Belgrade High School Sophomore Writing Workshop

Today I had a most enjoyable time working with Mr. Aaron Yost's classes at Belgrade High School.  He asked the MSU English Education Community for volunteers to help his sophomores with their creative writing pieces as a writing workshop.  I gladly signed up.  I arrived at 8 am, checked in with the school office, and waited outside Mr. Yost's door.  Once we entered his awesome, quirky classroom, he told me a little bit about what they were doing and gave me a copy of the list of instructions he gave the students.  We had a brief discussion on the use and acceptance of adverb use in writing before the students arrived.

I was there for 3 hours and worked with maybe 20 different students.  Only a few were expounding on a common prompt Mr. Yost had given them a while back, and other than those few, everyone's work was different.  Some simply talked about what they were writing and others shared.  I tried to ask thoughtful questions to get them thinking of how they can build on what they have.  I attempted to ask them questions to help develop detail and even sequencing.  I thought of Dr. Wynhoff-Olsen's class Teaching Writing to Secondary Students.  I thought of the show don't tell concept, and I'd like to think some of the students got it when I tried explaining it to them.  I wrote on one girl's paper, "Tell me more.  What does freaking out look like?"

So what did I learn today?  Here's what isn't taught in school except in theory, yet given the theory I was at least aware of what I was experiencing:

Confronting my own biases
During first period I sat at the back table before the students arrived and sat with whoever sat at that table. It turned out to be a group of girls.  They were willing to share and for the most part, they were prepared for the day's work.  I noticed a table of all boys, and I was honestly intimidated by them.  I realized that my feelings of intimidation were not about them but rather my own fears of being rejected by them.  I did not move from my table during first period, but by second period I was ready to move around and confront my biases.  I decided to sit with a table full of boys, and must say they were really funny.  As soon as I sat down I noticed one of them had drawn a picture of a penis on their paper, and they weren't even embarrassed when I said something about it!  Their stories were wildly imaginative.  One was about rescuing a beautiful girl and riding off in an outrageous sports car.  Another wrote a disturbing internal monologue of a man who had been marooned on a deserted island.  I expected them to be withdrawn and disinterested, but I found them almost more willing to share than the girls were.  During another class, I noticed one boy sitting all alone.  I went to the table to try to engage him and I realized I knew him.  I had known him since he was in diapers but had not seen him in 5 years.  Puberty sure changes people!

Seeking Balance
I realized how easy it could be to neglect the loners or abandon those who don't participate.  It's easy to engage those who respond, and I could have so much fun spending all of my time with those students, but that's not ethical, and as a teacher I must be conscientious of the disenfranchised students and be an advocate for social justice.  A teacher must always seek balance in the way she treats her students.  It's hard and takes concerted effort at times.  Trust and trauma were an issue for one student who was absolutely not going to expose what he/she had written.  I later learned that with this student, it simply takes time.  Another student completely shut down once we started dissecting the work.  The foreign exchange students, on the other hand, were grateful for the feedback I gave them.  

After all the students left and it was lunch time, Mr. Yost and I discussed how the students were functioning under the loose constraints of creative writing.  We agreed that burn out happens quickly when we constantly ask students to write about or comment on scholarly, assigned literature.  Mr. Yost believes, and I concur, that the best writing and the best learning happens when the students care about what they're doing, when it's personal.  I concluded that creative writing is exactly what all the great authors before them were doing, too, and maybe that's why we call it great.  Those authors gave a damn about what they were writing be it creative, personal, or spiritual, etc.  Students are no different than Orwell, Steinbeck, Alexie, Buck, Austen, and countless others.  They just haven't practiced as long.  No, they're not all going to be great writers, but their current task just may showcase the best they currently have.

"I want to see a squirrel throat!" - Tech Club Visit #3

Yesterday Brenda, Shelby, and I went to the CDC at MSU for our third Tech Club visit.  At our last meeting we tossed around lesson plan ideas.  Shelby put together a zoology lesson featuring pictures of animals but only showing a part of the animal.  For example, for the elephant, all we saw in the picture was its trunk.  She put this together in a presentation format - power point, maybe - and was able to go through the high quality pictures easily.

