Lit. Research and the Metaphor of One's Position as a Structure

I'm afraid to start talking about Lit. Research.

I'm afraid of analyzing it.

I'm still not that confident in the validity of it as a curriculum.

I spent a year fighting for it, but towards the end, I got tired. I began to grow skeptical myself.

I keep trying to reflect on it, but one thought keeps looming above all others: What if it isn't actually that good of an idea?

Every time anyone questioned it (slash me, because I take things personally), I was able to justify the program. But just barely, it seemed. I don't know that I really convinced anyone.

I know that it's okay to have an idea that doesn't work. It's part of the invention process. It's part of iterating. "I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work," and all that. I know that it's completely acceptable and that I would say the same to my students.

It's just hard to admit it.

It hurts your pride.

Especially when it's about something you've tried over and over to convince a hundred doubtful people of.

Especially when you're trying to convince a hundred doubtful people of your professionalism at the same time.

But of course it COULD still be a good idea. It COULD work.

And that's one of the reasons it's so hard. I don't know whether to keep fighting or to just give up.

And I'm not going to know unless I explore it more.

Repeat from line one.

I just have the sinking feeling that I'm fighting in vain. That I'm working on a useless project. That I'm trying to claim I'm an engineer while building a bridge out of toothpicks.

See, here is a concept I've played with in my mind for years: Each position, stance, or philosophy you hold to be true is a structure. Every time it's questioned, your structure chips at the foundation. Through reasoning and logic, you can fortify the structure of your position, making it stronger. At times, an enemy may deliver such a stunning blow to your structure that it becomes irrecoverable. You may discover that that structure wasn't defending, that it was build on shaky ground to begin with, and no fortifying will ever make it stand tall again. At that point, you may have to forfeit your claim and take up the enemy's. Or, in the case that your enemy's structure was likewise destroyed, you may be forced to build an entirely new structure out of broken pieces of the old and your enemy's put together. If your structure is never questioned, it is weak. It's only through dialogue, through delivering blows to one another's castles (ACTUAL blows, with intent to knock them down) that one can build a strong, worthy stance on anything.

My castle of beliefs about Lit. Research has been questioned, but instead of fortifying it with reasoning and better logic, I've just been patching the cracks and ignoring them. I haven't truly been trying to build my castle to withstand anything thrown against it. I've been turning my back to it, assuming it was still there, standing strong! In fact, it may have been dealt a finishing blow ages ago. The only way to know for sure is to analyze the cracks.

And what that means in reality is a deep analysis of the program as a whole, both the foundation it's based on and the details of how it's done.

It's just that it's scary because I created this program. I believed in it. I viewed it as my own child.

But it's not. It's only a structure.

I take blows against it personally, but I shouldn't. Those blows aren't towards me as a person or even as a teacher, they are just testing blows. They are testing the validity of my castle.

I'm afraid of discovering that my castle has suffered a fatal blow because that might mean that I'd have to take up my enemy's flag. But didn't I just say that it's acceptable, the that case, to build a new structure out of the remaining pieces? That's what iterating IS. Build the structure, try to knock it down. If it falls, take the existing whole pieces and build a better one.

I want the best for my students. I want to teach them in the best, most efficient and effective ways, and that means that I need to analyze my methodology. I need to test its strength and look for cracks that need to be fortified. I need to see if its integrity has already been so damaged that it doesn't hold weight anymore. And if that's the case, I need to pick up the broken pieces and start again.

Because I'd ask the same of my students as I would for myself.

I will analyze the shit out of this program. I will test it for weaknesses myself. By the time August rolls around, there won't be a disputing attack strong enough to hurt my castle anywhere to be found.

