Inside School Turnarounds

Last night I finished the third book on school reform for my summer school course, Inside School Turnarounds: Urgent Hopes, Unfolding Stories by Laura Pappano. The author is a journalist who has a lot of experience writing about education and tells the stories of various schools focusing on school turnaround efforts mainly in a narrative manner.

Although Pappano discusses many schools and their efforts, the main focus of the book is on Hartford, Connecticut. She explores turnaround from various angles, such as regular public, as well as charter schools and talks about the complexity involved in turnaround. Among charter school efforts, she frequently references KIPP and Achievement First.

In Pappano's words, "School turnaround--this adrenaline-charged movement that we are presently in--is about rapid and dramatic improvement not just in test scores but also in culture, attitude, and student aspirations. It is marked not by orderly implementation but by altering a lot at once and being willing to step in and change--and change again. It is a new paradigm for education, one not about trusting the process but about seeking results, both measurable and immeasurable" (p. 3).

Throughout the book Pappano discusses that each school is unique and it is not as simple as simply transplanting one successful model to another school and expecting it to work without intentionally considering each unique context. She explains that reform is messy and rife with complications. In addition, she brought up the need to consider both theoretical school design and implementation.

The focal schools discussed are still deeply entrenched in their reform efforts - thus the "unfolding stories" aspect of the title. It is too soon to know for sure what the long term effect of current reform efforts will be. Through the book Pappano brought up many relevant and timely issues in education, considering different points of view. I appreciated that the quick read left me with a lot to ponder and think about with regards to our current educational context.

Drawing From Personal Experience to Think Aloud Approaching Texts

This semester I am taking my first statistics course. Though I have been nervous for the class for quite some time because it is so far out of my comfort zone, I felt fortunate to have a professor who lowered my affective filter on our first class this Tuesday. It also helped that my classmates also seemed to feel insecurities when it comes to statistics when compared to other classes in our program.

Gearing up to read and reading through my first readings for the class, I was thinking about how it is always beneficial to stretch ourselves as readers in order to put ourselves in the shoes of our students to then share how we approach texts with them. While before I had texts that were challenging, I think this is one of the first texts in a long time where I truly knew that no matter how many times I read it, I would not start to really understand it until I go to class next week. These will definitely be texts where I need scaffolding from my professor. Luckily, he mentioned to the class that we would feel this way at the start of the semester. We'll see if by the end of the semester I am able to be more independent following the gradual release of responsibility model or if the content is still too new to feel that sense of ease with the texts.

Last year I wrote about a writing to a prompt as a genre unit that I am doing again right now with my students. This year I am also going to do a short test reading genre study as well. It is still coming together in my mind exactly how I will map it out, but I know that I will focus on the importance of reader's/writer's purpose, making the connections between what we are highlighting for our writing to a prompt genre study and our test reading genre study. I will also be talking about how reader's adjust depending on the type of reading they will be doing.

While reading my statistics this week, I realized or had some thoughts reaffirmed that I can share with my students about difficult texts:

• It is important to think about level of familiarity with the content of a text before beginning in order to think about how to approach it. With my statistics readings, I know that I have very little background knowledge. That means that I will always need to read it (or at least ideally): when I am well rested, when there are no or very few distractions, and when I do not feel under pressure (such as a time crunch). I also need to go into it realizing that I will need to slow down, but at times, speed up when I realize that I am at sections that are still beyond my comprehension.
• Realistically with this text I was able to get some of the big ideas. Classmates who took the introductory statistics course said that even with high levels of confusion with the readings, it was still helpful to "prime the pump" for class instruction. Knowing that was the expectation, I was able to relax and clearly identify where I had some understanding and where I felt completely lost and knew that I would need to listen very closely to class discussions in order to fill in those gaps. 
• It was also essential to try to sift through the information to try to categorize the priority level of the information. I watched for key words that pointed toward what would be major take-away points. For example, it talked about the purpose of certain distributions. I know that one of the program goals for students is to at minimum be able to understand the statistics that we read in research, even if we are not going to conduct quantitative research. Thus, knowing the purpose of each distribution will be key in being a strong consumer of research, so when I saw those key words, I knew to slow down and grasp on to anything I could. 

I am glad that through statistics I will not only learn a whole new content area, but it will also provide me an opportunity to reflect on what I do as a reader, how I can piece together information as I navigate unfamiliar texts, and have to work hard to build background knowledge and then apply it to future readings. It is also valuable to share with students my own vulnerabilities as a reader and that it is more important to recognize confusion and seek strategies to patch up gaps in comprehension (either independently or with the assistance of someone else, depending on the situation), rather than being too proud to express confusion.

Waiting for Superman

Tomorrow I will be going to watch Waiting for Superman with my curriculum class. I am excited to see it because I had originally looked to see if it would be playing anywhere close, and it was not. I was glad to see that it was going to be playing after all. I would be curious to hear what others who have seen it think. I will post again after seeing it.

