By Karla Hilliard
Summer is great, isn’t it? You know that feeling? The read by the pool, lose track of days, backyard hangout kind of feeling? Isn’t it great when you can have unadulterated time with your favorite writers (or wines) without grading guilt? Don't you love when you can go to a Body Combat class at the gym and punch into wild oblivion just for the fun of it? Or what about how fantastic summer salads are? I mean seriously, have you tried the watermelon-and-feta orzo salad? You haven’t? Well what are you waiting for?! You know this whole chill-vibe thing will end, right? You know it’s going to run out of gas pretty soon? Because, you know that small pit of dread and little twinge of excitement upon seeing the first school supplies lining the shelves of Target? Are you, like me, like, “I should totally buy that adorable sign that says SLAY THE DAY for my classroom, but it’s only July and I’m not thinking about school until August!”? Or are you more, “WOW 50 cent composition books, SCORE!”? Or are you a parent who’s all, “Why have I cleaned up this kitchen 15 times today? Why do we have only one lonely slice of bread when we just bought this loaf this morning? This morning! Why is my child pausing the song on this laptop with her actual butt? Why would she think that’s a good idea? Why, oh, why isn’t it time for school yet, oh em gee?”? Ever felt this way? And why am I asking you this? Why am I asking me this? Because I’m thinking a lot about…What do I want to do with School Year 2017-2018? How will I build a community of learners who feel safe, valued, and heard? How will I show my students that without them, there is only a shelf full of books and a few ideas, that there is no “me” in my classroom -- there’s only been and will forever be “we”? How will I impress upon them that I am not the keeper of the literary gate nor am I the only one responsible for their learning? How will we traverse the land of great literature this year and explore it together — explore the masterfully written novel, essay, poem, short story because it is the work of the course and of the heart? How will I connect my students to their communities and inspire more ownership in them? How will I help students challenge their opinions, deepen their curiosities, and expand their worldview? Why should it matter that they do all of this — that they develop empathy, that they problem solve and innovate, that they discover knowledge, that they consider their responsibility to one another? Will I help my students become better people? And how will I bring balance and focus to my classroom and life next year? How will I continue to explore the essential and the “definite yeses” of teaching and parenting and just being a person in general? How will I make it to the gym? How will I get my kids to dance on Wednesday at 4:00? How can I find my grading Zen? And what’s my bigger responsibility? How do I advocate for kids? How do I stand up to the face of injustice, bigotry, prejudice, and hate? How do I teach my students and my own children there’s more than one way of being a human? How do we love those who are toughest to love? How do I fight for all students? So, why am I asking? To borrow a line from one of my favorite novels to teach, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” By the end of School Year 2017-2018, I hope along the way to discover a few new answers. WVCTE is wondering... What questions are you asking this summer as you consider a fresh school year? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! I'd love to hear from you! -- Karla
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This morning, I rolled out of bed around 8 o’clock. My seven year old was already deeply immersed in her craft project and my five year old slumbered on, mouth agape and arms thrown gloriously overhead, like a bizarro world roller coaster snapshot.
