Ms aposiOpesis

I’m thinking that perhaps it would behoove teachers to be students as often as possible.  Formally, I mean, as we’re always students–we’re always learning from our kids, our peers, our classroom experience–and should be students of life.  I’m talking bona fide, sit-in-a-desk, have homework, students.

I just started my Master’s in late August, and even though college isn’t something new to me (I have a B.A. and a B.S.), I’m learning a lot about what it’s like being a student.  This is the first time I’ve taken long-term classes since becoming a teacher, and it’s quite enlightening.

First and foremost?  I get to see how well I, myself, implement all the study tools I’ve been suggesting or mandating to students all these years.  Review notes each day, use Cornell notetaking, organizing binders, highlighting efficiently, SQ3R text reading, working on assignments over time rather than four minutes before they’re due, effective listening techniques…all of it.

And how am I doing?  Well, averaging them all out?  About a C.  Maybe a C-.

I do very well in listening…I’m one of those people who is horribly, terribly, immensely annoyed with students talking while the teacher or other students are, whether it’s my own classroom or I’m in another’s.  I’ve noticed over the years at teacher in-services that teachers are the worst offenders in this regard–behavior they never would allow in their rooms they partake in regularly, talking to neighbors, carrying on full conversations while a presenter is speaking.  Drives me crazy.  So, in that regard, I’m doing well…and probably annoying classmates by occasionally shushing them when the Prof is trying to talk.

On the notetaking, I’m doing well.  On the daily note reviewing?  Not so much.  For many reasons, none of them reasons that most of my own students couldn’t claim, themselves, which is important for me as a teacher, I believe.

Secondly, it’s a new wrinkle on studenthood that I’m looking at my courses and wondering how I would present the same material, and with which resources, and in what order.  I guess once a teacher, always a teacher; the planning, the assessing, the absolute absorbing, is always with me, just as it is whenever I’m hearing the news or waltzing through my regular blogreading and having “I could use that in class….” moments all the time.

And, thirdly?  It’s damned hard to sit in one place for two hours at a time, even with a little break.  I’m a pacer in my classroom–unless the fibro is biting me big time (which happens, and in which case I’m liable to hurt myself if I move too much as it brings dizziness, too).  I often give my own students “stretch time” even in our 50-minute classes because I hate sitting for that long, and yeppers…it’s not any easier for me these days, which could be the spinal arthritis and two bad discs which I’m also lucky enough to be blessed with.

I do often wear my TENS unit during class for this last reason, which led to yet a fourth reason why teachers should be students more often.  To experience the embarrassment.

I was giving a presentation the other night, and not only did I have to squash a half-hour’s worth of information and slides that I’d worked hard on into ten minutes (don’t ask), but the electrodes from my TENS unit came unattached as I bent for something (were on my lower back) and fell to the floor, still connected to the unit on my waistband.  I had to scoop all the wires up and stuff them in my pocket, while trying to explain it briefly to a classroom full of onlookers who thought, no doubt, that I was Frankenstein.

Which is something far different from when I was a student before…in my younger years, I was not only unable to speak publicly, but if pressed to and something like that had happened?  I would have lost it, completely, never to show my face again.  Now?  Make a joke, move on, whatever.

Being a teacher has also been good for my being a student, you see.

A few weeks ago, I had the distinct pleasure of being asked to write a guest blog on Bedford-St. Martin’s Press High School Bits blog, authored by my online friend and colleague Jodi Rice.  (She’s doing silly things like getting married, traveling around the world for a year, and other hateful stuff like that…sheesh.)

Here’s the result.

That’s all for now.  New school year, teaching on overload, and going to Grad School is keeping me far too busy, and throw in lots of personal things (Mom fell and broke her hip, this, that, some more o’ this) and I’m tapped.

For now.  I’m never silent for long, however. 

Let go of the dead now.

The rope in the water,

the cleat on the cliff,

do them no good anymore.

Let them fall, sink, go away,

become invisible as they tried

so hard to do in their own dying.

We needed to bother them

with what we called help.

We were the needy ones.

The dying do their own work with

tidiness, just the right speed,

sometimes even a little

satisfaction.  So quiet down.

Let them go.  Practice

your own song.  Now.

–”Letting Go of What Cannot Be Held Back”, from Playing the Black Piano, Bill Holm, 2004

I first heard of–and met–the large, ebullient, red-faced Icelander over twenty years ago when I signed up for some poetry/creative writing workshop at my St. Cloud, Minnesota, college.  Bill Holm had just published Boxelder Bug Variations, and I was intrigued by the freshness, the humor, the seriousness, the twinkle.

Many years later, I suddenly found myself teaching English at a tiny little school in a tiny little town that just happened to be not only Bill Holm’s hometown–and current residence–but his muse, his tether, his theme, his kingdom.

It wasn’t completely accidental, of course.  During my interview for the teaching job, his name and acclaim were brought up as a way of sweetening the deal.