This is also the last week of the first quarter! I will probably be doing a post toward the end of the week/weekend reflecting on the year so far.

Researcher Reflexivity #3

The last couple of weeks have been exciting as I have been uncovering more and more what it means to be a qualitative researcher. I realized that coming into the class I still had the vision of the researcher always trying to be an outside observer, but with various class discussions I have come to realize that with qualitative research, the researcher is able to define their role. The concept of qualitative researchers trying to make sure their participants benefit from their studies has really opened my eyes to view the whole process differently.

This week I checked out a copy of Berta Pérez's Becoming Biliterate from the library - the book that made me realize a few years back that I was not ready to leave the classroom in quest of a doctoral degree yet, that I wanted to have the opportunity to teach in a dual immersion school. It was fascinating to reread about her process as a researcher and her methodology now that I have been studying about the topics and better understand those aspects. I started a document to record the ideas that I notice in different research studies. I also revisited a couple of articles that stood out to me and plan to reread Kim Potowski's Language and Identity in a Dual Immersion School sometime soon. I would have looked at it this weekend, but it was at the school.

Once again dissertation ideas are swirling around in my mind, and I am excited about the possibilities but still unsure about all the logistics, which is only natural since it is still early on in the process. I still catch myself wanting to do longer-term studies, so I will have to really make sure to put a limit on what I do for my dissertation. Yet, one of my professors talked about how her dissertation led into a longer study, as she continued to follow her participants. I have been considering how that might work for one of the topics that I have been thinking about the most lately.

For now one of my biggest questions is, out of all of the exciting areas to research, how do researchers decide on their topics? My multiple writer's notebook entries and Word documents with different ideas for research are a testament to the many different directions and angles that I could look at the topics that interest me. It will be a fun journey to see where my research leads me.

Researcher Reflexivity #2

This week I continued to think about the roles of researchers. The same questions that I was pondering last Sunday were some of the key discussion points brought up in class by others, and it was interesting to hear others' opinions, as well as our professors thoughts on the topic. One suggestion from my professor was for researchers to remember their purpose at the onset of the research. A potential scenario is that researchers often notice multiple trends, some negative, others positive. The researcher can decide to not pursue the negative aspects, especially if the negative aspects were not the initial purpose for the research. I loved this idea, and with each discussion I have a better sense of ethical issues.

Yet, I know that there is still so much to consider about these ethical research questions that come up, and our classroom discussion was not enough to answer every scenario. As I was doing the readings for this week, Shulman (1990) was questioning who her "clients" were when pondering where her loyalties should lie - whether it was the research participants or consumers of research.

Then at the end of Friday Night Lights, a book that I chose as one of our novel options, H.G. Bissinger also broached the subject of the controversy surrounding the way he represented the community of Odessa in relation to football in his book. He said, "When I first arrived in Odessa, I anticipated a book very much in the tradition of the film, Hoosiers, a portrait of the way in which high school sports can bring a community together. There were elements of that bond in Odessa, and they were reflected in the book. But along the way some other things happened--the most ugly racism I have ever encountered, utterly misplaced educational priorities, a town that wasn't bad or evil but had lost any ability to judge itself. It would have been a journalistic disgrace to ignore these elements" (pp. 353-354). It would not have been the same book if Bissinger only showed the glowing aspects of Odessa football. Instead he showed various angles.

Again and again, throughout my readings and reflections this week I have been going back to my professor's comment in class about the importance of keeping purpose in sharp focus. Based on the first weeks of class it is apparent the questions that have been at the forefront of my mind will not be easily answered. I will continue to pay attention to how researchers deal with this through course readings, class discussions, and interactions with researchers.

Bissinger, H.G. (1990). Friday night lights. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Shulman, J.H. (1990). Now you see them, now you don't: Anonymity versus visibility in case studies of teachers. Educational Researcher, 19(6), 11-15.

Researcher Reflexivity Introduction and Entry 1

Reflexivity Introduction:
For my qualitative research course we have an optional assignment of keeping a researcher reflexivity journal. I decided to start recording my emerging thoughts about myself as a researcher as blog posts. One of our first assignments was to reflect on who we are as researchers, and as far as formal research goes, I am a novice. My master's program focused on a literature review, rather than conducting research. In my undergraduate I did a few projects that incorporated research, but I had not had research courses, so they would not be considered up to standard. In my classroom, I constantly have an itch (or typically itches) that I am scratching. My blog has been an integral part in the last couple of years of teaching to record my thoughts and reflect. That is why I thought it would be appropriate to consider thinking about this new phase in my professional development here.

My summer research class focuses on the continuum of research methods. It was a great introduction, but within the first couple weeks of my class focusing solely on qualitative research, I realized that the summer course truly just scratched the surface. There is still so much to learn, and as with anything in education, I know that most of my in-depth understanding will come from practice. I am looking forward to an assignment that my two fall professors have collaborated on for our classes, where we meet with a superintendent for dinner on a Sunday evening and then visit the district's schools all day on Monday. We will have opportunities to observe and conduct interviews. Prior to that assignment we will conduct a practice interview with a university faculty member about their research. I already know who I am going to interview and have been having fun thinking of some questions.


