Rube Goldberg Challenge

Our middle school students came back to school on Thursday to a surprise:  no classes for two days!  Instead, they would work in teams (assigned) to create their own ten-step Rube Goldberg "machines." They would all end their machines with the popping of a balloon.  Cheers went up around the auditorium followed by a steady hum of middle school voices as they headed out to begin their adventure.

I greeted my two groups in the commons area and provided them with the instructions.  The immediately began to plan, explore the materials, and test out ideas.

For two days the kids did not go to class (except for music at the end of the day).  Instead they learned on the job.  They learned about teamwork, planning, revision, and overcoming frustration in a fruitful way.  They found that they were having fun AND learning.

My favorite question of the two days:  Will we do this again next year?

See a successful run here!

Creative Writing and Literature Masters Program Complete!

I am just waiting to receive my final grade in my last class and have my program portfolio approved, but all of that is out of my hands!

To celebrate, I thought I'd post a bit of my work (just poetry for now) from the program. 

Enjoy!

5:18 A.M

Emily Dickinson beckoned me to my window

with a tattooed moonprint

on the carpet below the sill,

six-paned and lovely.

And I saw, through Emily’s eyes,

one neighbor’s light dancing through red sheers,

one sedan gliding down the road.

She brought me to my window to find this poem.

She showed me how to see what there is to see

when no one is supposed to be looking.

Poem

All these years of hips and thighs and muscle and instinct,

my body delivered my girls with the reflex of knowing.

You, though, kicked and fought with angry heels

your path artificial, not of my flesh.

My girls arrived with shrill cries of life.

You sulked into the world broken, insolent.

Daughters borne of me

A poem born in me. 

Blood and ink

both.

Manic

Morning

slides out of her cracked shell

so sweet

and urgent and

Jackson Pollock fills the sky

with drips and splashes

of to-do lists only half-formed

in my mind.

There is still time,

I tell the birds.

So sing, even though

it’s early and you are chirping

more loudly than my alarm clock

that will never be set as long as you

keep chirping

the morning news

starts even earlier now

because the breaking news ticker

scrolled all night so there

must be something to report first and fast.

Each morning the same

routine, procedure, schedule.

What began as beautiful becomes

a metronome of must

go and do and get

until day bends toward evening

and there is only the threat of

tomorrow to lull me to sleepy

haze of dreaming of the

magnificent morning.

For Esperanza

Outside the petunias in a pot

will blossom when the soil’s richness

can grow dollars instead of flowers.

Inside I write words forward and backward

and upside down, just like I lived them. 

I never type them,

the whack of the keys like gunshots. 

You cried when I left, but not the kind of crying that cracks

your heart into so many pieces that you

can never find them all. 

Your crying was the song of a hungry kitten.

I will not be gone forever. 

Only until my petunias have blossomed.

I will have legs that carry me back and away,

filled solid with dirt and words and blood and love. 

Home to complete the circle

and away to begin my own.

Straight Lines

This morning I was rereading Georgia Heard and Jennifer McDonough's A Place for Wonder:  Reading and Writing Nonfiction in the Primary Grades when I was stopped short by this beautiful poem.  It captures what I believe so movingly:

All the kindergarteners
walk to recess and back
in a perfectly straight line
no words between them.
They must stifle their small voices,
their laughter, they must
stop the little skip in their walk,
they must line up
at the water fountain
straight, and in perfect form,
like the brick wall behind them.
One of their own given the job
of informer--guard of quiet,
soldier of stillness.
If they talk
or make a sound
they will lose their stars.
Little soldiers marching to and from
pretend
their hair sweaty
from escaping dinosaurs
their hearts full of loving the world
and all they want to do
is shout it out
at the top of their lungs.
When they walk back to class
they must quietly
fold their pretends into pockets,
must dam the river of words,
ones they're just learning
new words that hold the power
to light the skies, and if they don't
a star is taken away.
One star
by one star
until night grows dark and heavy
while they learn to think carefully
before skipping,
before making a wish.

I believe childhood is too precious to press into straight lines.  Thank you Georgia and Jennifer for confirming that.

"5-Paragraph Essays Allow Students to Say Nothing in an Organized Way"

 5-paragraph essays allow students to say nothing in an organized way.


I have been trying to track this tweet back to its source, but I can't.  It is flying around the #ncte12 Twitter feed--retweeted by so many people that I can't figure out who actually said it in a session. 

Whoever said it, THANK YOU.  I've been arguing against this structure for years, but this one line captures my feelings about the five-paragraph essay.

We owe it to our students to invited them to write authentic pieces for authentic audiences.  We must teach them the essential skills of writing and allow them to write about topics they care about.  All kids--even the ones that struggle with organization, deserve that.




Here are just a few a few interesting links on the subject:

Death to the Five-Paragraph Essay
If You Teach or Write 5-Paragraph Essays, Stop It
Teaching Writing:  5-Paragraph Essay is Not the Answer

NCTE Reflections

On the flight home from NCTE I had a long time to think about what I learned there, the trends I noticed, and what I want to put into practice right away...5 whole hours awake on a red-eye can be great for reflection.

