Seniors, Citizens, and Being a Person: Teaching 12th Graders in a Writing Classroom

"It must be nice just teaching the good kids."

"Yes, it is."

And that's the exchange I've had for years. There's not really a response that logically follows after this exchange. It is nice teaching "good kids," however you define that. And I define it as kids who are open to learning, respect each other, and respect me. I've taught this dual credit Rhetoric class for 8 years, and before that I taught AP Literature and Composition for 4 years. So I've had the good kids for a long time. Before AP, I taught the "other" kids--and you know what? Those were good kids, too. Especially the seniors, though. 

Having taught exclusively seniors for 8 years--and seniors overall for 13 of my 15 years in the classroom--I enjoy the benefits of being with these kids. I taught freshmen during my first 3 years, and that is just different: they're still poking each other, often haven't decided on a routine bathing schedule, hold hands 3 across in the hallway, and rarely know how to look adults in the eye when holding a conversation outside of class.

Young Giraffe, wikimedia

Seniors are more like year-old giraffes: they are getting their legs under them, figuring things out, learning how to survive. I've had seniors talk to me about how they're quitting smoking, ask me what to say in a job interview when they're asked about their weaknesses, or want suggestions for a good restaurant to go to in Chicago. They're more like real people. Like Han Solo an hour after emerging from the carbonite, they're starting to see things like the rest of us do; they're appreciative; they're anxious to get involved in the next step; maybe they can understand what a Wookie is saying.

So with my seniors, a modest benefit is also that they get out of school before the rest of the students, and while I do look forward to a little time to myself that last week, I look forward to the last day of class with them as well. Most years, Hackney and I say goodbye to our seniors in ways that define who we are in the classroom--he does it with a David Foster Wallace speech,  

I do it with a song I rewrite every year where I gently poke fun at each student, a song that's rarely amusing to people outside of our class (I make a list of every kid so I don't forget anyone...again).   But the seniors get it. It's a fun way to recap the highs and lows and ridiculousness of the year. Before my song, I have them write a letter to themselves that they address (I have to teach this skill explicitly during the third Friday in May every year), and then I mail them in May of the following year. A former mentor teacher of mine Mrs. Brubaker taught me that, but she held them for 4 years. I don't have that kind of organizational capacity. I have them write my email address in the letter so they can give me updates when the get the letters. It's great to hear what they're up to, putting a face to the name and remembering what they wrote about in their essays, what we talked about in the hallways. The exception is the one year I had them send emails to themselves using Futureme.org. I heard an NPR story about it 

For 9 months of our lives, 5 hours a week, we've seen each other. It's not just that, though; as a writing teacher, we get to read their writing. (*Sidenote: I saw Ryan Adams on Austin City Limits recently, and in an interview he explained how once he was complaining to a friend about his busy schedule, and a friend said, "Don't say I have to do these things. Say I get to do them." That stuck with me.) Essentially we are learning who they are a little more with each essay.The first piece of writing we work on in Rhetoric is a narrative. Nothing prepares me for what I'm in for like a narrative essay every August: Edith had to translate and navigate her parents' home purchase with a banker from English to Spanish at age 10; Mike found out his dad was getting a divorce when he mindlessly opened the glovebox at a stoplight--while driving with his dad--and the papers spilled into his lap; Amber barely spoke in a class for months after a teacher told her an idea she had was dumb; Katie wanted to be an Olympic ice skater.

We learn a lot about these kids, these young adults, who are soon about to be a part of this adulthood experience with us--the other adults--in just a few short months. What do we need to tell them? What do they need to know? I feel a good kind of pressure being with 12th graders. For some seniors, the book they read with us in April is the last piece of classic fiction they'll ever read again, so what must we read? I feel a sense of urgency with their writing, like if I don't get them to understand commas this year, they'll echo Sammy's sentiments at the end of Updike's "A&P": ...my stomach kind of fell as I felt how hard the world was going to be to me hereafter. It feels like that when the commas go south. And the pressure isn't just what to read or what to teach them, but just helping them to "be a person," as my library friend has often said to me about what our role really is. Help them be a person.

