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.

"Your choices will change the world"

I was reading The Alchemist the other day and decided to have a cup of tea. With my tea came this wonderful line on its tag, "Your choices will change the world". This hit me on several levels because it was SO connected to what I was reading, but it is also connected to much of what we have been discussing.

I truly believe that when given choice, the possiblities are endless. Isn't learning about those possiblities? Isn't it about the idea of thinking about things in a way you never thought about them before? Those students in Laura's group were able to discover their inner writing voices because of choice. This happened because of the choice that Laura made.

What does this line say to you? Can choices change the world? I love the idea that choice is so powerful that it can and does change the world. Please take the time to consider this idea of choice. What does this mean to you? What do you choose to respond to in terms of this line? Write to it. Consider the idea and just write and don't think! Make it a quick write if you want to...but think about the implications of this line.... Of course if you need to think then you may choose to do so!! It is, ultimately, YOUR choice!! However you choose to do this, please write to it!

Reading, Rereading and Reflecting...

Darlene had a suggestion for our blog and I think it is a great one! This week I am asking that you take some time to navigate your way through the blog and do some reading, some rereading and some reflecting. If you click on each post, all of the comments will be listed below it. Take this time to go back through the different posts to see what people have written before you and after you. Notice how the conversations take twists and turns. Feel free to comment again after a certain section or not! If you have missed a post, then take the time to weigh in now! Remember, this is our place to continue our conversations, to ask questions, to ponder and make sense of our teaching in this crazy culture that we call education! Below is some of the rough thinking I have been doing about all of you and your school as of late! I am working with a colleague on a book proposal on "The Improvisation of Teaching" if you will. As I mentioned this is a very rough draft, but I am hoping it captures some of what I sense that day in class. We are trying to speak about the art of teaching and the role that each of us plays in that.

Energy is Catching!
A big part of my work is working directly with teachers. As I was driving to the Windham school I realized half way there that I had forgotten the registration forms for class that afternoon. As I turned around to go get them I called Laura and told her. Laura is a long time friend and colleague. We worked together in the “good ole’ days” and team taught every chance we could. We had a rhythm teaching together and got energy from each other as we discussed, planned and executed great teaching moments! Her response was to take my time, but to be SURE to see her because she did the coolest thing with her students that day. I hung up the phone and smiled, not remembering the last time I had heard that kind of energy in her voice about teaching. What HAD she done? I couldn’t wait to find out what brought on such a flurry of excitement.
When I arrived she accosted me with a great smile and a stack of papers saying, “you HAVE to see this!” This is the lesson she told me about.
Laura described talking with a colleague about her job and how it had become on of shuffling and mastering paperwork. She was finding herself getting bored with the constant need for grades, accountability and testing. She was experiencing a great deal of sadness about the state of teaching and what she was required to do. So, after this conversation she decided to make the time to do some poetry with her students. She uncovered a treasure of images from another teacher and hung up one of the photos, asking the students in her small remedial group to brainstorm words and phrases that came to them as they looked at the image. She listed everything they said. As she looked at the list she realized that they were focusing on the sights. She spoke of the other senses and asked each of them to think about what it would smell like, sound like and feel like to be in this setting. And the list went on. After they brainstormed, she told them they were going to take some time

(Insert Laura’s piece about the process)

