Can we call this the home stretch?

Not saying I am looking forward to summer or anything, but my summer reading books are sitting on my nightstand cheering me on. I am supposed to be downsizing in the book department, but we can't all be successes at everything. These last two weeks have certainly been trying. My anxiety level has been turned up to 11. Between the standardized testing and the re-accreditation process at the high school, and the reality of how much work there is left to do at Sac State, I cannot remember the last home cooked meal I had. Cooking is typically such a stress relief for me, but it is time consuming, and right now there is too much Henry James and Anthony Trollope to read for me to cook my usual health conscious meals. My wife's sudden illness has not been helping in that department either.

While I have had my juniors over the last few weeks, we have been doing rhetorical analysis, a unit I slapped together when I realized April was kind of a shitty month for us at school. I had this whole project idea where students would pick a problem they would like to raise awareness of, pick three different audiences that problem affects, and then create three different texts, one for each audience. In theory it sounded fantastic. The problem was, it never got off the ground. This week our FHA students were at a conference, our marching band, choir, and color guard were in Disneyland, two of our sports teams had tournaments, we had Farm Day recently. My classroom was too empty to get anything meaningful done, so instead, we took our problems and turned them into rants. For an entire day, I gave my remaining students a platform to vent frustrations, to complain about whatever was on their minds. It turns out that people do not ask teenagers what is bothering them all that often, and it led to some pretty emotional outbursts. These complaints ranged from the disgusting nature of school lunches (a student actually started a petition after venting), frustrations at another teacher's texts not being on the stuff they actually cover in class, pressures of college, to global issues of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and most commonly, sexism. Multiple young ladies told stories of older men following them, grabbing at them, or stories of school teachers and administrators excusing some pretty awful boy behavior towards girls by saying "Boys will be boys" and telling the girl she probably should not wear whatever she was wearing to attract these disgusting things.

It was all very healing for the students, but enraging for me. To know that I work alongside so many people who are perpetuating these ideas I rail against so frequently was a bitter pill to swallow. I was left emotionally drained, angry, and like nothing I can say or do can change the culture of this backwards thinking community. On the plus side, the students were made more aware of the issues that face young women, and they all felt safe and comfortable in my class to speak up. If I can continue to provide that, I think I am doing my job.

The next challenge is going to be my African American Experience unit with Raisin in the Sun as my primary text. The racism in this community is thick. I have to be ready for some backlash.

Wrestling with Activity Theory

Activity Theory, or as I understand it, the igniter to the Project Based Learning philosophy that has had a wild fire like spread through public education, is of particular interest to me. I have spent the three years of my teaching career looking for ways I can implement more of the philosophies of Activity Theory into my classroom. I have entire folders dedicated to stories, articles, blog, ideas, etc., that all surround the idea the we learn by doing, not by sitting listening to someone tell us what to do. I am not sure what this looks like at the college level, but at the high school level it looks like a ton of different things, but they have one thing in common; they cost money. Public high schools do not like to spend money, and so I have done modified versions of these things.

One of the challenges of Activity Theory I think, is that there is a lot more upfront work for the instructor. It makes it seem like it is so much more difficult, but the reality is, once the front loaded work is done, the instructor takes sort of a backseat. I first became interested in the ideas in my teaching credential program when I was assigned to give a presentation on Lev Vygotsky, and decided to center my presentation around the Zone of Proximal Development. This became the driving force in my personal teaching philosophy at the high school level. Everything I did started with Me doing an activity, then the class doing it, then small groups it, then the individual doing it. Even that though, did not do it for me. I felt I was still lecturing too much, creating too many lecture slides, and having too much rote note taking going on.

Now, if you came into my classroom, you will find almost no straight lecturing, and I have not used a single PowerPoint presentation this year. Students need to do things to learn them. School should be hands-on. I am even in the process of trying to get all of the desks removed from my classroom and replaced with tables and chairs, so the students have more space to do things.

The struggle I am having is thinking about using this idea in a writing course. I see how it works for projects and presentations, but in the scope of crafting essays, or other written genres, I am unsure how to translate this theory. I guess I need to keep thinking about it!

Week 9? 10? 1000000? Who knows anymore

On Monday morning a student asked me how I was doing and I responded with "Well, I'm glad it's Friday" so that is where I am in my life. The days are blurry, and obscured my own anxieties of finishing strong. Finishing the school year strong as an educator, and as a grad student. Most days I feel lucky if I leave the house with my pants and shoes on. It is currently 9 in the morning, and I have been sitting at Starbucks since it opened at 5 getting all of the reading for Teaching College Comp for next week. From here I will go to Barnes and Noble to pick up AP books so I have new practice exams to go through my students for the last 13 school days before the big exam. After that, I will sit in my apartment, spread out my 10 sources for the Literature Review for my Henry James class due Wednesday, and start piecing it together. I imagine I will eat some food at some point, and if I am lucky, I will be able to stop working by about 9pm, go to the gym, then come home, put a movie on (feeling like a Zombieland re-watch might be in order) and fall asleep, just to get up at 5am tomorrow to get all of the work for my Anthony Trollope class done.

I have also started piecing my syllabus together for AP Language and Composition (a class which gets some mention on next week's readings for TCC) with an eye towards FYC. As it is customary for students who get a 4 or 5 on the AP exam to be exempt from FYC courses, I want to fashion my course in a similar way to how I will fashion a FYC course, but still teaching the complexities of the AP exam, and doing the regular job of a high school English teacher. The delicate balance is proving complicated. I am meant to teach book length texts, and I have 4 that I am all prepared to use, but I want to make sure the students are introduced to a wide variety of texts from multiple genres as well. I am a person who, it turns out, finds a sense of calm in the crafting of syllabi. It is the same sense of calm I get when doing a puzzle. My mind enjoys trying to make all of the pieces fit. Is there a job where I can just get paid to create syllabi all day every day?