Notes from Bulletin Board Spring 2015

I have a bulletin board directly behind my desk I use to hang the school calendar, lunch menu, schedule, and any time sensitive notices from other teachers I need to remember. As the school year wore down this past year, I started keeping small notes to myself that I wanted to remember for next year. They were scattered and various half-thoughts, exactly the sort of thing that I need to write down before they disappear from my brain forever. On my last work day before vacation, I compiled them all into one sheet, organizing them by topic and expanding on anything that didn't make sense by itself. Here's the final analyzed list:

*Add to pledge -- seeing multiple sides to issues / arguments
*Add to pledge -- "viewing new perspectives" or similar language
*Add to Practices handout -- my stance on standing / stretching during class

*Answer questions each day / week for Lit. R. -- essential questions?
-"What is the plot of x?"
-"What is important about x?"
-"Who is the author of x? What do you know about them?"
*Literary terms -- one/week?

*Lots of practice playing devil's advocate. Create some sort of game?

*Perspectives throughout the year. Reflections from various perspectives
*Start the year w/ Doing Hard Things convo (Dave Stuart)
*"What to look for when you read" lesson should be one of the first lessons of the year (so that when we read excerpts, they can look for style, etc.)
*Plagiarism discussion at beginning of the year. "We usually look at content online, but we need to write our own content. Either about the content we read or something it makes us think about, something it inspires us to create, etc." / "If you copy paste, use quotations. That's totally acceptable and gives more context to your reader. It just doesn't count towards YOUR word count because they aren't YOUR words."

*Create a template for informative AoWs, not just argumentative

*For summaries, teach how to combine sentences.
-"The Old Man and the Sea was written by Ernest Hemingway. It was written in 1951. It was written in Cuba. The Old Man and the Sea is a novella."
-"The Old Man and the Sea was written in 1951 in Cuba and was written by Ernest Hemingway. This book is a novella."
-"The Old Man and the Sea is a 1951 novella by Cuba resident Ernest Hemingway."

*There are two ways to handle any situation. Take situation X (I accidentally ate a bug?):
-The Emotional way: ... (Freak out!)
-The Rational way: ... (Well, I hope I don't get sick, but I suppose it's okay. I wonder how many people accidentally eat bugs each day? I wonder what bugs are made of. Protein?)
-Which way is better?

*Feedback: "I want to read more books." / "Explain better. Use models, exemplars. Write down exactly what you want to say."

HS English Spring Semester plan

Here's what I want to accomplish with my second semester of teaching high school English:

*Continued Article of the Week project
*Continued Lit Research project (one text per week for seniors, one every other week for juniors, and one a month for freshmen and sophomores)
*A small writing assignment for journals every day for all classes, even on days we're working on other assignments. That means it may be homework some days. Consider putting prompts on a website students/parents can access from home.
*A big writing/research project integrated with History class. Possibly integrated, also, with blog writing. Much of this depends on when we receive Chromebooks.
*Speeches, presentations, communication. PVLEGS. I need more curricula material for this.
*Practical life assignments for seniors. How to write a resume, have an interview, fill out documents, file taxes, etc.

Experience with Assigned Reading in High School

Although I had developed a revolutionary idea about how to teach literature, I still only had the confidence of a second year teacher. Just like last year, when faced with the challenge of forming my own curriculum, I fell back on that which is commonly accepted. When I asked myself, "What does one learn in a high school English class?" the answer came, "Literature." I knew I disliked this truism just by remembering my own high school experience. I remember thinking to myself, "Why are we reading so much in English class? If I wanted to read, I would have taken a literature class! I want to be learning grammar!" (I was a strange child...)

And yet, it is what it is. That's what's expected. I'm to give each student a classic novel, assign pages to read each night, and give quizzes in the morning. In the classroom I inherited, there are shelves full of book sets for me to do just that. That's what parents, administration, and my fellow teachers expect. It's not that I can't stray from this model, it's just that if I do, I'd better be prepared to explain my pedagogical philosophy immediately. And we all know I'm working on building the confidence to do that.

Plus, well.. how can I know for sure that I don't want to teach literature in this way if I don't even try? There's no reason that I can't assign a book and still do Lit. Research at the same time. We'll just try it this way first, I resigned.

So I sorted through what I had available, gave questionnaires to determine what my classes had previously read, considered what I read when I was in high school, and eventually came up with my assigned reading:

* Romeo and Juliet for freshmen because I had heard somewhere that freshmen all over the country are assigned Romeo and Juliet.

