Author Archives: Lisa Dennis

There’s Still Time to Get Lost (And Found)

Lisa Dennis, Readers Writers Workshop July 25, 2017 Comments: 5

The school supplies are coming! The school supplies are coming!

You’ve seen this, right? You walk around the corner, minding your own business with a cart full of summer clearance items (I know, I know…there’s a reason the summer items are on clearance) and BAM! Pencil themed signage and endless bins designed to heighten Copy of Three Teachers Talk(1)the appeal of protractors, highlighters, and color coordinated glitter glue. (That last one should sell itself, no?)

Don’t get me wrong. I love me some school supplies. I still get excited to line them all up, to organize them, to dream of a perfectly categorized school year when I can find everything I need, revolutionize my post-it note-taking system (They are everywhere. Every. Where.), and create the equivalent of a zen garden on my desk with pretty pen holders and file folders.

But, I’m not ready. Hear that, corporate America? I’m not ready to go back.

You’re stressing me out. Your Hello Kitty backpack pushing, pink eraser wielding, bento box my lunches mid-July attack on my summer is not welcome.

Truth be told, I need more time. I need more time for two very important things:

  1. To get lost. A few weeks back, I wrote about remaining calm through mindfulness and embracing summer by being kind to yourself. When I will actually get around to taking my own advice remains to be seen, but thankfully, I have great friends, and one of the best said something just this past week that reminded me of something I really needed to hear: “There’s plenty of time to get lost.” He is so right. There’s plenty of time to get lost in more books, lost in the garden, lost at the movies, lost in my writer’s notebook, lost on the patio with great friends, lost in thought about nothing at all.
  2. To be found. Despite everything I’ve written so far, or maybe because of it, I do get excited to get back to the classroom. Honestly, the rejuvenation I seek isn’t about checking out, it’s about checking back in with fresh eyes and a full heart for the coming year. I love to lose time on Twitter searching the ideas of amazing educators. I love the stack of pedagogy books I get to tackle, and after Shana’s post last week, I think I need to add Rewriting by Joseph Harris. I love learning alongside educators whose enthusiasm for choice, talk, and student voice will inspire me the whole year through.

So summer is a balancing act. A mix of letting go of school, to again embrace it as a teacher who is grounded in passion and emboldened by a capacity to grow, change, and reinvent myself. To be both lost and found, I return again and again to the possibilities presented to teachers and students when the classroom focus is to build readers and writers.

I find myself thinking this week, post emotional meltdown in front of a Target employee, about a piece I read from Brian Sztabnik at Talk with Teachers. He said:

“Our students need to be taught how to see, not what to say.”

Get LostThis thought has been ringing in my ears for days. In context, I found it to be a brilliant way to suggest a necessary departure from formulaic writing instruction. Beyond that, I find it resonating with my continued desire to be both lost and found during this blessing that we call summer vacation.

The duality of a “vacation” that often serves as just more time to work and prepare for the upcoming school year in the traditional (formulaic) sense, can also be a time to stop and look around at how experience, observance, and appreciation can mold our practice in the coming year.

The same duality exists in workshop. The rules for school (the guidelines, the philosophies for best practice, etc.) need to apply to all stakeholders in the literacy education of our students, not just to the students.  As Amy said a few weeks back, “Every Teacher of Reader. Every Teacher a Writer.” In this case, it’s every teacher a seer too.

I’m taking time this week to really see (and again, mindfully appreciate) the possibilities: The English Journal read out on the patio in the sunshine, the extra time to write about everything and nothing at all, the planning meetings at a coffee shop instead of deep in the windowless conference rooms many of us are familiar with. I want to really reflect on how these more relaxed approaches to learning can inspire some of what I will ask my students to do and how I want them to see getting lost and found in our time together. I want them to see reading, writing, and talking about their ideas as opportunities to lose themselves in reflection, and find themselves there too.

So, no. I am not ready to go back, but I am ready to see both the lost (escaping into some poetry writing inspired by Iron and Wine’s Endless Numbered Days album) and the found (I just read Anne Whitney’s piece on authenticity in the classroom in the July release of the English Journal – blew my mind in a thousand amazing ways) of this summer.

The school year may loom large, and in truth, much of what I want to work on the rest of the summer does have to do with school, but I’m not on anyone else’s timetable yet. The bins of washable markers can wait. I still have a stack of books to get lost in, moscow mules to sip, and animal-shaped clouds to count, and even that (at least the first one) will make me a better teacher come fall.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Enjoy. Again, you deserve it.

How are you leaving time to get lost and enjoy?  How are you ramping up for the start of school?

Lisa Dennis teaches English and leads a department of incredible English educators at Franklin High School near Milwaukee. This post was finished in front of a bonfire in our backyard, after a day spent reading at the pool. Cheers to summer. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LDennibaum 

 

Summer Alert! Educators, Remain Calm!

Lisa Dennis, Readers Writers Workshop July 6, 2017 Comments: 11

I was speaking with a friend yesterday about summer anxiety some teachers experience. How the “endless” expanse of summer gets eaten up by, well…work.

We agreed that “teachers have the summer off” is a dangerous myth, both politicallyimg_4296 (which I’d need 289 pages to dig into, so I’ll avoid that angle) and emotionally (which I will explore, but just a bit. My daughter and I are heading to the park, because I’ve been working on prioritizing). It’s a myth that was making me downright twitchy, because I thought I was “doing summer wrong.”

Summers of my youth were eternal. Swimming, biking, The Sandlot viewed from sleeping bags, vacations to Gettysburg and Colonial Williamsburg (my Dad was a history teacher), and reading countless books. Reading in my swing set fort, unless I saw a spider. Reading on my trampoline as I liked to imagine I was multitasking, because I was also tanning. Reading in the car, until I felt like puking – such a bummer for a bibliophile to get carsick from reading. Reading as a cliche, under the covers with a flashlight.

