Se Hace Camino Al Andar

One of my colleagues (that’s her with the fabulous food at the workshop) invited me to join her tonight at a seminar at The New-York Historical Society. All I knew about it was that it was related to their exhibit, Slavery in New York and that we would get a ton of free teaching materials. The seminar turned out to actually be a workshop given by Channel 13/WNET. They are premiering a new documentary this week called African American Lives. The exhibit itself was great and I learned a lot. (No pictures allowed! ) They fed us great food (we’re talking filet mignon sandwiches) before we sat through a three hour presentation, which was, all in all, pretty interesting. The keynote speaker was the museum’s public historian, who took us through some of the primary source documents she uncovered in her research. Someone from PBS did a demonstration lesson on using the television program and the website that goes with it. It’s definintely worth a look. At the end, we got a HUGE, and I mean, HUGE binder from the museum with lesson plans based on their exhibit. The binder also included a DVD from The History Channel, a couple of wall maps that show New York’s geographical spread of slaves and slavery, and a copy of an old newspaper from 1764. I still need to look through the whole binder to see exactly what’s contained therein but it looks like support materials and hand-outs, in addition to the lesson plans.

The workshops I gave this morning went pretty well. We had a good discussion about teaching grammar. The second workshop was pretty quick and somehow led to a discussion about strategies for getting kids to hand in homework. It was good to see my department communicating ideas with each other. We never have the time for that! I did a brief, disorganized training with the mobile laptop lab. The wireless connection in the room wasn’t working, the printer wasn’t networking with the laptops but we still did a run-through of the various enrichment software programs on the desktop and addressed concerns about the logistics of using the mobile labs in our classroom. I am excited about finally having access to the lab. I’ll be doing a dry run in my classroom afterschool this week to work out the set up of the computers. I’m starting a ISearch unit with my Ramp-Up class this week, so it’s great timing.

Tomorrow, we’re back in full swing…sort of. It’s a four day week and we have a short schedule on Friday. We have two full weeks of teaching after that, then a week off. Oy.

Tomorrow is a professional development day for teachers, so I’m giving two workshops in the morning for my department and doing computer training in the afternoon for a select few. Here’s my plan right now (no hand-outs yet, Graycie!). Both of these workshops are based on workshops that I took at NCTE in November:

Workshop One: Grammar
I’ll begin by leading colleagues through an interactive exercise. I’ll ask two or three volunteers to perform a series of actions (ie enter from left, walk forward, look around and clap). The audience will create a sentence to describe the actions. Then, we’ll identify the POS (Parts of Speech) in the sentences.

The second activity, I’ll distribute photos of various scenes. Participants will create sentences to describe what is happening in the photos. Then, I’ll ask them to change the nouns to gerunds, then change their sentences to past tense. (On a side note,an interesting thing I learned when doing this workshop at NCTE–a gerund is actually a form of a verb that acts as a noun!)

I’ll wrap up this workshop by leading discussions about applications in the classroom, the ways we teach grammar if we teach it at all. I’ll also share the idea that when we teach grammar, we should maximize the writing and minimize the terminology.
[Unfortunately, there is no online link to information about the workshop I took but the women who led the workshop were from the New Jersey Writing Project in Texas.]

Workshop Two: Responding to Student Writing
First, I’ll hand out a sample of student writing and ask my colleagues to respond to it as they would with any student’s paper. We’ll debrief on the ways in which we responded and what we chose to focus on.
Then, I’ll lead a discussion about issues associating with responding to student writing, such as time and the fact that many students don’t read the comments or take them to heart when doing subsequent drafts.
Then, another discussion about what we, as teachers, want to accomplish when we respond to student writing. We’ll talk about the idea that we should focus on ideas first, then conventions and mechanics.
I’ll wrap up by sharing the rough draft questionnaire that the original presenters of this workshop used and share my idea that the first draft should be ungraded, marked with feedback only with no corrections.
[You can get the original presentation here. Click the link that says NCTE Packet.]

I’m still fine-tuning the details and looking for support materials but I think it’ll be useful and hopefully not boring for my colleagues. In any case, I think it beats having to sit in the auditorium all day or going to a yet another useless Balanced Literacy workshop.