* To Kill a Mockingbird for sophomores because I had heard the same thing about it, but the sophomores hadn't read it last year as freshmen.

* A Midsummer Night's Dream for juniors because I arbitrarily felt like they needed some more Shakespeare and I didn't have Hamlet or Macbeth (which was weird). A Midsummer Night's Dream was always my favorite Shakespearean play, anyway, so no hard feelings.

* And Fahrenheit 451 as the dystopian novel for seniors because I think one of the big three (451, Brave New World, and 1984) are typically assigned junior or senior year. And I adore dystopian novels.

With no evidence on which to base my hypothesis, I think most traditional high schools give students a Shakespearean play each year. (When I was in high school, I was assigned Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Macbeth, though most of my friends were given Hamlet in place of MSND.) This plan didn't give my students Shakespeare each year, but.. well, I worked with what I had. (More on Shakespeare to come... much more. I've developed some passionate feelings on this topic.)

Well, it seemed like a good place to start! Definitely a plan a good little teacher would come up with. I passed out books and took down the numbers written on the inside cover on a sheet of paper next to their names, like a good little teacher. I assigned the first few pages to read as homework, like a good little teacher.

But that's about where my commendable organization ended.

My first mistake was relying too heavily on having each class do something similar each day. I wanted writing assignments for each class on the same day, to stay at about the same point in each book, and finish up at around the same time. This is an obvious mistake. Not only are the classes at different reading and comprehension levels, but they're reading different materials. Of course it's not going to take as long to read 451 as it is to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Yep. A little more planning would have settled this out, and it's not insurmountable in the future, just a little messy the first time through.

Mostly this was difficult having two classes reading Shakespeare and two not. This meant that I definitely couldn't do comprehension and discussion the same way. The constant gear switching was irksome, but eventually there was some semblance of organization. After a little trial and error, it wound up like this:

* A passage by passage analysis of Shakespeare with class notes. Mostly this boiled down to asking what happened in the section we read, prompting if any important details were forgotten in the response, and writing on the board for students to copy. I tried to only write student wording, but occasionally I had to ask for clarity if I could tell not everyone understood. I feel like this was an acceptable way to go about Shakespeare, though surely not the best. Students were responsible for reading and translating the original text, but I could point out any passage that needed further exploration. I assisted in the creation of notes to assure everyone's comprehension, but it was still in their words.

* Discussion circle of 451. 451 lends itself nicely to discussion, and I enjoyed the conversations it brought up, though I could tell the seniors didn't really get into it. Towards the end, they got lazy in their reading and I had to start giving quizzes to ensure they actually made it through the text. That still wasn't quite motivating enough for about half of them, though. They had made up their minds that they greatly disliked this book.

* Daily quizzes and discussion of the responses for To Kill a Mockingbird. My sophomore class is my most trying and challenging group of students, and this was my attempt at being stern with them.  Many saw their grades decline drastically during this time. But still, I think maybe I'm okay with it, as it was an authentic and direct consequence for the action of not reading the assigned reading. Their grades clearly showed which students read and which didn't. I had a few students fail this semester, and though I'm not sure I'm okay with that, those students were the ones that didn't do the work. (Bah, THAT'S definitely a concept I need to revisit at some point. Just typing it gives me an unpleasant feeling.) But regardless, after the quizzes, the responses were discussed, so that even the students that didn't read knew what had happened in the selected chapters. And I DID try to give straightforward questions on the quizzes. I tried my best to avoid any sort of thing that could be seen as a trick question.

Also there was the fact that the last time I read these books (with the exception of 451) was when I was in high school. So I suddenly found myself with four books to read and lessons and quizzes to plan immediately and concurrently. It was a tough month. I got through it, but it definitely could have gone better with planning.

My biggest problem, though, was that the students all hated the books. I had a couple freshmen liked Romeo and Juliet once they got past the language barrier, and one sophomore really enjoyed To Kill a Mockingbird. The rest read begrudgingly, if at all. And that's no way to read. I hate seeing reading as such a chore.