Stress was not a part of the equation. Various foods on a stick, mud up to my knees, and bicycle trips to pay for candy with a bag full of pennies, yes. Stress, not so much.

These days, summer days years later, I was finding myself legitimately nervous. Such anxieties include:

  • It’s already the Fourth of July! What have I done with the past four weeks?!
  • Each week of the summer has had at least one day (more likely two or three) on which I either went to school for a meeting/to work, or I worked several hours from home.
  • I’m reading, but not enough.
  • I’m writing, but never enough.
  • I’m spending time with my daughter, but…is that enough?
  • My list of to-do projects is largely unchecked.
  • I’ve burned once, but returned quickly to sickly Wisconsin pale.

In short, I’m doing a lot. However, I think my big mistake so far is that I’m still trying to balance being a teacher and taking time off. In other words, I haven’t actually allowed myself any vacation.

Today, the AP scores come out for the great state of Wisconsin. Awesome. No stress there.

Kelly Gallagher shared a tweet this morning, linking to a post from Diane Ravitch about research into AP courses and their impact on our school system. Basically, the courses are important. Rigor is important. However, what we’ve done with the courses (high stakes for class rank, stress on students who overload, etc.) is far from ideal. On extra stressful days like these, I am reminded each year of Amy’s post about what really matters in AP courses: creating readers and writers out of our students. Not hyper-focusing on the test and the scores.

In the same way, I need to stop hyper-focusing on school during the summer and remember what’s really important. If I don’t take some time to recharge, I am going to burn out by October.

There are ways to let go. There are ways to really embrace a little bit of summer.

And for those of you who are like me and aren’t so good at it, here is a list off the top of my head:

  • Read. Read under the covers with a flashlight if you are feeling nostalgic. Read exactly what you want, when you want. This one should be easy…it’s a part of being a workshop teacher.
  • Take the time you can. Maybe it’s a weekend or maybe it’s two/three weeks in a row, but no matter how much time, intentionally set it aside for you and for your family. No meetings, no planning, no curriculum work, no searching Twitter for ideas (save your Three Teachers Talk blog post from that time as something to look forward to later!).
  • Practice some mindfulness. I was introduced to this concept by a friend. As a teacher, I’ve lost a bit of “in the moment” thinking in favor of planning ahead and reflecting back. Resetting myself to return again and again to the moment I am in brings grounding and appreciation for what is right in front of me.
  • Grab some of your summers past youthful innocence back. My daughter just said from the other room that Belle and the Beast are finally loving each other now. I took a break. I went in to watch Belle throw snowballs at the Beast. Tale as old as time: you need to play more than you work sometimes.
  • Let yourself take a break. Good heavens…you know you deserve one.

How are you capturing summer? Please leave your comments below!

Lisa Dennis teaches English and leads a department of incredible English educators at Franklin High School near Milwaukee. She loves to count fireflies in her backyard, sip root beer floats through striped straws, and get so lost in a book that she loses all track of time. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LDennibaum 

 

Are You a Reader, Darlin’? 

Lisa Dennis, Professional Development, Readers Writers Workshop June 24, 2017 Comments: 3

A few weeks back, I was on a flight home from Dallas to Milwaukee, my thumbs clicking away at my phone. Working to stifle my usual chatter in a effort to be a good fellow traveler to the woman I was sitting next to, I had been reflecting on the past few days of learning with fellow educators. However, it hadn’t taken me long to realize that I might be sitting next to an archetype wrapped in pink. My curiosity was piqued.

She was an older woman with white hair cut into a sassy pixie style, a pink shawl wrapped around her tanned shoulders and a pink Bible in her lap. I was Honey, Darlin’, and Sugar in the first 20 minutes I knew her, and she had even put her hand on my knee Are You A Reader, Darlin'- (1)to ask me to reach up and adjust the air vent for her, replying to my action on her behalf with a long and drawn out, “Bless you.”

Her slow, sweet drawl suggested that she was the one on a trip North, not headed home as I was, and when we ended up chatting, she confirmed she was headed to Milwaukee to visit a friend she met on a cruise almost 30 years ago.

After awhile, my new friend reached over with a long, manicured finger (you guessed it, pink nails) and tapped the book on my lap.

“Now, isn’t that an intriguing cover. The Nest,” she said, emphasizing the E with a smile and turning the word to Nast. “Do you like it?”

I smiled back, “I haven’t had a chance to get very far yet. Do you like your book?” I took a chance at a small joke.

She chuckled. “Darlin, I’ve read this one several times. It’s a bit different each time. Never read it in pink before though.”

We laughed and I asked if she read often.

“Oh, yes, (I love how E’s are A’s in the south) always been. How about you? Are you a reader, Darlin?”

I smiled inwardly at the revelation that the North needs to use more pet names and told her a bit about workshop.

“Then you are a reader,” she said, leaning over a bit and pausing. With a dropped voice she whispered, “Go make a lot more of ’em.”

I smiled broadly at 40,000 feet. Yes, Darlin. I’m a reader. 

An educational leader capable of professionally developing peers? Of that, I’m still not sure…

But a day earlier I had been in Dallas, sharing a two day workshop with Amy for about 40 educators. To say I was nervous would be a gross understatement. 3 years ago, I didn’t really know what workshop was. Now, I was walking into a library, full of expectant educators, to professionally develop them, like I had the necessary social capital (thanks for that new one, Amy!) to pull it off. 

As the training got underway, I felt like it was the first day of school. Ever. The very first day of my very first year, when my smile didn’t quite reach my eyes because I was actively trying not to vomit. However, as I think back on my first professional development experience, from the other side (and vomit free), I feel blessed.