It worked.

For the nearly seven years I’ve worked here, I’ve seen Bill Holm speak in a variety of contexts, spoken to him in awe as he peeked into my classroom, driven by his house with a sense of fan-girl curiosity, and admired both reading and teaching his printed word.  While I’ve never–and will never–share his appreciation for the desolate prairie (I’m a “tree person” as he would say), I do share a Scandinavian Lutheran background, a Liberal mindset, and a love for wit, humor, and travel.

And a love of Walt Whitman.

Reading his essays, his poems, is like looking in a mirror and finding I share part of myself with a middle-aged bearded man with a hearty voice and a love of ale and chat.

It’s not a bad place to be.  Ever.

When I began teaching my Advanced Placement Language course one of his books of essays (The Heart Can Be Found Anywhere on Earth) centered around the very town in which I spend the vast majority of my time, three schoolyears ago, I was nearly giddy when reading certain of his pieces.  My class teased me the entire year about my schoolgirlish crush on the man, and kept threatening to stop by his house to tell him of my undying love.  Since I had thought about getting up the courage to ask him to speak to my class, this was a major problem.

I never did ask him–he spoke about the same essays in another English course taught by another English teacher (Aaron Cheadle, who also happens to live across the street from Bill)–and now I never will be able to.

Bill Holm died last night, in Sioux Falls.  We thought we’d lost him a couple of years back when he suffered major heart trouble, but he pulled through to keep carrying around Walt Whitman and leading Boxelder Bug Days, and even kept teaching at the local University until retiring this past year.

Every summer, he conducted an Icelandic travel and writing seminar, and I always wanted to come up with the money to go.  It was a dream of mine.

And last night…he left us.

And, like he wrote above, I still want to bother him and call it help.

Goodbye, Bill.  I will look for you in the grass.

Tags: Holm, Minneota, obituary, teaching, Whitman

Here’s your chance, students and teachers and friends of students and teachers.  All four of you who occasionally read here, that is.

Here’s your chance to sound off about “schooliness,” that hated, soul-sucking abyss that we teachers and students often (too often) find ourselves falling into, myself included.

What is “schooliness,” you ask?  Good question.  Burell provides a few roadmaps to find answers, but the rest is up to you.

And he’s put in a call for you to provide your own examples.  You should have plenty.

Even students in my classes, I’m sorry to say, will have plenty.

Link to Burell’s Change.Org “Evils of Schooliness” blog, with open request.

Tags: blogs, Burell, education, favorites, Schooliness

I gave my Web 2.0 presentation today at the extended faculty meeting–I took nearly an hour and I still wasn’t finished.  Sheesh.  Good thing I cut it back, eh?

I’m not sure if I was very helpful to people, but I hope so.  I began by asking the assembled faculty if any of them knew what “web 2.0″ was; not a single hand went up.  That was actually nearly reassuring; it meant that I wouldn’t be talking down to them.  I hate it when that happens, from either side of the communication.

A few more joined the faculty ning I set up over Christmas break–that’s a good sign.  Quite a few who had joined right away and then forgot also showed up today—adding some information, discussing other things.  A good start.  And, a group of us had a meeting today about doing interdisciplinary lessons and performance preparation for the concert that’s on Cinco de Mayo–we came up with some neat ideas–and we immediately said we need to add a group for that purpose on the faculty ning.  Yay!

Drop by drop.

Also had a discussion about YouTube (and subsequently Nibipedia and Wordia) being blocked.  It sounds as if most of the faculty (if not administration) supports unblocking it and finding other means of monitoring students than wholesale locked gates.

We’ll see where that goes, as well.  Drop by drop!

In other news, grades are due this week (I have hundreds of papers I’ve been putting off) and Round One of Mock Trial competition (I have two teams, and both play the same day) on Wednesday.  Preparing for a sub for the whole day plus the stress of the trials (I lose years of my life each time) added to the grading, AND a new semester starting tomorrow, and I’ve about had it.

Might explain the migraine I’ve been nursing all day, one that promises to gather strength if I keep heaping stress on like Mrs. Tam O’Shanter nursing her wrath to keep it warm…(one of my all-time favorite lines of poetry, there–thanks Robbie Burns!)

Oh…the insulting part of the day?  The insurance meeting.  We have a pay freeze on, statewide (Governor Pawlenty), but our already outrageous health insurance is going up at least 20%.  I have no idea where I’ll find that kind of money–we already aren’t making it, and my husband doesn’t even *have* insurance.

I’m trying not to think about it right now.  Not this week.  I can’t physically afford the worry.  Once grades are in, once Mock Trial is over, then I’ll spend the time to deal with having two degrees, several years experience, working a gazillion hours a week, but not being able to support myself doing so.

Tags: grading, inservice, teaching, web2.0

Back before I started my teaching degree, I, like so many others, had grandiose plans for the cool projects I’d have my kids do…great authentic learning, exhuberant participation, impressive end results.

