I went to the woods

When I was single and living in New Hampshire, I lived for getting into the woods. Every weekend practically, I'd be hiking or skiing. I lived in the perfect area- practically on Lake Winnepasauki, a short drive to North Conway or to the western side of the lake. I could hike the Whites or the Sandwich range. I could ski Gunstock, King Pine, Cranmore, Attatash-Bear Peak, Cannon...there were several friends that I could call up and say, "Let's hit the slopes". And I often went on my own. 

I miss that life. I've become too sedentary. I have a wonderful husband who loves the outdoors as much as I do, yet, we hardly every go to the woods. We have a canoe and live on a wonderful little pond. We're in an area, maybe not quite as perfect as the Lakes Region of New Hampshire, but the Lakes Region of Maine is pretty darn close. We have snow shoes and hiking boots. My husband can't down hill ski anymore due to severe knee injuries when he was younger, but he still hikes and snow shoes. 

This weekend we got out snow shoeing two days in a row. Sunday we went through our backyard to the pond and today we climbed the ridge across the road from our house. It was spectacular! It felt so good to get out, to be in the woods. I want very much to get back to the woods on a regular basis. Hopefully there will be many more snow shoe treks before this winter is over, and that this spring and summer will find the two of us exploring the woods and trails of western Maine and rediscovering my favorite trails in New Hampshire. 

A Little Late to the Party

We were suppose to go back to school yesterday. Winter storm Hercules had other plans, and our Christmas vacation was extended by two days. I'm not complaining. While I do miss my students and I'm eager to hear about their vacations, the things they did and the books they read, I have used my extra time well. I spent time reading and researching.

I've been researching some trends in education and in my research on Genius Hour (more to come on that later), I reconnected with a guy I ran cross-country with my freshman year at PCB (now Cairn University). We weren't super close because I was a dorky freshman and he was a cool upperclassman, but he was (and is) a really nice guy and was part of the family that helped me make a smooth transition into college. Turns out he's been doing Genius Hour for a couple of years. Its been fun to reconnect and swap ideas and book titles.

I also spent time reading TEACH LIKE A PIRATE by Dave Burgess. When the book came out, there was a lot of buzz on Twitter and a large number of people all read it and had chats about it. I lurked in some of those chats (how can your curiosity not be piqued by a hashtag like #tlap?) but didn't participate. I hadn't read the book, and the impression that I got was it was something for elementary and involved dressing up to teach your lessons. So I kind of passed it off. That's just not my thing, and I teach high school.

Then came time for the executive board of the Maine Reading Association to plan it's spring conference.  One of the names that was floated was Dave Burgess. "Who?" I asked.

"Teach Like a Pirate".

"Oh."

My fellow board members had all read they book (They are elementary teachers. I still was so clueless!) and gushed about how amazing it was. From a marketing stand point, it made perfect sense to me. I hadn't read the book, didn't know the guy from a hole in the wall, but I knew from Twitter that he & his book would be a big draw.

Now I needed to read the book, preferable before March 8. After all, I was helping to plan and promote the event and would certainly be attending, even if just to support MRA. So here we are, back at the first of two snow days at the end of Christmas vacation. I started reading and playing around with visual note taking. This morning I finished reading Part 1 and spent about 30 minutes talking with my husband about the ideas that I took from just this first part of the book.

I can honestly say, I drank the Kool-aide. I came away from the reading encouraged, inspired, and challenged. What I thought was a gimmick that didn't apply to me, is actually very appropriate to my situation. I've been working hard to try to find the best practices that are the best fit for our school and am coming to the realization that we can't keep trying to fit into the traditional model of school. It just isn't producing the outcomes we are looking for. My co-worker and I have been lamenting that our high school students are disengaged from the learning process and unenthusiastic about school. You see, PIRATE is an mnemonic. The cornerstones are Passion (both professional and personal) and Enthusiasm. These are two things that we want in our students. These are two things that our teachers need to have. Students are not going to be passionate or enthusiastic about learning if their teachers are not exhibiting those qualities.

This is challenging me to rethink how I'm teaching. I'm not going to be able to change everything instantly. As Dave Burgess points out, "creativity results from properly directed attention, laser-like focus, relentless effort, and hard work." It takes time, and I admittedly have a lot on my plate, but it is important, and so I will start targeting bits of my lessons and figure out how to approach them in a way that will better engage my students.

I've already been thinking about that handful of boys that I know I'm losing. They're great kids, and are definitely capable, but they are struggling with the complex texts and the writing assignments I'm asking them to do. I don't want to lose them. I want them to know that while English might not be their cup of tea they can still succeed. I want them to learn to see the connections that I see between life and the books we're reading.

As I work on researching best practices and what works, and prepare my proposal for the school committee, I'm going to keep all this is mind. We want our kids to be engaged, enthusiastic, and passionate learners. That's not going to happen with a special program or schedule, they have to see it in their teachers before it can be fostered in them.