I’m blessed because I was afforded the opportunity to teach other teachers about something I am truly passionate about. I am blessed because their questions and concerns not only helped clarify my own beliefs, but strengthened them. I am blessed because I was able to teach beside one of my workshop mentors, Amy Rasmussen. I’m blessed because I got to see the excitement and possibility that light up the eyes of fellow educators when they see how empowering choice and talk can be in their classrooms.

Then, this past week, our fellow writer Jessica asked a few questions in our ongoing Three Teachers WhatsApp conversation that took me right back to McKinney:

How do we prove workshop to our colleagues? How do we prove that it works? That we are doing the right thing? How do we prove that it can help make all the difference for our students and their futures as readers and writers?

The short answer? We do it.

We jump in and try it. Just as Amy and I asked the teachers in McKinney to do, you try it. You hold on to the core values of workshop (choice, student talk, time to read, mini lessons, conferring, writing with mentors) and you begin. A comment made by a veteran teacher during our McKinney training sums up this ironically simple, and yet seismic, shift quite pointedly. This rather stoic, obviously brilliant, and totally skeptical educator, leaned back in his chair on our final day of training and said to the group, “What the hell have I been doing all this time?” 

This gentleman’s astonishment at how limiting teaching English can be if we are trying to teach students to be English teachers, was moving. It does nothing to negate all of the amazing work he (all of us!) has done in his career to move students forward. The practices he implemented in good faith and with good reason were to benefit students.   But now, he was seeing that something could be added to benefit the young people in front of him, not only as students, but as people. Something could shift. Something meaningful needed to change if his ultimate goal was now different too . No longer was the fight to make students read a particular text (or to read/write at all), but to build a support system to show students all of the opportunity, benefit, and enjoyment that come from reading and writing, and the lasting impact if can have on their lives.

Ambition (1)

It’s not easy.  It will not be easy, but the right work rarely is. My move to workshop and my recent training work has reminded me that this is the good, hard work that I need to be doing. In order to do it, I need to remember the following:

  • Be vulnerable. This is hard. No kidding. But it’s about effort to be real with your students. They need to know you are a human writer, not some enlightened literary god/goddess who is there with the right answers and a perfect draft each time you put pen to paper. Write with your students. Share your work. Share your revisions. As Shana suggested earlier this week, share your writer’s notebook. Also, keep in mind, that vulnerability doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Students don’t need to know every little detail about you in order for you to share. Not comfortable detailing the deep dark secrets you only share with your therapist and your murky, tortured soul? Good! Being vulnerable means sharing your writing about dogs, because you love them, not your poetry about the loss of your innocence. Open up a little and you’ll get back a lot.

 

  • Be honest. There is little room in my classroom to connect with students on the level I need to in order to know them well enough to build them individually as readers and writers, if I am anything but myself. If we as teachers are not raw ambition, pure desire for student success, and the occasional humble failure, then we are not really what our need.  Tell your students which books you’ve loved, which you’ve abandoned, and which classics you haven’t read. I keep Don Quixote, with 258 pages read, on my desk for that very reason. I thought I should read it. I struggled so long, I grew to dislike it. I moved on. I haven’t read all of the classics. Who has? And who determines the classics?! Share the pieces that mean something to you in an effort to help students find pieces that mean something to and move them.

 

  • Be a reader and a writer (Darlin’). If we truly want to build readers and writers in our classrooms, we must be readers and writers ourselves. Listen, a few short years ago, I wasn’t a reader. I had always loved reading, but in the first few years of my career, I had allowed myself to read less, because I claimed to have no taste for it after reading so many student papers. This just can’t be. Of course we can share our love of books through the pieces that have touched us over a life of reading. But, how can we claim a life and love of reading, if we aren’t doing so voraciously now? The same with writing. It’s malpractice in my mind to promote reading and writing as transformative if we, the teachers, are not taking the chances and the time to transform ourselves in the same way. I want my doctor to love and practice medicine. I want my mentor to truly believe in the power of education and promote best practice through his own leadership. I want my students to know they can trust what I’m selling them, because I’ve bought in.

I’m a reader and a writer, Darlin’. Won’t you join me?

Lisa Dennis teaches English and leads a department of incredible English educators at Franklin High School near Milwaukee. As this summer rolls on, she looks forward to sharing more of the wonders of workshop next week with the awesome educators in Wiley, Texas. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LDennibaum. 

 

Student Gratitude – A Guest Post by Margaret Lopez

Classroom Culture, Guest Post, Maggie Lopez, Readers Writers Workshop, Reflection June 9, 2017 Leave a comment

I didn’t teach last year because I resigned.  I still feel guilty.

When I moved back to my hometown of Chicago, I accepted a position with a well-known, controversial charter school network in the city.  I quickly found it was not the right fit for me.  It wasn’t the students–they were full of hope and sweet in spite of the adverse circumstances they dealt with outside of school.  It was the system.  

If the ACT was king, a strict demerit system was the reigning queen.  Students were part of a system that didn’t see them as individuals, but cogs in a wheel that kept churning out “College and Career Ready” students, as measured only by a test, and using strictScreen Shot 2017-05-01 at 8.44.22 PM rules to keep the wheels turning.  There was no student choice, just multiple choice.  No discussions, just lectures.  No collaboration, just eyes tracking the teacher.

It was horrible.  So horrible that I made the choice to leave.   I felt like teaching to the school’s standards made me compromise non-negotiable parts of my teaching philosophy.  I tried to break the mold, but received teacher demerits (seriously..teacher demerits).   I couldn’t find my way in the system and struggled to officially make the choice to put myself before students.

I made a choice to leave.  But I didn’t realize how many repercussions that choice would have.  There was so much about teaching I missed and what I, admittedly, didn’t take the time to appreciate when I was in the classroom.   I missed students most of all.