Somewhere along the line, reality–cleverly disguised as complacence in the face of standardized testing and too-little-time and pressure from a hundred different sources–sets in, and some of us, myself included, wind up with yet another stack of five-paragraph essays and monotonous worksheets.

There are interludes that snap us out of this jaded burden-bearing of too-many-restraints: excellent workshops and conferences, the occasional inspirational book, world-changing events…

…a good nap or Christmas vacation.

And, in the modern age, there are wondrous things like blogs and twitter and facebook and listservs, all managing to keep the complacence in check.  They don’t eradicate it, at least with me, but they do manage to give it a good run.

One of these teacherly-mood-lifters arrived this week with yet another one of Clay Burell’s “get up and make it real” blog postings, this one on his brand-new blog over at Change-dot-org.  It’s this one, and it even contains a cool informative video.

Today, I shared the blog and video by posting it to the faculty ning I set up (and which is not being used hardly at all, but I’m patient and will keep harassing people to share ideas and collaborate until they either do or I’m fired).  I sent out a little in-school e-mail alerting folks to it, and asked that they view the video before next week’s faculty meeting where I’m presenting some of the cool things I learned at TIES (see a previous blog, and this one, too.)

I got a phone call from my Principal–he loved it and was excited, too.  He was forwarding my e-mail on to other educators in other places.  And he stopped by the lab today when my tenth-graders were signing into the class wiki I set up.

We’re a small place in the middle of nowhere.  Very, very small place.  Very far from any sizeable place.  The nearest Kinko’s is about 85 miles away or more, for crying out loud.   You don’t have to lock your doors here, and there’s a “lake of poo” for (supposed) sewage treatment. 

Connections are important.   These tools–the ones Burell talks about in the video–make us count, and connect us to the larger world. 

And that’s exciting—and the perfect antidote to jaded complacence and fill-in-the-oval-asinine-testing as the most important facet of assessment.

Tags: education, inspiration, technology, tools

Yeah, the health-related and personal ones will go elsewhere. 

Educators have a natural “refreshment” break before each new school year, or term, to revisit goals and make adjustments.  New Year isn’t exactly the natural point for such endeavors, but since I haven’t been doing so well with the objectives I set for myself back in August–plus I have some new ones–I may as well start fresh here.

Ah, the sweet smell of optimistic good intentions!

So, first of all, the “I’ve-had-these-on-my-list-and-I-still-need-to-do-better” resolutions:

Grading. I’m still absolutely overwhelmed by the amount of grading and the hours and hours it takes.  I need to not only vow to decrease the time between getting the papers and handing them back with feedback, but find efficient means of doing so.  Perhaps I need to try some different methods–online commenting, peer review, etc.–because I something needs to change.  In 2009, I will try to grade more quickly and also find ways to do it *better*.

Family Contact.  My Principal makes this a priority, and we’re reminded to make contact with parents more often–and I have not done this as well as I could be.  I need to make more contact for the good things, the “wow” moments, the “You won’t believe the cool thing your kid did today!” moments.  I think part of it for me is that I’m far more comfortable with e-mail than telephone; I have a near pathological aversion for telephones and I would be quite happy not even having one, actually, especially in my classroom (I loathe the interruptions).  I know for sure that I would make more contact via e-mail than with phone, so my resolution here is twofold: to face up to my aversion to phones much more often and to make more e-mail contact, as well.

Fewer Stranded Lessons.  There isn’t enough time each day to get through all the lesson, practice, application I want, and there certainly isn’t enough time each school year to do justice to all the strands expected on the state standards.  I know I’m guilty of introducing a concept–usually something grammatical, the next step in making writing more fluent, etc.–and, because of lack of time, realizing days later that the followup for the lesson got lost in the shuffle.  When I come back to it then, it’s nearly like starting over.  I need to find ways of making sure this happens less often–I think I’m doing better this year already, but I haven’t reached my goal just yet.

And, a few new ones that I want to incorporate into my teaching:

Web2.0 Advancement. Ah, yes…I can hear the echo of this one reverberating off thousands of teachers’ walls across the country as we speak.  The big catch-phrase of 2008-2009 (at least where I’m from–we may be a bit behind the trends, being where we are, which isn’t always a bad thing as at least the trends have to take substantial hold before we get to them).  And yes, I am wholeheartedly signing on.  Not because I think the tools are ends in and of themselves, but because I think they’re great tools.  If the tools open up the world, if the tools help kids connect–both with text and with others, if the tools allow different perspectives, if the tools bring delight and efficiency to learning, then I want to use them.  I want to spice up old plans, I want to shift and expand and view lessons through different lenses.  Kids up out of their desks more often.  I want to see the love of discovery–something I’ve decried the lack of for years–and if these tools can help with that, I want ‘em.

Tags: education, New Year, resolutions, teaching