The kids loved guessing what the animals were.  The three of us were able to generate enthusiasm and incorporate learning with silliness, physical movement, a focused lesson, and technology.  There were only one or two animals the kids didn't know.

Here are some things we learned during our visit:

1.  Technology made it easy for us to be flexible and enhance the lesson.
The students were excited to see pictures of the animals.  They jumped up and down and squirmed in their seats.  During the first few pictures they were content to talk about the animals, make animal sounds, and guess what they eat and where they live.  By the third, they were ready to be creative like imagining having a pet rabbit or pet spider and what they would name it.  They also wanted to see a video and we were able to show them one quickly on YouTube.  They LOVED the videos.  They also wanted to see close ups of a hamster's teeth, a beaver's tail, and even a squirrel's throat.  Through Google Images we were able to find most of what they wanted to see.  At one point Brenda used her smart phone to add even more context and images to the lesson.  We kept the group engaged for over 45 minutes by being able to offer them what they wanted to see.  

2.  At this age, students need a fairly rapid pace or they divert their attention.
Technology is meant to move quickly.  We didn't stay on a single photo more than 3 minutes before they were ready to see other images or a video.  We have come to expect video and audio to stream immediately, for high resolution images to be ready for download, and for whatever we want to find to be available in just a few clicks.  It's fast and can work well for this age group that has a relatively short attention span.    

3.  Children have much to add to the lesson and educators should invite their input.
This particular group of kids is awesome.  They are diverse and many of their parents are university professors.  We were astonished at how much one child knew about spiders.  When his mom arrived, we learned that his father is an entomologist.  He taught us some things about what spiders can eat and not eat.  Another little girl wanted to see a squirrel's throat.  Then she wanted to see a beaver's throat.  We wondered if her father was an ENT doctor.  We never found pictures of animal throats, but it added to our group conversation.  We watched a squirrel video and then Brenda took out her phone to show the kids pictures she took of a baby squirrel she rescued from a building at MSU.  Kids are smart and they learn quickly.  They learn even more when they are directly involved.  We let them ask for what they wanted to see, and we let them hold the iPad.  That was a big treat.


I'm not sure we had any struggles during this visit.  We started on time and the "friends" that sat with us stayed for the majority of the lesson.  They were enthusiastic and loved every minute.
Next time I might email them and ask them to make sure the iPads are fully charged.  We didn't plan on using two, but we could have had two tables of tech club had the other iPad been charged.

Summer 2015 Book Club - The Catcher in the Rye

All the secrets of the world are contained in books.  Read at your own risk. - Lemony Snicket

The MSU English Education Community started a book club.  We set up a poll on Facebook and asked for submissions.  Then we voted on what we wanted to read.  Our first selection was The Catcher in the Rye.

In attendance:
Allicia
Annie
Stephanie
Hailey
Lee

Issues we discussed:
Teen angst
Dysfunctional families
Personality disorders/Mental health
Language
Cyclical pattern of interest, annoyance, rage, escape, contempt, depression
Authorship

ELA Tech Integration Experiments

This is a link to an early concept map for a possible activity at the Child Development Center at MSU.  I highly recommend using lucidchart.com for building concept maps.  There are lots of neat options for creating them, and they are easy to export.  I wish I had known about it when I was in Dr. Wynhoff-Olsen's class this past spring.  It didn't come through as a hyperlink, so copy and paste it or highlight it, right click, and click on go to.

https://www.lucidchart.com/invitations/accept/fc75b528-1267-4d22-9832-2de041394a53

***

After reading a classmate's idea of using Storybird.com to write and illustrate poetry, I thought I would give it a novice attempt.  This website could be a really cool way to integrate technology into the ELA classroom.  I envision middle schoolers getting a big kick out of this.

http://storybird.com/books/a-storybird-experiment/?token=twzkrucc2y

Tech Club Visit #2

On May 13th, our group met at the CDC to execute our first lesson.  We were a little nervous and unsure of how it would go, but since we came with a purpose, we were going to execute that purpose and make it fun.  That is exactly what happened.  The week before we planned to teach the students how to say their colors in Spanish.  I found a website that was a color and shape click learning activity.  The web address is www.123teachme.com which features many Spanish learning games and activities.  I tried it out at home several times in order to feel comfortable navigating the site and to make sure I, too, knew my colors in Spanish.  