I missed the little things, like greeting them at my door, ready to embark on a 50 minute odyssey into the literary world.  I missed wishing them a happy, safe weekend, then anxiously awaiting their return on Monday.  I missed seeing their homecoming pictures and watching them in the school play.  I missed having class jokes and saying hello in the hallways.  I missed reminding every class, every day about an upcoming assignment and the student who had the best excuse when it isn’t completed on time.  I missed waving to students as we each got into our cars to head home.  I missed reminding them to relax, just take it easy for a night.  I missed the chaotic moments in the classroom just as much as I missed the moments when all the fates in the world conspired and each child was rapt in their learning.

I missed transforming the protesting non-reader into a book worm. I missed adding recommendations to my book list from all types of readers.  I missed students asking me what I was reading and why, did I like the book or the movie better , or which John Green book is the best.  I missed the excitement I felt when a student genuinely loved a book or returned a book that I thought had been lost to a locker or car trunk forever.  I missed being moved by a student’s connection to a character.  I missed seeing my bookshelf fluctuate depending on what topic or genre was trending.

I missed reading their timed essays, the writing in their notebooks, the personal annotations in the margins of their books.  As an English teacher, taking home 180 essays over your weekend doesn’t always feel like one of the perks of the job.  Grading becomes tiresome halfway through the first stack of essays, and builds to a mundane, tedious task quickly thereafter.  Until that one essay…the one from a shy student.  The one from the athlete who no one takes seriously.  The one from the student who actually managed to turn something in on the deadline.  The one that yanks you from your near slumber and makes you re-read it because it is so insightful, poignant, and refreshing.  These essays can be few and far between, but when they are uncovered in my stack of loose-leaf paper, they stir up my teacher soul.  These golden essays remind us of the humanity and intelligence high schoolers have within them.

Can students be whiny?  Sure.  Can they be inconsistent?  Consistently, it seems, some weeks.  Can they be forgetful, even with a school-issued agenda and text-message reminders sent to their phones?  Yep.  But they can also be generous, helpful, and shockingly perceptive about the world.  They can be innovative and resilient.  In fact, they usually are every day.

thank

As teachers, I think we often see the best of our students, the qualities their parents miss and their peers don’t notice.  We notice their compassion when they offer to help a struggling student.  We enjoy their passion when they light up on the field.  We see their curiosity through the books they select and the choices they make in their own learning.  I missed learning about each student as a member of my classroom community, and uncovering their beliefs, habits, and ideas slowly throughout the school year.  I missed noticing their growth, as English students and young adults, from August to December to May.  What is more rewarding than taking a step back and admiring an individual’s progress?  We are so fortunate that nurturing and acknowledging individual progress is a routine component of our jobs.

I still think about those kids, the ones I chose to leave behind, and I still feel guilty.  I wonder how they’ve fared as seniors, how they performed on the ACT, if they’re itching to break out of the mold and be free in a few short weeks.  I wonder what they have been reading and writing.  I wonder how I could have stayed and made it work.

There is magic that happens in a classroom.  Sometimes we don’t notice it in the moment or it looks messy.  It isn’t graded on our appraisals or summatively assessed, but it happens, in little moments and big “ah ha” moments.  It happens because of our students.  

thank2

As these weeks get more stressful the closer we get to summer break, I want to challenge all of us to remember the good in our students and try to have gratitude for what they bring to us each day.  To be proud of the relationships you’ve worked to forge with your young readers and writers.  To remember student achievements and how you have supported that growth.  To recall, during arguably the most hectic, patience-testing time of the school year, the young adults that make this noble profession so demanding and rewarding.

Maggie Lopez has six years of teaching experience at large public high schools in Louisville, Houston, and now Chicago.  A graduate of Miami University, she had the pleasure of learning from the workshop masters and is on a continual quest to challenge, inspire, and learn from her hilariously compassionate juniors and seniors. 

Screen Shot 2017-05-01 at 8.44.22 PM

Care to join the conversation? We’d love to add your voice! Please email guest post ideas to Lisadennibaum@gmail.com.

Stay Gold, Ponyboy. Authentic Literary Analysis: Poetry in Two Voices – Guest Post by Elizabeth Oosterheert

#poetrychat, Guest Post, Modeling, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop June 8, 2017 Comments: 2

Over the past several months, social media has been a buzzing hive of Tweets, articles, and teaching resources for The Outsiders, as S.E. oosterHinton’s beloved classic celebrated fifty years of resonating with readers of all ages around the globe.

In using The Outsiders as a whole class text this spring with a seventh grade class composed of nearly all boys, I began to explore juxtaposing the beauty and power of poetry during National Poetry Month, and authentic literary analysis. How could I use poetry as an analytical catalyst?

The answer came in an approach that I love because it promotes several of the pillars of writing workshop:

  • Student agency/ownership of the writing process
  • Collaborative writing and thinking
  • Mentor texts as models for writing craft moves
  • Opportunities for teachers to participate in workshop as writers

Poems in Two Voices are an excellent way to invite creative literary analysis, since by definition, they challenge student writers to take on the personas of fictional characters and to look at a literary work through the lens of their chosen character’s perspective.

As an invitation into learning about Poems in Two Voices, I shared a poem that I wrote from Johnny and Pony’s point-of-view during our workshop time, as well as poems written by former students.

