Saturday

I'm on my second round of Caribou Coffee already. Kristie is off to work Ag Day for her insurance agency in RLF, so I have the kiddos for the afternoon. Cash is out for a nap, so I've got some time to blog.

What's new?

Well, two weeks ago we got the news, which was no shock to any of the English teachers, that it has been decided that we will not hire a new English teacher at LHS to replace Jan who retired at semester break.

To say this is disappointing is a massive understatement.

This likely will plunge class sizes to 30. Not good for writing intensive classes. This also will likely eliminate the few electives we currently offer.

Worse yet, about 8 years ago we actually had 2.5 more English teachers on staff. Our current media specialist taught English classes and also worked on the grad standards for our district. We had Mrs. Olson, who taught honors and Brit Lit, and Mrs. Anton. Now all of those positions are gone.

Yet, we expected to carry on. And we will. But it's the students who suffer. One cannot simply get the educational experience in a class of 30 or 35 kids that one can in a class of 15.

Sad.

And it didn't have to happen. I know we hear that we might have the position back next year. But I don't trust that. At all.

We will have a state of the art facility thanks to our referendum but we'll have fewer staff. Where is the sense in that?

This, too, is a very important reminder to fight for tenure.

I know I've said in that past that tenure protects horrible teachers. And it does. But it also protects highly effective (and expensive) senior teachers.

I have no doubt that if it came down to it in a lean budget year that we'd lose an excellent veteran teacher at the top of the salary scale in order to higher younger and cheaper teachers. Hopefully, it will not come to that.

*****

What else is new?

Well, we have one week left in third quarter.

And I'm struggling. My overload is killing me. I don't know how anyone could possibly teach without any prep time during the day.

First block I have College Comp II. I only have 11 students, but these are some of the best kids in our entire school. And preparing a lesson for them - as well as getting all of the writing and assignments I give them graded and returned on time - consumes much of my time. But that is a nice problem to have.

Second block is my overload: Lit & Lang 9. Unfortunately, these 32 students tend to get the short end of the stick. Is that fair? No. But it's survival. We just blundered our way through The Odyssey. This was my fault. For some stupid reason, I was under the impression that the textbook contained the full version. It does not. This is stupid. What is the point of reading four selections for The Odyssey? Do we just read the second act of Julius Caesar? Or the first 200 pages of To Kill a Mockingbird?

So my students struggled with skipping around the poem so much. I should have prepped more and realized this, but I didn't have the time.

The good news with that class is that while they tired of the short story unit relatively quickly (I swear half of their textbook is devoted to short stories). They could only take so much of plot, character, setting, and theme before it got old. I was with them on that one too.

So I tried something different. I took them to the library and had them each check out a book they could read in about two weeks. I was going to have them complete a Stick-Note Book Report on it, but then I thought how to conclude the short story unit, they had already created iMovie trailers. So I thought maybe they'd like to try keeping a blog as they read their books and put all of the 'book report stuff' on the blog instead.

I came up with several categories for them to blog on - chapter summaries/reader response starters, characters, outside connections (I wanted them to do some research and find extra information related to real world events or figures mentioned in their novels), creative assignments, and final response (I was hoping to have them record themselves offering a 60 second review of the book - but that wasn't quite feasible, so I just had them do a written review instead).

For the most part, the kids read quite well and worked hard on their blogs. Of course, some blogs were far better than others, but they were engaged and creating. So I was happy with that.

Here are a couple samples -


Girlfriend Material

Woodsong

Speak

Now, I just have to find a way to keep channeling that creativity to other assignments.

My College Comp classes are reading their way through Ken Robinson's The Element. Previously, I used to teach this in my College Comp II class, but the more I began to really think about the book, which is all about how finding your passion, especially when it comes to work and your career, can change everything, I realized it was too late to be talking to the seniors about this. They are just about out the door. So I decided to teach it in my junior College Comp I classes instead.

So far, so good.

And it actually fits perfectly into my curriculum. I used to have them write a braided essay on their passion anyway, so the more I thought about having them write about The Element, the more I thought I could use that to introduce the braided essay. This way they can get a little bit of an introduction to citation and using sources on top of writing a braided essay.

Here is how they are going about it

(and for those who don't know, a braided essay is one long essay that has three or four different essays woven together to make one complex piece)

4.1 - write about who you really are? (this ties in to the first chapter of The Element. Robinson tells the wonderful story of Gillian Lynn and how her elementary school thought she had a learning disability. They recommended taking Gillian to a doctor. Her mother did. The doctor examined her and asked to speak to her mother outside the office. As he went out, he flipped on his radio. As they peered into the room, Gillian began dancing and floating around the room. The doctor said there was nothing wrong with her. Gillian was a dancer (today he would have said she was a kinesthetic learner) and she should be in dance school. Her mother enrolled her the next day. And it made all the difference. Through being in her element and pursuing her passion, Gillian learned who she really was. Robinson ends the first chapter posing that question to the reader. So I posed it to my students and had them write an essay on it).

4.2 - Answer these 25 questions (okay. This isn't an essay. But their answers might well be great fodder for an essay. Plus, they can still braid these in to their essay).

4.3 - Select one of these ways to ignite your passion and test it out (this entry will be written in journal format as they test out this way to ignite their passion. Plus, each of these fit perfectly with the movie Kung Fu Panda, which we watched to help illustrate Robinson's points about finding your passion and believing in yourself).

4.4 - write about an epiphany moment where you realized that you either discovered a passion for something or when you discovered you hated something. Sometimes discovering what you don't love and have a passion for is just as vital as finding your passion!

4.5 - Freebie #1 (what I mean by this is that students can choose to write about any topic that they find interesting as a result of reading The Element. It might be "What is your medium?" or "Who is your biggest mentor?" or "if you know what your element is, write about what it's like being in the zone when you are totally in your element."

4.6 - Freebie #2 (same as above)

4.7 - Interview someone in their element.

Okay. Got all that? Now after having written seven different pieces, students will choose FOUR to revise into final drafts. Then we will work to braid them together. This is the most difficult part. But it's a great chance for me to model crafting and revising an essay and polishing it up. I love this part of the job.

College Comp II -

They just finished up their Sticky-Note Book Reports. I had them do the actual Sticky-Note Book Report where they put the Post-Its in their books. Then I also had them give a book talk to the class. Finally, instead of writing a research paper, I had them create a blog based on their book (there I go again with those blasted blogs!) and then write a hyper-text review of the book. I know it doesn't have any citation like their other papers, but I really wanted them to experience writing a hyper-text essay (which I believe is the wave of the future). They had to have a minimum of 10 links in their review though, and no more than three could lead back to wikipedia.

Here is the link to our class blog where you can see student examples. They blew me away. When I was a senior I was still typing on my electric typewriter. And if I could pull it off, I was just learning how to use the Apple IIe in our library and typing and saving my stories on floppy disks!