Reflexivity Entry 1:
Right now I am most concerned with the topic of my research for these fall classes. Potential dissertation topics have also been flowing through my mind for quite some time as well. When I am reading different research examples I have learned to keep a pen close by in order to record my ideas. I started this back in the summer, and I have many writer's notebook entries about possibilities. I have discovered that it is easy to get me excited about potential areas to explore, yet I am still unsure of knowing when it is a "good" topic or not. The areas that interest me the most are language, literacy, technology, professional development for teachers, and teacher philosophies.

At our last class meeting, about two weeks ago (we had last week off since it was a holiday), our professor talked about how she likes to make sure that her participants benefit from the research that she conducts. I had never really thought about this before, thinking more about potential contributions to the field without really thinking about a direct impact on the participants. The reason why this had not occurred to me is because I always think about the researcher as trying to blend in and not interfere with what is happening in the context. However, I like the concept of participants benefiting, so I am paying attention to exactly how this happens.

With my readings for tomorrow's class, I was thinking about how this seems to mean that in order to benefit participants researchers must go in ready to learn from participants and highlight what is going well/the participants' expertise. I am really grappling with how it seems like in this scenario that it would be hard to point out deficiencies. Yet, research also needs to be honest. The researcher would need to be forthright about whatever observations he/she ends up having. It seems like this will be a delicate area that is personal to each researcher - trying to honor their participants, while also contributing to the field in a forthright manner. Ideally, the observations will point toward findings that portray the participant(s) in a glowing manner. That would be the easy part. On the other hand, it would be awkward if the practices observed point toward a lack of awareness or support in the area of research.

Since I will be reading like a writer as I plunge into this new genre, I will be paying attention to these two main areas that I have been wondering about - topic selection and researcher-participant relationships. In future posts I will continue to reflect on how these questions are clarified, as well as about some of the other components of qualitative research.

Etched in My Mind - Remembering September 11th

This year, more than any other year, the events of September 11th popped up in my life in so many different ways toward the end of August/early September. One of the assigned books for an Ed.D. class on Monday is Forever After: New York City Teachers on 9/11. I had started reading it, and then a couple of weekends ago my sister and I rented a movie to watch at my parents. She had already seen it and when we were deciding whether or not to get it, she said that it was good but that the ending caught her completely off guard. I won't mention the title because I can see what she meant about an unexpected ending that linked into the events of September 11th. We were both surprised that all the previews and talk about the movie had not let that link slip out. As if that was not enough, a copy of Megan McCafferty's Second Helpings that I had requested on interlibrary loan over a year ago magically arrived at the library. I started reading it without realizing that Jessica Darling would be grappling with the events of 9/11 during her senior year in high school.

I don't know that I had ever written in depth to reflect on my experiences of the September 11th attacks, but the day is etched in my mind. For my class there were different options to respond to Forever After, and one of them was a narrative of where I was that day, how it compared to the teachers in the book, and the implications of my experience and theirs on my teaching. I knew right when I read the assignment sheet that I would choose the narrative option. I started my narrative before beginning the book. Tomorrow I will go back and revise and add in the ideas related to the teachers in the book, as well as teaching implications.

I have often thought about proximity and how my view of September 11th was deeply impacted by being on exchange at the University of Rhode Island. I always sensed that had I experienced it from back in eastern Oregon that I never would have fully gotten it. Reading Forever After makes me realize that compared to the teachers in New York City sharing their stories, I still cannot fully fathom the impact. While writing my narrative, I realized that in some ways it is so clear in my mind, yet I know some of the details that I would like to include in my narrative are fuzzy. I wish I would have been journaling while on exchange, but like most of my college career, I didn't document my daily life.

Here is my narrative that is still a work in progress that still ends a bit abruptly:

            I sat in the computer lab checking my email in anticipation of any messages from home. It was still early on in my semester on exchange to the University of Rhode Island, and though I could hardly contain my excitement for the experience, it was also my first time living farther than a 15 mile radius from my parents – my whole family on the opposite side of the United States. It was too early for any instant messaging, they would all still be in bed, so my only hope was email. As I switched between homework assignments and Internet distractions while waiting for class to start, there was instantly an automatic buzz in the computer lab.

            I could tell that something major had happened, but I could not tell what, and I barely knew anybody at the whole university, let alone at that early of an hour in the lab. I picked up on bits and piece, “A plane hit one of the twin towers,” “Oh my gosh, now another plane hit the other tower!” My mind was trying to piece together the eerie feeling that had overcome the laboratory and to figure out what all this meant. Hitting one of the towers must have been a horrible, terrible accident, but how did two accidents of that scope just happen to occur that close together, I wondered.

