by MK Jarvis Every good teacher reflects. We ask ourselves things such as what went right or wrong with a lesson, how could we tweak our classroom management, or could we possibly stop eating the donuts the 6th grade team insists on bringing in every Wednesday. I’ve just completed my second year of teaching, and this summer I’ve been thinking a lot about how I survived the last two years. A great administration and wonderful co-workers (with or without donuts) are definitely at the top of the list, but there have been a few master educators who have given me great advice. My first year of teaching was phenomenal. I’m not bragging. I’m was as surprised as anyone that I made it through in one piece, believe me. I heard from so many other teachers how their first year was their worst year. They told horror stories from the trenches: crummy, unsupportive administrations, back-stabbing co-workers, and misbehaving students and all their shenanigans. At times during the year, I was embarrassed that all those things weren’t happening to me. I had landed in a middle school with a stellar admin, helpful, friendly co-workers, and misbehaving students and all their shenanigans. Hey, two out of three, right? So how did I survive among those rotten little middle schoolers? I owe my survival largely to my principals and my team. They made life so much easier. They paid attention to me and any problems I had and supported me when things seemed to be going awry. However, I know there was something more to my survival. When I was thinking through what I might want to write for this post, I kept coming back to the reasons I had had such a great first year. Certainly, the staff at my middle school were heroes, but what else had made it so? What experience had I brought to the table that made my maiden voyage into teaching so much different than other new teachers? I’m sure it was the master educators I met in the beginning of my journey. The wise words they imparted, whether it was off the cuff or in response to a crisis I was having, have stayed with me. On many days and in many situations, I have found myself remembering them or repeating them to others. I read somewhere when I first started taking classes for my certification that teachers were the most generous people. They were willing and happy to share experience and wisdom they had collected along the way. I found this to be so when I met my first master teacher. Mrs. Gillian (rhymes with chillin’ or villain depending on how you behaved in her class) had 30 plus years of public school teaching to her credit and was currently teaching struggling writers at a local university where I was working as a writing tutor. When I decided to finally take the plunge into teaching, she appeared like a guiding angel with all the advice a burgeoning teacher could want or need. I had thousands of questions and “what if” scenarios for her to address. She never seem to tire of my inquiries and often stayed awhile after her classes to help me with assignments and projects. One of the things I was most nervous about was actually being in front of a room full of students. I’m not a bashful person, but thinking of all eyes on me really freaked me out. Would I buckle under the pressure? How would they react to me as a teacher and a person? Would they be compliant? Would they boo me off the stage, throw spit wads at me, or ignore me completely? Her advice was simple: “Walk in like you own the place.” She was simply telling me to put my shoulders back and my chin up, but the words she used were so much more commanding. She told me I should act like I know what I’m doing, and if I’m convincing enough, the students will believe it and buy into it. A few days before school started, “walk in like you own the place” became my mantra. I practiced how I would walk into the room, what I would say, and how I would say it. The first few weeks were difficult, but that technique helped immensely. My knees didn’t buckle. I kept my shoulders back and my chin up. I could have been nominated for an Oscar. At the end of the year, one of the students asked me how long I had been teaching. When I told her just a little over a year, she didn’t believe me. Perhaps my next career will be acting. Similar to the famous athletic shoe slogan, “just teach it” means what it says. Take the bull by the horns, get on with it, jump in with both feet. I had to throw out timidity and pull up my big girl pants and teach. Again, I was lucky enough to meet up with a veteran teacher with years and years of experience. Mrs. Williams took me on as a student teacher, and while we sat in her immaculately clean portable classroom with rugs on the floor, curtains on the windows, and encouraging quotes stenciled around the top of the room discussing what I would be teaching during the next six weeks, I hinted at lesson plans she might have in mind. She took mercy on me and offered her plans for the week ahead and the materials that went with them. While I looked it over and asked question after question, she simply stated, “Just teach it. Get up there and teach it.” So I did. I swear I can still hear my steps to the front of that portable echoing off those clean, white-panelled walls. The kids were staring, waiting for me to speak. Mrs. Williams watching, but trying to look busy and unconcerned. The first part of the lesson was a rubric, so I handed it out and