These 17-18-year-old students are people, and they have stories, stories that don't need to be corrected all the time. Sometimes they just need to be told, and most times they just need to be heard. I enjoy reading them without thinking about making comments. Just reading. Or during some quiet writing time a kid will look up and ask something random, "Newman, did you have a roommate in college?" or "Do you think it's weird if I go alone to prom?" They are thinking of these things. And that's fine. They should be wondering about their college roommate, and they can't help but wonder what others think of them. That's part of being an adult that we never leave behind from our childhoods; or rather, that's part of childhood that we keep with us as adults.

My senior year, four friends and I decided we were going to canoe across the border from northern Minnesota into the Boundary Waters in Canada. We went to the "All-Canada Show" in Rosemont that winter of 1992 and picked an outfitter and the whole thing. I can't tell you how many Candian flags I drew in my notebook during the last 3 months of my senior year. That was on my mind. Whether or not I'd break up with my girlfriend before graduation was on my mind. Singing in my rock band Kindread (the spelling implied darkness and gloom) was on my mind. It's not always a senioritis thing. It's a "this is my life" thing. So I respect that about them when the get a little off track. We just have to help them figure out why getting back on track is important, too.

hairy-nose wombat

The two groups I have this year, 28 in one class and 34 in the other, are classes that I really enjoy. Their research paper topics never cease to amaze me. Hackney and I give them a pretty wide berth when it comes to topics, and what they come back with sometimes are ideas that I could never have imagined. The one requirement is a survey (thanks, Google Forms) or interview (phone/email/personal). This year, I'm learning about algorithms on dating sites; the relevance of music in the deaf community; why entry-level fast-food jobs should be seen as leadership opportunities; why the collaborative efforts of Australia and the US to save the koala, the platypus, and the hairy-nosed wombat are working and what implications that can have for other endangered species. Zack emailed some conservationists in Australia and they got back to him; it's the career he wants to pursue in college.  Each year, these seniors explore topics that I become a 10-minute expert in if I'm making small talk at a party or something* (exception: 10 years ago my student, Manveer, wrote about String Theory. I'm afraid that if someone's making small talk about that, I'll need to find someone who wants to talk about wombats, or hell, I probably shouldn't be at that party; however, to learn more about String Theory, watch this TED Talk).



So all that said, I guess this is where I'm at: there are "good kids" everywhere. Our job as teachers is to get them to learn something about being a person, about being a citizen, and listening to them and reading what they have to say and not giving soul-crushing feedback after they say it, or write it. We're all trying to figure this thing out. But seniors often have a little bit of the humility, if we look hard enough, that's needed to start to figure it out, and when they're asking us how to do it, we at least owe them that much: to just listen and appreciate what we get to do.

Rewind to 1989

“When students write for teachers, they are writing ‘uphill’ in the authority dimension: instead of having the normal language-using experience of trying to communicate ‘across’ to others in order to tell them what’s on their mind, they are having the experience of trying to communicate ‘up’ to someone whose only reason for reading is to judge the acceptability of what they wrote and how they wrote it.”—Peter Elbow

I came across this quote during the summer while rereading Jonan Donaldson's "The Maker Movement and the Rebirth of Constructionism."

I was drawn to the quote because I was experiencing the obligatory summer nostalgia for the classroom.  I like to dream big about what school could be. I know it sounds cheesy, but I even visualize how an ideal class period will go the upcoming term.

Elbow covers many of my current beliefs in the quote. Here's how it breaks down in my head:

• be explicit to students about pedagogy--blur the "authority dimension" as best as possible
• continue to have students write to authentic audiences and not just me--"communicate 'across' to others"
• begin to have students use the classroom as their learning environment--fight against students having "the experience of trying to communicate 'up' to someone whose only reason for reading is to judge the acceptability of what they wrote and how they wrote it"
• continue to place an emphasis on students developing digital literacies--it's 2014 now, so "communicating 'across'" often involves technology, or at least it involves the choice to use technology
• continue to stress the importance of considering the rhetorical situation in order to be successful in any communicative act--effectively "communicate 'across' to others in order to tell them what's on their mind"