            As I left for class, the same sense of panic and frenzy was overtaking the campus. When I got to class I still felt like an outsider, not getting what happened, but luckily, I finally felt comfortable asking someone. Not long after our professor came in. The level of concern in the whole room was high. People were wondering about family members and friends who worked in or near the trade center. It was not long before our professor asked us whether we wanted to stay or go, including that she could not imagine conducting a class with this big of an event on everybody’s minds. Nobody protested leaving class, and the university president’s directive to continue on with classes as normal had not yet been announced.

            I made my way back to my dorm, emotions rising to the surface. By then I knew that it was not an accident, that it was a terrorist attack – something that was unfathomable to me. I always felt so secure growing up in rural Oregon. I instantly called my dad at work. As he said hello I could feel tears coming to my eyes and my voice cracked as I said, “Dad, have you seen the news?” In his brief response of a yes, I could also hear his voice crack. The vision of my dad cracking down raised my level of emotions even more. Next I called my mom, who was still sleeping and had not heard anything. She was not fully awake and even more confused than I had been in the lab, first thinking I was saying that there were terrorists at my school.

            The next call was to one of my college friends who was also on the east coast, continuing on for a Master’s program. The only thing I remember about our conversation was me saying, “I wanted to make sure that you were okay since you are in New York,” and she replied, “Mandy, you’re closer to it then I am.” Even though I knew I was close, in the frenzy of the day I had not thought about just how close I was. Thoughts started flashing through my mind, wondering if I should just go back home. After all, my university would not even start fall trimester until the end of the month. I could go back home and slide back into my old life, back to the familiar. However, as if my sense of insecurity were not high enough, my friend’s comment drove home just how vulnerable I was at that moment. My first time trying to go out into the big world, and all of a sudden realizing that even if I wanted to go home I could not because all public transportations were quickly shutting down – a scenario I had never considered when I flew away from everything that was comfortable to me.

            It took much longer for the impact of the events to sink in with me than it appeared to with my New England counterparts. Later that semester when I went on a day trip to New York City with my college for the first time I was in awe by all the skyscrapers. Images of the New York skyline with the Twin Towers were all over in various shops and stores, towering way over every other building. I could not fathom how that was even possible since even the “ordinary” buildings were breathtaking.

            Throughout that semester at Rhode Island I could not help but think that I would have had a completely different understanding of the events had I experienced it back in Oregon. Seeing pictures of New York City and images of the Twin Towers never really registered just what the scale was like, and being in Oregon would have distanced me from the panic that I sensed from the reaction of those concerned about family members.

Checking In

(Our required textbooks, in addition to articles and research handbook chapters)

For the last five weeks my blogging activity has been close to non-existent as I was busy with an intensive five week summer session to take two of the core courses for my Ed.D. program. Though I was doing a lot of reflecting and thinking, I did not have time to post as I was trying to strike a balance between school and family, realizing that it was possible only if I cut out/reduced a lot of my other favorite activities, such as blogging and some of my reading for pleasure. It has been worth it though, as I love the benefits of being back in face to face classes having philosophical discussions with colleagues. One course focused on research perspectives, and it was a great introduction to the program to work toward establishing a critiquing lens when reviewing research studies/articles, as well as considering how others will view my own future research. The other course focused on critical pedagogy and the purpose of education. It was especially beneficial for reflecting on myself as an educator and refining my beliefs. 

Thursday I went to my last class and emailed off my last assignment. It was such a relief, but there was not any time to sit back and relax. The next morning I got up to go back to my official first day back to school. This year I am feeling more confident than ever before, the great feeling with being at the same position for multiple years. This year I will be focusing solely on reading and writing; however, I plan on collaborating so that some of our assignments can support the social studies content as well. 

A week from Monday I will also start my fall semester classes, Curriculum and Qualitative Research. They will be two back to back classes, so I will leave right when the students do and go right to bed when I get home. Luckily, I will have the whole week to complete assignments before the next class meeting. I already have my textbooks, and there are many that look like they will be really interesting. 

This week I will be trying to post some of the posts rolling around in my head. Some I will program as I have a chance, and others I will hopefully make time for. However, while I am teaching and in my Ed.D. program my posting will largely depend on how much time I have once the girls are in bed and homework/school preparation is complete. 

Latest Books

Lately I have not been posting as much. Right now I am at the start of week four of my five week summer session. It has been an exciting time for me as it is the start of my goal to continue my education. At the same time, it comes with a shifting of priorities. I wanted to make sure that I make time for my girls and husband, and reading professional development books for fun and blogging has been some of the areas where I have had to spend a significantly less amount of time than before.

However, I have had time to make some space for self-selected books that I should be posting about soon. Throughout the fall it will continue to be a balancing act, but I know that I will slowly move through my TBR pile of professional books. Today I was just on the Stenhouse blog and thrilled to see the side bar icon pop up with their latest upcoming releases. I always love seeing the newest books coming out, and it looks like there are a lot of great books in the lineup. The most anticipated book of the season for me is Ruth Ayres and Stacey Shubitz' Day by Day. No amount of doctoral assignments will be able to keep me from that book for long!

