We Are Bloggers....

We are bloggers! Hear us roar!
I am going to ask you to blog once a week.
Groan
Once a week? How do you blog?
How do I get on the blog?
How do I post?
My password doesn’t work….
I am behind on my blogs.
I am nervous and anxious.
My password still doesn’t work!
Groan
When did it become 30% of our grade?
I groaned again
But when I blog…
There is no right or wrong response
It lets me say things that I am thinking but I don't have to think too much, if you know what I mean.
And when I blog….
I enjoy the pleasure of learning a little more about my colleagues
Some weeks I just write what I want and other weeks I enjoy responding to other people’s entries.
My password is not working again!
And because I blog….
Blogging has made me "cool"
YOU BLOG, MOM? Wow...it just seems so weird to hear/see that you're doing THAT!"
And when I blog…
I am better at expressing my ideas and feelings in a written format than verbally
I CANNOT ADD ANOTHER THING TO MY "TO DO" LIST, I groan….
But when I blog….
I actually find it VERY therapeutic.
And when I blog….
I bond with colleagues I have longed to know better.
I groan…my password is still not working….
And then one day I successfully DO this now without running to Barbara in tears… an amazing accomplishment
I don’t have anything to say about this topic I groan…
But when I blog….
I do like to hear from my friends and often draw inspiration from what is written!
I enjoy reading the responses of my peers. It has made me feel closer to them. It has created a strong sense of community
Blogging....I love the idea of it, and I do enjoy responding and reading what others have written about their thoughts, beliefs....
But…I miss the human contact. I miss the actual voice and having eye contact with people.
Will I use “blogging” in the future? Honestly, no.

And when we blog we experience,
Community
Caring,
Inspiration
Frustration
Groaning
Accomplishment
And success at trying something new
And groaning a little more along the way
Thank you to each and every one of you for humoring me and sticking with this alongside of me!
We are all bloggers…hear us roar!

Not On the Test

Ahhh...it is time for a bit of comic relief. Take a few minutes to click on this link and play this song. It will bring a smile to your face! After you have watched, please do a quick write on the blog so that we can get your reactions!

http://www.notonthetest.com/

Observations...

Who did you get the chance to observe in your building? What did you notice about the set up of their room? The way they managed their students? What were they teaching and was there anything you left thinking about? What did you leave wondering about? What did you notice as an observer in another room? How did you feel being an observer? Were you able to talk to any students? You do not have to answer all of these questions, they are just some questions to get you thinking!! Take the time to write and reflect upon your observation. In the end it may feel as though we all got the opportunity to "see" all of these different classrooms in action! It is all in the details!!

Integration Experimentation Reflections

Bl – Bl – Blogging….
What a long strange trip it has been! But one that I am so glad I took the time to do! When I first started as a blogging virgin I never knew where this would lead or how I could or would manage it! So I started slowly, asking only one of my groups to blog. In no time, I was hooked with the idea of a virtual conversation to carry on with the ones that were started, and often abruptly ended in class. It has also provided me with another place to connect with each individual, something that is priceless because I am working with so many teachers!
I have also learned that blogging is not for everyone, and I get that. That is why when I tried starting up my own personal blog to see what would happen, I was very disappointed at how non-interactive it was. I don’t think I truly understood the nature of a blog or even the purpose of my own blog and so it sat, floating around in the virtual world, un-nurtured, unloved by all…even me!
It all started when I was invited to be a part of an artist’s blog. She is a young, vibrant woman who I connected with when we worked together in Deerfield. She had married, gone away and was pursuing her art degree and had left the world of teaching and all of her friends and family behind. She started a blog to connect herself with the creative souls that she was missing in her new home, in her new state, with her new husband, and her new career goals. The artful garden was a place that I would go every morning with my cup of coffee as I got to know people, interesting people through this crazy virtual world. It was magical. The conversations were so deep and thought-provoking. This was something I wanted more of!
So that is when I decided to start a blog of my own. But the interaction was not there and unfortunately, the interaction in the artful garden also waned. Busy people, busy lives. So how could I use this medium in my teaching world to make those deeper connections with teachers? Making blogging a part of their grade and requiring each one to go in a certain number of times and have those written conversations. It worked well in one school and so the second semester I integrated blogs into all of the groups of teachers I was working with. And I LOVE them!
I was also discovering the many different blogs that are out there. In the meantime, my sister started up a blog of her own and so it is to her place that I go each morning with my coffee. It is almost like having a daily conversation with her…getting to know what is on her mind and what it is she is thinking about on that given day. I am addicted. I am fascinated and I am upset if there is no fix. Her goal was to write EVERY day and I actually believed her! It is a sad day when I find no new entry on her blog!!
With my sister’s blog I discovered a new sense of purpose for my own. My idea of blogging was to create a virtual community. Hers was to make herself write every day. Could I perhaps change my purpose and make my blog more meaningful and purposeful for myself? I could, but with everything I have going on, I decided to just add things that I really wanted to have there. I would like to get to the point where I do write on it every day…no, not every day. There are very few things that I do EVERY day, other than brush my teeth, but as many days as week as I could. I can see how my sister’s writing has become even more powerful through her writing. Her voice has always been strong, but now the flow of her writing is amazing. Would I, could I become a better writer if I wrote deliberately every day? Of course, the answer is yes, and so this will be an ongoing goal for me.
And then there were the safety issues and privacy issues. So I started looking into edublog where one could close the learning communities and make them more secure, but every time I have gone onto that site I find it SO frustrating!! I do believe there are so many things I could do with it, but blogspot is just so much more user friendly and so with my frustrations in hand, I am just going to stick with what I know…for now. In the future I may consider using edublog if I can get myself to even work my way through one of the menus….can you say overwhelming???
And then in one of my schools the vice principal wanted access to their blog. I had to think this through and ultimately deny her, explaining that even though it was on line that I would never turn their journals over to her so this blog needed to remain private as well. A learning curve for us all!!

