Creative Narrative 1

Sophomore Year: Fall 2014
Day 1
New year, new school, and new people I have to try to get along with. We'll see how it goes.

Day 3
I'm always worried about getting into trouble for cussing at school (because I do it a lot), but today we started reading this play in English. It's called 12 Angry Men, and I read the part for Juror 7, who swears all the time. Our teachers let us say the words and they read them too! I've never heard a teacher swear before. They always try to seem so perfect.

Day 7
School is going alright, I guess. I'm tired of reading and homework, but I really like my science and math classes. One of my English teachers gave us the homework of comparing an event in our lives to one of the themes in the play. All the themes are hard to talk about: prejudice, anonymity, blame, guilt. I don't want to talk about my life to these people; they're strangers. I don't even want to talk to my therapist about my life. Why would I talk to them?
I'm not going to do this assignment. I've decided to turn it in blank. I'm sure they'll get the hint.

Day 8
Today when I passed my assignment forward, my teacher asked me why it wasn't filled out. No one ever asked me that before; they just gave me the F. I told her I didn't want to give any personal details about my life, and she talked to me about what I could do to still meet the requirements and get a good grade without talking about things that she called "emotionally charged."
I liked the alternative she gave me. She talked to me about what I liked to write about (which isn't anything, really), what I like to study, and how to tie-in my beliefs about science or politics with standing up for what I believe when others aren't with me. It actually made sense. I remembered hearing about racism in Ferguson, Missouri and I wanted to research it more because I may not believe the same things other people do about the situation. She told me to think about how my opinions about the cop aren't going to be shared by everybody else. I spent some time in the library trying to figure out what to write about, but I didn't do much. I still just don't really care about this assignment.

Day 9
My grandpa called my English teacher last night. He's worried about my grade in there because I have an F. I just hate writing and reading; there are better things to do with my time. Especially when I have to talk about my life. I don't think it's possible to get a good grade in this class.

Day 10
I was worried that my teachers would feel sorry for me today. Poor little kid, has to have his grandpa call to check in on him and explain why he struggles with English class. Screw that.
But Instead, one of my teachers asked me if I finished my homework, even though my grandpa explained that I don't like writing about my life and that I didn't want to do the assignment. She even gave me extra class time to complete it. I felt kind of bad because I still didn't want to work, and she's probably annoyed that I don't because she made me sit at a table alone. She tried to talk to me about my life some more. What I like, what classes I enjoy, what classes I hate. I guess I told her I hate gym, which I do, and I'm glad I don't have to take it again because we started talking about why I don't like it. I guess I'd never really thought about it. I just thought I didn't really care about school because school didn't care about me. But it was because the boy's coach was an inconsiderate jerk. I don't care about my teachers, or even think about them for that matter. He didn't care about me, why should I even think about him? He doesn't deserve any of my time. She just kept asking me about why he was a jerk, why I didn't get along with him. He gave me an F, he didn't even try to help me get a good grade. I had just moved again, and didn't have any gym clothes. I don't even bother asking my mom to buy me the stuff I need anymore. There's no point. He never asked me why I didn't have stuff, but just reminded me that I needed clothes. My teacher asked me if I thought he should have treated me differently, if he should have given me partial credit for participating or tried to help me get clothes. But I don't really care about my grade in gym class. She said something that kind of surprised me: "I don't care that you don't care, if you were the teacher, would you have done something differently? Did you think he had treated you justly?"
I guess I would have.
She stopped to tell me that I didn't need to write anything different than what I'd just told her. So I wrote it down and turned it in.

Day 13
I just took my 12 Angry Men  test. I didn't finish in class, but my teacher let me come in during advocacy. I really need a good grade (right now I have a 30%).

Day 15
I got a B on my test. I try not to care about my grades, but I tried really hard on this test. My teacher told me she liked my answers and appreciated how much effort I put into it.

Day 16
I had a really bad headache in class today. My English teacher kept telling me to sit up. Finally I told her that I didn't want to because I had a headache, and she told me to keep my head down, try to pay attention, and do my work the best I could. I did my worksheet and even talked in class discussion. After class she told me she appreciated my contribution even though I didn't feel good.
I think when teachers respect me and my space it makes me want to pay attention to what they're saying. Especially when they notice that I'm trying.

To be continued...

Reality? Check. My efforts to evoke some enthusiasm with a brand new unit plan. (Response 2)

Classrooms can be an ugly place for idealists.
Students are not perfect, other teachers are not perfect, my ideas, thoughts, actions, and practices are not perfect.