YA Lit Class Project

This weekend I went to the last meetings for my YA Lit class. It was a great class that I loved. I focused my project on books for boys and concepts from Teri Lesesne's Reading Ladders. Here is the Google Docs presentation.

Boothbay "Final" Reflections

I never had a chance to do a comprehensive, concluding thoughts about the Boothbay Literacy Retreat on my blog. Right now I will be logging off my computer soon so that I can gather what I need for summer school tomorrow and get to bed, so I know that I will not be able to do the retreat justice. The reason why the title says "Final" is because while this is my last official retreat post, I know that the ideas will be at the forefront of my mind for quite some time.

There is always a lot of ideas and thoughts to absorb and reflect upon in professional development opportunities like this, so I was thankful that I decided to earn college credits based on my learnings from the retreat as an independent study. It helped me to go back through my notes and synthesize my learning, reflecting on what I want to implement at the start of the year, as well as other ideas that I will continue to mull over.

All of the presenters complemented each other nicely, each bringing their unique assets. It was fun to see the personalities of authors whose books I had read and from whom I had learned so much.

The most immediate learnings from the retreat were I absolutely loved ideas that Robert Probst and Kylene Beers shared called Notice and Notes. While they were able to give us an overview, I am very excited to see their forthcoming project from Heinemann early next year. I could instantly see how it would fit perfectly into my reader's workshop, and I am also going to talk to the Reading Support TOSA at my school about it because we share some students in common. I will be posting more about this as I get started, and when the materials are released.

I also loved Story Bird, which I posted about recently. I will use it for sure in my classroom, but I also thought about how fun it would be to use with my girls (ages 4 and 7). They can choose pictures and I can write down their words to accompany their thoughts. This will be so much fun. It made me think about the potential for Story Bird in the younger grades as a center. I can't wait to see my students embedding their Story Bird stories into their own blogs, and I will probably embed my daughters into my personal blog to share with family. So many possibilities...

The retreat left me feeling energized as a writer. This summer I have been trying to utilize my writer's notebook more, and the retreat provided me with thoughts to jot down in my notebook. I have been reading Penny Kittle's Public Teaching every time I have a little bit of extra time here and there. It continues to inspire me.

Those were a few of the big ideas that struck me from the retreat. It was definitely worthwhile, and I wish that I was lucky enough to be able to go every year. However, it was also a financial sacrifice to go, so I know that won't be realistic. I think my husband and girls deserve a family vacation next, rather than me going somewhere on my own. Nonetheless, even if I only get to go once, it will impact me for many years to come. And if I do have an opportunity to go again? I will jump at the chance!

"Guy Books"

For the YA Lit class that I am taking, I decided to focus on "guy books" after that was the way one of my students referred to most of the books that he read this year from our classroom library. Last year when I would book talk a lot of the books that I bought to read and then passed on to the library, many of the boys would grumble that they were mainly girl books. This year I made more of a conscious effort to buy more books for the boys; I still have a lot of catching up to do though. So, while I have plenty of books that are more appealing to girls in my to read pile, I thought the class would be a great chance to buy more books for boys. There are not any required texts other than YA books, so it was a nice excuse to justify placing a couple of Amazon orders, thinking about how much I typically spend on textbooks for other college courses!

This week I read Tyrell and Mexican Whiteboy to see if they would be a good fit for my incoming 8th grade boys. However, because of the mature themes mentioned in Tyrell, my initial gut instinct is that it would be better for high school students. Mexican Whiteboy also has a lot of mature content, but I am leaning toward including it. You can see more thoughts about Tyrell here and about Mexican Whiteboy here. I am thinking that a lot of the books I chose will be tough calls on whether or not they are a good fit for a middle school vs. high school classroom library because a lot of the boys are drawn to books with real life problem/issues themes. 

The two required books for the course were The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and American Born Chinese. Then we each needed to choose seven more books, with a few stipulations. They are all supposed to be award winners or on recommended lists. At least one had to be a "problem" novel and one had to be historical fiction. 

Here are my seven books, aside from the two already mentioned:

Sleeping Freshmen Never Lie by David Lubar

Deadline by Chris Crutcher

Copper Sun by Sharon Draper

Inexcusable by Chris Lynch

Carter Finally Gets It by Brent Crawford

These are the other books that I bought on the same order with the boys in mind:

Crash Boom Love by Juan Felipe Herrera (The girls have been crazy about novels in verse this year, I want to get more novels in verse that will also appeal to boys)

Romiette and Julio by Sharon Draper

The First Part Last by Angela Johnson

Growing Up in Slavery: Stories of Young Slaves as Told By Themselves by Yuval Taylor (We are supposed to read a non-fiction piece on the same topic as our historical fiction pick.)