Then there is the research I have done as a blogging junkie! It is AMAZING once you venture into the world of blogging what you can find. People connecting through illnesses (my crazy sexy life), discussing the food sources in our world, global warming, politics, education and well as you can imagine the list goes on and on. And then you find one of those blogs that you just love! It is like you get to know a person through their writing and I find myself wanting to read more of their stuff and so I stop in when I have the time and see what they wrote about that week. It is SO amazing because you are in charge and well, it is almost as though you can read through newspaper column after feature articles after information articles but they are ALL of your choosing and the topics that you are most interested in!
I have also gotten to realize that for some the learning curve has been a brutal one. I still insist that those individuals plug through. We live in the information age and part of that is working to keep up with this technologically fast-paced world. I have heard frustrations and worries and also trust and know that for many it will never be a natural thing, but at least it will be something that they have tried.
So what next? Will I continue using blogs next year? I am not sure yet. What I do know is that I find myself discovering new purposes for each blog I create! My latest one is a “holding” place for the summer course I am designing on Music, art and literacy. I can store links to valuable websites, clips I want to show from the web and lists of books, articles and even movies that all relate to music and literacy. Nobody knows about this blog yet, but I will use it this summer as a reference point and also something that each person will be able to leave the class with as a reference point. That I am loving. In some ways it is helping me to be more virtually organized and to take advantage of all of the different ways I can use all of the technology that is out there. I will also reconsider my own blog (http://www.shinesistahs.blogspot.com/) and see just how I can make a commitment to that and if that is something that I even want to do! Check it out if you want to!!
So what have I learned about myself as a learner? I have rediscovered that I learn by observing, watching, using other people’s models and then diving in and doing. I do not like to read “how to’s” or tutorials, I have to “just DO it!” And with my learning style comes a great deal of frustration and then some successes along the way. I see what I am doing as part of a process that may only lead me to a new process or discovery. I am never done!!
I am a blogger and I love it! Wouldn’t you like to be a blogger too?

What do YOU think?

ONE Thing?

What do you see as ONE thing that you would NEVER give up in your teaching repertoire?
The number one thing I would ever give up is the use of humor. Humor in the classroom is one of those things that I am always seeking and striving for. Here is a piece I have been working on...you don't write, so you have to read more and THEN write! Ha ha!


The Jokes on You

“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear," Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in "The Wisdom of the Ego."