One issue there was with my lack of planning again. I think I took too long getting through the books, and by the end, everyone was tired. But they had hated the books long before that, so it was more of an additional problem than a main one.

Perhaps it could have been a lack of autonomy. I told them what to read. I've spent a small amount of time since then perusing articles about English classes run solely on choice literature. As I've said before, my school does AR, so I'm not as concerned that my students get choice reading, because it's already happening.

But perhaps I could get them to do more response work to their AR books, like book reports or writing that copies the style of the text or reflects deeply on the concepts presented.

Or perhaps I could do small reading groups for self-selected classics from the shelf. That seems doable, but what would I do the first time a student came to me three pages into A Scarlet Letter and said they hated it? Could I allow them to put it back, or would I make them lie in the bed they had made?

Regardless, I think a bigger issue is at hand that I'm ignoring.

One thought that crossed my mind at some point during a comprehension-checking discussion was that some of these students just... really didn't get it. Maybe they weren't ready for it... but no, that's ridiculous. These are high school students we're talking about. They are practically adults, and if they aren't capable now, they never will be. Besides, what about high expectations for my students? Readiness isn't an issue.

But at the same time, I was certainly understanding the assigned reading at a different level on this, my adult read-through, than I did at their age. Was I asking too much for full comprehension from someone with as little life experience as they had? But maybe that's just it. Maybe it's more about providing new experiences. But, if that's the case, couldn't there be a better way? Videos or something? My students seemed so disconnected from the books I placed in their hands.

I certainly think it's asking a lot for a deep connection to a text from an entire class, despite how few students are in my classes, in particular. The more students, the less connection to the lesson, it seems.

Woah, that's quite a statement. The more students involved, the less individual connection to the lesson.

Okay, okay. That may be profound (or maybe it isn't at all), but it's not the issue we're here to discuss today. Focus, Holly. The point of that statement was that reading is a personal thing. I can understand small group, because small groups can dissect and analyze in a way that one person alone can't, but if you add more students that aren't invested, it detracts from the commitment of the others. It removes them from their magical connection with the text. Or, put another way, using another concept I also haven't written about, it takes them out of their flow.

So we've discovered two things: if I'm assigning reading, it must be self-selected, and it must either be solo work or small group work.

And still I'm ignoring it. I keep avoiding a point my mind keeps trying to bring up, and it's this: why are we reading these books in the first place? If my students are disconnected with the text while trying to get through a whole book, why force them? We know students don't learn well when they're being forced. I'm giving them the Lit. Research project to make them aware of the collective consciousness Americans have of literature. My goal is to supplement each material we discuss with an abridged selection of the original text so that they get exposure to different styles of writing, I just haven't collected them all yet. I'm also encouraging reading the full texts on their own. As of yet, only the freshmen have taken me up on that offer, but the offer still remains for everyone.

And as for the experience thing. If my job is to provide experiences and various perspectives to consider, I must find various was to do it, not just from "classic" texts. They just don't hold the same weight for students today as they once did.

The real question is this--is it worth my time to do it again? Honestly, at this point, I have to answer, no. It's not. I really don't think I'm giving my students any positive experiences that they couldn't get on their own, and the negative ones I'm giving weigh much more heavily.

And what of making students do things they don't like to build character? Well, I could argue that in college and the adult world, there will be plenty of things they have to do that they hate, and there's something to be said for developing the skill of persisting in that way, but... well, why does it have to be reading? Yeah, I know that in college and the adult world there will be a ton of dry, boring material to get through. But, on the other other hand, I'm doing that with the articles of the week. So! There's my answer for that, and I'll completely dismiss the entire argument because it makes me uncomfortable. I don't like forcing students to read books that they don't enjoy, because books should be entertaining. Articles and other nonfiction materials are sometimes dry but necessary. If a book is boring, stop reading it.

The other argument I anticipate is, "Reading classics in English class is tradition," and it's hard for me not to just dismiss that, as well. I'm not here for tradition. I'm here for results. Tradition wasn't working for us. It's a new age, and we have new techniques to try. We have new and exciting work ahead of us. (Honestly, is that not a tag line of my entire blog yet? I'm setting it as that right now.)