Do This, and Other Advice, on Student Blogging

My Rhetoric students have 3 days left of high school. Not just my class. High school. They spent the year blogging, making roughly 10-12 posts per semester. Some students posted on their own--poems, pictures, random thoughts--and some students redesigned their blogs monthly. They often went from smaller fonts to larger ones, from black backgrounds to white ones, and from posts with one hyperlink to an explosion of images and sounds.

image courtesy of Traci Gardner, flickr

As they wrap up, I've asked them to add two final posts: the first will be a "DO THIS" assignment. They recommend things to their blog readers. A year from now, whether they're still posting or if they revisit their blog, they may really be embarrassed by their recommendations, but for now, this is how they feel. Our categories are as follows:

• Listen to this: (song/album/band)
• Read this: (book/magazine/food labels)
• Watch this: (tv show/movie/your mouth)
• Play this: (videogame/sport)
• Eat this: (food)
• Do this: (diet/overtip/whatever people should do)
• Click this: (a website that is funny/interesting and legal)
• Go here: (a place to visit)
• And always, always, remember this: (your best advice)

I'm letting them have total creative control over how this appears, because that's what I've learned from them about their blogs this year: they want a little structure and a lot of creative control. 

In their end-of-year presentations, we (Hackney and I) asked students to tell the story of their development as a writer, highlighting the blogs and the research paper at some point in that story. When they talked about the blog, I'd say that roughly half of the students discussed finding their writer's voice. I shared this with Hackney, and as usual, he embarrassed me with his deep digital pockets and pulled out an essay from Peter Elbow, and it probably changed the way I'll teach writing next year. That's a conversation for another post.

Their final blog post of the year--taking place in class in the next 3 days--will be a post that will function as a capstone for their year. Hackney is encouraging a "selfie" video, or at the very least an audio recording. I'm just asking for the post, but offering the video as an option. I hope they can summarize their blog, their thoughts, the meaning behind this whole experience. 

In the "Evolution of a Writer" presentations that the students just wrapped up, they posted their presentations on the blogs (see earlier posts from Hackney and me to see our students' blogs). We used them as a host for their Prezi, PPT, Powtoon, or other visual presentation tool. I was really happy with the way that turned out. The embedded presentation doesn't work if you just view it on its own, but we asked the students to be a necessary component to their story. "A presentation should need a presenter." That was the motto we went with.

Since we started this blog with the encouragement of professor and digital mastermind Troy Hicks, telling us it's imperative that we write along with our students, I guess I'll answer my own DO THIS questions:

• Listen to this: My Morning Jacket's Acoustic Citsuoca. Jim James' voice never sounded so beautiful and haunting.
• Read this: "Put Your Hands on 7." I realize, as an English teacher, that I should be recommending Kafka or Orwell, but I really enjoy non-fiction, too. In this case, Mike Newman (no relation)--who runs the Illinois running website Dyestat  blogged in 18 installments last year about the path to his York HS cross country team's run at a championship. As a cross country and track coach, I was obsessed with each installment. 
• Watch this: Moone Boy on PBS. Chris O'Dowd, the Irish cop from Bridesmaids plays the imaginary friend of Martin, a 12-year-old boy. It's all filmed in Ireland. I have to thank Hackney for this recommendation. I have to include NBA playoffs as something else to watch. It's so different than the regular season.
• Play this: Tetris. It's a classic. I'm just sayin'.
• Eat this: steak tacos with cilantro and lime. Casablanca in Joliet makes them better than most.
• Do this: take the Platinum tour at Graceland.
• Click this: I am a writing teacher, after all, so this site covers a burgeoning genre: check out Passive Aggressive Notes.
• Go here: It's not exotic in the sense of requiring a passport, but it's worth a visit: Chicago Botanic Gardens. People might actually get a chance to visit this place. 
• And always, always, remember this: We all make choices. We then have to live with them.

Blog as Storytelling

Prepared is best, but underprepared is always better than overprepared.
— Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) February 19, 2014

Newman and I had our students create blogs this year as a way to practice formative writing that accounts for an authentic audience and prepares students for success in summatively assessed writing. For example, if we were ultimately going to write a compare/contrast paper, students would first practice the skills of comparing/contrasting on their blog.