“Why did the cookie go to the doctor’s office?”
“Because she was feeling crummy!”
“Do you get it?”
My daughter, Emma loved to tell this joke when she found herself in new strange situations. Humor is one of those incredible gifts that we all have for making human connections. This was her way of taking some kind of control over her illness and she loved to tell this joke over and over. The delight in her eyes in seeing who “got it” was sheer heaven, thinking she was so clever and loving the joke over and over herself. There was something in this joke that she could see that made her enjoy it every time she told it. She “got” it and was always sure to ask, “Do you get it?”
The "getting it" is like the secret that she is privy to, the delight is making sure that everyone is able to enjoy the magic of the punch line in the same way as the teller. And there is an art to telling a good joke and the feedback is instant…did you get a laugh or not? You can always tell those who get it as an expression of knowing crosses their faces, and then there are those that laugh to be polite and those who are laughing as they are still trying to figure it out. We have all been there, at one end or the other and of course the worst place to be is to be the jokester that gets no laughs at all. It is a tough lesson, but one that you can do something about right away.

In the classroom one part of our morning meeting was joke telling. There were some rules surrounding the telling. First the joke had to be appropriate for school. Yes, of course there were those who pushed the limit every time, but for the most part kids were able to discriminate between those that would be acceptable and those that would not. Just trusting them allowed them the freedom and the responsibility to make good choices. The other rule was that you had to practice the joke at least three times and that you had to get a laugh at least one or two of those times before volunteering for morning meeting. This was for two reasons; one was to work on the delivery and to work on making it funny. We would talk about what made a good joke and what didn’t. We talked about the emphasis being on the punch line and how to deliver an effective punch line. These could be classified in our reading curriculum under reading with expression, the importance of audience and comprehension studies. (How is that for meeting standards?) It was a clear test of whether the child understood the joke or not based on the reaction of the audience. If it was not funny we worked together as a group to think about what could be done with the joke to make it funnier. This is revision in real life. Then the child would take his or her newly revised joke out into the world and wait until it was funny enough to bring it back to the class. Everyone had ownership of the joke by then and often there would be many versions of the same joke told over and over again. This gave us time to talk about the fact that authors do this all the time. Once someone has a great idea then other authors try to take the basic idea and make it their own. We talked about how this often happened with jokes and that jokes changed regularly in their details because joke-telling is typically an oral form of literacy that is passed on from person to person. The game of telephone is a great way to show how things change based on the oral telling and that people all hear things differently. Telephone is when you start at the beginning of the circle with a silly phrase or riddle and then have the kids whisper it from person to person until the end of the circle. By the end it has usually changed completely from where it began.
I would always begin the year telling a joke to model how to tell a joke. I would overemphasize the telling in order to be able to point out to the class just what it was I was doing and that there are things that you can do to tell a good joke. The joke I told was about a chicken that goes into the library to get a book. He goes up to the librarian and says, “Book, book book”. This is said like a chicken saying bok, bok, bok with a high voice. (This is hard to put into writing!) The chicken takes the book and returns within 10 minutes shouting the same thing to the librarian, “Book, book, book”. The librarian thinks this is strange but gives the chicken another book. Sure enough if you have heard enough jokes you know that this chicken is going to be back in no time. This structure allows us to look at it closely and see there is predictability in jokes and that if you wanted to make up your own joke then like fairy tales, the magic number of 3 often appears. Well, the chicken magically does show up again but this time the librarian wants to know what is going on, knowing the chicken could not have read either of those books so quickly. She gets on her coat and decides, after giving the chicken yet another book, to find out what is going on by following the chicken. The chicken leaves the library, heads up a big hill, out into a field and through the forest to a clearing. (Again here is a way a leading the audience into what we know is going to be the punch line. I talk about slowing down here and that when I do the audience almost leans in waiting, waiting, waiting and thinking get to the punch line already!) At the edge of the clearing is a pond. The chicken walks over to the edge of the pond where a frog is sitting. The chicken pulls out the book and shows it to the frog. The frog looks at it and promptly replies, “READ IT. READ IT”. Of course this is said like a frog instead of ribbit it is read it. These slight changes in voice are very important because without them the joke is just not funny! So, okay you are thinking this is a dumb joke, and it is. It is also, however an excellent model for kids because it is clean and it contains so many elements of a good joke. This gets kids thinking about their own jokes and jokes they have heard in the past. Often one of the hardest things to do is to just remember the joke. I tell the kids that having one or two good jokes in your pocket is a great way to be in a new crowd. Everyone loves a good joke. But is has to be a GOOD joke. A bad joke won’t get you very far. This also encourages kids to think about themselves in social settings and to think about when it is appropriate to tell a joke and when it is not.

“Jokes compact the elements of storytelling into bite-sized mini-narratives. They are not just funny. For writers and editors, they are models that can help teach storytelling” Chip Scanlon, the Poynter Institute.