started going over it. Something happened. Something beautiful. I knew I was in the right place at the right time doing what I had always wanted to do. Magic. I folded the rubric in two and advised the students to only concern themselves with the 3s and 4s on the rubric because who would ever want anything less than an excellent mark. The students folded their rubric and relaxed a little, Mrs. Williams did concern herself with other things, and I just taught the lesson unafraid and with joy. Mrs. Dow, master teacher and butterfly enthusiast, had a penchant for snazzy sneakers and velour track suits, had flawless classroom management and graded papers faster than any teacher I had ever observed before or since. I often think of her paper grading prowess when I am slogging through stack after stack of essays exhibiting deplorable writing skills and sloppy handwriting. How did she do it? At first glance her room seemed a bit messy and disorganized, but I quickly found out it was only an illusion. She was über organized and knew exactly where everything lived and belonged. Mrs. Dow had been my son’s ninth grade English teacher and the assignments he had been given in her class were both challenging and engaging. My son complained about how difficult the work was, so I knew she had to be an excellent teacher. I wanted to meet her. I wanted to student teach with her, so I went to the school and asked her if she would consider having a student teacher lurking around. She agreed. By the end of the first day, I was mesmerized. Everything in her class ran smoothly. Students complied with requests, completed assignments and turned them in, students listened to instructions and went to work. What magical spells had she cast upon these children? A couple of weeks into my stint with Mrs. Dow, I had given back papers that I had graded. A student approached me after class and said she hadn’t received her paper back, but she was sure she had turned it in. I assured her I’d have a look on my desk to see if her paper had accidentally been shuffled into another stack. At planning, I looked everywhere for the paper and did not find it. I asked Mrs. Dow what she did when she lost a paper. Our conversation went something like this: Me: I think I lost so-n-so’s paper. It wasn’t in my stack when I returned the graded papers last period. What do you do when you lose a paper? Mrs. Dow: (brows raised, chuckling) Don’t ever let them smell blood in the water. Me: (growing fearful, beginning to sweat) What do you mean? Mrs. Dow went on to admonish me about what I should and should not ever say to a student and one of those things is “I lost your paper.” She told me that most of the time the paper is still in the student’s binder and they would eventually find it. Did the student find her paper? Yes, she did. Have I found in the short time I’ve been teaching that more times than not the paper is in the binder or the locker or the backpack or perishing in the no name basket? Yes, I have. On the surface, this advice seems to tell me I have to protect or defend myself against student treachery. In a way, it is, but more than that, it tells me I have to stay organized. I have to be careful with the trust the students have in me and do my darndest to do right by them. The advice tells me to stay on my toes and do what is required of me to the best of my ability. These tidbits of advice are a little zany, I admit, but I’ve applied it all and it’s worked for me. I plan to always remember the words of the masters. WVCTE is wondering do you have words of wisdom, no matter how crazy, that have carried you through the school year? Encourage us by leaving us a comment, Tweeting us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connecting with us on Facebook!
0 Comments
by Dr. Louise McDonald I teach middle school, which means I teach some students who are ready for college and others whose reading got stuck in fourth or fifth grade and who need a good reason to move forward. “Tricks and tips” then, from middle school teachers, have to be taken with a grain of salt—they work some of the time with some of the students. Anticipating what will work without experimenting is an inexact science. Discussions of Common Core have often focused on non-fiction texts, but literary source material is also excellent for teaching many of the skills outlined in the core. Poetry for middle school I taught at a university for many years and used to have a great time teaching poetry, but when I reached middle school I hesitated to do more with poetry than basically treating it like any other complex text to decode. One of the easiest ways for the students to access poetry is through lyrics. They know lyrics, learn lyrics, and value them already. I really like Paul Gallipeau’s lesson as an introduction to rap as poetry. It can be found here: http://www.paulcarl.com/teaching-poetry-through-rap/ . He brings literary language to rap music as tools that can then be carried on to use with more canonical work. His lesson plan can be downloaded from the site above, but before you do, pause in the middle of Paul’s blog or watch below Alkala’s TED talk on rap and Shakespeare; which connects Shakespeare, which students often read as inaccessible, to hip hop, in convincing and joyful ways. Once you convince students to read poetry as well as listen to it, they are ready to take some poems in as friends. I