Fire from the Rock by Sharon Draper

Street Love by Walter Dean Myers

I also pulled a few other books from my TBR pile to make sure and read this summer. 

Idea Generation

"There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together to make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up." -Stephen King in On Writing

This was one of my favorite lines while reading On Writing in my recent writing course. Recently I made the realization that this concept works so well when considered as it relates to teaching as well. A perfect example came up while reflecting on one of the weekends of the class.

One of the genres we studied was poetry. Our professor led us in a cinquain writing with feathers. Part of the exploration to gather ideas was a partner game where each pair had a feather. On alternating turns, one person blew the feather and the other person tried to catch it in different ways. After discussing the tone of the cinquains and writing our own rough drafts we had some time in between sessions to think about the presentation of our cinquains and any final changes we wanted to make.

The day before the class session where we were going to have a Poetry Slam and present our cinquains to the class, at my school we had a staff development day that included teaching each other what some of us learned at ITSC, a recent technology conference. Some of my co-workers were going to share what they had learned about Photo Story. While we were traveling, they were bubbling over with excitement about what they learned at their session. Even though I was glad that they found something they knew would be relevant to their classrooms, I thought to myself that I probably would not incorporate it in mine since I was planning on focusing on other integrations, such as blogging and iTouches (once we receive them for our students). Nonetheless, I had fun learning to use the super easy program.

Fast forward one day, and as I was sitting in our class' Poetry Slam it hit me that it just might be amazing to have students do cinquains and then share them via Photo Story. Just as King had said, "two previously unrelated ideas [came] together to make something new under the sun" for me. I loved the results, and I will post more about the actual outcome tomorrow. 

As a funny coincidence, after I came up with my idea I emailed one of the 2/3 teachers who had presented Photo Story to us that I was excited to try out my first Photo Story project, but I did not tell her anything about what I was doing. At our next teacher's meeting she said that she was going to do something with poetry, and I said that I was too. However, we did not go into any details. After we both completed our projects I was looking at hers and noticed her class did cloud cinquains because they have been studying weather. I guess that just goes to show that the idea of "previously unrelated" all depends on the perspective of the individual. Nonetheless, it was fun to see how the idea worked for 2/3, as well as 6/7 grades. 

Year-Long Writing Curriculum "Handout"

Last summer I carefully planned out a year-long curriculum for my students. However, since this year was my first opportunity to integrate a year-long writer's workshop, I have been reflecting all year long on pieces that I have not been able to integrate as well as I would like to or realizing areas that I needed to learn more about in order to successfully integrate them. Some topics that I have studied have been: conferring and technology integration. In addition to continuing to explore technology, I will also be delving deeper into individual genre studies, better utilizing writer's notebooks, and social aspects of writing workshop.

Knowing that I wanted to re-visit my curriculum plan, I chose the year-long plan for my final project. Rather than pulling out my old map, I sat back and reflected on what is most important to me as a writing teacher. I choose to teach writing with a workshop approach because it fits my goal to not only move students toward meeting on state assessments but to become life-long writers. While my year-long curriculum will continue to change from time to time as I grow as a writing teacher, the following are core beliefs that will remain the same:

• Wide writing and reading across genres
• Writer’s notebooks to gather ideas and document everyday life
• Awareness and exploration of the writing traits
• Support in mechanics and editing
• Student reflection on self as writer and personal growth
• Opportunities to share writing

You can view the overview of my 6th-8th grade curriculum plan here. Even though this is as I will submit it, I still consider it a working document. Since creating it I have already considered ways that I would like to update it, such as incorporating multi-genre projects that I thought of after reading Penny Kittle's Write Beside Them. 

Many educators have shaped what I value in education. Some of the most influential in writing are:

Jeff Anderson (an alternative to Daily Oral Language to focus on good examples of sentences)

Nancie Atwell (workshop approach)

Donald Bear (and the rest of the Words Their Way team for word study)

Aimee Buckner (writer's notebook)

Troy Hicks (technology integration)

Penny Kittle (teachers as a mentor for process and workshop)

Mark Overmeyer (workshop and assessment)

(Note: This post is a requirement for my writing class. We each had to choose a final project and then create a handout for our classmates to share our learning. I decided to make a blog post for my "handout".)

Write Beside Them - Implications for my Classroom

Reading Write Beside Them came at a perfect time. All year long I reflect on my practices, but this time of year especially I think about what has been working well and what I will change for next year. This is even more true because of working in a school that is still growing. I started last year as the self-contained 6th grade teacher for my school, teaching all subjects in both English and Spanish. This year our school grew to have a 7th grade class and another teacher was hired, so I was able to be the social studies and language arts teacher for 6th and 7th grade. Next year the school will grow one final year, we will hire yet another teacher, and I will be able to teach 6th-8th grade language arts. (I am so excited!)