Seventh Grade Literature
The Outsiders
“The End of Innocence: A Poem in Two Voices” by Mrs. O.

ooster2

Ponyboy Curtis Johnny Cade
Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold. Nature’s first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold.
Gold was my mother. She was beautiful. Nothing gold can ever stay. My life has been black.
Gold is my brother Soda. Movie star handsome. He kind of radiates. I pulled a silver switchblade, thinking it was for the best. Disaster from then on.
Beauty was the sunrise in Windrixville. There was a silent moment when everything held its breath. I did, too. I remember Pony’s voice as he read Gone With the Wind. Dallas is gallant, going into battle like those Southern gentlemen.
I thought things could only get better, but we went from ice cream sundaes at Dairy Queen to the red Hell of the church on fire. We started it with our cigarettes. I was a hero for a moment. Instead of being beaten down, I was giving life. Pony said Jerry thought we were sent from Heaven.
Johnny never thought of himself. We can’t live without him. The gang needs him. I don’t want to die now. Sixteen years ain’t long enough.
Sixteen years on the street, and you can learn a lot. But all the wrong things, not the things you want to learn. Sixteen years on the street, and you can see a lot.  But all the wrong sights, not the sights you want to see.

 

Then leaf subsides to leaf… Then leaf subsides to leaf…
We had a rumble, but in the midst of the fight I realized, I don’t hate the Socs anymore…None of us should have been there, throwing punches with a gang of future convicts. Useless…fighting’s no good. I tried to tell Pony that. I have to get the words out while I still have a pulse.
Johnny was so quiet, I thought Dallas and I were too late. I thought Johnny was already dead. “We’re all proud of you, buddy.” That’s what Dallas said. I loved Dallas. I wanted to die with his words in my ears.
Johnny was trying to talk to me. I leaned in,  close to his burns, his closed eyes. “Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold.”
The pillow sank a little, and Johnny died. I see something on the horizon. Light.
So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

 So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay.

After sharing my poem, and giving students the opportunity to read several student written poems aloud, we wrote the following list of writing craft moves:

Writers of Poems in Two Voices…

  • Look back at passages in the text where the characters they’ve chosen are actually speaking, or where they can “hear” their thoughts.
  • Base their poems on a specific passage in the book, or make their writing a more general reflection of everything that they’ve read so far.
  • Might give a voice to a character who doesn’t speak often or is silent. This allows creative license as a writer. For example, what would Bob say if he could speak to Johnny or Pony about what happened in the park? What would Johnny say to the children he rescued from the church in Windrixville?
  • “Steal” lines or word choices from the book such as a favorite Again and Again, or golden line
  • Sound like the character being represented
  • Decide which lines will be read in unison, and which ones will be read individually
  • Include important details from the novel to illustrate close reading
  • Practice reading poems ALOUD with coauthors to work on timing and inflection

 

Two voice poetry allows students to powerfully express how a text has changed their thinking about the world, gives them the opportunity to write with a coauthor, and to present their poetry to others.  It works beautifully with any book. My students loved revisiting favorite scenes in The Outsiders, and we’ve also written narrative poetry, found poetry, and whipstitch poetry together.

The end of the year is the perfect time to utilize poetry as an analytical tool.

How do you use poetry with your students? Please add your ideas and questions to the comments below!

Elizabeth Oosterheert teaches middle school language arts and directs the 8th Grade Theatre Troupe at Pella Christian Grade School in Pella, Iowa.

She loves reading and writing with middle schoolers.

Screen Shot 2017-05-01 at 8.44.22 PM

Care to join the conversation? We’d love to add your voice! Please email guest post ideas to Lisadennibaum@gmail.com.

Practicing What We Teach, One Letter at a Time – A Guest by Amy Menzel

Classroom Culture, Community, Guest Post June 7, 2017 Comments: 2

I’m not always ready for Monday, but I was ready for this one. I had spent a lot of time reading Penny Kittle’s Book Love over the weekend and was anxious to get back into the classroom and spread my love of all things literary. Wouldn’t you know it…my seniors weren’t.

Now, it was “senior skip day,” and I knew that, so maybe I was less prepared than I thought. I thought, “Hey, I’ll be able to give more individual attention to students Screen Shot 2017-05-01 at 8.44.22 PMwho need it.” Meanwhile, they thought, “Hey.  I’m here.  What more do you want?”

It’s not so much that they thought this that bothered me, but that they said it. They actually said,  “You should just be happy we’re here.”  To my face. And they meant it.

A small part of me died right then and there. Likely from overheating because my blood was boiling. It took me a while (and eleventy-seven deep breaths) to calm down. Somehow I made it through the day without exploding, but barely.

That afternoon, I sat at my desk as the building got quiet. When only the sounds of the custodian’s sweeping and my continued deep breathing remained, I opened a new Google doc. “Dear Students,” I began, and channeled my frustrations and feelings through my fingertips.

menzel

I made 140 copies, left them in a neat stack in the middle of my cluttered desk, closed my door, walked to my car, drove away, and hoped for a better day.

I felt better that I wrote about it (duh, say many researchers). And I felt better having calmly and clearly expressed my expectations. I also had a student voice echoing in my head from last semester: “I’ve never had a teacher take the time to write to us before.”

Of course, we write to students all the time; we write our syllabi, our assignments, our writing prompts. But I do think there’s a difference when we address a note, a discussion to our students. It’s more personal. I forget about this.

It’s also a way to practice what we teach.

Back in April, Lisa talked about the importance of English teachers being readers. She closed her impassioned post, “We must be readers…otherwise, we are in the business of false advertising.” The same is true of our work as writing teachers.  We must write.

This is a lesson I learned (or finally appreciated) during my participation in the UWM Writing Project back in 2010. One of the core principles of the National Writing Project, the program of which the UWM Writing Project is an affiliate, is that, “Knowledge about the teaching of writing comes from many sources: theory and research, the analysis of practice, and the experience of writing. Effective professional development programs provide frequent and ongoing opportunities for teachers to write and to examine theory, research, and practice together systematically,” — emphasis mine.

I learned a lot that summer, but the most significant lesson I took away was the importance of practice. Each of us teacher consultants prepared and presented a teacher inquiry workshop and the number one rule for these presentations was to have your participants write early and often. It changed the way I teach. Still, I find that I need to remind myself to write more often.