cast about for methods for putting together a whole essay using the literary language, until I found this video from Isabella Wallace somewhere in Australia. The kids have a great time with Ms. Wallace’s accent and her wayward hairdo and they don’t seem to worry too much that her target audience is older than middle school. They are very intimidated by poetry and like a tangible technique. I have them bring in lyrics from their favorite songs to practice the method before we go on to literary canon. Performance is another great way to approach poetry in middle school. I have the students pick among poems that I select in a variety of levels and perform for the class. It is useful to learn some poetry yourself to perform, and there are great poetry slams on youtube. One of my favorite performances is by the Canadian poet Shane Koyczan. It inspired a number of students to perform this poem themselves! This is even more remarkable when you see the poem: it has more than 100 lines! Once the students have analyzed poetry and performed it, I ask them to write some. Of course, they are happier and more successful if they take another work as a model. Maya Angelou has a number of poems that make great models and I guide their writing by asking them to write poems about tangible things at first. The first poem I assign is about someone who is important to them, the second about something they like to do, and the third about the kind of person they want to be. Strangely, these were their favorite assignments of the whole year, when the time came to evaluate at the end. They liked finding out that they “had something to say.” One of the most important aspects of converting skeptical middle school students to poetry is to bring a lot of enthusiasm. They may laugh at your verve, but it gives them permission to feel the electricity of a good poem themselves. If you feel the need for some inspiration, try the Academy of American Poets selection: https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/anthology/popular-poems-teach Reading poetry is different than reading prose and I find students are not confident, so it is an unlikely equalizer—which all by itself, is valuable in not only a middle school classroom, but any classroom! WVCTE is wondering... How do you approach poetry with your students? What poems work? What activities make poetry click? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! Louise received a BA in political Science and International Relation from Carleton College and her PhD in Enlish/Composition, Rhetoric and Literacy. She taught at various universities until 2009, when she started teaching ELA at a middle school in Jefferson County. She finds middle school to be the perfect laboratory for learning about literacy and teaches some stuff there too! Louise serves as Secretary and as a member of the Executive Committee of WVCTE. By Dr. Louise McDonald I teach middle school, and like all of us, confront classrooms with students who read (per the STAR test) as well as college students, and others that test at the third grade level. Circumventing the issue of test validity, many of us who teach at this level find that reading is a barrier to the types of lessons on literary analysis and source citation that the curriculum requires. When I started teaching middle school, I came from twenty years of teaching at the university level. I was surprised to hear students tell me that they had learned to read in third grade, didn’t need to do it now, and to stop treating them like babies. I was surprised when they insisted that they had read a passage, but couldn’t tell me what had happened. Were they not paying attention? Couldn’t they read at all? Were they uncooperative? Did they not understand the vocabulary? My internal conversation, I soon found, echoed a conversation that university professors of freshman students have every year. “The papers from 101 are abysmal!” they say to each other “What are they teaching in high school? How come they can’t [fill in the blank]?” Do students really become less prepared every year? Or look younger? Recent research has found that as we get farther away from learning those skills ourselves (dare I say, older?), we forget our own ignorance—we even forget how much last year’s class had to learn before they got as smart as they were when we released them at the end of the year. I don’t remember learning to read at all—certainly not the early levels. Reading was a joy and passion before I knew it. How can I understand what my struggling students feel? Let me explain. Did you take high school Spanish? Try reading this Noble Prize-winning poem by Pablo Neruda. Really read it. Don’t just look at it and stop when you find it is in Spanish and you “don’t read” Spanish: Juventud Un perfume como una ácida espada de ciruelas en un camino, los besos del azúcar en los dientes, las gotas vitales resbalando en los dedos, la dulce pulpa erótica, las eras, los pajares, los incitantes sitios secretos de las casas anchas, los colchones dormidos en el pasado, el agrio valle verde mirado desde arriba, desde el vidrio escondido: toda la adolescencia mojándose y ardiendo como una lámpara derribada en la lluvia. "Juventud" from Canto General, 1950 Published in Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda Edited and translated by Ben Belitt Copyright © Fundación Pablo Neruda, 2009 If, like me, you are