Let's swing, baby!

Today I was surfing Pinterest for some graphics on the process of writing.  

All I found were lists.

Don’t get me wrong, the lists had appropriate components, and some were lovely. But they were lists, and the lists included each element in its proper place and in a specific order.

Fifteen years ago when I was just learning to use computers and finishing my master’s work, a class assignment required me to create a visual that would represent some aspect of writing.   After spending an intense five weeks in class, it seemed to me that computers had changed the linear way I was used to writing.  I realized that when I composed on a computer, I no longer brainstormed and then drafted and then revised and then proofread and then published. Instead, I swung back and forth between all the “steps” in the process as I rethought and rephrased, edited and proofread, sometimes multiple times and in alternating ways. With the freedom of word processing, I could copy and paste, delete and replace as I wrote. I didn’t let the limitations of having to type another draft dissuade me from improving.  Neither did anyone else.

That notion of swinging got me thinking about my assignment.

With my very limited computer graphics skills, I created several lines and dragged them around to draw a stick figure on a swing.  Underneath the person in scattered text boxes were the former steps in process writing. It was pretty crude, but it was profound.   This simple graphic illustrated how “process writing” really didn’t even exist in the computer age. Instead, writers use a kind of fluid writing that swings back and forth between those traditional elements before the final product is complete.

Today, a common gripe I hear among teachers is that their students hate to revise.  But maybe if we acknowledged that as writers today we revise as we draft, they might have less distaste for it. 

As evidence of “drafting,” maybe students should explain their processes in teacher/student conferences, instead of having to submit artificial drafts to prove that they have invested thought and time in revising.  They just might emerge with better work... and a better attitude about revision and the true nature of writing. 

How about modeling that fluid writing process for your students?  Show them how you compose, rethink your phrasing or content, go back to edit or proofread, and then continue composing.

Then ditch the “Process Writing” charts and use your own metaphor that shows that writing is a journey, a winding path that sometimes switches back on itself, or a pendulum on a clock that swings as it ticks off its progress.  

Or challenge your students to invent their own metaphor for fluid writing.  

Whatever we do, let’s finally move past writing as a linear model.   

Let’s swing, baby!

Let's share the blessings

I've been pretty blessed as a teacher.

Almost every single time I have asked to attend a workshop or conference, I have been granted professional leave time from the classroom.  At my new school last year, I attended the IAGC conference for high ability education, as well as NWP's annual meeting and NCTE's national convention... in Vegas, no less.  I met some fascinating people, helped greet attendees, gave a presentation about writing camps, and soaked up new ideas that sparked my creative energies.

I came back with a different eye for engaging my students. I started thinking about video games as narrative.   That was an enormous leap for this Pong player but also a blessing.  Because I get bored teaching in the same old way.  And I have to believe that my students get bored learning in the same old way, too.

Many teachers aren't as lucky. They are stuck in their classrooms teaching the same old material year after year, without getting a chance to shake it up and learn something new-  such a mistake by administrators who are tight fisted.  The best educational ideas I have ever had were ignited by reading a professional book or attending a conference.

So with the encouragement of new and old friends and colleagues, over the course of the school year I'm going to share more of my work from the past fifteen years.  My files are bursting with ideas I've tweaked to teach seventh through twelfth grade language arts.   

I will be sharing some of them through my blog and a wonderful Internet resource called Teachers Pay Teachers. Some materials will be free; others will be for sale.  I invite you to browse. See what other teachers are doing.  See how you might save time by using someone else's great plans or ideas.  Maybe you have some ideas to share, too.

Here's a sample of what I've been working on this week.    The Best Reading Strategy I Ever Used- FREE

Let's get posting!

Here's to the almighty stretch!

These past two mornings, I practically hobbled to the bathroom.  Then I went straight back to bed for an extra thirty minutes of television.   I channel surfed, hoping to find something so engaging that I might be able to justify a full hour of “inspiration” before I started thinking about my to-do list.

Actually, I’ve been pretty sore this entire last week or so. My lower back aches, the back of my legs ache, my neck and shoulders ache.   Probably because school starts in two weeks and I’m pushing to do everything that didn’t get done around the house during the school year.  We’ve been moving furniture, redecorating, and painting.  And as a result, well... let’s just say that I’ve been getting re-acquainted with muscles I haven’t visited for a while.

This morning, while lying there, I could feel my lower back throbbing.  I instinctively pulled my knees to my chest, right there in bed.  It felt wonderful!   I could feel my spine lengthening and the achiness leaving.  So while catching up on the overnight news, I stretched my legs, my lower back, my arms.  And you know what?  After only twenty minutes, I was actually eager to get up, and when I did, my aches were nearly gone.

Since then, I’ve been thinking about those aches and writing and about how some of my students struggle to begin writing, looking for "inspiration" or just procrastinating, the same as I did. 

I’ve also been thinking about how to integrate more writing into my curriculum, especially writing that I don’t have to grade.  Heaven knows I don’t need to bring home more papers to mark.  So does Kelly Gallagher, who spoke at an Indiana Writing Project event in June and mentioned having students write four times more than teachers grade in order to make them more proficient.  I’ve set that as a goal for myself and my students.

So… what if I changed my bland “Writing Warm Up” at the beginning of class to our “Writing Stretch?” 

