Welcoming the Spring Semester

Welcome 2018!  

This new year and new semester prompted me to consider what I want to be and do in 2018.  Determined to be more and better in this year than I was in 2017, I began January 1 with reading, reflecting, and enjoying family time.  Each day is an opportunity to shape who I am and want to be.  My new and improved routine did not begin on January 2.  Some weeks into 2018 and the first week of spring classes, I'm still figuring out how to get up in time to stretch or have coffee, wake up children, read a news blog, make lunch, get ready for the day, and leave the house to drop off the high schooler before work.  After a few days of saying, "I think I need to start my day earlier," I reset my alarm.  Baby steps.

Many things stay the same when you work within an academic calendar.  I have ongoing projects with accreditation, research, and writing that stretch along the August-July continuum rather than the calendar year.  Yet, new classes in the spring semester revitalize me with opportunities for curricular revision.  And this semester, two pathways to enhance my understanding of students and partnerships have presented themselves in very different settings.  One is within my freshman composition course; the other is in my secondary English methods course.

The second semester Writing Studies delves into discourse communities, and in my particular learning community cohort the focus is civic engagement.  I began planning for this course in November while attending the National Writing Project Annual Meeting.  At that time, I was introduced to the PBS documentary American Creed and worked with instructors who had previewed the film and developed resources.  It was with even more good fortune that I learned the director of freshman composition at my university had received a grant for including service learning in the Writing Studies courses.  My course will analyze historical discourse, which will unfold as an exploration of today's discourse and the needs in our local communities.

My affiliation with the Illinois Writing Project and my participation with the National Writing Project College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) placed tools in my hands that will deepen this exploration of discourses in the composition class.  These argument-writing resources provide a framework for putting texts in conversation with one another and a foothold for students to engage in these conversations with each other.  Being present, being open, and being responsive allowed me to make the connections necessary to plan this semester.  I hope that what the freshmen experience within the class is as meaningful as planning for them has been.

In my secondary English methods course, five teacher candidates are continuing their program that began last fall.  We weathered some obstacles in the fall course, including my attempt to add writing and research layers to an already packed schedule.  We tried writing personal pieces with little time to develop them.  We recorded teaching episodes but did not fully take advantage of the feedback feature that was available in the technology platform.  After experimentation that resulted in marginal (if any) success, I should have been hesitant to try anything new this spring.  However, I want to enrich the candidates' experiences in the program, and have prepared myself for the setbacks that might occur. 

It has been a dream of mine to recreate my graduate research assistant experience of assisting a middle grades methods course taught in a middle school, often utilizing technology for backchannel discussions about classroom observations.  At the least, I hoped for my candidates to observe in a school together at the same time so that we could unpack the observations in our weekly class sessions.  Though possibly more than I should have hoped for, I also wanted a classroom space within a high school.  I am thrilled that our new partnership with a local high school opens doors for that dream to become a reality.  We meet in our high school classroom next week.  As we discuss candidates' observations and unpack the assigned readings, it will feel different from our university campus space.  I want it to feel different.  High school is where they have chosen to be, and it is my responsibility to prepare them.  Surrounding ourselves with the high school culture is only the first step.

Baby steps.

Getting It Right

As a secondary English methods professor, I wish I could get it right every time.  The truth is, I wish I could claim just one perfect year as a middle or high school teacher instead of a few near-perfect class periods or too many near-perfect disasters.  As many educators of any level might agree, it is the striving for perfection that keeps us moving forward: researching best practices, finding better resources, attending professional conferences, and meeting new colleagues as we continually shape and reshape our philosophical stance on teaching and learning.

Every week, my English methods students pose tough questions about numerous topics in education that experienced teachers struggle with daily.  Last week they asked, "How do we get students to actually read (or care about reading) during silent reading?  What does accountability for independent reading look like?  How do I manage student choice and grading?"  Channeling some of my best professors' strategies, I asked them to discuss their own classroom observations and what they have learned from their mentor teachers.  Most recently, however, during our discussion of Lev Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development and Deborah Appleman's Critical Encounters in Secondary English: Teaching Literary Theory to Adolescents, one student stumped me with questions about grading: How do we assess scaffolding if one student needs more resources and assistance than another student?  How does the scaffolding enter into grading?  


Time limited our discussion that evening, which made it immediately clear that we needed more resources to help us grapple with these issues around grading practices.  Having experienced the depth of the Twitter professional network, I turned to #sbgchat and discovered #sblchat (Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST).  In just moments, I found a video by Rick Wormeli, proficiency grading guides, a website on all things standards based by Matt Townsley, and conversations archived by Garnet Hillman around grading theory and practice.  


Yes, my students' questions give me pause, more now that I realize how much there is to learn.  But knowing how to navigate these education resources moves me closer to being the professor my secondary teacher candidates need me to be.  I have an advantage over my first-year teacher self of twelve years ago: supportive professional networks that constantly teach me (how else would I have discovered teachers on Twitter?).  These networks include the National Council of Teachers of English (@NCTE), National Writing Project (@writingproject) beginning with the Louisville Writing Project (@LouisvilleWP) and continuing with the Illinois Writing Project (@IllinoisWP), the International Literacy Association (@ILAtoday), the Illinois Reading Council (@ILReadCouncil, and the Literacy Research Association.  Through these professional networks, I have learned the value of mentors, lifelong research, and constant investigation.  I have also learned the importance of wobbling on the edge of new challenges.  Without these experiences and the support of these associations--of mentors and friends--I wouldn't be able to show my future teachers how to get it right, even if it's only some of the time.

