Here are the stories and articles I'm reading this weekend.
An interesting blog post about something many teachers take for granted: what your room says about you.
Early in the week I attended a Teacher/Principal evaluation training session put on by Ed MN (it's to help use prep for the new teacher and principal evaluations that the state will put into place to, hopefully, improve K-12 education, in the next two years). One trainer, when talking about assessing teachers, said, "You can evaluate a teacher's effectiveness even if there isn't a teacher or students in the room." And he meant by how your room appears.
I don't know how serious he was about that statement, but it's interesting. I've always been one to put time and effort into my room. It might be busy as hell with Legos and art work and student notes and art projects everywhere, but at least it's not boring. I want my room to be a reflection of me. If students aren't learning something from what's going on, maybe they can at least look around and see something to spark their imagination.
And don't lie to me- you know when you walk into a room - whether it be as a parent or colleague - you can't help but entertain the thought, "damn I wish I could be in this class" or "good lord, if I had to spend ten minutes more in this room, I'd go insane."
The blog post at the top, just asks beginning teachers to think about what their room says about them. And it's something to really thing about.
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More from Bauerlien.
We finished Bauerlein's The Dumbest Generation, but here he is still haunting me. Dammit. And on Twitter of all places.
Here is the link to the article by Bauerlein.
He, of course, condemns personal writing. And that's no surprise to anyone familiar with him.
And, surprise, surprise I have no problem with this.
Yes, I love personal writing and think it's vital. But I also think Bauerlein has a point.
I've done enough research on this topic (a bulk of my master's work was on comp theory) to know that you can just as easily make a case against strict academic writing in the classroom. If you don't believe me, just write a letter in support of the thesis-support / five paragraph theme to the English Journal and see the response. It's hilarious.
There has been a huge push for as long as I've really been teaching high school for personal writing. And I'm proud to be one of the strongest advocates.
There are a number of factors here. First, reader-response as a lit theory is more often taught in high school instead of formalism. So students do a ton of free writes where they have to identify with a character or circumstance of plot rather than really do analysis.
I don't think this is a bad thing.
Second, the BST writing test is always a narrative of some sort. Thus, personal writing is taught widely to get students to pass that test.
Third, it's more fun to teach.
But there should be a solid balance of personal and academic writing. I think that's what Bauerlein is getting at. I don't think one form should dominate another.
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Learning in the Modern Classroom
This post is about what it looks like and what it should be. I wish my class was more like this one. We're getting there though.
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And to counter Bauerlein's previous argument, here are professional authors talking about what makes a great essay. And it ain't a solid thesis statement.
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A very interesting tactic: A father pays his daughter $200 to quit Facebook.
How much would it take to get your son or daughter to quit? Be honest, how much would it take to get you to quit it?
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Finally, this video. Sometimes you just have to stop what you're doing and remember the lure of a puddle when you were three or four.
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