Well, is that it, then? Do I have my pedagogical philosophy prepared? Am I ready to explain myself to colleagues, parents, and administration? If not quite yet, I should be soon enough.

The only thing left is to decide what I am going to do with our time together, if not this. Eh, there's still five days left before winter vacation is over.

Notes from a Week of Exploring Teaching the Core

Ooooh my goodness, my brain is so full of all of the things. Dave of Teaching the Core is a wonderful writer, but his blog posts are so chock full of all of the great information I want to learn and links to other pages that are also full of information. He's pretty prolific, too, so there are already so many posts he's published I want to read through. But I don't just want to read them, I want to devour them. I want to scour them for every morsel of useful information, analyze them, and decide how I want to use them.

I feel as though I'm at a big feast, and every time I finish a course, Dave just brings out another plate full of deliciousness and sets it in front of me expectantly.

I have all of the tabs open in my browser. Tabs from Teaching the Core, tabs for other Teaching the Core posts the original ones linked back to, tabs from awesome resources that those blog posts linked to, tabs from interesting articles that those links linked to... *groan* So let's try to get a little more organized, shall we?

Article of the Week and Making Annotations

It didn't take me long after finding myself in this click-hole to realize that I wanted/needed to implement this in my class. I'd been trying to find some way to incorporate more nonfiction reading but was hesitant to try something like this because I didn't want to start printing off a lot of pages. 1) because I'm a hippie and don't like "wasting paper" 2) because it seemed like a slippery slope to worksheets, and 3) because we live in a digital age and why print off something that could just be viewed and manipulated online? But all of these reasons were immediately out the window when I started reading Dave's blog. Hush, now. It's worth it.

Next semester, we may be getting Chrome books (one for each student), but until then, if we don't have print off articles, how could we make annotations? (I'd considered allowing them to write lightly in pencil in their books, but I hadn't gotten that desperate yet.) Annotations? Oh yeah, that's that "close reading" I'd been hearing so much about in CCSS articles. I learned about it for the first time at the summer conference I attended and didn't quite understand what all the hype was about. Alright, we're teaching kids to make annotations while they read. I do that when I read, so it made sense to me. It seemed like there was something more to it that I was missing.

Turns out, "close reading" is a super conflated buzzword that people are looking too much into. Dave recommends just sticking with teaching how to annotate and leaving it at that. Sweet, that's probably what I was going to do, anyway.

Links about annotation:

TtC - Purposeful Annotation - What annotations are and how to use them

Harvard Library Reasearch Guides - Six Habits for Thinking-Intensive Reading - some useful guides on how to annotate to share with students

TtC - Close Reading - Dave's original post on the matter, which he says is outdated but still has some interesting things, such as a modeling video

Articles of the Week

The Article of the Week is a child of Kelly Gallagher, one of Dave's heroes. We take a nonfiction article from an authentic source, read and annotate it, and then write a paper responding to it. Sometimes we can share our thoughts in a Socratic circle or debate. Awesome. I can't wait to get started.

Links about AoW:

TtC - There and Back Again - What AoW is, how to get started, and how Dave adapted Gallagher's work to fit his own needs

TtC - Articles of the Week - Backlog and current articles to get'cha started

Kelly Gallagher - AoW Archive - Gallagher's AoW backlog
TtC - Getting Started with AoW - more information

Argument:

Teaching students to make a claim and support it with evidence. 

Links about argument:

TtC - They Say / I Say Two Paragraph Essay - a basic way to introduce argument writing

Amazon - They Say / I Say by Graff and Birkenstein - the book Dave referenced above

TtC - Argument and Debate - what and how to (including video!)

TtC - Popup Debates - a debate starter kit Dave sells

And~

Links to other stuff!:

B10LovesBooks - Erica Beaton, Dave's coworker who also runs a sweet blog I need to explore further

B10 - Whole Class Novels vs. Choice Reading - This is part 3. There's so much to consider...