Before it begins to sound like I'm irreparably jaded, I knew all of this before I began this school year. Over the last month, I have watched my group of Sophomores struggle to pay attention and participate in our daily activities. There has been an enormous effort on my part to connect with my students, to make them feel heard, valued, and independent. But there is only so much I can do as a co-teacher who is merely imposing upon a pre-existing lesson plan. It was like being a sub, but with the main teacher still present.
So for my upcoming unit, my CT has given me free rein over what I incorporate into the plans. There are only two limitations. The first, which I knew before I planned the unit, was that the lesson would cover John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men. The second, which came as a disheartening surprise after I planned my unit in full was that my CT warned me against moving away from the novel. I certainly understand consistency in lesson planning, but everything I had planned was directly connected to the novella. Then I discovered the real stipulation: Don't move away from Common Core.
Internally, my mind referenced texts I have read over the past two years. Engage your students. Find an overarching concept. Challenge their critical thinking skills. Relevance, Relevance, Relevance!

So, my ideas don't align with the pacing guides. Reality check: 1, Lindsay: 0. Have I got some news for reality: I'm resilient and full of ideas I'm not afraid to try.

In Teaching English by Design, Smagorinsky (2008) suggests planning units with an overarching theme(p. 112). Parts make-up a whole, and conceptual units of instruction do just that--create lessons where the instructors connect different aspects that are related to make the unit more engaging. Common Core's Sophomore ELA Pacing guide for Unit 2 focuses on character analysis. The overarching concept I have designed for this unit is "Reality", which heavily focuses on realism.

My goals for this unit are:
-to be mindful of the strategies for comprehension, writing, and attention
-causing genuine and relevant inquiry (Wiggins & McTighe)
-to spark meaningful connections (Wiggins & McTighe)
-to incorporate new, innovative practices
-to get students college and career ready (Bomer, 2011)

In order to accomplish these goals, I've had to spend a lot of time getting creative.

A useful text for me has been 50 Instructional Routines to Develop Content Literacy (Fisher et al., 2010). It seems that I am constantly flipping through this text to see what routines I can adopt and adapt for my students. These strategies certainly help me keep in mind their attention, comprehension, and need to write. For example, during our introduction activity I have planned for them to simply use think-pair-share when analyzing a stanza from the Robert Burn's poem "To a Mouse" as an introduction to Of Mice and Men. Not the most creative approach, but it allows them to bounce ideas off of one another before being put on the spot as a whole class.
The most fun part of this introductory lesson (for me) was incorporating another strategy from Fisher et al. (2010), I arrived as a "visitor" who was dressed as a 1930s migrant worker! The students did not think I was cool, but they paid attention and it was fun.

Causing genuine and relevant inquiry, and sparking meaningful connections between "real life" and the text  is one of the more challenging aspects of this unit. I found that turning to Pinterest was a helpful tool to help me generate ideas. I'm a visual learner, and everything on Pinterest has a picture! I would really recommend using Pinterest to help with your lesson plans. You can create a board and fill it with ideas that can very quickly be referenced. I found several pictures from Time's issue about The Great Depression and I also saw that several other teachers had been comparing it to The Great Recession!
(P.S. you can follow me on Pinterest here: http://www.pinterest.com/lindsaydale/)

Although Pinterest is a fun, new innovative practice, there are several other tools I can incorporate into my lessons. My new favorite is a spin-off of an Oppinionaire (Fisher et al., 2010). From the website Poll Everywhere you can have your students text their responses to a class number (not a real phone number) where their responses appear on the screen. And, yes, before you freak out, their numbers do not coincide with their responses on the screen, but you can track the messages with the numbers on the site. You can ask any question you'd like, and the students can respond with one word answers, yes or no answers, or sentences. For my unit specifically, I will use it to gauge their responses about decisions the characters made and other debatable themes in the book. They like this better than a Value Line or Oppinionaire, and it incorporates technology.
Check it out here: www.polleverywhere.com

College and career readiness are, to the state and school district, the most important piece of the lesson. In my unit, I will ask my students to read articles about The Great Recession and current economic downturn, read articles and do activities about "the working poor", discuss the treatment of mentally handicapped in the 1930s and today and what job opportunities they have, and creating a final project that ties to one of these "real life" topics that connect with the novel (along with an accompanying paper, of course).

I want these students to understand that I'm not here to ignite their passion about English class, but through this unit I want to convey to these students that they don't need to be college bound to care about the world and its impact on their lives.