Effectiveness is often a result of careful marketing.  Maybe I’ll create an extended metaphor with my students that goes something like this: 

So, class, over the summer I’ve been feeling the effects of getting older. My muscles and joints don’t always work the way they are supposed to, and I’ve been getting lazier and lazier because of the pain, especially in the mornings.   Unfortunately, being lazy doesn’t help me get much accomplished.  It ends up causing me to take MORE time to accomplish my goals.  But what I’ve discovered is that stretching in the morning actually helps me move more easily.  It ensures that my joints work the way they are intended.  It gets me ready for the tasks at hand, and it makes me more efficient and more productive.  And best of all, I can do it at home, without anyone around.

Sometimes our school lives are so busy that we have trouble flexing our writing muscles.   A daily writing  stretch will do the same thing for us that my morning stretch does for me.  It will ensure that our minds and our fingers work more easily, the way they can and the way they should.  It will make our writing more efficient because we have already begun getting ideas on paper, and more productive because when an actual writing task is presented, we will already have ideas to start from.   And best of all, no one needs to see what we have written in our writer’s notebooks because what we do benefits us.  It is not a performance or a final draft.

So, here’s to the many benefits of a good long stretch!   May we enjoy it and reap its benefits in all its forms!

What's old is new again

July 9, 2013

She didn’t think he was all that special, back in Fairmount, Indiana, in the 1940’s.  Pauline Miller wasn’t impressed with James Dean - or Jimmy, as she remembers him.  But perhaps that is because he was younger than she was.  No, going to school with a future heartthrob isn’t what she remembers most about her school days.  Instead, it is grade school.

You see, my mother-in-law actually attended a one-room schoolhouse until she was old enough to catch the bus on State Road 9 to Fairmount High School. Last week, she snared me with her net of reminiscences. 

Every day, Pauline explained, the teacher  in her one-room schoolhouse gathered the children from one grade, all two or three of them, and taught them their lessons.  The other students quietly worked on their assignments and waited their turn for lessons with the teacher.

They all knew the rules.  For example, gaining permission to go to the outhouse involved holding up one finger or two, perhaps so the teacher might predict how long a student would be away from her desk.  Talking to others was not allowed.

There was rarely any disruption.  Pauline remembered only once when all the students had their hands smacked with a ruler for some infraction.

Listening to Pauline’s stories, I marveled at the skill it took to work with every student in grades 1 through 8, in several subjects, all day long, and also keep control of the students.  Could I have done that exhausting work?

Then it hit me:  Good teachers today really are like the teachers in those long abandoned one-room schoolhouses.   Excellent educators today are meeting the needs of a range of students, even those in the same class.  They are differentiating for readiness.  Or ability. Or interest.  And often all in one class period with thirty students, before doing it all again with another thirty.  And then another thirty. And so on, all day long.  Just as their predecessors did years ago.

Thankfully, today’s teachers have resources and technology to ease the burden. 

One that I am eager to use is a free website called Forallrubrics.  Using this site, teachers can create rubrics to evaluate student performance, track a class’s accomplishment of standards, and even link scores to an electronic gradebook via a tablet or iphone.

I wonder what Pauline’s teacher would think of how far education has come… or not.

Summer dreams make me feel....

Last night I had the stress dream.

I stood at the front of an unfamiliar classroom, with dozens of students facing me.  Their sour faces condemned me from the moment they plopped into their seats.  They could see right through my sham. I had nothing.  Nothing to share, nothing to assign. 

All I could say was, “I thought they said school started on JULY 29, not JUNE 29.”  As if that mattered. In that moment.

I’ve started doing the hair thing, too.  In the middle of the night, I run my fingers through my hair.  They start at the base of my skull, then slowly follow my scalp to the crown of my head.  There they wiggle through sections of my hair, like some animated version of the 1970's electric hair detangler I used after shampooing my long hair in high school. 

After several passes, Jerry firmly grabs my hand and places it by my side, and on some level of consciousness, I stop because I know I have interrupted his precious sleep.

My ultimate stress scenario hasn't manifested in recent days, thank goodness.   

I am standing at my locker at Yorktown Middle School.  A sense of dread fills me, as I know that the bell will ring at any moment.  And there in the empty hall, I stand twirling the lock, first right, then left, then right.  I'm flipping through my mind for the right numbers and the correct sequence.  I feel the ridges in the black knob dig into my fingertips as I twirl faster.  An invisible clock ticks down the seconds.  I cannot be late.  I cannot be late.  The bell will ring any second. But the numbers just are not there. Panic fills my throat.

At other times, I enter the elevator to go to class in the ten-story tall Teachers College on the BSU campus, one of the few buildings at the time of my undergraduate days that had an elevator for students to use.  I step into the small pod, often with another unknown person.  As the doors close, I immediately sense something is not right.  On cue, the pod blasts straight up through the shaft and terrifyingly into the air above the building, a la Charlie Bucket’s adventure, but without the comfort of chocolate.  Or it lurches laterally, in a sci-fi movie effect that I knew is going to end in disaster.   

Sometimes, even though I have entered on the ground floor, the  elevator drops hundreds of feet in excruciating slow motion, and I know that there is no hope for my survival.

I guess it’s that time of summer again.

The time when, even though over the years I have faced countless students in English classes, bunches of terrified novice swimmers at summer camp, scads of teachers in professional development programs, and even flocks of church members from a couple of pulpits, I start to get panicky.

I begin to wonder, at least in my sleep, how can I get everything accomplished.  How can I have positive time for myself and my family and be prepared for new students and classes?  How can I make this list get smaller instead of longer?

Maybe the answers are in my dreams.