My top 5 moments from NCTE:

1.  Presenting with Melissa.  It was wonderful to have a partner to share the journey with and who taught me so much about how to craft an effective presentation.   I believe that people left our session having learned something new and useful.

Proof that we presented

Our standing-room only crowd

2.  Listening to Sir Ken Robinson with thousands of other dedicated professionals.  I was charmed by his sense of humor and reinvigorated by his call for sweeping changes in education that begin in each person's classroom.

 

3.  Learning from my teaching heroes in an intimate setting.  Though NCTE is a huge conference, the sessions are small and allow for a sharing of ideas.  I was lucky enough to attend sessions with Ralph Fletcher, Georgia Heard, Laura Robb, Matt Glover, Ginny Lockwood, Kathy Collins, Stephanie Parsons, Donalyn Miller, and my new teaching heroes--Kristin Ackerman and Jennifer Mcdonough.  Everywhere I turned I found inspiration.  I also found comfort in the way these mentors presented their ideas--they are still forming them, toying with them, changing them. 

Ralph Fletcher

The Two Sisters!  Joan and Gail sitting in front of me in Kristin and Jen's presentation

The Nerdy Book Club session

 4.  Listening to Natalie Merchant perform the poems-turned-songs from the collection Leave Your Sleep.  She reminded us all about the power of poetry for children (and adults!).

 5.  Being stopped by someone in a hallway in the conference center who said, "I loved your presentation yesterday."  That brings me back to my first favorite moment... 

My Top 5 Action Items:

1. Find a few teachers who will try Biblionasium with their students to create stronger communities of readers.  Thanks, Nerdy Book Club, for that idea.
2. Urge all teams K-6 to plan at least one non-genre-specific writing workshop unit.  Thanks, Matt Glover, for reminding me why that's important to kids.
3. Find one classroom teacher who will allow me to try out Georgia Heard's poem-a-week model for poetry instruction (Tanya, if you are reading this...)
4. Visit the DailyCafe website to follow Kristin and Jen's progress with their ISCORE writing concept and design lessons for our teachers.  Their idea is fantastic--let's not compartmentalize the writing lessons we teach by genre.  Let's teach kids that good writing is good writing, no matter what the genre.  Good writing has Ideas, Structure, Conventions, One Focus, Real Voice, and Elaboration.  Let's set up those concepts just as we do with the Daily 5 and Cafe menu.
5. Work with Melissa on an in-house presentation on knocking down the classroom walls--how to use technology to broaden our students' writing and reading lives beyond the classroom.

My Top 5 Realizations and Reminders:

1. Ralph Fletcher shared that he is rethinking mentor texts. (Wait, he wrote the book on mentor texts!)   He is thinking that perhaps it is better to provide kids with examples of great writing and see what the kids find, rather than saying, "Kids, this piece uses excellent similes."  He's rethinking his work with mentor texts to balance the teacher-directed and student-led noticings.  I heard this idea in more than one session--this reminder that we should trust the kids to make their own discoveries, even if they aren't what we intended.
2. Student choice continues to be at the center of student engagement and achievement.  This choice is important in all areas of their day--what they read, what they write, what they discuss, and how they think.  Ginny Lockwood demonstrated a mistake so many of us make when doing a read-aloud--directing the kids on how to feel about something in the book.  Let's work on shutting up and letting the kids think!
3. Teachers of reading and writing must be readers and writers themselves.  I must work to encourage this with the teachers.  Our kids must see that we build reading lives.  And the only real way to name what they are struggling with as writers is if we are writers doing the work we ask our kids to do.
4. When we catch ourselves saying, "These kids don't..." or "These kids can't..." then it's time for a gut-check.  What are we doing to make kids BE school instead of DO school.  It is our own fault when they ask questions like, "How long does this have to be?" or "When I'm done with this can I..." or when we say things like, "What I'm looking for is..."  Kids came to school as joyful, creative creatures.  There's nothing to blame but SCHOOL when kids lose that.
5. 93% of a teacher's day is spent in isolation (from other adults)!  When is the time for collaboration, deep reflection, and planning?  How can we allow more time for the collaborative planning and reflecting side of teaching that is just as important as the time spent in the classroom with kids?

NCTE 2012 Presentation: iPads in Language Arts

Here's our presentation

Just a screenshot!  Click on the link to see the video on YouTube

And here are our app handouts for Writing, Reading, and Word Study

How did you get this way?

I've been asked this question twice in one week.  So I suppose it's time to think of an answer.

First, let me clarify the question.  They wanted to know how I became the teacher I am now--how my philosophy of education has evolved into its current "progressive" state.  One of Seth Godin's recent blog posts has helped me realize my answer:

Who you hang out with determines what you dream about and what you collide with.
And the collisions and the dreams lead to your changes.
And the changes are what you become.
Change the outcome by changing your circle.


I have had the chance to collide with a wonderful assortment of people throughout my 18 years in education.  I have changed my circles every 5-7 years, moving from two public high schools schools in Howard County, Maryland to the SEED School of Washington DC (a middle and high charter boarding school) to  Flint Hill School (a JK-12 independent school).  In each school I have found adults who have challenged, shaped, and supported my views about education.  And I have been lucky enough to have students who have let me try out these views.