Not Just for Shakespeare

Today began a unit on Modern literature.  We started looking at Eliot's "The Hollow Men" as a way into the characteristics of the period.  They have been working on Prufrock for a week by themselves.  We will pick up on it tomorrow together, and we'll move from Eliot to discussion of As I Lay Dying and Their Eyes Were Watching God.

I love Eliot.  I always have.  It was probably an early warning sign of future English-teacherdom that I was buying Dover Thrift Editions of his works during my own high school days.

I do understand how challenging he is.  He operated at "god level" when it came to weaving allusions with stream of consciousness and vivid imagery.  Even most of my bravest students are daunted when it comes to dealing with him for the first time.  (Those that aren't...well...lots of them are now English teachers, too...)

As I was preparing copies of the poem for TPCASTT annotation, a thought occurred.  What if I tried the Folger 3-D tactic with "The Hollow Men"?  I was curious as to whether or not the strategy would be as successful with helping my students to shape meaning for themselves with this complex poetry.  It had worked so well with the Seven Ages of Man speech at the beginning of the year.  I piddled and pondered, and finally, I decided to see what would happen.

I did use part of a PowerPoint of Doom this time because I wanted to remind them of the general feelings of despair, distrust, and brokenness that inform Modern literature.  I slipped through it quickly, presented the format of a TPCASTT, and had them make quick notes on their initial reaction to the title.  Then we read through the entire poem with each student taking a line.

They took to the activity with no hesitation, prompting each other if someone got lost.  When we got to part V with its "here we go round the prickly pear" portion, some of them actually caught on and put the tune to it.  One student missed his cue for his line, and he laughed.  "I was singing the song in my head.  Sorry."  The final lines drew a big reaction from everyone, "Hey!  I've heard that before...."  Suddenly, there was a connection with something that had been more or less threatening and unintelligible.

Because I was doing this on the fly and time was short, I asked them to get with partners immediately after that and "see what they noticed."

They started putting big chunks of it together, and I eavesdropped on their conversations.

"They're scarecrows, right?  I see 'heads stuffed with straw.'"

"They aren't real scarecrows.  I think they're supposed to be like people?"

"Everything in this poem is dead.  Look.  'Stone....cactus....dry....'"

I couldn't hide my glee.  It had worked.  One student saw me smiling and eyed me suspiciously.

"What?  Ms. Waters, did I say something silly?"

"Not at all.  Not.  At.  All.  You were dead on.  Keep going."

And they did.

We talked through parts of it today, and they were a little amazed at how much they had understood with just one brief dip into the work.  I saw smiles.  I saw confidence growing.  I saw the same group who had almost without exception raised their hands when I'd asked who didn't feel comfortable dealing with poetry at the beginning of the class suddenly eagerly pointing out things that were dry or purposeless.

Tomorrow, we will start with the portion of the read-through where each person takes an entire sentence as a review before finishing it and moving on to Prufrock.  I can't wait to see how much more they can extract.  The benefits of what I learned this summer at the Folger just keep coming.

PD

My administrator showed up outside my door two weeks ago and asked/told me to co-lead a PD session with one of my colleagues to be a part of our staff development day .  She and I started putting things together the best we could.  We tweaked and edited.

Then, two days before we were to present, the great grumbling began. There is nothing like knowing you're going to have to stand up in front of a room full of your peers who are angry at having to be there.  As time ticked away, I had a migraine.  Both of us had nightmares about technology failure, general rebellion, the usual meeting horrors.

Friday finally came, and by that point, I just wanted it all to be done.  We presented for our first group, and I gradually saw the grumpy faces smooth out some.  They asked some questions, tried out some of the strategies and apps we were presenting.  We gave away candy and Dollar Tree door prizes as a part of the demonstration of some of the tools.  When we finished up, they walked out with smiles.

Fifteen minutes later, we did a second session, and much the same pattern repeated.  I wanted to collapse when it was all over, but we made it through.

While I didn't volunteer to do the PD Friday, I still tried to do something I would want to attend.  My biggest fear was that the other teachers would think Jayne and I were saying, "Oh my GOD.  We are SO FANCY.  Be like us."  Nothing could have been further from the truth.  She and I just put together things we'd found to be helpful and told them how we'd used them.

I don't know if they will ever use anything Jayne and I put together for them, but I hope at least they weren't still angry at having to come.  I am the Queen of Not Liking Meetings.  I understand.  Too often, our PD winds up being an overpaid and condescending consultant or someone who has a PowerPoint and reads every line.  Teachers have so little time and so much that needs to be done that I think we are grudging of every second.  We don't mind coming to something that helps us do better for our students, but when a presentation is clearly a way for someone to practice the time-honored art of Covering One's Backside or Padding One's Bank Account, we don't tend to respond well.

What happened Friday is what I believe good PD should look like:  peers sharing.  We could all share things that have been tested out with our kids on our campus.  We could all point out apps that had been run with our technology filters in place and our WiFi connection providing the hookup.  We could avoid the problems that come with being the first person to do something.  Together, we could be stronger.

It would be nice to think Friday was a first step in this process.  I suppose only time will tell.

The Day the Newspaper Went Live

For an entire nine weeks, my little staff and I have been anxiously working toward this day, the day the newspaper would finally "go live" and be publicized.