Students' Voices at the IWP Writing Palooza

What happens when students, teachers, parents, and grandparents come together in the same space to write and share?  The Illinois Writing Project hosted a Writing Palooza on Saturday, April 30 to find out the answer to that question.  What we discovered far surpassed our expectations.

The Writing Palooza event featured Adrienne Gibbs as the keynote speaker to jump start our day on writing.  She shared lines of poetry from noted authors and some of her own writing from middle school.  Everything and anything can be a story, she encouraged, and writing flourishes when writers discuss their works together.

The morning and afternoon writing sessions and workshops included poetry, soapbox speeches, and memoirs for grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8.  In the poetry sessions I attended or facilitated, parents and teachers were encouraged to join in the writing and discussions.  The primary focus, though, was empowering students' voices.  

In the middle grades poetry session, R.J. with the Young Chicago Authors invited introductions from everyone.  These introductions were slightly different in that he asked us to rate the day on a scale of 1-10 and share one thing we often think about but do not get to talk about.  How powerful it was for students (and teachers and parents) to answer this question!  Students around the room identified environmental concerns, worries about their neighborhoods, world events, self-destruction, and other issues they have weighing on their minds with no outlet for conversation.  A common thread wove its way across the room.  Yet this space was different than their more familiar settings of school and after school activities--here, students could discuss and, better yet, write.

One girl in our afternoon poetry session rated the day a 10.  I wondered what made this day shine so brightly for her.  Was it her morning session on writing memoirs, perhaps?  Was it the lunch led by The Chicago Community Trust with information about leading #onthetable2016 civic community conversations?  Or maybe she was there with friends who had also found an outlet for their writing passions.  I did not have the chance to ask her, but I did get to hear what she had to say.

The IWP Writing Palooza culminated with an author share in the auditorium where Adrienne Gibbs began our day.  A few of our youngest eagerly started the line, and we watched with amazement as the line perpetually grew longer and never shorter.  The thirty minutes allotted for this part of the day grew into forty-five.  Students shared narratives about their first roller coaster adventures and soapbox speeches about playground repairs or ugly words on bathroom stalls.  And poetry.  Their poetry, like what was written by the girl in the earlier session and the one by another girl, pointed out the unfairness of stereotypes and made me wish a whole community could fit into that auditorium to hear what these students had to say.

I am excited that the Writing Palooza might become an annual event.  But what I realized even more at the end of this incredible day was that students need more than just one annual event for their voices to be heard.  Where is our daily palooza joining communities of students, teachers, and parents together to write and share?  

Crossing State Lines: Correcting EL/Bilingual Methods Deficiencies for Teacher Certification (Part 1)

When we first decided to move from Kentucky to Illinois, I sought out guidelines for becoming certified to teach middle and secondary language arts.  In whatever way our new adventure developed, I wanted to be prepared.  Many university teacher education programs require certification in their states, further catalyzing my push for an Illinois teacher license. 

Kentucky requires tests called the PRAXIS that assess teacher candidates in content areas and teaching knowledge, which I passed in 2003 before being hired as a middle school language arts teacher.  However, Illinois required another round of tests, which I paid to take last fall and passed, and which removed some of the "deficiencies" (yes, this is what Illinois calls them), moving me toward full certification--but not completely.  Throughout my teacher education graduate program and later doctoral studies, nowhere did I have coursework specifically focused on English language learning or bilingual methods.  Therefore, my dissertation adviser and I worked out a plan for me to design an independent study to include different types of observation hours (professional development sessions, classroom observations, and interviews) and various readings (English learner teacher standards, research articles, proven strategies, and critical literacy texts). 

At the end of my dissertation journey and having been certified to teach in Kentucky for so many years, I was more than slightly annoyed at having to complete these requirements (pay for tests, pay for another graduate course) but chose to see the potential positives of this last "deficiency."  The positives did, indeed, come to light as I found readings and field locations to support my English language learner/bilingual methods curriculum.  Through texts such as O'Donnell-Allen and Garcia's (2015) Pose, Wobble, Flow and Al-Saraj's (2015) The Anxious Language Learner, I realized there was more to an English language learner methods course than best classroom practices and time-proven strategies.  I learned to shift my mindset to look at cultural and motivational components of learning English.

After gathering reading material, I volunteered to help the Illinois Writing Project with an in-service day at a nearby district.   By serendipitous fortune, I met Stacie who was a director for the English Learner/Bilingual program in a northern district.  She presented a professional development session on K-5 EL in the morning and 6-12 EL in the afternoon.  I attended both.  Her presentations and classroom strategies for meeting the various needs of English learners prompted me to request observation time in her district elementary, middle, and secondary schools.  And that is where real learning began.