I knew I would be meeting with Laura and her 16 colleagues that afternoon. After visiting various classrooms the wheels in my head were turning. I had come with a solid plan for that day’s class and it would be fine to do, but I also knew myself well enough to know that this “energy” theme was going to make it’s way into our class that day. It, in fact, was imperative that it did because this was the school that I drove away from just before Christmas thinking about how it was a pressure cooker and that at any moment the roof of the school was going to blow off with all of the pressure that was building. (You have no idea just how vivid this image was, and the fear that had been instilled in me as a child from my mother about not getting near the pressure cooker…because it could explode at any moment and kill me…was overwhelming. I was afraid, afraid for these teachers and afraid for our kids!) The administration had made the decision to move to a basal program and this group of incredibly talented, creative, intuitive, artful teachers were breaking under the pressures to complete so many pages within so many days. The art of teaching was slowly being squelched out of them in the name of test prep, basals, worksheets and time pressures. I could see, feel and sense their utter distress of what was being required of them. These were seasoned teachers who love children, the prospect of what each new day would bring and here they were being reduced to reading manual after manual and reciting from that manual and giving assignments that they themselves knew were meaningless. They were drowning in these manuals, they were suffocating under the heavily-laden expectations of what these programs would “supposedly” do for test scores.
As I continued to think about my conversations throughout the year with many of the teachers, one common theme ran throughout. “How am I supposed to do all that I “have” to do and also get to do the things that I KNOW are what my students need?” Laura made a very deliberate choice on this day and the results blew every single person who knew these children out of the water. Me, I am always humbled by the voices of children, but I am never surprised. In fact, I expect those kinds of thoughtful, creative voices to come out. They crave the opportunities for their voices to be heard, their thinking to be explored and valued. The more we take this out of our curriculums, the more they will show us, again and again, just how critical it is!! We MUST listen to our kids!!
So as I entered class that afternoon I knew I was about to improvise, as Laura had improvised that morning with her students. I was going to teach from a place of not knowing, a place that I knew most of these teachers needed to go, a place where we could be authentic in both our teaching, our discussions and our learning together. I started out by telling the story of hearing Laura’s voice on the phone and the energy that I heard there. I posed the question about “What gives you energy?” and then Laura shared her story with great enthusiasm and sheer pleasure! You could see that this had allowed her to tap back into the reason she went into teaching in the first place. She allowed herself, gave herself the permission to go back to a way of teaching that she is masterful at; a kind of give and take that combines the thoughts and the thinking of both the students and the teacher. It is a collaborative effort that kept everyone engaged. It was thinking on her feet. She didn’t know she would move into the other senses until she realized and made the change on her feet that they needed more information other than just the visuals from this image. This is GREAT teaching! It takes us places we don’t know about. Just as this class would take a turn and take us all somewhere that I had no idea about!!
When I asked again the question about energy I felt the pull of those who wanted to talk about what took energy away…as that is what is most on their minds…that is what they spend much of their time thinking about…but I really wanted them to get back in touch with what gives them energy and so I redirected. Remembering…that I did not know where this conversation would lead, but I did have a very specific sense of where I did not want it to go! Not into a bitch session, but to a constructive place where each teacher could look at their teaching from the point of view of what is good for them and their students. They were quick to respond and what followed was powerful. There were conversations about different things people had tried, on the sly, with their students and the celebration of what they might do next. After this discussion we went into what I had planned, but what permeated the entire two hours was the feeling of possibility. There was hope in the air and that is something I have not felt in a long time.
The goal of the day was to share with the group part of my library of children’s literature that I use all of the time to teach. We are reading Katie Wood Rays Wondrous Words. I brought in some of my favorite children’s literature and asked teach pair to choose a book and read it like a writer. Most chose a book they had never seen before and the excitement on their faces was contagious as they poured over The Napping House and Where Are You Going Emma? with great interest and engagement! They laughed and read as though they had not had a good dose of good literature in a long time. One teacher commented that she wished her children were still young so that she could read some of these books to them! After each pair shared what they had found about craft, I asked them to dust off some of their old favorites and to bring them into their classrooms. I talked about how I use all of these books over and over to teach reading comprehension strategies, writing craft, text structure, vocabulary and the list goes on. Getting to know just a couple of books really well allows us to use them over and over. Nothing spectacular about what we were doing, but what was spectacular was the engagement and the willingness to go through these texts with hopeful eyes. I cannot accurately explain the shift that I felt in the energy in the room, but I can only trust that you will believe me that it was there!
I am not saying all of the pressure dissipated, but there was a sense that as we went through a stack of children’s books and read them as writers, that they would and could bring some of these ideas and others back to their students and make the choice to tweak their days to include good literature and choices in their writing. Each pair shared their book with great enthusiasm and respect, remembering those favorite books that needed to be dusted off from their shelves.
I got an e-mail from Darlene who was in class with us last night. She wrote simply,
Tomasen,

YOU are definitely my energy in teaching! Darlene

And as much as I’d love to take the credit for this, I reflect and realize that it was the energy of the group that gives us energy in our teaching. We are all in this together and as long as we can continue to have conversations about what we KNOW in our hearts to be good teaching…then we too will survive this ridiculous right wing swing in the educational pendulum that has so many of us scratching our heads, even banging our heads and waiting and wondering how long it will be before we find some sense of equilibrium! I too left with the hope that we can and will endure and even facilitate the move towards a better education for all of our kids!

What are you doing?

