortable and safe and when other students get in the way of that, what in the world are we to do?

I'm back!

So the Adolescent Lit blog didn't really pan out. I'm not abandoning it, but I have been too selfish for it this year. I have actually read more than I ever dreamed I would, but I've been pretty stingy with it.

So I'm going to work on keeping up with this one to track those funny stories I wish I remembered all of from the first semester, post some lesson plans, and ponder questions and issues that I will probably try to pass off as semi-philosophical in an effort to appear smarter than I am.