not fluent in Spanish, you can make out some of the nouns. Certainly there are cognates and words that we have picked up in English, so “camino” and “perfume” and “erotica” stand out. “Juventude” looks a bit like “juvenile.” You can identify the sequence of clauses. But would you be able to “analyze”? When you read the above carefully, how does it make you feel? Powerful and confident? Like I am silly for asking something like this? Are you ready to go on to the next blog post because this one isn’t any fun? Try the translation: Youth Acid and sword blade: the fragrance of plum in the pathways: tooth's sweetmeat of kisses, power and spilth on the fingers, the yielding erotic of pulps, hayricks and threshing floors, clandestine recesses that tempt through the vastness of houses; bolsters asleep in the past, the bitter green valley, seen from above, from the glasses' concealment; and drenching and flaring by turns, adolescence like a lamp overturned in the rain. "Youth" from General Song, 1950 Published in Selected Poems of Pablo Neruda Edited and translated by Ben Belitt Copyright © Fundación Pablo Neruda, 2009 The literary analysis writer in me gets pretty charged about this poem—wow! Doesn’t it speak to the universal experience of middle school? Look at the great images and the repetition of ideas of discovery and secrecy! OK, so maybe the example is extreme. I don’t read Spanish easily, and Neruda is not “easy” Spanish. But my point is that reading when you do not understand is not fun and the temptation to quit is undeniable. What about English? What about this first paragraph of Hamilton’s Federalist Papers:
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton and John Jay and James Madison
Posting Date: December 12, 2011 [EBook #18] Release Date: August, 1991 Last Updated: July 10, 2004 Not fair! you say. This is a blog post to be read on a summer’s afternoon, not a puzzle to be untangled under a fluorescent glare in class. Reading slowly and carefully, paraphrasing in your head as the sentences get longer and longer and the clauses mount – the inward toss of the head as to the futility of soldiering on… this is what some of our students feel when you give them Rick Riordan or J.K. Rowling. It feels like work; like digging a ditch when the blisters start popping. So how to reach them, when they say they “don’t read” and everything you do suggests this to be true? Yeah, that’s the trick. Here are some thoughts: 1. Give them sounds rather than text. OK, you say, but idle hands make mischief. I have lots of luck asking them to illustrate a scene from a book as it is read—either by them or by me—or by Jim Dale. Even if they just “doodle” their concentration improves. 2. Give them choices. Have students read one of, say, four books that are available. Have the students schedule their group’s reading over a certain number of weeks. I find students are less anxious when the bulk of graded work is independent, but make the groups responsible for some kind of responses/presentations together. Reading with friends and not just assigned groups has some difficulties for the teacher, but friendship compensates for the work and gives them something to discuss. 3. Read together. Make time for independent silent reading. And then talk about what you are each reading. Model it by reading a great YA book yourself. I like making a big circle and talking about books and characters periodically. Get excited! 4. Write stories. Yes, I know, standards in the eighth grade do not include writing stories, but students are so out of touch with the creative process that digging into a character they have invented themselves can really inspire them. If you hit a wall with this, sometimes writing fan fiction is a good way to differentiate. It is a great way to teach elements of narrative and work on transitions and sequencing. What makes you want to read a passage like the one from the Federalist Papers above? Well, being interested in history is a help, but if you aren’t? Make a game. For example, have three students paraphrase a difficult passage with “two truths and a lie.” Then have the students individually or in groups choose which one is the lie. The possibilities are endless and teachers do them all the time. Sometimes they “take,” and sometimes not. Often, we are swimming upstream in a torrent of negative internal discourse. I think the “take home” here is that reading can be difficult and therefore vaguely distasteful—sometimes not so “vaguely.” One of the most important gifts we can give our reluctant readers is the experience and then the memory of finding something joyful in reading. WVCTE is wondering...How do you engage reluctant readers? What texts and strategies are reliably effective? Leave us a comment, Tweet us your thoughts @WVCTE, or connect with us on Facebook! Sources Kelly Gallagher and Cris Tovani. Louise received a BA in political Science and International Relation from Carleton College and her PhD in Enlish/Composition, Rhetoric and Literacy. She taught at various universities until 2009, when she started teaching ELA at a middle school in Jefferson County. She finds middle school to be the perfect laboratory for learning about literacy and teaches some stuff there too! Louise serves as Secretary and as a member of the Executive Committee of WVCTE. |
AuthorsMeet our contributing writers here! Archives
August 2017
Categories
All
|