In addition, a key part of the blog assignment is giving students a chance to think about their learning.  The blog functions as a place to practice writing, but it is also used to post summative assignments and reflections. In this way, the blog captures a student's work for the class in one place, provides an authentic audience, and requires other design decisions as students consider the genre of blogging.

Basically, the blog acts as a platform for formative practice and as a hub or portfolio for publishing a student's work from throughout the year.

Our students have done some pretty amazing work. They've designed blogs that show genre awareness, they've practiced the skills for a unit in various ways, and they've created some strong final assessments.

The truth is, though, that if you would have asked me last summer if I thought the blogs would look like they do and that we would have been able to do all of the things mentioned above, I wouldn't have had any idea what you were talking about.

Exploring Apathy and Motivation in Teachers and Students as Professional Development

"I'm up there talking and they don't even care."
"10 out of 26 kids turned in a rough draft. I told them that they'd lose points, and the next day only 2 more kids turned one in."
"I planned the hell outta this lesson and it totally bombed. I thought they'd be excited, but they were like, 'Whatever.'"

And then we play the blame game:

• it's their home life; they don't value education
• they're always multi-tasking and can't focus when I'm just trying to teach them
• their other teachers never collect homework so they're used to doing nothing
• last year's teacher didn't teach them anything so they're not ready for this class

Image courtesy of kirkh from Flickr

So whether I've heard these things or said these things, that doesn't matter. It doesn't change the fact that student apathy exists. It also doesn't change the fact that teacher apathy exists. In our case, though, as teachers, it's the apathy to evaluate our own practices and determine what our role is in student motivation.

Because I had numerous conversations during the first semester about student motivation--in the hall, in the lunchroom, in my office--I knew this topic was on teachers' minds. When veteran teachers--those teaching over a decade--start to compare the current level of apathy they're facing and claim that "it's never been this bad," it's worth examining. Is that true? Is there some new development we need to be concerned about regarding student apathy?

Primum Non Nocere: Should Teachers Have an Oath, Too?

The Latin phrase, primum non nocere, translated from the original Greek, is generally associated with the Hippocratic Oath, which is sworn by some physicians, often more out of tradition than conviction. This English translation of "first, do no harm," never appears in the Oath itself, but it's grown comfy along with the other maxims of Hippocrates.

Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine

Still, this concept is one to which doctors generally subscribe. Should we, as teachers, consider the same maxim? Might we have different ideas from Socrates, John Dewey, or Bill Gates (kidding) to which we, as English teachers, subscribe?

Last year I served as a jury foreman on a medical malpractice suit, and this concept of "first, do no harm" came up repeatedly. Of the 12 jurors and 2 alternates, I think 4 of us were educators. The prosecution lawyer on behalf of the deceased patient regularly invoked this phrase, asking if what the doctor prescribed for his patient was really in the patient's best interest if it possibly led to his death. The lawyer asked us, "Did the doctor violate the concept of 'first, do no harm?'" Recently, I started thinking of what our binding agreement might be to our students. What should they commonly expect of all of us? Maybe this phrase could be adopted by educators. Or maybe it's too passive because it implies a position of doing nothing, possibly.  Maybe we need a phrase that demands action.

My Audience, My Blog, My Cause, My Goals: Student Feedback on Blogging

Image courtesy of Flickr

"Alright. I'm using random.org to call you up for your blog conference. You'll have 4-6 minutes to go through the prompts I've given you. I'll have a computer up here already so you can walk me through your thinking. According to random.org, the first person is...."

Thus my blog conferences, as described here, had begun.

Here is a list of my period 3 and 4 blogs, and I've included Hackney's period 7 blogs, too.

I am writing this post after my first day of conferences. My students (as Sean's would later in the day) began their conferences with me about how this semester of blogging has gone. Our blog assignment sheet can be found here.

