Sunday, April 06, 2014

MCTE 2014

I spent two days with my entire department, as well as Mandy, our ALC English teacher, and Sara, our curriculum director, in Duluth at the Minnesota Council of Teachers of English conference.

I had never gone before, the main reason being that it always used to fall on the NFL draft.  Missing that is out of the question.

However, since the NFL moved the draft over the past year, things finally worked out.

We all went down because there were going to be text book reps attending, and since we are in the process of purchasing new materials for our curriculum cycle, we were going to devote some time to looking over new textbooks.  However, because of the weather (Duluth was expecting upwards of 20 inches of snow by the end of the weekend), the reps didn't show.  And that was fine with me since I don't really use a textbook anyway (College Comp I and II don't' have textbooks).

The first part of this year's theme was excellent, "What You Do Matters."  However, the last half wasn't quite so inspiring, "Connecting with Common Core."

Though I didn't know what to expect, I have to admit that I was very, very happy that I went.

I enjoyed every single presentation, and, honestly, I came away with about a dozen new teaching strategies or ideas for improving my craft.

Here is a rundown of the sessions and speakers.

The first day began with a presentation from NCTE president Dr. Ernest Morrell.  Talk about an excellent way to begin the conference!  Dr. Morrell is the son of two teachers and passionate about education.  He is professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.  Oh by the way he also earned his Ph.D from Berkley.  Must be rough.

He was incredible well spoken and relevant.  The title of his presentation was "(Re)Inventing the Future of English: Teaching English in the Digital Age."  The main focus on his presentation, which he was kind enough to share with us via Dropbox, focused on literacy, mainly seeking to address the questions of "What should we read?" "How should we read?" and "What are we doing while and after our students read?"

One of the best ideas I can steal from Dr. Morrell's presentation is the idea of his "The Reading Ladder."  This idea features students building (with my help, of course) a ladder of reading material focusing around a specific subject (such as "coming of age," "sports," or "bullying") that starts out easy and then ends up with more complex readings.

I'm not sure how I'd design this.  I don't think I'd have the entire ladder consist of books.  I think I'd have three books (one at the bottom of the ladder for easy reading, one at the middle for moderate reading, and one at the top for difficult) and then mix in several different genres on each "step" of the ladder related to the theme.  I'd even try to use various media, film, graphic novels, non fiction, poetry, and so on.

I'd love to devote significant time to this project.  In fact, I'd rather spend our money here than on a textbook.

And I know the standards call for us to teach a Shakespeare.  And 9th grade (where my remedial class is taught) is the traditional spot for teaching The Odyssey.  The be honest regular 9th grade classes struggle with these texts (they struggle with Rome and Juliet because of the Shakespeare's style and the struggled with The Odyssey because our textbook butchered it when they included samples from it).  This is where another thing Morrell spoke about comes in: graphic novels.  I'd love to see the 9r class get a classroom set of graphic novels for both The Odyssey and Romeo and Juliet (or whatever Shakespeare play we decide to cover).

It's safe to say that once Dr. Morrell finished his opening presentation, my mind was on fire.  And the conference had just begun!

Luckily, for me, it wasn't downhill at all from there.

Our first session of the day "Going Digital: Creating Online Content and Curriculum" was easily the weakest of all the sessions I attended.  But that is mainly because it really didn't present us with any new information or ideas.  Since we are 1:1, we do plenty of creating content and curriculum.

After the first session, it was time for our next presenter, Native American writer Jim Northrup.  When I read his bio, I swore that I had heard of him before.  Then I recalled going to an author talk when I was at NCTC when a Native American author spoke to us.  I recall hearing a very powerful poem from that man about being in Vietnam and not dreading the bullets with my name on it as much as fearing the bullets addressed to "To Whom It May Concern."  That phrase stuck with me for the past 20 years.  I also recalled how he chronicled the difficulties of life on the reservation and the horrors of boarding school.

Sure enough, this was the same man.  He read the same Vietnam poem.  I was blessed to hear it again, though it packed the same type of punch as it did all those years ago.  Northrup was a riot.  He was pretty much the polar opposite of Dr. Morrell, who did Berkley and Columbia proud with his speaking skills and stele.  Northrup was blunt, off color (dropping the F world at least half a dozen times), and brutally honest.  He did a great job though and had everyone laughing.

The second session of the afternoon was "The Omnivore's Dilemma for Young Readers: Using High Interest, Non-fiction Text to Engage Reluctant Readers." The highlight of this session was Jesse Kwakenat.  He works with special ed students at Central High School. He was an absolute rock star and the kids are fortunate to have him.