Last year in my first experience as a self-contained teacher, I was left a bit breathless. There was so much to plan and explore. This year I have relished in being able to focus in more on reading and writing, and I can't wait to be able to narrow in even more on these two content areas next year. With this focus; however, I want to get a firmer grasp on my 6th-8th grade scope and sequence. For the recent class I took on writing I chose to do a year-long writing curriculum as my final project. Though I only needed to do one grade level, I decided to do an overview of all three to see the big picture. In my introduction to the plan I explained that it will always be a work in progress because I will always be changing as I grow as a writing teacher. I had just finished my first draft before I read Kittle's book, and I will be making some revisions before I submit my plan to my professor based on areas that I considered while reading her book and reflections from the final weekend of my class. Many of the ideas that I have been wresting with all year came up in the book.

Here's some of the components that the book prompted me to reflect on:
 *The use of quick writes in the writer's notebook: I often use quick writes; however, she uses quick writes daily and in a different way than I do. Her thorough discussion of how she integrates them will improve my writer's workshop.
*Grading and Feedback: The way that I grade in writer's workshop has changed throughout the year as I have experimented with different ideas for writing assessment. I had an aha moment when I read her thoughts that she grades the final product, while emphasizing the process in her classroom. She gives frequent feedback and support during drafts, and provides students with mentor texts of process through her own writing. She also allows for opportunities to re-submit writing for an improved score. I am still thinking through exactly how I want to set up my grading for next year, but she has definitely played a big part in helping me discover my set-up.
*Multi-genre writing: I had completed two multi-genre projects during college and enjoyed the process of each one. Yet, for whatever reason I have never done multi-genre writing with my students. That is one of the revisions that I will be making to my year-long curriculum plan. I can't wait to see how much fun my students have and can already picture where particular students' strengths and individual favorite genres will lead to fulfilling and amazing final products.
*Individual Focus: While Kittle gave a clear sense of the progression through different units of study during her course, she also made it apparent that she recognizes each class is a different set of learners requiring different things to be successful.
*Reflection and Portfolios: So far I have not had my students do enough formal reflection on their writing process and on themselves as writers. For example, I have not had my students do formal writing portfolios yet. This is an area that came up both in my writing class and in Kittle's book. I will be able to implement this during the spring because of the ideas and support from my class and the book.

There was so much to learn from Kittle. My favorite professional development books are always the ones that help me reflect on what is working and what can be fine-tuned with my current practices. I look forward to reading more of her resources that come up under her name on the Heinemann website. I already have Adolescent Literacy, and I will have to go back and read her contribution.

On Writing

I chose Stephen King's On Writing for my book club choice for my writing class because I had already heard the book mentioned many times. Last night I just finished it in preparation for our last class meeting this weekend. I had not really known that much about Stephen King's life or how many books he had written.

In fourth grade, much to my mom's chagrin, I was horrified when I saw It at a friend's slumber party. That was enough Stephen King for me to last a very long time. When I was much other I did see some of his other movies, such as Cujo, Misery, and The Green Mile. Although I had some concept of the plots of these and some of his other novels, I had never actually read any of his books.

It was interesting to learn about King's life and his reflections on himself as a writer, as well as tips for aspiring writers. There were many points along the way where he had me roaring with laughter. In his section "On Writing" I noticed that many of his suggestions/thoughts so closely aligned to the promising practices mentioned by so many educators on writing. For example, he emphasizes the importance of writers reading, writing in a style that you have immersed yourself in as a reader, and the transaction that happens between a reader and the text.

I'm glad that I chose this. The last book club meeting time flew as we discussed his thoughts. I look forward to hearing everyone else's thoughts again. I do, however, hope to sometime read Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, one of the other choices, as it sounded equally amazing.

Best Practices in Writing Instruction

I just finished the last required chapter out of Best Practices in Writing Instruction for the writing instruction course I am taking right now. There were four chapters I do not have to read as an assignment, but I am planning on reading them because they all sound interesting and relate to areas that are pertinent to my current position.


Many of the ideas in the book corraborated ideas that I have read about previously in books that I have self-selected to improve as a writing teacher. However, the chapters often made me reconsider or refine a concept or to see how multiple ideas worked together. One example is that the course has made me think a lot about writing to learn. Previously I thought about writing instruction as more isolated. While I knew students did a lot of writing in other content areas, I never considered the writing to learn pieces as part of my actual writing class and writing grade. This concept came up in the book as well. 