Joke telling is a form of storytelling, something that we can use to help our young writer’s to see the elements of a story in a very compact version. To tell a good joke the teller must prepare the reader by setting the stage introducing main characters and setting, the chicken, the librarian and the library.

Next is to provide some kind of background for the reader, in knowing the structure of many jokes, one is sure that the chicken will be coming back at least a couple more times. Also using the voices allows for the characters to know more about them. She is a female chicken with a high voice; the librarian is suspicious about a reading chicken from the beginning.

The joke relies heavily on creating scenes that the reader can follow. The chicken comes and goes, comes and goes and does these actions very quickly, leading the librarian to become even more suspicious.

A good joke creates suspense, engaging the reader as they sit and listen, leaning in to find out what in the world is going to happen next and often this is done through conflict. The conflict here is for the librarian who is miffed that this chicken keeps on coming back without having read a book!

Next it builds to a climax and a clear resolution. We know that when the chicken leaves and the librarian follows that we are going with her and that we will find out instantly just what the chicken is up to.

Finally, is that wonderful element of surprise, the “aha” moment where we wonder how we didn’t get it all along. It is funny that the chicken is trying to get the frog a new book and so we laugh with this quick resolution and twist that we can visualize as being very funny.


Derek was a small fourth grader who had a hard time fitting in. Not only was he smaller than all of his classmates, but he was somewhat goofy looking and gangly. He had a hard time finding his place in the world and was often seen getting into it with kids. If there was trouble, then Derek was in the middle of it. In the classroom he struggled. As a reader he struggled the most. For Derek, this opportunity to tell jokes, this place where being the class clown was encouraged was his place to shine. By the end of the year he had found every joke book in his local area. I will never forget the day he showed up with a book the size of Webster’s heaved up under his arm. It was titles “A Million and One Jokes.” Derek would sit for hours pouring over this book in search of the perfect joke. It was a ridiculous book for him as it was laden with jokes that were so out there that I didn’t get a lot of them. Many of them politically motivated from cultures all over the world. The schema one would have to have for many of these jokes would put Google to shame! The print was as small as anyone could imagine, but he continued to read over it, searching for that one joke that he did get! And he would know when he would get it. You want to talk about serious monitoring for meaning. He was getting to know himself as a reader through this insurmountable task he had set for himself. He would carry that book everywhere…and did I mention it must have weighed 25 pounds??
At first he would tell jokes that none of us got. Eventually, though he was able to work on finding a good one, practice it and in no time Derek became one of the classes favorite joke tellers. This was his forte’. This was his place to find comfort and acceptance for who he was. This also gave him a very real reason to read and to read for meaning. It also gave him a real reason to write as he then went on to write his own jokes. At morning meeting it would be Derek that everyone wanted to tell a joke. Each day we had time for three jokes. On days when nobody else would volunteer, they would all chant Derek’s name and he would get up and do his own version of a Leno monologue telling joke after joke. He was good. I don’t know where Derek is today, but I have a hunch that someday I may see him on stage at the Laugh Factory!

We need to value children, for who they are, not who we want them to be. We need to look at each child and find the strength inside of him. Derek could also easily have dropped out of school. It was not a place that he “typically” succeeded and it was joke telling that allowed him to have a place in our classroom community for who he was. Don’t get me wrong. This was not that all magical cure and Derek continued to struggle each and every day in the classroom and on the playground, but offering this as an option allowed for Derek and other kids to use their humor in an effective and constructive way. It also allowed Derek to take some of the painful anger in his life and poke fun at that as well. Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in Team of Rivals, a study of Abraham Lincoln where she focused on “the vital role humor and storytelling played in Lincoln’s melancholy personality.” , “He laughed, so he did not weep. He saw laughter as the ‘joyous, universal evergreen of life.’ His stories were intended ‘to whistle off sadness.’”

Where there is laughter there is community, and where there is community, there are safe learning environments. We should each laugh as many times in the day as we can. I remember reading somewhere that we use so many more facial muscles to frown than to laugh…therefore frowning causes more wrinkles!!. So heck, let’s laugh or in the end…the joke is on you!!

Being Specific

What is there in our reading of Katie Wood Ray that speaks to you? Look through your current readings and find that one passage that is powerful to you. What do you think about it? Take the time to quote it, with the page number and then write to it. I will be collecting these quotes and posting them on our blog.