Now, I know it’s the end of the year. So you may be thinking…

menzel2

But I’m all about embracing the constant reflect-and-revise nature of teaching. So allow me to publically commit to writing to my students more–early and often starting next school year.

Dear fellow teachers,

Are you with me?

Sincerely,
Amy Menzel

Amy Menzel teaches English at Waukesha West High School in Waukesha, Wisconsin. She hopes her unbridled enthusiasm for all things literary haunts her graduating seniors for decades to come. In the best possible way, of course.

icon

Care to join the conversation? We’d love to add your voice! Please email guest post ideas to Lisadennibaum@gmail.com.

Uncovering the Bonds We’ve Built With Books – A Guest Post by Karry Dornak

Guest Post, Readers Writers Workshop June 1, 2017 Comments: 3

I live for a good mentor text, and I have started to experience somewhat of a “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” because I find them everywhere.Screen Shot 2017-05-01 at 8.44.22 PM

Most recently, while scrolling through Facebook.

An article titled, “Dying, with a Lifetime of Literature” sounded powerful, so I clicked the link.

I immediately knew this piece would appear in my classroom.

The piece, written by Lynette Williamson, a former English teacher of thirty years, documents her diagnosis with ALS while sprinkling in allusions to literary works that stuck with her and appeared at various times after her diagnosis: quotes from Toni Morrison, Sophocles, Shakespeare, and even a connection to Kafka’s cockroach from The Metamorphosis.

I wondered, about myself and my students, “If we dug deep enough, which literary scars would we find hiding in our own skin?”

To start this excavation process, we created our own “ideal bookshelves” (based on the book My Ideal Bookshelf by Jane Mount and Thessaly La Force and referenced in Book Love by Penny Kittle). I get overly and outwardly excited when we talk books in our classroom, so, to spare my students another one of my emotionally-charged nerding-out moments, I stifled my excitement when I overheard their conversations about books! “Oh, remember this book?” “Oh yeah, that’s a good one – I need to add it to my shelf, too!” “You’ve never heard of this book? It’s so good! It’s about…”

And sure enough, at the end of the period, students were handing me their ideal bookshelves, my first peek into the connections they have forged with books.

The next day, we read “Dying, with a Lifetime of Literature,” together. I asked, “What is she doing as a writer?” And we agreed that she is referencing pieces of literature to tell her story. Then, to press the issue, I said, “We all superficially agree that books teach lessons (hello, thematic statements), but have we looked at that personally?” I told my students to visualize two timelines: one is everything they’ve read in life. The other runs parallel and is their life story. Where can we make connections or intersections between these two parallel timelines? What has happened in your own life that you could connect to a character’s?

To support this idea, I shared with my students the part of Mechanically Inclined where Jeff Anderson explains the “linguistic data pool theory,” where “all of a student’s visual and aural language experiences flow into that student’s personal pool of data” (17). I thought it fascinating to consider that what we read leaves marks on our schema and manifests itself at times and in ways that we may not even be aware.

At this point I’m sure my students are thinking I’m taking this idea way too far. So I snapped out of it, and we got to work.

And, true to my “Baader-Meinhof” tendencies, when I start thinking of an idea, possibilities appear everywhere. My instructional specialist, Stephanie, had recently shared with our grade level team an idea from Cult of Pedagogy (“16 Ways to Use Google for Student Projects”).

Dornak 1

One idea is the e-book, which had just the right amount of simplicity and polish for our needs. I instructed my students on how to set up their e-books (using Google Slides, go to File, Page Setup, then change the dimensions to 8.5×11). Once the Slide is the right orientation and size, students can add images of books plus insert text boxes to type their own versions of Williamson’s writing.

For students who struggled to get started, I encouraged them to start the same way she did.

Hers: “When I was diagnosed with ALS….”

Mine: “When I lost my mom in 2009…”

A student’s: “When I heard the news that I would be going to study abroad in the States for 6th grade…”

I continued drafting my own “literary touchstone,” as I was now calling the assignment, in front of my students while they, too, drafted theirs. Writing together is powerful – students are able to see both my thoughts and my emotions while writing. The best writing is raw, real, and should be shared. After all, if these books had never been shared with us, look at all of the touchstone moments we would have missed out on.

Dornak 2

To foster sharing, I created a Padlet. Students were able to share the link to their Google Slides presentation directly to that Padlet for other students to see. I make all of my Padlets require moderator approval, which means I have to approve the post first. This feature also allows me to not approve posts whose authors wish to keep their work private. I can still see the post, but others cannot.

Dornak 3

Dornak 4

This experience (the words “activity” or “assignment” just don’t do it justice) touched on so many things I hold valuable in the classroom: conversation, nurturing book love, experimenting with writing, sharing, and publishing.

Experiences like these don’t happen in my classroom every day, but I hope that now that I am seeking them out, the Baader-Meinhof effect will continue to work in my favor.

Karry Dornak is living the dream teaching sophomore English at Klein Collins High School in Spring, TX. She is energized by research-based practices, innovative ways to teach and learn, and coffee.

icon

Care to join the conversation? We’d love to add your voice! Please email guest post ideas to Lisadennibaum@gmail.com.

Author Bios – A Follow-up

AP English, Community, Lisa Dennis, Modeling, Readers Writers Workshop, Writers Workshop May 25, 2017 Comments: 9

I collected these papers 20 minutes ago, and I am smiling so hard that my second period class coming in asked me what was going on.

A few days ago, Amy wrote a post about students writing their own author bios. It was an idea that snuck up on me a few weeks back when Amy Poehler’s author bio made me laugh out loud.