This is one of those times that I wish I had endless funds so that I could purchase this book for all my colleagues and pay for them to attend the workshop with Dave in March. I maybe a little late to the party, but I'm glad I made it.

If you driving distance of Auburn, Maine, and would like to attend the workshop, click here for a link to the flyer for the March 8 event.

Write Beside Them ( with a nod to Penny Kittle)

Nearly every workshop on teaching writing that I have sat in over the last few years, from Linda Rief to Penny Kittle, to Kelly Gallagher, has emphasized the idea that I am the best writer in the room and that I need to write beside and in front of my students. In fact, Penny Kittle wrote a book by that very name: Write Beside Them, (Heinemann 2008). It is very helpful to write with my students. They need to see me modeling writing, from the struggle to focus or find the right word, to getting into the flow. It also helps me to understand they struggle they may have with a particular assignment. Unfortunately, I don't always get to write with them or I have the best intentions but don't follow through with completing the assignment.

I have a unique situation with my sophomore English Composition and Literature class this year. There are just three students in the class and two of them are ELL students whose native language is  Chinese. Because of the ELL students, I have another teacher in the class with me. Her job is to work one-on-one with the ELL students, both in the classroom and outside of class, to improve their English and be able understand and complete the work in their classes. She always tries to do the assignments so that she can best help the ELLs. That inspired me to make a greater effort at doing the writing assignments with my students.

We are wrapping up our study of Romeo and Juliet. I'm not completely happy with how the unit went. Things took way too long, November was broken up with days off, half days, special events, and testing, and we weren't able to cover everything I would have liked to. Still, I tried my best to stick to the lens of relationships that I use (thank you, Jim Burke, for the idea of this lens as well as many of the textual analysis assignments!) and I think we've done enough that they can write the final paper on relationships. We reviewed the characters and their relationships to each other, I gave the students the prompt and guideline and took them through the thesis generator (again, thank you Jim Burke!)

We are taking this week to write the draft in class because the ELL kids need a lot of support. Today, after getting everyone rolling on their writing, I sat down and started my own essay. As I got going with the thesis generator and then moved on to planning out the examples I want to use from the play, I realized that this will be really good prep work to show to my 9th graders as they start the same process in our next class. They need to see the steps and see the model for this paper. This is when I wish I had a document camera! But I'll do what I can. I would like to try to carry through on writing this paper. I need the practice and it will be good for my students. I'm also excited about apply to this an idea that I read yesterday on Kate Baker's blog. Rather than use the term "Final Draft", use the term "Best draft (for now)". I love this idea! It makes so much more sense!

I'm excited about the thesis statements the sophomores have crafted and I am looking forward to what the freshmen will come up with. I like using the lens of relationships for the study of Romeo and Juliet because it allows for such a broader understanding of the text- it's not just about Romeo and Juliet, but also about the other relationships in the story.

Neglect

My poor, neglected blog. Every once in a while I blow the dust off, lament my neglect, then log out and let the dust collect again.

I need to write.

There is so much swirling around in my brain. School, family, books. I struggle with so much dissatisfaction- mostly in myself. I set the bar so high and then scold myself for not making it over such an impossible height.

Writing will help me process. Writing will help me think.

Right now my biggest frustrations lie in two areas:
My professional life and my personal life.

Professionally I am feeling a bit stuck. I know what I need to do. I know what works. But trying to actually flesh that out is where I feel stuck. I strongly believe in two major pedagogical practices: Workshop and Standards Based Grading. But these ideas are progressive and go against what everyone else believes and expects. I feel like Jeremiah- a voice crying in the wilderness. So I am trying to make mid-stream corrections. Sometimes mid-stream corrections are easier because you have momentum. Sometimes they are so much harder because you need to go in such a different direction.

Workshop and SBG require a lot of initial time and energy to establish- you need to think through everything you are doing and look what the students need to learn, how they're going to learn it, and how they're going to demonstrate that learning. I love Understanding by Design (UbD). It makes so much sense! But it's so much work. And when you are teaching five different subjects, and you're on your own for planning and implementing, it quickly gets overwhelming and discouraging.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around what the reading/writing workshop looks like in the high school English classroom. I am facing the following hurdles:
mindset of students & parents
space- a tiny classroom
schedule- currently running an A/B Day block schedule with 80 minute periods.

When I went to NERA in September, I grabbed a few minutes with Penny Kittle after her keynote. I expressed my frustration with trying to do workshop, yet feeling that I was coming up against the expectation that "that's just not how high school English is done". Penny surprised me with her response, "Who's expectation is that? The parents' or your's? Most parents are thrilled that their kids are reading." Her parting words to me were, "I've read your tweets. You know what you need to do. Do it. Trust yourself."