Jim Burke - Verbs to Live By - a phenomenal chart that defines and explains frequently used academic verbs in easy-to-understand language

Baka desu yo - 6 Things the Most Organized People Do Every Day - Just a reminder on how to stay focused and in control. Not sure if it's something to show to students or if it's just for me.

And there we have it! Not the most productive post, but at least it helped clear my head and leave some bread crumbs to come back to later.

The Literature Research Project

I haven't been teaching my high school English classes with textbooks this year. That was a conscious decision I made going in, and thankfully, I had the authority to make it. But then, of course, came the questions of, "Well, if not textbooks, what then?"

The first concept that I explored (and still am) is the novel.

I should preface this with the fact that my school does, and has for years done, Accelerated Reader. So I know that my students are reading (and if they're not, then that's a separate issue to be dealt with on its own). I know that they're reading choice books, and I know that they're reading at least 30 minutes every weekday. With that in mind, reading isn't the same problem as it is in other schools. I'm not tasked with the goal of making sure students read for the sake of reading. I know that they're already doing it.

I questioned myself, Why do English classes read what they traditionally do? You know what I'm talking about--the standard curriculum. Romeo and Juliet and To Kill a Mockingbird in Freshman year, Gatsby in Sophomore, etc. Why?

Is it just for the sake of tradition? I was made to read this when I was your age. I disliked this idea and played with it in my mind for a while before I was able to put it into better terms.

I like to think that it's to create a shared American experience. More of a, kids all over the country your age are reading this, so you need to, as well. Something to create a liberal education and collective consciousness of society.

A liberal education is easy to explain: it's a good idea to take a look at a wide variety of topics and voices in order to widen your perspective and understand more about the world. Everything is interconnected, and something you encounter in one discipline (or in one book) might provide insight or help solve a problem in another area of your life. There are some good lessons in the books that have already been chosen for us. (That being said, they shouldn't be left unquestioned. If something seems outdated, it requires further scrutiny and replacements should be considered.)

But "collective consciousness" is a little more difficult. To understand it, I found myself asking the question that every student asks, "When will I need to know this?" It's a question of authenticity, a valid question indeed, so I answered:

When will these novels and literature themes come up again, hypothetical student? Well, first of all, you might need to know them in college when your English 101 and 102 professors expect you to be familiar with them.

Pfft. Alright, sure, but that's still an artificial reason. What else you got?

Okay, let's consider. Because these are books that the rest of America knows, everyone makes references to them, and, likewise, everyone understands those references. You will probably encounter these references your entire life--a conversation with a coworker, a news report, a song you hear on the radio, a movie you're going to see. 

Ah. So that's what is meant by collective consciousness. Central themes that we know as a society. Common stories that we all know and can discuss together.

So what's really important here? The ability to know the books in America's collective consciousness and understand references to them.

But as our society grows, so does our collective consciousness. Every year, there are more and more books added to our pool of material from which references are made. At this point in time, I doubt there are very many Americans, if there are even any at all, who have actually read all of these books that are considered important enough to make references to.

Now, what I'm about to say next is considerably controversial, but that's why we're here at Non-traditional Teaching, right? So bear with me.

What if English class didn't mandate that students read a limited, select few books cover to cover, but instead guided them to conduct research on a wide number of books so that they understood a larger amount of material present in America's collective consciousness?

Thus, my Literature Research project was born. This concept was intriguing enough to dive head first into. It was exciting!

My first step was to discover what all was encompassed in the literature realm of America's "hive mind," if you will. The first thing that came to mind was a silly quiz I'd seen on Facebook titled something like, "Which of these 100 classic books have you read?" I couldn't find the precise one, but in my search for it, I discovered countless other lists. I had hoped to find a good, comprehensive one, but that didn't happen. They all came up short somehow, and none of them included everything I expected it to.

I finally settled on a list of Assigned Reading in High School on Goodreads (this one? I can't recall). It was quite extensive, and there was no way that we would have the time to cover everything, so I had to pare it down.