Link: Adding Up the Numbers. [Via Gothamist]

Miss Dennis over at Your Mama’s Mad Tedious posted her thoughts on the whole James Frey debacle and mentioned two other titles, Random Family and Amazing Grace. I posted a comment, offering my thoughts but the comment was returned to me, via email, citing an inability to deliver, so here is the comment I wrote (A link to the original post follows):

Random Family, I belive, can be categorized as an ethnography. Ethnographies are basically non-fiction but some of the details are acquired through interviews with the subjects, hence her disclosure that she was not present for all of it. I’ve spoken to more than one person who actually knew the subjects of the book and they pretty much corroborate the situations described. I don’t think it’s valid to draw a comparison between James Frey’s work and that of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s work. James Frey fictionalized his own life and presented it as non-fiction, appealing to readers’ emotional responsivness. LeBlanc, on the other, is presenting the story of others and telling that story as it has been told to her, as well as the observations that she made. Huge difference.

Link: Your Mama’s Mad Tedious: Diary of a Bronx Teacher: Dear Smoking Gun.

1. I haven’t heard anymore information about the e-grading. We were supposed to have a PD on it, on Monday but my AP just asked me to submit a PD proposal for our department, for Monday, so I guess we’re not having a PD on e-grading.

2. I’m excited about the PD I planned. The morning session will be broken up into two workshops, one on teaching grammar and the other on responding to student writing. I took workshops on both of these things at the NCTE convention in November. I haven’t implemented any of the grammar stuff I learned but I have used the ideas that I picked up on responding to student writing. The afternoon session, some of us will be  visiting the new Bronx Library Center on East Kingsbridge Road. Some teachers will stay in the building and do curriculum development. Still others will have the option of attending a workshop on balanced literacy for CTE teachers (gag me!).

3. It looks like I’ll get my first choice for Circular 6–planning PD for the department. No hallway or lunchroom duty for me! Woo hoo.

4. I heard a rumor that our school might be restructured into small learning communities. They (admins) are convening a committee to look at the possibilities. I want to be on that committee and my AP knows it. I just have to let the principal know of my interest.

5. I heard back from an admin at the Institute for Writing and Thinking, regarding the JP Morgan grant for their week-long summer workshop. She said she might have some funding available for me and I just have to check back with her later, in the Spring. Keeps all digits crossed. Thanks.

6. I’m completely and totally head-over-heels for this guy.

I can’t find any information about it online yet but I heard from my AP today that the DOE is switching over to computerized grade reporting. I cannot tell you how excited I am! Has anyone else heard anything? Apparently, the program will begin with the first marking period of the new term.

Today, at work, I got two mailings today about new conferences at The Institute for Writing and Thinking. You might remember that I attended a one-day conference last May and a weekend workshop the December prior. The one-day conference this year is about academic papers; namely, what purpose do they serve and are they still relevant? There is also the week-long summer workshop, which I would looooooove to attend pero es muy caro. 875 dollars to be exact. I’m planning a trip to Europe this summer, so unless I can swing another JP Morgan grant, that workshop ain’t happening.

It’s Regents Week. That means lots of hanging out with fellow teachers in the library, getting a kick of our kids’ “unique” writing style. Seriously, though, we’ve had heated discussions about what standard to which we are holding the kids. The state grades essays easier than we do and I think we should use that to our advantage. Needless to say, several teachers disagree with me. The reality is, that Regents scores have no bearing nor do they reflect the readiness of our students. The only thing that Regents scores represent is more money for my school, since its used as a measurement tool to meet NCLB requirements, no? Let me know if I’m wrong.

Link: The Education Wonks: The Carnival Of Education: Week 51 – Thoughts And Ideas Freely Exchanged.

Yesterday, the NYCWP did another walkabout, this time at MoMA. You can see the writing that resulted here.

I found out why I haven’t heard anything about how my school is using the 37.5 minutes…we’re a multi-session school, so we’re exempt from having to create a block of time. Instead, the 37.5 minutes will be spread throughout the school day, adding on two minutes to each period. I would prefer they add two minutes to the passing time between classes but I digress…LOL.

I have to plan a PD on holistic grading for Monday. Any ideas or leads to sources? Shoot ‘em to me.