Se Hace Camino Al Andar

Regents week is winding down, though we still have a few essays to look at, and scores to record and report. It’s been a good week, mostly because I get to sleep in a little. This week, not so relaxing but good nonetheless.

The professional writers’ retreat had their second meeting at Lehman College last night. Up until last night, my idea for a piece was sort of just floating in and out but being able to bounce ideas off of other people, and listening to what other people are writing about has helped tremendously. So, I’m pretty sure that I’m going to write about the challenges of teaching AP English to ELL/former ESL students. I need to come up with a way of organizing my observations and notes so that it goes beyond mere storytelling. I’d like it to be a case study of sorts, as well as an examination of what strategies I’m using to help my kids build their “cultural knowledge,” or what I call “the conversation.”

Today, I’ve arranged for my fellow teachers to do PD outside the building. We’re headed to the Museum of the City of New York, where we’ll get an overview of their collection and their educational programs, then do a self-guided tour. My only peeve is that the exhibit I really want to see, the Robert Moses exhibit, doesn’t start until later this week! I’ll have to go back on my own and… pay. Boo hoo!

Tonight, I’m at my consulting gig, reviewing texts for an AP website. I really like the work I’m doing, as it entails sitting around reading good writing and figuring out the teaching applications, in the context of an AP class. I’m learning a lot! One of the hardest things about having this course just dropped in my lap at the beginning of the school is finding time to plan for it, and do a ton of reading to figure out what I want to teach. With the AP audit coming up, I have to start re-working my syllabus, which, apparently, is not a syllabus at all, according to the syllabi I’ve seen on the AP Central website. Woefully inadequate does not even begin to describe my current syllabus. This consulting job gives me a leg up on creating an acceptable syllabus, one of the unintended side effects of the gig.

Tomorrow, I have a meeting with the two facilitators of this Spring’s NYCWP Satellite Invitational, which I participated in last Spring. This time around, I’ll be a technology coach. Joe and Joanna want to use various web 2.0 applications with this year’s group, so it’s my job to pull that together. I think we’ll probably end up using Google Groups, with Google Docs but we need to have a conversation about how I’ll introduce these two applications to the group members and how I’ll continue to support them throughout the Spring.

Thursday, I have a Tech Thursdays meeting with Paul and Ken. We’re doing some planning for the Spring and hopefully, I can start to lay out the groundwork for the web-based research paper I want to do with my seniors…again. I’m really unhappy with how it unfolded last semester, through many faults of my own, as well as my students. I talk a little about it on Inquiry. Basically, I need to more organized this time around and slow down. I overestimated how much they knew about the internet and the interweb. They need a lot more structure and an introduction to the basics of blogging and searching. I’m on it! At the last Technology Advisory Committee meeting, we talked about what products would be expected from the Tech Thursdays group members. Because I feel strongly that group members should produce some kind of product, whether it’s a process paper or online portfolio, I’ve been asked to draft guidelines for the group.
Also, if you haven’t already, check out Teachers Teaching Teachers. Paul and Susan host a webcast every Wednesday night at 9pm, on technology and teaching.

Thursday is also the first day of the Spring Semester. I’m starting Anthem with my freshmen and need to come up with a front-loading activity. The Reflective Teacher has a great lesson that he did with his students before this book. The big question that came out of reading this book, for me, was “Why is intelligence dangerous?” I’m going to throw that question out there to my students and see what they come up with. Anthem will be followed by Holocaust literature, either Maus or Number the Stars. I think the themes of Anthem and The Holocaust are similar, and I’m eager to use the material I picked up at the Holocaust education workshop I went to a few weeks ago.

By the way, at the writing retreat meeting last night, one of the group members talked about the work she did with her seniors last year, in using literary theory to help them write deeper, more reflective responses to literature. I was totally impressed and will attempt something similar with my own seniors. She will be presenting her work at this year’s NCTE conference in New York City, and I think it will definitely be a workshop worth attending.

One of my favorite sentences from an AP midterm:

“Life has no meaning. There are too many issues.”

I honored a request to make mac and cheese for lunch. For one staff member, it will be her first experience with homemade mac and cheese.

Link: The Education Wonks: The Carnival Of Education: Week 103 – Thoughts And Ideas Freely Exchanged.

Tomorrow begins Regents Week, which is like a psuedo-vacation because there are no classes. Instead, I get to sleep in a little bit later, proctor exams and mark essays. We don’t see the kids again until February 1st.

I’m very behind in my work, though! Grades are due tomorrow and I’m nowhere near done with grading midterms. I have two and half classes worth of midterms to grade, and I’m saving the AP midterms for last, because those will take the longest to grade. So, yes, my grades will be late. To be fair, the AP has been given a heads-up, though it doesn’t make any less convenient for anyone. Oops.

We have two excellent PD opportunities set up for next week. My AP, once again, is letting us set up our own PD outside the building. I arranged for my colleagues and I to visit the Museum of the City of New York, in Spanish Harlem. We’ll be getting an introduction to the museum, its programs and the galleries, then we’ll take ourself on a self-guided tour, since they are totally booked that day for full PD programs. Best of all… it’s FREE! (I’m just bummed that the Robert Moses exhibit doesn’t open until two days after we have the PD!).
The following day, we have an in-house PD with the Facing History folks. I’ve heard of the organization before, but I’m not familiar with the work they do, so I’m looking forward to this one.

So, this will be a good week, full plate and all (I’m still consulting at NBC, and I’m also working as a technology coach for this year’s NYCWP Satellite Invitational.)

Sometimes, it can be hard for me to articulate exactly how I feel about something and other people say it much better than I ever could. This is the case with Freedom Writers. I saw the movie, I enjoyed it for what it was but it definitely rubbed me the wrong way at times.