So, help me spice-up my lessons! What creative activities for Of Mice and Men can I do with a group of unenthusiastic sophomores? I'm willing to try just about anything.




Sources:

Bomer, R (2011). Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fisher, D; Frey, N (2012). Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Area Strategies at Work. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.


Smagorinsky, P (2008). Teaching English by Design: How to Create and Carry Out Instructional Units. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Wiggins & McTighe. Understanding by Design.

Where the Textbook Ends... (Response #1)

This semester I have a class of sophomores. They are average students, some are under-motivated, most of them struggle to stay engaged in class work. We are a little more than halfway through the unit of 12 Angry Men, all of which we have read in class. My CT has been more than willing to allow me to create assignments and experiment with different teaching strategies to help them understand the importance of the story. I have strived to incorporate the fundamental teaching principles highlighted by Wong and Wong in The First Days of School, such as intentionally inviting the students to inquire and learn (Wong & Wong, p. 67 1998). I make sure that my comments are sincere and timely, and I have noticed that they do react positively. For example, I quietly told a student who has been absent more times than he has been present that he did an excellent job contributing to group work. His smile was the only feedback I needed. See? Classroom management and motivation is so easy if you've only read your textbook. Wrong. So wrong.

Despite a personal connection with the students, minding my manners, asking them to mind theirs, and ensuring they complete their work, they are far less engaged than they should be. This play is fun to read, fun to act out, suspenseful, and thought provoking. Not to mention appropriate considering the racial tension exposed through current events in Ferguson. I admit that I don't expect any or all students to share my enthusiasm for literature, but they should at least be excited they get to swear when reading the play. My dilemma is that they aren't engaged, they don't seem to be grasping the concepts, they don't care, and they don't seem to have been previously pushed in their school work. My goals for this class are to continue to connect assignments to their own experiences, continue to synthesize classwork with real-world application, and continue to force the students to be responsible for their own learning. It's only the first month of school, after all. Now that I have set my goals, it should be easy to measure their progress.

My attempts to meet these goals have been through trial and error. I first tried being transparent in our activities and assignments. I try to clearly and throughly give instructions and expectations while explaining its importance. Fisher and Frey's Improving Adolescent Literacy (2012) suggests that we maintain transparency in all we do to help students understand our expectations (p 15). Being transparent has certainly been beneficial, but my instructions are not always clear. My CT reminded me that sophomores are on the brink of self-discovered learning. Freshmen need a lot of guidance, juniors usually just need a leader, but sophomores are a balance between the two. They want independence, but don't yet know how to get there. In Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classroom, Bomer (2011) reminds us that the teacher's role is to be an expert and coach (p. 14). Coaches give athletes clear instructions, goals, and feedback; they don't endlessly ramble or lecture, they get to the heart of the challenge. This is how I have begun to approach these sophomores (today is Day 1).

I also ask students lots of questions without the fear of dead silence; someone always finds it awkward enough that they give me their best answer. I constantly ask them to recall the legal terms we discussed before beginning the unit, and they get faster each time I do. Bomer (2011)states that activities should connect to one another-- not simply break class time into segments (p. 49). By using their vocabulary words in their writing, seeing it in their text, and using them in class discussion, they begin to see the relevance. But is what I am doing enough to keep their focus, engagement, and help them get the most out of what they learn? I want to make these students responsible for their own work and get out of the habit of giving up before they make any real effort, but I don't want to discourage them either.

I don't know how much these students have been pushed in the past. I don't personally know any of these students outside the classroom. I don't know any of their reputations. What I do know is that I want to try to take a class whose motivation about English is less than ideal and build them up to see what they can do. I am already finding what does and doesn't work. When it doesn't work, class time seems a little wasted. But I have seen glimpses of what does work, so I'm going to hang onto them and run.


Sources:
Bomer, R (2011). Building Adolescent Literacy in Today's English Classrooms. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Fisher, D; Frey, N (2012). Improving Adolescent Literacy: Content Area Strategies at Work. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc.


Wong, H; Wong, R (1998). The First Days of School. Mountain View, CA: Harry Wong Publications, Inc.

First Day of School!

Our parents always took pictures of us during milestone school years, so why not document this one too?! Happy first day of PST, seniors! We're almost done!

Goals for Student Teaching

Student teaching is off to a great start!

My current goals are to:
-practice classroom management
-incorporate techniques I have learned in my classes
-be innovative with the lesson plans
-incorporate technology in a unique way
-have my lessons become as seamless as possible