I keep reminding myself of those words. I know what I need to do. Just do it. I need to stop giving into the fear that I'm going to be judged or criticized and just do what I know is what needs to be done. I've been thinking about Penny's question- who's expectation is it? Maybe it really is my own expectation and it is that that is causing my fear and preventing me from just moving forward in what I need to do in my classroom. Maybe this also applies to my struggle with constantly feeling that I'm not measuring up as a high school teacher or that I'm being weighted and found lacking because I don't have a masters degree in education or literacy. Maybe those feeling are coming from me and I'm projecting them onto my students and their parents. Whether it's real or perceived, it is a constant struggle. It does lead me to realize I need to be practicing 2 Corinthians 10: 5 "...take every thought captive to make it obedient to Christ."

My professional struggles are tied to my personal frustrations. I need to reclaim my life from my job. I feel like I've been stuffed into a mould that isn't really me. This morning I told my husband, "I feel like I'm not allowed to be myself and I'm sick of that." I can't fully articulate that feeling or where it's coming from and after reflecting on the possibility of the transference of my professional expectation, I wonder how much is true and how much is transference. But I don't always feel like me, or that I can truly be me.

It hit me this weekend that I really missing hiking and skiing. I haven't done much of either in a very long time. I put so much of my time and energy into my job and my relationships and my personal time suffers. Unfortunately it's been that way for a very long time. I need to get back into the woods, back to the mountains, back on the water, and I need to find me. Thoreau said,

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.” 

I'm not planning to go spend a year in the woods, living in a cabin I built myself, foraging for food (and nearly burning down the woods!). But I do need to get back to the woods to find what I've lost- namely myself. I think I've been so concerned with succeeding, that I've forgotten to be me.

I'll probably read this tomorrow and think. Wow. What a bunch of self-righteous crap! But tonight, this is what is on my mind, and I've written.

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” ― Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods

Wagon Wheels

I had the best of intentions, really I did. I started off the summer so well doing my IMWAYR posts. I was going to blog at least once a week. Then things got real with our move, and the wheels fell off the blogging wagon. Blogging didn't happen, my Twitter feed grew dusty, school plans got pushed to the side. Now here we are, two weeks out from the start of school and I'm trying to get back in the saddle, get the wheels back on the wagon, and hoping that it's not to late to be at least a little prepared for the school year.

Early in my teaching career, my dear friend, pastor and administrator explained to me the Rotter-Covey Square.

(image source: http://www.achieve-goal-setting-success.com/set-priorities.html)

Too often we allow the tyranny of the urgent to take over. As I enter the last two weeks of the summer and look at all the planning I wanted to do and did not get to, as well as the planning I needed to do and did not get to, I feel my stress level rising. I need to manage that stress well. I want to enjoy my job as a high school administrator and I want to enjoy teaching- both my high school students and my fellow teachers. I think it's time to fill out a Rotter-Covey Square and try to enjoy my last two weeks of summer in this beautiful house that we have moved into. If I sit on the porch, I can look at the pond and not the piles of boxes that still need to be unpacked!

It may be 9:30 and I'm still in my pajamas, but I've emailed three teachers and one teacher candidate. So that's good, right?

Words in Expert Hands

"There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic." 

~The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

There are certain books that stay with you. You can't put them down, and when after you read the last page, and close the tale, whether with a sigh or a sniffle, they stay with you. They follow you around as you wash the dishes you neglected that day. They tug at your heart and mind as you get supper, grade papers, write lesson plans. They stand at your shoulder as you talk with your family and friends. There are some books that you excitedly recommend to every single person with whom you come into contact because the book is so amazing that you are convinced that every person on God's green earth absolutely must read it. And there are those books that just stay with you because they have touched you so deeply.

As I look back over my reading life, I can bring to mind numerous titles that have deeply impacted me in various ways. Some are delightful reads, masterfully wrought. Some are intellectually or spiritually challenging, and some have simply stopped me in my tracks.

I now add Jamie Ford's Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet to the number of books that are my "favorites". This one carries the tag of "Haunts Me". Its such a beautiful story. The narration switches artfully between 1940s Seattle and 1980s Seattle. We see first generation Henry as a young teen trying to make sense of his traditional Chinese family in a time fraught with patriotism, fear, and suspicion. We also meet him as an adult, looking back at his life with new insight.

This book has gotten me thinking a lot about the questions of what does it mean to be an American, and what is the American identity? Over the centuries so many people have come to America with hope for success, for freedom. So many have proudly taken citizenship.  Then there are those who were already here or where brought against their will. Yet so many of these same people have been treated as less then human, let alone less then a citizen.

This book is haunting me. Even as I try to write about all the thoughts and questions that it has brought up, I realize that I am still meditating on it. I'm going to have to revisit my thoughts on this book. I know that I want to read Farewell to Manzanar, but I think it would be wise for me to wait a bit, to read something a bit different.