Today, the NY Times published an op-ed by Tom Moore, in which Moore objects to the portrayal of teachers and students in Freedom Writers. Here are two things I’ve read about the movie, and the op-ed that make excellent points:

This from Rabi–
wockerjabby

and this from the NYCWP listserv (I’m reserving the name of the writer for privacy reasons)–

As soon as my wife heard about Freedom Writers she said, “I don’t want to see another movie about a super-hero teacher. I want to see one that is about a real teacher.” Of course, Hollywood has always been about fantasy–the doctor I grew up with was far from Marcus Welby, and my DENTIST–don’t even get me started on that sadistic @#$%&*^!!! Unless one of us can write it well enough to sell, we’ll never get the real thing from Universal Studios. The writer and director have to be able to capture the slow building of trust, the constant feeling about for something that works, the agony of a well-planned lesson crashing and burning, the wonder of the well-planned lesson actually succeeding, the difference between third period and eighth, the grind of doing it again tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeping in its petty pace towards retirement. I don’t know how to make such things movie-worthy and apparently no one else does either.
But here, for some unknown reason, the NY Times has finally allowed a teacher to have a voice and, wouldn’t you know it, it comes out like whining.
I know it’s hard teaching in the city, but I bristle at a term like “the post-desegregation urban poor”! I want to smack him. And when he whines at the end, “Every day teachers are blamed for what the system they’re just a part of doesn’t provide” I want to clamp my hand over his mouth. Yes, I know we have little control over the things he mentions but, for teachers, that’s not really the point. The point is we do small wonders all the time despite everything that challenges us. Teaching is ABOUT small, quiet, everyday wonders. It’s about learning and growing and trying again. It’s about recognizing that everyone in the classroom wants something she/he can’t articulate. It’s about finding respect and holding onto it tightly while helping students gain skill and knowledge they often can’t see a need for but deeply long for. Instead of whining about what Hollywood and “the system” don’t do, he could have talked about what New York teachers are able to do. He had a chance…and he blew it.

There you have it. What do you think?

Update: NYC Educator reminded me that Tom Moore also wrote a series for Slate in 2004. It’s been awhile, so I didn’t make the connection at all!

Link: NWP – NWP Urban Sites Network Conference.

I would love to go to the Urban Sites Network Conference, hosted by the DC Area Writing Project. It starts on Friday but I would probably take the train down on Saturday morning, and just go for the day (I don’t want to take a day off work, etc).

There is also a technology initiative retreat in Amherst, at the end of April, sponsored by the Western Mass Writing Project, that I would love to attend as well.

I am a nerd.

My AP released myself and two of my colleagues today to attend a seminar on teaching the Holocaust. It’s rare that three teachers from the same department can attend a workshop or seminar together, and I think the seminar was worth our absences from the building. The seminar was held at the NY Center for Tolerance, the east coast offspring of the Center for Tolerance in Los Angeles, which is the teaching arm of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Professor Tim Cole, of the University of Bristol, gave a talk on Holocaust representation. Most of my notes are my own thoughts on the topic that came up as Professor Cole gave his lecture. Prior to attending the seminar, I was asked to identify my interest in the topic. I’ve never taught the Holocaust, nor have I taught Night or The Diary of Anne Frank. Despite years of Holocaust education, to the point of burn-out and desensitization, I didn’t feel adequately prepared to teach such a sensitive subject, especially with the knowledge that many of my students harbor some serious misconceptions about Jewish people.

The main idea that I came away with is teaching the Holocaust in a universal context. I want to avoid making it a solely Jewish issue. The fact remains that Jews were far from the only victims in this atrocity. Professor Cole queries his students with 6 questions: Who, What, When, Where, Why and How. He made the point that we can’t begin to ask “why?” until we ask “when?” and “where?” After all, it’s about context, right? The Holocaust doesn’t exist in a vacuum and understanding the “why?” of this event requires us to examine the events leading up to the event, as well as the psychology and sociology involved. Professor Cole related an interview he saw, of Nazi party members 25 years after the fact. Interestingly, the men didn’t mention anti-semitism as their reason for participating in the atrocities. One of the reasons they did cite was that they viewed their participation as a career move; it was a step up in the organization. We’re so used to the idea that the Holocaust was entirely about anti-semitism but it’s not as simple as that. I think that contributes to my reservations about teaching the Holocaust. It isn’t not cut and dry by any means, and there are so many angles to work with; how does one choose?
One of the angles that I like is examining the three roles that people played in the Holocaust: That of the victim, the victimizer and the bystander. I think it would be interesting to explore with my students the responsibilities called into play in each role, and what the moral implications are. Of course, this sort of angle has implications far beyond the Holocaust.

The second presentation was given by Professor Simone Schweber, from the University of Wisconsin. She arrived late because of a delayed flight, so her presentation was kind of rushed, which was too bad because it was definitely useful and interesting. She presented classroom models of teaching the Holocaust and discussed her research on the pedagogy of the Holocaust. She modeled class activities for us, and had us get into groups to read various scenarios and discuss them. We also got a free copy of her book, Making Sense of the Holocaust: Lessons from Classroom Practice, which I’m looking forward to reading. I’ll be back with more, once I’ve had a chance to process the day a little more.

What does a teacher do when faced with extra cash and a long weekend? Why, flee the city, of course! You can see my weekend here, just click on the photo!

(Working) Vacation
Originally uploaded by NaniRolls.

I attempted to grade some papers this weekend but didn’t get further than the top half of the second page of this paper because it was so friggin’ hard to grade. When one teaches AP English to English Language Learners/non-Native English speakers, not only does one have to contend with thesis development, but basic grammar and sentence structure skills as well. It makes grading papers very tiring and difficult.