The house was still. I headed for the coffeepot, searched for a mug to match my mood, trading in my favorite Vonnegut for a sunshine yellow, and poured an easy cup. I sat down and read a book for a while and then thumbed through a book of Natasha Trethewey poems as the morning sun poured in. I washed a few dishes and tidied up a bit. I mixed up some waffle batter and relished in the sizzle of batter dropping onto the hot iron. I buttered and syrup-ed fresh waffles for my kids and got sticky snuggles after breakfast. I love these human moments of summer break. I love seeing pictures of my teacher-friends planting their gardens, building benches, vacationing with their families, joyously reading away the day with their bare feet soaking up the sun. I see my colleagues committing time to self-care, and it’s inspiring. It gets me thinking -- why do these moments seem to be reserved only for summer break? My catch-phrase of the 2016-17 school year became, “I know I’m doing too much, but so far I’ve kept it all going.” I guess acceptance is the first step, but I realized that if I was seeing life as “keeping it all going” I should probably re-evaluate. The good news is, I have because... This year, I choreographed two show choirs, was a club advisor, taught Sunday school, blogged regularly, helped build my school’s STEAM Academy, taught two packed sections of an AP course, and rocked out as a mom to my seven-year-old and five-year-old. I made time to hang out with my husband, family, and every now and then, friends. This is not braggery or martyrdom -- this was my inability to say no. And you know what? I’m exhausted. Notice I didn’t mention any self-care in that last paragraph? No yoga, no reading, no cooking or crafts. Remember #OneWord2017? Mine was FOCUS. I knew that in 2017 I wanted to focus on what was essential. That drive led me to the book Essentialism. As my friend and fellow teacher Liz Matheny says of the book, “It’s a game changer.” The philosophy of Essentialism according to Greg McKeown is simple: the disciplined pursuit of less, to do the right things with your time, and to take control of what and how much you do. And McKeown challenges, “What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance? What if instead we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?” My enduring understanding from Essentialism is, if some thing -- some project, task, relationship, or commitment, isn’t a definite yes, then it’s a definite no. This logic brought such clarity to my life, both personally and professionally. But what I’m learning is something we already know: being an essentialist teacher is difficult. The profession demands much more than what is essential, and many teachers, myself included, have a deeply rooted desire to contribute their time and talents to more than one worthy project. Being an essentialist teacher is difficult, but not impossible. How do we pare back to the most essential? What are the right things to do with our time as educators? What is your definite yes? For me, it is essential that students in my classroom are safe and loved, that they share in a community of learning that is positive and prosocial. It is essential that I know them and they know me, that I am vulnerable with them so we can develop honest and necessary connections that allow us to explore the meaning of literature, and oftentimes life, which occurs when great literature and our life’s experiences intersect. Well-designed lessons and intentional teaching are also essential. A student’s discovery of meaning in literature and their exploration of their own authentic voice in writing is essential. Their ability to ask questions, to examine a writer’s craft, to notice subtleties in literature that make meaning, to play and experiment with language and to feel safe and supported doing so is essential. Inviting students to innovate and problem solve and consider their role and ownership in their own community and state -- all this is essential. For me, being an essentialist teacher is to remember and recommit to the one job I’m there to do -- to teach and inspire students. And of course there’s more. I have more professional “Yes”es -- writing and reflection and professional connections and learning. And I wonder, on this beautiful summer day and lazy morning, if we commit to professional essentialism, will it relieve us from just “keeping it all going”? Will identifying the right things we do with our time professionally allow us more human moments not only during summer break, but all the time? My friend Jay from Moving Writers says, “Teaching is a human endeavor." It is essential that we remember this, too. WVCTE is wondering, how do you balance work and life? What is essential in your classroom? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! I'd love to hear from you! -- Karla It seems like some of my best lessons and most successful classroom activties strike at times when I'm less concerned about a perfect and tidy plan and more focused on student needs and engagement. It seems simple and obvious enough, but adjusting my "work barometer" is something I'm always trying to finetune. Last week my AP Literature students worked hard at reading, interpreting, and analyzing poetry. It was the kind of week that felt like a great workout -- challenging and a little uncomfortable, but valuable and motivating because you're getting leaner and stronger. Each day, we took on a new poem. To kick of the new year, we studied a beautiful poem called "At the New Year" by Kennth Patchen. We then went "down the vista of [our own] years" with D.H. Lawrence's "The Piano." And after several student requests for "animal poems" (they're cool kids, what can I say?) we took a look at the wonderful and Zen "Golden Retrievals" by Mark Doty and the fiercely self-aware hawk of "Hawk Roosting" by Ted Hughes. By the end of the week, students' increasing confidence in poetry analysis was palpable. So on a welcome 2-hour delay Friday morning, I thought it best we hit the brakes and play for a day. Here's what we did. I asked students to create a structure or sculpture that extended, supported, or highlighted an INSIGHT they had about ONE of the poems they studied during the week. The goal was for students to revisit, re-read, and deepen their understanding of one of the poems from class and to use manipulaitves and play as "a way in" to their insights, interpretations, and analysis. After that, we broke out the hand sanitizer and a big bucket of toys and got to work. Here are some highlights of student work: After time was up and all students had completed the task, I asked students to complete a Quickwrite Journal explaining and unpacking their thinking and choices in creating their structures or sculptures. Some questions I asked:
Besides the excited and bubbling "This is so fun!" from students, the best part of this purposeful play: Students were invested in learning and discovering more about the texts -- I heard thoughtful conversations and read thoughtful commentary about the poetry we studied. So... WVCTE is wondering... What does purposeful play look like in your classrooms? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! Karla Hilliard teaches STEAM Academy Honors English 10 and AP Literature and Composition at Spring Mills High School in Martinsburg, WV. She's a contributing writer on www.movingwriters.org and a teaching fellow with Collaborative for Student Success. When Karla isn't teaching, you can find her hanging with her husband and two little girls. Karla serves as Executive Vice President and Head of of Secondary Affairs for WVCTE. See what's happening in her classroom at www.hilliardsclass.com or connect with her on Twitter @karlahilliard. An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves. ~Bill Vaughan (1915–1977), in The Kansas City Star If you’ve been anywhere near social media, then you know the vast majority of the world was ready for 2016 to come to an end. And I’ll admit, part of me was right there with them. This year saw the horrific violence of Syria, we lost Leonard Cohen, Prince, David Bowie and Princess Leia, and let’s not even talk about the chaotic, weird, divisive United States election. Yeah, 2016 was a doosey. For a hilarious recap, check out this parody of a man who slept through 2016. Like most folks, when New Year’s Eve approached this week, my knee-jerk reaction was “good riddance 2016.” But then, I sat down to draft this blog post and realized that for all the awful things that happened in the past year, there was also an extraordinary amount of awesome, specifically for our WVCTE community. For starters, WVCTE received its official NCTE affiliate status, our membership has grown, we’ve connected educators across the state, and we’ve begun planning our first state-wide conference for March 2018. Our little organization hosted its first professional development session in September with the authors of Writing with Mentors, Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O’Dell, and it was attended by over 40 teachers from West Virginia and Maryland. Our Best Practices blog has been reaching teachers all over the state, country, and world, and we’ve given West Virginia ELA teachers a platform to share their stories, success, and strategies. (And we designed these really great t-shirts...) So no, I can’t say the 2016 was a bad year. In fact it was an incredible year, and 2017 has some pretty big shoes to fill. I look forward to the next year with hope and optimism. And like most hopeful, optimistic people I have made qutie a few New Year Resolutions. Most of them are pretty standard proclamations like "get fit," "get more sleep," and "drink more water," but I've also made a few Teacher resolutions, and I would like to share two of them here: Teacher Resolution Number 1 |
This activity is a fan favorite. And it may be the trickiest of all the tricks. Annotation stations allow students to talk, move, collaborate, AND think through a passage. What's not to love? The directions are simple:
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What I love about this approach is that not only do diverse and interesting ideas emerge., all students' voices are heard.
Plus, you get to walk around, chat with students about their findings, and largely stay out of their hair. I call that a win!
- Philosophical Chairs
This activity is tried and true and is on my class's top requested list. I first learned this strategy through the AVID program, which I taught a class of in another district. The long and short of it is this:
- Give students some fairly provocative topics or statements that are thematically connected to their reading (e.g. For Of Mice and Men -- euthanasia, the reality of dreams, and the power of loneliness), then have them agree or disagree with each. From there...
- Ask students to move to one side of the room or the other depending upon their response. I typically designate Agree, Disagree, and On-the-Fence sides of the room. Then...
- Have students take turns discussing their thoughts and ideas about the topics. If any student is particularly persuasive and changes someone else's mind, he or she switches sides of the room.
I also provide the following rules:
- Only one person speaks at a time.
- Talk to one another and not to me and use one another's first names.
- Participate in the discussion at least one time and actively listen.
This activity is such a solid way of incorporating movement and speaking and listening. Healthy conversations emerge and students generally enjoy themselves. And that's a class I want to be in!
So, WVCTE is wondering...what's in your teacher bag of tricks? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook!
Karla Hilliard teaches STEM Academy English and AP Literature and Composition at Spring Mills High School in Martinsburg, WV. She has been a classroom teacher for 11 years. When she isn't teaching, you can find Karla hanging with family, cooking up a good meal, reading up on educational trends, crocheting soft things, or eating spoonfuls of peanut butter.
Karla serves as Executive Vice President and Head of of Secondary Affairs for WVCTE. See what's happening in her classroom at www.hilliardsclass.com or connect with her on Twitter @karlahilliard.
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