Demitasse, anyone?

I'll have a skinny decaf peppermint mocha, please.

The first few sips of a new approach to teaching are always enticing to me; I love the sweet promise of a new strategy that will satisfy my needs and tempt my students' taste buds. 

Strategies for building on-level literacy skills are my new cuppa.  My challenge now is getting the mix just right as I attempt to recreate it in my own "coffeemaker" classroom.

For the past few years, I have felt great about the strategies I am using to help my high schoolers comprehend and analyze fiction.  But Probst and Beers' new book Reading Nonfiction is making me rethink my semester two syllabus. 

Isn't that always a concern during winter break, when all the standards that we haven't yet taught seem to leer at us from their place on the lengthy list as we decide what MUST be covered before the next high stakes test?

Even though I am comfortable abridging Romeo and Juliet to cover only its most salient and intriguing scenes for my non-readers, I am still struggling with the specifics of my new syllabus.  Hearing echoes of "less is more," I feel a pang of guilt in planning to use only a handful of short stories this semester, supplemented with a few poems and a piece of bi-weekly nonfiction to analyze carefully and for different purposes.  

Why so few?  

I have to find time for independent reading for these students who are not independent readers and who would rather do just about anything except read.  

They must have on-level reading skills to pass their graduation exam next year, so my work this year is critical.  So where am I going to find the time for all this in-class and independent reading?

And grammar review?  

And writing argument and narrative?

Something's gotta give.

Times have certainly changed from when I began teaching almost two decades ago.  In those days, there were no academic standards; we chose what we taught from the textbooks we were given or the beat-up sets of trade books left in our classrooms from the previous teachers.  Some teachers paced themselves to just "get through the book." I could never manage that.  Either way, it didn't seem to matter so much that our students were prepared to pass a particular test.  Students just needed to be able to think, to read, and to write an argument while appreciating good literature.  If they could do that, they could pass a test.

Today, they still need to be able to accomplish those goals.  

But now, they ... and I.. are visibly accountable for seeing that it happens.  

That means I have to be a better barista than I was before.  I have to get the mix just right, taking advantage of each ingredient and using it to highlight its best features for the tastes of my customers.  That means integrating metacognition, specific reading skills that will help students grow, data for tracking, and differentiation to meet the needs of my diverse population. 

Even so, sometimes today with our high stakes pressures, literacy standards, and curriculum maps, we teachers still have to go with our gut as we mix our unique concoctions.  

My gut says that the venti cup can be too much.  

Less IS more, if the mix is right.

And so my students will have a demitasse, thank you very much, but end up with so much more lasting flavor.   

Keeping it fresh

The rapid pace of societal change, Dungeons and Dragons, primary sources, and the notion that aliens could have placed a nonferrous metal tracking devices in the body of an unsuspecting middle-aged woman.  It’s been a summer filled with teaching inspiration, despite my being out of commission for a few weeks with a knee replacement.

I am pondering how best to use this inspiration to motivate my less-than-enthusiastic, new freshmen.  Here’s what I am thinking as August 3 draws nearer:

Elements of video gaming-design, persistence, teamwork,  and mastering levels by simply reiterating their avatars’ adventures with a new life and new knowledge to be more successful- will have a place in my Writing Workshop this year.   I plan to use the unpredictability and fantasy elements of my sons’ vintage D and D books to create writing circles who will craft fantasy narratives from their avatars’ points of view.  Who says there is no time for PBL?  I’d rather have writers who are engaged and learning than robots that just practice test skills.

Learning how Millennials think and behave has caused me to refine some classroom practices to engage more students.   Millennials like to work in groups.  So I’ll be looking for more ways to crowd-source information and report and archive it in addition to using charts, posters, and digital discussions, on Today’s Meet or Canvas.

One way I am appealing to my Millennials’ visual needs is to integrate more images and videos.  Integrating primary sources provides inspiration that they will immediately connect with and be able to write about.  It also supports inference and argument.  The Library of Congress has excellent teacher resources on its website and regional workshops to help educators use them purposefully.  I will be presenting a session on writing narrative from primary sources in Bloomington this week for Indiana Writing Project.

Carving out time for students to think about their lives and reflect on their activities and interactions is another way to engage students.  I need to be sure I am allowing my kids time to think… to process.  After the surgeon removed the mysterious piece of metal that had somehow been lodged in my leg for the past ten years, I needed think time to ponder the possibilities.  And there were many!  Excellent fodder for creative writing.

Keeping it fresh.  Using my surroundings to inspire me for the coming year and new crop of students.  That’s what makes summertime so vital for teachers…  and for students.