Essentially, we gave students their choice of blog platform--Blogger, Tumblr, Wordpress, Weebly, Snack Websites--and had them post almost weekly in the genre we were studying for that two-week unit.  For example, our curriculum includes a Literacy Narrative as the first essay. Their first blog post had to be a narrative about something that happened to them on the job. If they never had a job, some students posted about trying to get one, and others wrote about summer work with their dad or mission work with their church. The blog was a chance to formatively practice the writing genre so that they could perform it better summatively. In terms of which blog platform they chose, most of my students used Tumblr, about a third used Blogger, and just a few used Wordpress or Weebly.

Not one of my students had been a blogger prior to this course. A few had a tumblr account but didn't really do anything with it. One girl told me today that she thought blogs "were just for responding to what other people said, like what my mom had to do for an online class she took in college."

Here is the list of topics the students were assigned for blogging; they follow the writing progression for the course: Literacy Narrative, Annotated Bibliography, Single-text Analysis, Compare/Contrast, Literary Analysis, Multi-source Synthesis/Argument.

When the students wrote an argument essay, they had to blog about a cause on change.org. Suddenly, they were activists petitioning others to sign on for a cause, to make change happen. One student told me today, "I had to get more people to look at the petition. My goal for next semester is to find out how to get more people to read my blog." The student used hashtags on his change.org post to get the petition viewed more frequently.

I had the students walk me through their journey of audience awareness. I asked them how their understanding of audience developed. I heard them say things like, "Well, at first, I knew it was just you, so I didn't care as much, but then when you had us start following others in the class, I was like, 'I don't want them to think I'm dumb,' so I tried harder." Another said, "The audience at first was you and the class, but then you showed us how to check our page views if we used Blogger, and people from around the world were viewing my blog. I felt like I had to be more interesting." And, my favorite, was this: "My goal for next semester is to make my blog more glowy and sparkly so more people read it and comment on it."

I took nothing they said as a personal attack; rather, I felt like a Physical Therapist talking to a patient about how the stretches made him feel (it hurts when you move my arm like this, so don't do that). When I heard comments like, "I just couldn't connect to that post you made us write about that TED talk," or "That post in response to tipping from the New York Times, I just didn't care. That set me back because I didn't have anything to say about it, so I was late on that one," it's those comments that I will use as formative feedback for my own teaching.

How can I improve this blogging experience next semester? Next year? For other teachers who ask me how it's going? How much will I control the topics and how much will I let them choose?

I know--because I've searched for the info myself--that there are thousands of blog posts about how to be a better blogger. About how to teach blogging. About how to make interesting posts. Well, I'm one semester in, so here's my humble addition to the existing literature about teaching with blogs:

1. Make the posts occur regularly.
2. Give them choices.
3. Use the blogs as formative writing practice for summative writing assignments.
4. Check in with them regularly.
5. Get testimonials from previous students about the positives and drawbacks of the various blog platforms.
6. Make them read each other's blogs.
7. Use technorati.com, the blog search engine, to get them reading blogs.
8. Conference with them.
9. Grade them with care, because they care about being assessed on how they feel.
10. Identify your tech wizards in class and empower them to help others.
11. Create opportunities for kids to teach each other how to do make posts more interesting.
12. Help them expand the audience: email the links to parents, other teachers, or other classes.
13. Oh yeah, and write along with them. That's what got Hackney and I writing this blog in the first place.

I am open to all kinds of feedback on this, and please, feel free to open up my students' blogs in the link near the top and give them some feedback, too. We look forward to next semester when we can enrich this experience even more.

Achtung, Baby! Using Audio Feedback in the Classroom

When U2 had something to say to their fans in the '90s, they used German and asked us to Achtung, Baby!  When I have something to say to my students, I use Audacity, Screenr, Jing, or even Audioboo, and I, too, want them to listen up.



From Flickr, courtesy of xrayspx

The issue of how teachers give feedback has been relevant as long as teachers have asked students to compose their thoughts. Written feedback may appear as only terminal comments, as praise/comment/question, as a series of checks and question marks, or any combination of words and symbols meant to reward, punish, shame or inform the writer (depending on the professionalism and disposition of the teacher). English Journal published an essay from Bardine, Schmitz-Bardine and Deegan that highlights a number of key points about feedback. One key issue is the benefits of conferencing. I've highlighted the work of Don Murray in 2 previous posts ("Implications 1" and "Implications 2"), and of course he wrote about the importance of discussing students' work with them, also. It's no secret. But what if we are struggling to find the time, management style, or method for having those meetings?