The session focused on how Kwakenat and another teacher used the book The Omnivores Dilemma for Young Readers to build almost an entire curriculum around, featuring writing, reading, science, and public speaking.  This was excellent.  The used a gallery walk that I'm going to use in my classes this week.  I've used a variation of it before, but I am going to use it much the same way they did.  What a gallery walk includes is several large sheets up paper hanging up around the room with a question written across the top.  Then we were divided into one group per sheet of paper.  Then we were dispersed to answer each question.

So here is how I'd use it in College Comp 2 where we are currently reading Seth Godin's Linchpin.  I'd have five sheets of paper up with a specific question on each sheet, such as "Of the seven abilities of a Linchpin, which do you think is the most important?"  and "Why has the world changed from a labor intensive world to a thought intensive world?"

So each group would take turns answering each question.  Then when all groups had a chance to answer, we'd discuss briefly.

Then - and this is what I love about it - I'd walk to each piece of paper and remove it to reveal the same question that had been posed to a previous class.  This way students can instantly compare how they answered the text to how their peers did.  Or I could survey employers or other adults, having them answer each question.  Then I'd jot their answers on the sheet before taping a blank one over it for my students to answer.

When that session was over, we had our last one of the day.  And this one was the best session of the day: Using Structured Socratic Seminars by Daryl Parks.

What I enjoyed most about this session was that we actually modeled exactly what we were learning about.  We sat in a large circle and modeled a Socratic Seminar.

And it was awesome. Now granted he had a bunch of English teachers as his "students," but this was still a great idea for fostering true discussions in class.

For my discussions I ask questions and try to get everyone involved, but that's not an honest discussion, at least in the way the Socratic Seminar is.

The grounds rules are this -

1. The day before, hand out a short piece to be read and discussed in class.  Our "homework" was a very short Ray Bradbury story entitled "The Last Night of the World" from The Illustrated Man.  Of course as a Sci Fi/Horror geek, I had read this book at least three times when I was younger.  So I was well versed in it.  Still I had never thought about it so deliberately as we did in this session.

2.  When students come to class the next day, welcome them and remind them of the homework assignment. If some haven't read it, have them do so quickly.  After all, what's the use of a Socratic seminar session if someone hasn't done the work?

3.  Establish the ground rules for the discussion - no one will raise their hands (I love this.  Dr. Parks noted that raising your hand ruins discussions.  Where in the real world do you ever raise your hand to talk?  Ridiculous).  No talking over someone (or being too eager to share your idea) nor talking under someone (having side conversations or talking about someone's comment beneath your breath).  And if you're an extrovert, be warned to tone it down just a bit for the good of the discussion.  Likewise, if you're an introvert, try to step it up just a bit for the good of the discussion as well.  Finally, the teacher does not make eye contact with anyone.  The reasoning here is to avoid the natural tendency of students  to focus their answers on the teacher.  That doesn't occur in real discussions either.

4.  Be sure to have specific text questions related to the reading.  These questions have to be open ended with no set answers.  This is vital for the discussion.  And I need to get better at this for often I 'fish' for answers in my 'discussions' instead of actually asking questions I have no idea how to answer. In fact, Dr. Parks gave us a list of dominant themes in literature so if we ever have a lull in the conversation, he offered us to just pluck one theme at random (like 'fate vs. freewill') and try to have the class apply it to the story.

5.  Each session begins with a question that is answered by everyone in a specific order - we went clockwise.  Our question was, "What do you think is the title of this story?"  It wasn't fair because I had read this back in 10th grade!  The each session ends with a specific question too.

This was a blast.  And I can't wait to do this in class.  Dr. Parks said that he doesn't use this for all of his discussions, though.  He uses this only three or four times in an entire semester.  So it's best when used sparingly.

That was it for the day.  It would have been a great day too had it not been for the blizzard that was descending on Duluth.  Over the course of the hour or two we went out for supper and a bit of shopping, Duluth was covered in at least four inches of snow!

Friday morning was pretty bleak.  There were fewer people in attendance as many hit the road early because of the weather and a few of the presenters weren't able to make it in.  Still, we plowed ahead (nice pun there) anyway.