Okay, off to the bookstore, where I have been given strict orders from my wife to not buy anymore books to add to my summer reading as we are supposed to be downsizing, but in the last 3 weeks I have purchased 12 books.

Engaging with Haswell

Perhaps it is too strong a word to say that this week's readings come as a form kismet to my life. My academic pursuits smashed directly into my career this week. As I was reading all about feedback and assessment, I was in the process of providing feedback to my students on their third drafts of their career essays. On Monday I collected roughly 80 drafts (out of 96 students, that is pretty good for this year), and I have until Monday to read them all. 80 drafts over 7 days, gives me about 12 drafts a day to read. This is down significantly from last year when I had roughly 20 drafts to read a day. 12 drafts a day does not seem like a Herculean task, but while teaching from 8-3, then grad school from either 4:30-9:20 or 4:30-5:45, it can be difficult to cram those 12 drafts in. This is why I devoured Haswell's article. I am always looking for a way to provide meaningful feedback, in an efficient and quick manner.

For the bad drafts, the system we have at school works pretty well. It is supposed to take 5 minutes to grade each essay, using a numbering system and correlates with a piece of paper each student has. When I see a mistake, I put a number next to that mistake and the student can see what that mistake is. However, there is no room for praising solid ideas in this system. There are no numbers that correspond with things done well. Because of this, I always take longer than 5 minutes because I include an ending comment for ideas that are too difficult to articulate with a number. In all honesty, the number system we have works incredibly well for level 1 errors, but idea level errors are difficult to apply a numerical system to.

Haswell's article makes mention of this idea that there is a disconnect between what instructors mean on a comment and what students interpret those comments to mean. I have been thinking about this all week because, while Turnitin.com has a short hand system that helps explain what those comments mean, I hate reading drafts/papers on a screen, so I prefer handwritten comments. I have taken recently to making most of my comments questions that I want the students to answer in their essay. For example, for this current career essay, students could chose 1 of 3 prompts: they could research their dream career and write an informative essay about it, they could research multiple careers and write a comparative essay, or they could forgo the career aspect and write an essay about the types of traveling they would like to do, backed by research about the places they want to visit. If the student wrote "There are some downsides to this job" but did not explain them, I used to write "Elaborate" and move on, but now I write "Can you tell me some of the specific downsides to the job?" Then in my end comment I remind them to answer all of the questions through their essay, while pointing out what I liked, what worked, etc.

I think this method gels with Haswell because I think it gets rid of that disconnect. It takes me a few minutes longer per draft, but I am hopeful the final products will be stronger.

Reflection on the week that was

 Last week was the all-important high school Spring Break, and instead of it being a time of joyful merriment the way I expected, it was marred by my car getting broken into via some punks smashing my back window and making off with $1,700.00 worth of my wife's stuff. Then dealing with insurance and police, and all of that noise, I was actually looking forward to being back in the classroom this week, only to be confronted with multiple classes full of students who tell me they are never going to college so why should they try hard on my essay. On top of that, I had a yearbook deadline to meet.

The saving grace was news that I will get to attend an AP Language Summer Institute and apply the knowledge I have gained from Teaching College Composition AND the AP Language institute to make myself a better all around teacher next year. I am trying hard to not look too far forward, but this course has given me a treasure trove of ideas on how to teach a course that, frankly, scares me. I even talked myself out of teaching it two years ago because I did not feel ready.

I am a bit concerned the next six or seven weeks might break me. Between my two lit class finals, and trying to craft a portfolio for TCC, then doing all of my work for my job, I wonder if I bit off too much. I guess I will find out in June!

Reflection on Anson

Part of the Process Pedagogical belief involves peer revision, and that is the part I found myself focusing on. A student centered classroom is a big part of my personal high teaching pedagogy and a chunk of that belief involves peer revision. The problem I am having with all of the pedagogical approaches is that none of them help me in the practical sense. What do you do when a majority of your class is simply not in the position to provide solid feedback? And when I say "in the position" I mean they are either struggling too mightily on their own, or refuse to participate, or did not bring their own work in to be revised, making it difficult for the process to be meaningful.

I absolutely believe that the process of writing can be taught, and I believe that the process of writing is vitally important, and I believe in multiple drafts, and giving feedback on drafts, and allowing time to rewrites, but what happens when you have a classroom full of unmotivated students who do not believe those same things. This year I have encountered my roughest classes in my short teaching career, and as I have documented here previously, I have changed many aspects of my class this year, including process points. For every draft the students turn in, they get points. It has not helped much. For example, we are in a writing unit currently where the students got to choose any career and research it and write an informative paper, or they can write a comparative essay on two or three career, and I broke it down in the following way.

1st step: Brainstorm what types of things they should look at when thinking about a career

2nd step: Pick a topic and research it in class.

3rd step: share topic and 2 interesting initial research items learned

4th step:  Do more research at home

5th step: Bring in a first draft for peer revision

6th step: Bring in a second draft for different peers to revise

7th step: Bring in third draft for me to grade

8th step: Hand back drafts with final due date 10 days away.

This is as step by step as a process can be, and at each step, they get points. By the time we reached the 7th step (today), I had less than 60% of students turning in this draft. No matter how much we go over the importance of drafts, or how often I show them my own drafts and how they change, they still do not see the value. I was hoping Anson would help me in that department. I know expecting 100% is silly, but I need more than 60%.