What are you doing with your students in writing right now? What is something you have done that was great, not so great, or downright horrible? Take some time to write and reflect upon your teaching of writing...right now!!

Making Connections...

What does your work on your Integration Experimentation make you think about in terms of your students? What does it make you wonder about them as learners? What have you discovered about yourself that gives you some insight into the minds of those you teach?

Windham Syllabus
Spring 2007
Learning Through Teaching
Tomasen M. Carey
UNH English Department

“Great things happen when the initiative is in the hands of the individual”
~Donald Graves

Class Dates and Required Assigned Reading for the next class:
Jan16th Read Chapter 6 and 7
Feb 6th Read Chapters 8 and 9Feb 20th Read Chapters 10 and 11March 12th Read Chapters 12 and 13(In Residence days....April 1st, 2nd and 3rd)
April 16th Read Chapters 14 and 15
First set of presentations
May 14th Second set of presentations


Course Requirements:
These requirements will be evaluated to determine final grades.
Regular Attendance and participation at group meetings, having all of the assigned reading completed and ready to discuss it in detail. (20%)
Weekly blog entries. (20%)
One visitation in your school of a colleague. I will ask that you post your observation on our blog. There will be a special section on the blog specifically for visitations. (10%)
One visitation out of the school in an area of interest (optional but highly recommended!) Perhaps we could make some connections to Golden Brook.
Integration Experimentation Presentation
Take your learning and use a mentor text or parts of several mentor texts to model your presentation after…using the work of Katie Wood Ray to guide you. Take time to reflect. We will share our processes on the last day of class as you guide us through your experimentation and what you learned about yourself and your new found knowledge. Each presentation needs to be limited to 10 minutes of fame! Thanks ahead of time for adhering to this! I will be bringing a timer!


Classroom Visits and Consultations:
If you ever have any questions and or concerns do not hesitate to contact me at home or via e-mail. My phone number is 772-4351 and my e-mail is tomasen@comcast.net.
Here is to a great semester together.
Tomasen M. Carey

What do YOU think?

Good Morning Bloggers! I would like to thank those of you who remembered to post your final letters and reflections and to nudge those of you who have not! Also please notice I am posting the special section for observations.
This week I would really like you to think about the work of Katie Wood Ray and write a personal response to something in the text that has "spoken" to you. Perhaps you might take a quote right from the text and write to that. What did you mark in the text? What makes the most sense to you? What does not make sense? What do you like? Dislike? The point here is not to write a summary, remembering we have all read it! The point is to write YOUR personal reactions so that we can all read and share the different ideas we have read about thus far. Here is a sample reaction from me!
I really like the list that Katie keeps about the process of writers that begins on page 103 and continues onto 104. She writes "When our students envision writers at work, then need to be able to see them doing lots more than just sitting at desks. Active development possibilities like those in the lists above need to be a big part of what our students can envision themselves doing as writers."
I wish that someone had pointed that out to me years ago! If you look at my background and my history it is somewhat overwhelming. Coming from a family of self-proclaimed writers, ( my grandfather wrote his town's history and multiple plays for the local players, My Dad, has owned and created newspapers and magazines throughout his life, my sister, worked for my Dad and started writing stories for the family when she was 10!) I was unwilling and unable to see myself as a writer!! In fact, I found the idea completely intimidating and made it my goal to be anything BUT a writer! I mean really, who could compete in world such as this? And yet, over time I found myself more and more drawn to the written word. I slowly became an avid reader and revelled in how different authors used words to convey their thoughts. And so I started thinking about how I would say different things. I began to "play" with words in my head...having no idea that I was heading down the exact path that I was eager to avoid!! Still, the image of a writer was one who was perched over their typewriters for hours and I knew that I would never have the patience for something like that. I needed to move and to play outside and to experience all that I could everywhere I went. And again, I was doing things that "writers do!" I just never knew it.
It was not until very recently that I actually was able to start calling myself a writer. It seemed simple enough as I started working on some writing that writers write. I was writing and so I tentatively called myself a writer. I do not do this still, though, in the company of my family and I think they are always surprised to hear that I am a teacher of writing. It is as though they forget and are startled back into reality every time I mention that I teach writing. I can teach writing because I write and because I write I am therefore a writer! Katie's list only confirms all of my active processes that involve so much more that actually sitting down at the keyboard. In fact, by the time I actually sit down I can write with a general flow because I have done so much thinking about it before I find myself banging out everything that I have spent so much time thinking about!