Our first speaker was a poet who was pretty much the polar opposite of Jim Northrup.  Our speaker was a past MN Poet Laureate, Joyce Sutphen.  She was gentle, soft spoken, a bit scattered brained, and excellent.  She spoke on teaching and poetry and writing and she worked her magic as she read several of her own poems and the poems of other poets she used in her classes sat  Gustavus.  In her hour or so speaking, I was struck with at least a dozen ideas for poems.  That's how rich her talk was.  She even had us write a haiku about Duluth.

This session was so good it could have been twice as long.  Actually, what would have been fascinating would have been to listen to Sutphen and Northrup talk about poetry.  She was so gentle and soft spoken (she reminded me a lot of the Divination teacher in the Hogwarts movies).  One could imagine her having a glass of wine and listening to NPR in the evenings.  Whereas Northrup was gruff and off-color.  I imagined him winding the day down with a six pack of beer and Breaking Bad.  Yet, how interesting it would be to observe these two total opposites talk about poetry and their work and the writing process.  I bet they wouldn't be so polar opposite when it came to that.

After Sutphen we had our final breakout session, this one entitled "An Uncommonly Good Homecoming Friday Leson Plan" by John Zdrazil.  He spoke about what it's like trying to teach sophomores who are all wound up on homecoming week.  And those are the kids who are actually in your class, not the four pulled out for homecoming coronation rehearsal and band practice.

Most of us try and combat their exuberance and just plow through with a lesson . . . or give in to the fact that zero education will be occurring and just show a movie.

Zdrazil said that he stumbled across a lesson that lets you use the students' goofiness and energy for an actual academic lesson.

And it would work so well.  The lesson?

He asked us to create a school based on a literary figure.  So if you were about done with Fahrenheit 451 when homecoming hit, instead of trying to give a final test on the Friday of homecoming (always a bad idea), you could hold off until Monday for the test (probably still a bad idea) and go ahead with this lesson where you'd imagine Montag, Faber, or Beatty (maybe even the Mechanical Hound) as principal or headmaster.  The you would give students a sheet of paper with a high school on it.  As you look at the paper, you see questions all around the school.

Some of the questions were - what is this school's fight song? What classes do they offer? Who is their rival? What sports or extra curriculars do they offer? What is their mascot? What is the vibe in the school during homecoming? What do they have for lunch? What are the dress up days and activities for their homecoming? And so on.

For the record, here is what I came up with using Beatty (the antagonist of 451).

School name - Beatty’s Academy for the Average

Colors - black, red, and gray

Mascot: Home of the Prowling Mechanical Hounds

Song - Cheer, Cheer for those who don’t think
for when the reader’s ship goes down, it will be on fire
and we’ll sing “burn, burn” as it sinks.

Required reading . . . only for those who we wish to expel (or exterminate).

Required viewing instead

Courses -

Mindless consumption

Constant entertainment

The Benefits of materialism

Immolation 101

The physics of fire

Intoxicating the mind with music, drama, and TV.

Fun Park Architecture I and II.

Shakesfeare 401

How to burn turn in your parents.

Burning the elderly isn’t bad

Rivals
Montag High
Hemingway Academy
Melville Tech


Vibe

Fear
Folly
Ruthlessness


Lunch - Salamandar soup.  

Homecoming week-

Monday -  Announcing the court.  The winner is crowned.  Second place fodder for the hound. Third place burned alive at the homecoming bonfire.

Dress up - Asbestos wear

Tuesday - Twin day

Wednesday - injury day (dress as your most recent burn victim).

Thursday - Mechanical Hound day - Activity - hide banned books in rival lockers.  Then turn the Hound on them.  Can you outrun the Hound.  If you survive first block, your class is awarded 100 points.  

Friday - Coronation.  The winner is crowned.  Second place has a dance with the hound  Third place is the guest of honor at the bonfire after the game.



Now that was a lot of fun.  So students - who would be very much in the homecoming mood during this day - would be able to channel some of that energy into this assignment.  Again, I can't wait to give this a try.

Friday came to a close with a great speaker, author Geoff Herbach who chronicled his quest to become a writer, which was not an easy task at all.  Still, he shared us stories from his high school days that were hilarious, as was the story of how he got the seed of the idea for his breakthrough YA novel, Stupid Fast.

I enjoyed every moment of Herbach's presentation.  Any school who has him in to speak to their student body, especially young males who have stopped reading, are very, very lucky.

This was such a great experience that I fear I'm hooked on MCTE.  Hell, even if it does fall on the NFL draft, it is still worth going!  And that's really saying something coming from me given that my favorite day of the year is the NFL draft.

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