I decided that my seniors, being the closest to departure into "the real world" should have the most to research. One book per week would be 31 books. (I needed just a few weeks to get settled in. Next year it could be more if we begin right away.) Juniors would work on the project every other week and have 16 books under their belt, and Freshmen and Sophomores could do it just once a month and have 8.

But then as for the actual book selections... That was a difficult decision, and it finally came down to my own discretion. I scoured the list and picked out the 31 books that I, personally, had heard the most references to in my adult life. Who am I to make those sorts of claims and decide what is in the collective consciousness? I know, but someone had to make a decision. I hated doing it, but it was my project, so it might as well be me. And besides, doesn't every English teacher do that each year by determining which material to share with her class? Not that that makes me feel any better about it, but it is what it is. I organized my 31 books into a weekly schedule. Step One finished. Books decided upon. Here's the finalized list for Seniors. Underclassmen have some of the same books, just not as many. (Click to enlarge.)

Now for Step Two. How to guide my students to knowledge of these pieces of literature? Well, as an adult, how do I learn something I want to know about? Google, of course! Wikipedia is a great place to start because it usually summarizes everything up nicely in one paragraph at the top, and if I want to go deeper, I can just keep reading. There's also Sparknotes, if I want to go chapter by chapter, and blogs and articles that analyze different aspects that are interesting.

But, of course, it may be a book that has been on a student's To Read list for a while, and he wants to just read the whole thing on his own. Awesome. The scheduled date is listed for their convenience.

Finally, we'll come together and discuss our findings as a class.

By these three methods (or four, as my students mentioned watching movie adaptations, as well), the student should have enough information and be prepared to contribute to a larger, societal conversation about the piece of literature.

Here is the handout I prepared for Seniors. I did make it sound more about the "being prepared for college" reason than the "being prepared for contribution to America's collective consciousness" than I stated here. I was still trying to figure things out.

Yes, the bottom refers to a couple of books read in class. More on that later.

Well, it's been six weeks, and though the Freshmen and Sophomores have only done it once, the Juniors have had a little more experience with it, and the Seniors have gotten into a good flow. There are two dates for each book listed on the schedule, a Thursday and a Friday. I give the Thursdays for researching (on laptops borrowed from the computer lab), and on Fridays, we discuss what they found and they each write up a one-paragraph summary.

The research itself was a little tricky to get into, as the students weren't quite sure what they were looking for. We worked up this list together:

The summaries have been rather difficult to get perfect. I'm not sure if it's because it's something they're still not quite used to yet or if I'm grading them too hard.

I did have one full credit paper turned in, and I was so excited, I took a picture that we've used as a model since:

I've also been urging in the direction of a specific format, even though that's something that typically bugs me about teaching writing. (Students should be able to write with their own voice! etc., etc. That's another topic entirely. I digress.) It should start out with the title of the book, the author, and the publication date, then go into just a couple of sentences of plot, and finish up with some historical context. It's not necessary to follow this format, but some of the students found it helpful.

When I grade the summaries, I make some comments about what information could be included or excluded, and they keep everything together in their notes. We haven't had any tests over it yet, but there will be a few little ones where students will need to remember enough key information to write a summary from scratch, and then a comprehensive one at the end of the year.

I'm not sure if I'm going about this in the best way yet, but we'll see how this goes. I'll report back with more information when I have it!

First Quarter High School Examination and Some Musings on the Concept of Failure

In the summer, my husband and mother-in-law asked me what I was preparing for my first year teaching high school. I gave them a couple of concepts I had been playing around with, but they were put off by my lack of fully formed plans. In an attempt to be helpful, they began listing ideas they wanted me to use. I listened earnestly for a couple of minutes, then my brain shut everything out. It's difficult to relay without sounding bitter. I know they want me to succeed, so when they saw that I "wasn't prepared," they tried to pitch in. Because they love me, they couldn't bear the thought of seeing me fail.

But I need to fail. I, and everyone else who will eventually master a skill, need to fail in order to truly learn.

(I looked for a previous article to link that last statement to, but I guess I haven't written one up yet. I know I have enough material floating around in my mind for it. Add that to my ever-growing list of concepts that require further exploration through narrative reflection.)