While it's not an honest quid pro quo, audio feedback is a worthy surrogate for the conference, and I'll explain why.

Let's Retire the Boxing Gloves

I recently came across another article concerned with the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the impact that they will have on English classes.  This time, from Emory University’s English professor Mark Bauerlein.  To be honest, I’m kind of getting tired of the same complaints being raised over and over again about the standards.

Ultimately, I think—and the standards emphasize this in the document—that implementation comes down to the state and local level, and if the committees charged with writing curriculum ask themselves the hard questions and spend the time to reflect on what is best for students, the end product is going to be strong.  That has been my experience.

Besides, if anyone is going to critique the standards—to be clear, I’m just talking about the standards, not the exams, data culture, political rhetoric, etc. that comes along with them—he/she should check out this 2011 article that appeared in Education Week, by Mike Schmoker and Gerald Graff.

 

As far as Bauerlein’s concerns about literature selections being limited in the English classroom, let me explain why this is not a concern if the standards are implemented effectively.  In addition, to be blunt, this appears to be just another manifestation of the divide that has happened the past 25 years or so in English departments between literature and rhetoric and composition professors. 

Playing College: Twice the Credit, Half the Respect

The November 2013 Council Chronicle arrived today. I'm always interested to see what's new. The cover lists that there's a "New NCTE Policy Research Brief" related to "First-Year Writing." At Joliet West High School, Sean and I teach a dual credit Rhetoric course: students take a placement test, and once admitted they can earn credit from Joliet Junior College for English 101-102: Rhetoric by getting a C or higher. The link above explains in more detail how it works.

To teach the course, JJC requires a Master's in English, and after I earned a degree in English Studies from Elmhurst College, I picked up two sections of Rhetoric and have taught it since 2008. As the class grew, Sean picked up 1 section, and he even picked up a night class of Rhetoric at the college itself.

I bring this up because the Policy Research Brief from NCTE suggests that the class we teach at the high school "cannot fully replicate the experiences of First-Year Writing because high school students' social and cognitive development is at a different level" (14). Further, the Policy adds, "Allowing college credit for writing courses completed while in high school will not help students to fully develop capacities for engagement, persistence, collaboration, reflection, metacognition, flexibility, and ownership that will help them to grow as writers and learners" (15). Well...where to begin.

Reflecting on Don Murray's Implications for Writing Part 1

As writing teachers, we can teach how we were taught, we can teach as a reaction against how we were taught, or we can read what the experts who have come before us suggest is a best practice and we can try that. When it comes to teaching writing, a name I've gravitated to is Don Murray.

The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America's Greatest Writing Teacher is a book that includes "Teaching Writing as a Process Not Product." Published in 1972, this piece explains the "implications of teaching process, not product." I'd like to reflect on how these implications have manifested themselves in my own teaching of writing (rather than pretending that I've come up with these practices on my own). This post will include Murray's first 5 Implications, with another post to follow regarding Implications 6-10.

Rebecca Black, Who?

I felt like things were clicking on Friday.  My 9th grade classes spent the day writing a literary analysis essay either on their own or with a partner.  We used Billy Collins' "Marginalia" as our text.  Students had already done a close reading of the poem on Thursday, so they were ready to go.

I was freed up to move around the room and read what students were writing and answer any questions they had.

Becoming a Student, or--What Did I Teach Them to Do?

Last year, Hackney and I really thought we were on to something as we taught presentation skills: we watched Steve Jobs videos; we made the students practice with metaphors as visuals; we limited them to just a handful of words on a slide; we sent them up there without notes.

Cut to September 19th. Hackney and I were to present to our peers at Joliet Junior College's "Bridging the Gap" workshop, detailing what college professors needed to know about the Common Core State Standards, and explaining what high school teachers needed to know about college expectations. We decided to focus on writing. We also started to fall back on what was comfortable for a presenter: slides with text that would guide our presentation. Hadn't we warned our students about that?