The CDC has 2 iPads available, so together we decided to look at the website on one iPad to learn the colors.  We would use the other iPad to let the kids take pictures of objects that were the colors we taught them.  For example, we used the website to teach them that blue in Spanish is azul.  We then sent the kids to find something azul and used the word repeatedly while they excitedly captured their object.  They came back with pictures of chairs, clothes, trash canes, carpet squares, and anything else they could find.

Since it was our first visit, we weren't sure how the kids would behave or how they would react or even more importantly, how WE would react to them.  It felt chaotic at first until we embraced the chaos.  I had a script in mind of how to engage them initially, but it was a struggle to hold their attention once the iPad camera was in use.  The kids enthusiasm was awesome and their adaptability and fearlessness to experiment with a different language was so innocent and accepting.  They had no qualms about sounding funny at all.  They loved it and learned quickly.  Using technology to identify the color, assign it to a shape, hear it, and capture it themselves engaged many modes of learning all at once.  I believe we impacted them.  The topic definitely worked.  The technology worked, but the technology at this age is completely fascinating and taking pictures became the most favorite activity. While taking pictures was not what we were teaching them to do, the employment of technology made a lasting impression on them.  Perhaps they walked away thinking that learning was fun!

The CDC refers to this time as "Reactivity" time which means that the kids are allowed to move from station to station and engage in any learning or play activity they choose.  When we started the lesson, only 3 kids joined us.  By the end we had about 7.  We might try to bring them all together for the next lesson or at least announce the activity so that more kids hear about it and want to participate.  

Week 1: Integrating Tech Into Education

Hello!  Let's start with an introduction.

My name is Lee, but some people call me Catherine.  When I came back to college in the fall of 2015, I was registered as Catherine because that's my first name.  I decided that Catherine was my academic alter ego, but as I move through school, I realize it's not really an "alter."  It's me, Lee, and it always has been.

I am setting up this blog as a requirement for a class called Integrating Tech Into Education, but having a blog is a goal of mine once I become a full time teacher, so I might as well start today.
The purpose of the blog at this point is to post substantive reflections about our field experiences with using technology to teach a lesson to real students.

My group has been placed in the Child Development Center on MSU's campus.  The students we work with range in ages from 3-6 years old.  Our first meeting was Friday May 8th.  Because we are taking this course during the summer and because we are in a year-round child care center, we aren't really engaging in an ASP (After School Program) like we might be during the school year.  MSU's CDC is quite flexible with our meeting times as long as we come well before or after nap time.  We met with the coordinator, Miranda Kacer, on Friday.  She showed us the classroom and told us about past pre-service teachers who taught.  The vision they have in mind is pretty open to any age appropriate learning we bring.    Kids this age are excited to explore and want to touch everything, so we intend to show them how fun technology can be for learning, playing, being silly, and being physically active.  

There are  many adults and MSU students who visit the CDC.  While we were there a woman was playing a recorder (flute) for the children.  They sang another song using sign language.  It looked like they had a colorful science experiment happening in the window sills.  I sensed that the classroom culture emphasizes diversity, creation, and exploration.  They have one Mac computer and 2 iPads for our use, however Miranda did mention that some parents are cautious about not over-exposing their children to technology.  For that reason she suggested we not spend more than an hour at a time more than two times a week.  Given the ages of the students, an hour at a time is about the max of their attention span anyway.  I appreciated her concern for honoring the wishes of the parents.  Miranda pointed out some differentiation needs.  One student is hearing impaired and another (maybe two others) speaks English as a second language.  I am not sure what the reading level is for the hearing impaired student or if he has an aide.  Our first lesson, which we will give today, is teaching shapes and colors in Spanish.  The topic should work well for all students, though ongoing differentiation may be a challenge.

I expect to enjoy my time working with these kids and to challenge my nervousness about going into an unfamiliar environment with a plan that we must execute.  I'm not real nervous about it, but I want this to be a good experience for the children first and foremost, and to do that, I must be on my A-game.  I have 2 children that are the same age as the kids I will teach today, so I am excited to see how the kids at the CDC respond for ideas toward introducing my own kids to technology beyond the television.

More later...