Our instructor has had us participate in many writing to learn activities, including the one for this text, called VIPs (Very Important Points). I enjoyed finding my personal VIPs for the text as I read and to reflect on them. I realized that it is actually the way I reflect on most of the books that I blog about. Here are a couple of my favorite VIPs from the book:


*From Chapter 10 - Boscolo and Gelati (2007),  “The problem is not finding an interesting topic, but making writing interesting” (p. 208). This really stood out to me. They continued to discuss that while making sure students are interested and invested in their topic is important, helping them recognize that there is worth to writing on the topic is key to motivation. I have found that one of the main components that makes professional development reading ideas catch my attention is not that they are completely foreign ideas, but rather they help me make a new connection to something I have already thought about. It reminds me of King’s (2000) comment on writing, “good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn't to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up" (25). I had previously thought a lot about topic and motivation, but I loved how the authors made me think about making writing about a topic interesting, rather than “interesting topics”. This makes sense, as many of the resources I have read emphasize the importance of teachers who are passionate about writing and how their enthusiasm positively impacts their students’ growth as writers. In this case two previously unconnected ideas came together for me, and I will be reflecting on how I can make writing interesting for quite a while because of the connection.
(Note: The King book that I mentioned is On Writing, the book that I chose for the class' book club selection.)


*From Chapter 1 - Pressley, et al. (2007) state, “If there is one generalization about writing in our work, it is that in classrooms and schools with good writing, there is a lot of writing instruction from teachers who are passionate about it” (18). When I was in college I remember dreading my writing classes. I only took the discourse (a combination of literature and writing) track, instead of the literature track because it was recommended for future language arts teachers. However, now that I am actually teaching writing and reading about writing, the more I find myself reconnecting with the passionate writer that my mom says I was when I was very young. I am already committed to making sure that I have a balance of reading and writing in my classroom on a daily basis. The more I find ways to foster my love of writing, the more effective teacher I will be able to be. This is a concept that no matter how many years I teach it will always be useful and applicable.

Google Docs - transparency

I had heard a lot of positive comments about Google Docs, but I had never really had a chance to explore. This summer I had signed up for a session on the app at a summer institute, but then I got sick and was unable to attend. This semester while taking my writing class, I decided to explore a bit on my own. Just as I had hoped, it is going to be a great tool to make my writing process more transparent for my students.

Before it always felt superficial when I would try to write out a rough draft and then model revisions and a published copy. The problem was, as many resources explain, the writing process is not a lock-step sequence. When I am writing naturally, I am revising all the time, not just when I get to the end of my first draft.

The real excitement came when I had typed for a while on the first draft that I was working on in a Google Doc and decided to hit save in order to show changes later. However, I realized that I didn't have to stop at various points along the draft, but rather the application automatically tracks ever single revision. When I got to the end of my first draft I already had around 50 revisions tracked. There is an option to click on any two revision numbers and compare.

I was ecstatic. Now I can more accurately show my students what I do as a writer. That alone was enough to get me excited about Google Docs, but there is still so much more to the tool. The tech at our school put in a request for the education edition of Google Docs right after I asked him to, so next week I am expecting to have my students' accounts up and running. Then I will be able to explore a bit with the powers of utilizing Google Docs for student collaboration and peer revision.

Exciting News

I just shared the exciting news on my personal blog that I today I received my acceptance letter into a doctoral program at a local university. In January I started a literacy class in writing in hopes that I would be accepted to the program, knowing that they the class would count toward my degree because my emphasis area will be in literacy. The first day of class was a turning point, knowing it could be something much more significant than just one class.

While in the middle of my doctoral studies my other blogs may not have as frequent of postings, but I expect that this will be the blog where I will continue to update regularly as it has ended up being a place to reflect and share learning. I plan on focusing much of my studies on technology and literacy. Along those lines, I had already been planning on getting my students started with Google Applications this week, including Gmail, Google Docs, and Blogger. After my technology conference, I have even more excitement for the possibilities of having a class set of iTouches. I am not sure when we will get our iTouches though. In the meantime I will be exploring and getting familiar with mine that I mentioned I got (a special surprise from our director). Soon, I will be posting about why I am so excited. As a preview, it is once again going to revolutionize the way I track conferences.

Whirlwind Holiday Weekend

This last few days rather than basking in the idea of having an extra day off with a long holiday weekend, I have been going non-stop. Friday evening and Saturday I went to my once a month writing course. Early Sunday morning I caught a flight with five of my colleagues to attend a technology conference. What a weekend of discoveries!

Though draining, I got a lot out of my writing class. It has been great to see ways to improve my workshop approach and different pieces are clicking in place. It has provided an avenue for additional reflection and to analyze what is working, what needs improved, and where to focus my energy next.

On the technology side, my colleagues and I are all exhilerated with all of the possibilities and debriefing on the best way to spend our technology funds. The area that we are most excited about now is iTouch capabilities. We had originally been planning on iTouch labs as more of a long term goal; however, this weekend we are realizing that they can do what our planned short term technologies can do plus so much more. It is always so beneficial to figure out how to best utilize technology without having a plethora of different gadgets if there is one that is all-encompassing. The confrence is changing the way we view technology and what will be the best fit for our classrooms.

Later today I will be going to a Google presentation that I am also really looking forward to. Lately I have been experimenting with Google Docs, and I will be posting about why I love it later. This week my students will be setting up their Google accounts (Gmail, Blogger, etc.). I am excited to see what I will learn this afternoon that I haven't already discovered on my own.