Following much the same format that Amy detailed earlier this week, I introduced the idea to my students of writing our own author bios by reminding them of what they have heard from me one thousand times before over the course of this year:

“We are readers and writers.”

To reflect this persona, I shared with my AP Language students a quick writing prompt that is turning out to be one of the best writing assignments of the whole year.

When Brianna turned her piece in this morning, she had a huge smile on her face. “I had SO much fun doing this.” Brianna, as studious, driven, brilliant, and stressed out as they come, was beaming ear to ear. What a testament to the power of writing with self reflective purpose.

To facilitate this assignment we:

  1. Looked over several sample bios from our book club books, some texts off my shelves, and a few internet suggestions.
  2. Students talked at their tables and came up with a list of “look fors” in this type of writing. I was impressed by not only the length of the list, in terms of what they noticed, but some of the insight. “If you are going to write a funny book, be funny. If you’re writing about the Nazi’s, that’s not a good idea.” True, true. Style and form must match purpose. I love it.
  3. Students then drafted both a current and a future author bio. The future bios were far and away the best. Students really embraced how wildly accomplished they will be as readers and writers after college. Additionally, this group is apparently going to rule the world.
  4. Peer feedback came next, with an inclusion of Shana’s “Push and Pull” feedback strategy. It was wonderful to see the details and voice emerge from their pieces. Celina had a line about winning the Nobel Prize, an Oscar, and a Grammy. I suggested she tell us what she won the Nobel for, who she co-starred with for her Oscar win, and how many albums she sold for the Grammy. “Oooo! I helped kids in the Sudan by supplying them with books (Mrs. Dennis swoons), Brad Pitt came out of retirement to play my dad in the movie, and I sold a record to every high school student in America, Spain, and the Ukraine.” Yes, yes, yes!
  5. Students took the peer and teacher feedback, went off to polish one of their bios, get an author picture, and turn in a final draft.
  6. These are HOT off the presses and I am so proud of their voice and creativity.

If you only look at one example, check out this first one. Brianna had me laughing out loud. No wonder she was beaming ear to ear.

img_2524

From line one, this piece had me laughing out loud. Brianna could not be a more serious student, but this work let her voice shine. I LOVE it from start to finish. 

Connor is a pretty quiet kid in class. His writing fluency has improved A LOT this year. And look at that smile! 

Charlie just won the most prestigious scholarship Franklin offers, because of his service, incredible heart, academic achievements, and being an all-around amazing person. He really opened up in his one pagers this year. I could not be more proud of this young man. 

Tahseen is a very serious young woman, but the little quips in here brought out her true voice. 

JJ too had a ways to go with his writing fluency and voice development. I’m seeing it now! 

Errin is a young woman whose name you will know someday. I am SURE of it. She had this shirt on in class this morning. The picture was taken before 7:00am. 

Lisa Dennis teaches English and leads a department of incredible English educators at Franklin High School near Milwaukee. She delights in writing in the third person, claiming it’s akin to an existence in parallel universes. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LDennibaum 

Book Clubs Save Lives (and Sanity)

Readers Writers Workshop May 23, 2017 Comments: 4

I don’t know that I would survive the end of the year without book clubs. While this might sound hyperbolic, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to suggest that book clubs are the very best way I have found to round out the school year with meaning and enthusiasm for all parties involved.

In the past, I might’ve said that the end of the year was a time to push through and cover material for a final exam. In the past, I might have suggested that the end of the bookclub4year was a time to have students start summarizing work that we had done in order to demonstrate cumulative knowledge, as if a project could encompass all we’d learned together. In the past, I believe I was missing the point.

I have since come to see the end of the year as the perfect opportunity to allow my students to dive once again into high interest texts in a way that promotes choice, challenge, meaningful talk, reflection, collaboration, exploration of weighty topics, and (ideally) momentum to continue reading over the summer.

Where previous final projects and speeches felt…well, final, book clubs feel like both a continuation and extension. We are honoring what we’ve been striving for all year – to be active, engaged, authentic readers.

Disclaimer:

This is not some sort of educational utopia. These are, after all, seniors who graduate in three weeks. For some, it’s rough. It’s been rough for awhile. But I keep at it. 

I have a group of gentlemen, smart (though resistant) lads, who’ve spent precious little time reading and an irritating amount of time complaining during discussions. Perhaps, if they had more carefully looked over the extensive list of options, and/or read the descriptions of the books, I wouldn’t have been compelled to give my “I’m not angry, I’m just disappointed” talk after their last discussion. 

Three. Weeks. To. Go. 

Overwhelmingly, though, I’ve been blown away by the discussions I’m listening to and participating in.

Top nonfiction texts in my post-AP test book clubs this year include:

  • Evicted by Matthew Desmond
  • When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
  • Columbine by Dave Cullen
  • Missoula by John Krakauer
  • Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan
  • Detroit: An American Autopsy by Charlie LeDuff
  • American Sniper by Chris Kyle
  • The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance  by Robert M. Pirsig
book-club.png

A discussion on When Breath Becomes Air recorded with Screencastify

Discussions take place each class period and I’m having my kids occasionally use Screencastify (a plugin that took my kids 2 minutes to install and 3 minutes to configure and get comfortable using) to record those conversations.

They can record for up to ten minutes at a time for free and instantly send me the link via Google Drive. This way, I can float around all class period to gather insights, but if I get hung up or want to check in more carefully with a group, I have a snippet I can pull up and listen to whenever I want.

And, for the first time (both in the spirit of inspiration from my reading of Disrupting Thinking by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst and needing inspiration to keep things fresh up until the bitter end), we’re focusing discussion on just two questions:

  1. How is this reading changing me?

  2. How is this reading changing my view of the world?

Beers and Probst have reminded me that the more often my students see books as “invitations to experience new thoughts” as opposed to “burdens,” the sooner we can realize the “ultimate goal of reading”  which is to “become more than we are in the moment; to become better than we are now; to become what we did not even know we wanted to become.”