Yes, they were just trying to give me ideas, but I took offense to it. I took it as an attempt to run my classroom. I reminded myself that they were just being helpful and tried to make enough uni-syllabic sounds of noncommittal agreement to drop the subject, but I suppose in my endeavor not to offend back, I did so too passively. Eventually the conversation ended in angry tears--mine.

As it turns out, I've been lucky enough to land myself a second job with administration lenient enough to give me my space and trust me to teach without requiring lesson plans or even curriculum mapping. Of course I've taken full advantage of the situation, playing with new ideas as I see fit.

But I'm also still hesitant enough to cling to what I view as traditional activities. And for the same reason as last year, too--in hopes of providing the outward appearance of a teacher who is in control of her classroom and knows what she is doing. I seem to be displaying the semblance of doing as such because, in truth, I probably am. I just don't have the confidence to know it yet. I just have a natural tendency to want to fly under the radar and not get "caught" doing something out of the normal because I fear I couldn't justify it accurately enough to get the permission to continue. Some day I will.

But also, I'm still discovering what my best practices are and, knowing this, would rather keep it to myself until I'm finished. If administration knew, I fear they would want to "be helpful," and I'd have a repeat occurrence of what happened this summer on my hands. And that's what I'm really trying to avoid.

I still need to play with ideas that don't work in order to know that they don't work.

I need to be free to fail in order to know what not to do.

I need to fail in order to grow as a teacher.

So, briefly, here's a short list of activities (some traditional, some not. Some that work, some that don't) that have been going on in my classroom for the past two months:
-Writing from prompts, but not every day
-No textbooks
-Reading books as a class (that is, an entire class reading the same book. Not aloud, but with reading assignments for homework)
-Reading Shakespeare
-Watching movies versions of books after finishing the reading
-Playing independently-produced board games with the theme of books read together or discussed
-Poorly performed Socratic seminars
-Group discussions
-Essay questions answered in iterations
-Daily quizzes with simple Bloom's Knowledge questions to give points for completing assigned reading (for modern books)
-Taking notes together on the board (for Shakespeare)
-Freely used magnetic poetry
-A role-playing-game-themed digital behavior management tool
-Stream of consciousness writing
-Desks that are in rows by default but easily rearranged to create small groups and partners, circles, semi-circles, and circles within circles
-Standing at the front of the room to teach whole-class
-Sitting with students in the circle to guide conversations
-Standing back to let student-led discussions flow
-Internet research and summary writing on books (definitely an entire post on this to ensue)
-Pillow usage for lounging on the floor during work periods
-Creating a found word word wall (freshman class only--I have them twice a day)
-Sentence diagramming with Shurley Method (freshman class only)
-Preparations to write our own school newspaper (freshman class only)

I'd like to elaborate on many things listed, but I find that difficult to do at this time. I feel like they are all experiments in progress, and when I write, I like to be able to speak declaratively about my subject. I like to be able to make conclusions and decisions of finality that can stand true at least for the time being, and I can't really do that with something I'm still in the middle of. (That's also one of the reasons I don't write often, because I feel like I'm always in the middle of something and not close enough to the end of it to make any real decisions about it.) So, elaborations and statements of temporary finality still to come.

Here are some things I am desperate to implement but have not yet because I'm still trying to figure out how to best incorporate them:
-Reflection writing
-Social emotional learning
-Nonfiction article of the week
-Annotation writing (close writing)
-Argument and logic
-Better Socratic circles
-Teaching styles of writing through exemplars
-Technical writing

Honestly, that's not so much. It's not as big of a list as I was expecting it to be. I just need to get my stuff together and work on incorporating them already!

Recently I've been feeling stressed about work and down about my job performance, so it's nice to take a step back and think about what we've actually already been doing. It's nice to see that big list of things we've been working on. I'm happy to be where I am, carrying out the experiments I am and implementing the the work I am. Though the day to day is tedious and full of challenging learning for everyone, I'll be able to look back with a heart full with accomplishment soon enough. And with that thought, I am contented.