I’ve heard students discuss mortality and our responsibilities to the aging population, whether it’s better to have a community that is falling apart or no community at all, how they can use knowledge of habits to change their own and improve their lives, and what it means to overcome tragedy based on their reading coupled with their own experiences. As Amy said in a previous post about book clubs (with a bonus of suggestions for several great book club titles!), “Just let them talk.”

I want my students to spend every last class minute we have together focused on what they want to become…with books in their hands. Then, we are going to make goals for summer reading.

I don’t want to let them go without a plan to keep reading.

It’s my job to keep them reading. Our democracy, their spirits, and my sanity depend on it. How’s that for hyperbole? #booklove

Are you rounding out the year with book clubs? What are your students discussing? What are they reading? Please leave your ideas in the comment section below. 

Lisa Dennis teaches English and leads a department of incredible English educators at Franklin High School near Milwaukee. She has added eight books to her summer reading list just based on student discussion the last few weeks. No hyperbole. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LDennibaum 

 

Where Dioramas Go to Die

Lisa Dennis, Readers Workshop, Readers Writers Workshop, Talk May 16, 2017 Comments: 7

I picked up my first pedagogy book of the year this week and I can’t put it down. Disrupting Thinking by Kylene Beers and Robert Probst is living up to its name. It’s 1950’s Louise Rosenblatt Reader Response Theory meets a desperate modern need to educate kids to be responsible consumers of information in order to compassionately embrace the viewpoints of others.

The first few chapters have felt like the perfect “Now what?” for someone that has recently made the move to workshop.

My kids are choosing what they read. Now what? 

I’m devoting class time for students to build this habit. Now what? 

My students are reading more and more. Now what? 

The “now what” is to really think about the how and why we read. The text details insights on building responsive, responsible, and compassionate readers who will interact with a text, rather than just extract from it, question the text, and open themselves up to the text in order to see other points of view.

Cue the angelic choir and parting clouds. I’m ready.

But, I am also guilty of not always facilitating this type of reader response. Not on purpose, of course, but just out of difficulty in dealing with the daily grind.

We read. We talk. We mini lesson. We write. We rearrange the order. We repeat.

However, somewhere in there, we also lose a lot of readers. The once enthusiastic elementary kids, with their literal cartwheels about books, often come to us as vacant vessels of readicide. How does this happen? Beers and Probst suggest that “we have made reading a painful exercise for kids. High-stakes tests, Lexile levels, searches for evidence, dialogic notes, and sticky notes galore – we have demanded of readers many things we would never do ourselves while reading. We have sticky-noted reading to death” (46).

Now, ironically, I’ve written quite a few sticky notes around the insights in this book…postitI like to organize my thoughts this way. And, in no way am I suggesting that pulling ideas from a text is malpractice. At the end of the day, of course we need students to think deeply about their reading and demonstrate that thought through talk, written reflection, and/or analysis of some kind.

But what is appropriate? What is too much? What kills a desire to read as opposed to igniting it?

In search of some renewed inspiration, Disrupting Thinking had me laughing out loud as it got me thinking about why and how I interact with texts:

Seriously, as you finished the book you most recently enjoyed, did you pause, hold the book gently in your hands and say to yourself, ‘This time, this time, I think I’ll make a diorama’?…Do you write summaries of what you read, make new book jackets, rewrite the ending, take tests over every text? Any text? Do you want your reading level put on a bulletin board for all to see. Do you even know your damn reading level? (Beers & Probst 46)

So, how do we balance professional responsibility, a love of content, a desire to build up students as readers and writers, and the knowledge that a lot of what we’ve done (or still do) in our classrooms actually exhausts, irritates, and/or alienates our students from reading?

Unfortunately, I don’t have all the answers. This is a reflective process in action.

What I do know, is that Disrupting Thinking has me…thinking about it. A lot. It also has me vowing to put a few things into practice and promote a few others in my classroom:

  1. Promote Responsive Readers through more and more opportunities to talk about choice books. I’m guilty of still trying to “make sure kids are reading,” when in fact, most often, they are cutting corners in that reading if we are trying to “catch” them. Book clubs, conferring, and talk through reflective notebook writing promote low stakes opportunities to share insights on texts.  With mentor texts to support skill instruction, the thinking can be applied to choice reading, but doesn’t necessarily mean that I should be looking to choice reading as a summative data point.
  2. Promote Responsible Readers by working to find a balance between supporting/celebrating reading and “holding students accountable.” This is an imperfect science to be sure. I find that the more I talk with students one on one, the more they have to say, and the more I can directly intervene to move them forward to more challenging books, deepen their understanding of why I want them to keep reading in the first place, and celebrate their successes as independent readers. Save the evaluation for skills based cold reads when the curriculum demands the assessment we as teachers need, while keeping in mind that many students don’t see those assessments as their responsibility to reading, and I would argue, nor should they.
  3. Promote Compassionate Readers, again, through talk. When I read something that is changing my perspective on the world, myself, or life in general, I want to share that with someone. I want to share that with many someones. I also know, that to grow in my reading life, I need to read a wide variety of books…books that challenge my long held beliefs and understandings (or misunderstandings) of the world. Again, this is where helping students to diversify their reading lives is so very important.
  4. Talk, Talk, Talk! I’ve been asking my students two questions this week to drive their book club discussions: How is this changing me? How is this changing my view of the world? These two questions invite personal connection and reflection. I can’t wait to hear my AP students’ book club discussions!

Lisa Dennis teaches English and leads a department of incredible English educators at Franklin High School near Milwaukee. Her thinking has been disrupted and she’s loving it. Follow Lisa on Twitter @LDennibaum