Today's date has been in bright red at the top of my whiteboard for four weeks.  For a publication that exists only online, this process was less about ad sales and formatting.  As a complete restart, we had to find, pay for, and set up our software.  Our staff had to learn how to follow AP formatting.  We had to go on interviews, take and edit photos, decide on polls, and then get all of that uploaded into the website.

Our trip to the MSPA Fall Workshop was a huge booster shot of ideas and enthusiasm.  We needed it for the final push to publication.

My staff has been relentless in their dedication.  I was so worried that a staff of seven would be too small, but when I look at what they have created, I realize how ridiculous that fear was.

Yesterday, we were all working furiously to finish the last tasks. During our class period, everyone was focused on getting a last editorial review and resizing feature images.  During my planning period, a few members and I hung posters all over campus announcing our return.  I was signing up for a new Instagram account for the paper at 10:30 and editing even thirty minutes later. Stories were being uploaded right up to midnight, and I did final brushups over my fruit loops this morning.

As I dressed in my spirit shirt and jeans, I had to admit I felt a little nervous.  Would everyone be able to appreciate just how much work my staff had done?  Would they find our site appealing and informative?

Had we done it "right"?

All day long, students, staff members, and community members came by, made comments on the site, shared it on Facebook, or emailed to tell us that they liked what they saw.   The students were over the moon, and I was right there with them.

It's hard to believe we have come from literally nothing to this point in so short a time.  I hope that we can look back at these first steps when we come to the end of the year and appreciate even more growth.  I am so very proud of my little group.  We made it through the first storm.  In the words of Frankenstein....

Check us out online at http://mhswildcat.com.

All the Alumni

Last Thursday morning at 2:30, I flailed my hand at my screeching phone, turned on my bedside lamp, and sat up on the edge of the bed.  It was time to get up to go to the MSPA Fall Workshop.

After fairly large applications of caffeine and a hot shower, I was awake enough to find my way to town and to campus, pulling into my familiar parking spot in an eerily empty lot.  My phone was already sending me Remind notifications from my eager staffers who were on campus and looking for me.

Since it was Homecoming week, mischief had been afoot in the community, and as we were waiting for our bus to arrive in front of the building, two police cars pulled up to make sure we weren't a problem.  We talked to the officers briefly; it turned out one of them was a former student of mine.

This was to be a recurring theme....

The eight of us boarded the bus, and we headed out for the three-and-a-half hour trip north to the University of Mississippi campus.  The students had brought blankets and pillows, and I think they were all asleep before we ever got to the highway.  I popped in headphones, and Bob Dylan and I dozed as the miles slipped away.

When we got to Ole Miss, we were driving through campus looking for the place where the workshop was being held, and before the bus had even parked, I saw another of my former students walking down the sidewalk heading to class.  We circled around, and I got to talk with her.

We got into the workshop, and after the first session, we had boxed lunches in the famous Grove.  My phone buzzed, and yet another of my formers was headed to see us after her classes.  She and I walked through the bookstore and had a good visit before our schedules separated us again.

As much as I got paper-sponsor-wise at the conference, part of my enjoyment of the day was in seeing all those former students in their different phases of life:  undergrad, grad school, and active career.  It was a great reminder of where those students on the bus with me were headed soon.

Those encounters are rejuvenating, too, because sometimes the struggle to overcome the "thousand natural shocks that [education] is heir to" obscures those fabulous futures.  As they say in so many cliched sports situations, "eye on the prize."  There are victories.  Press on.

The $15 Chair

As a high school teacher, I've never really thought about having furniture in my classroom.  However, when we renovated the English wing breakroom, I started thinking about how nice it would be to have a small wingback chair to sit in whenever I am evaluating presentations and for visitors to sit in when they come to my class for observations.

So the hunt was on.

For a town with a large number of thrift shops, it was impossible to find a wingback chair here.  Either they were already sold and waiting on pickup to go to their new homes or they were priced way beyond my low-end teacher budget. 

Finally, my best friend and I went to West Point for the Prairie Arts festival, an annual trip for us.  We always stop at this mega-awesome thrift shop there, and I found this chair.  It and several other pieces of vintage furniture were tucked behind some much glossier and slicker-looking new stuff, but when I saw its distinctive silhouette rising above the low backs of the faux leather couches, I made a bee-line for it. 

When I turned the tag over, I had a moment of true teacher joy:  $14.99.  I lifted it up right there and carried it up to the checkout lest some other predatory educator (or grad student) be looking for the same kind of bargain. 

It's not pretty, but man alive, it's awesome to sit down in from time to time.  It has made the times when my students come up and use my document camera or present my favorite lesson moments.  :)

My "New"spaper Wall

Whiteboard/wall space is extremely limited in my classroom because of all the lovely windows I have, so I have to try to find "workarounds."  I use a small whiteboard underneath my document camera whenever I need to write things during class, and I portion out my space carefully on the big boards that do hang on my wall. 

Newspaper needed more space, though, so I went back to Lowe's and got one more sheet of markerboard wainscotting.  After a theatrical farce trying to get it cut, I brought it back to school today, wrapped the raw edges in black duct tape with little skulls (or, as I think of them, baby Yorricks), and hung them on the front of my locking metal cabinet with command strips.

(Just a sidenote about command strips.  My whole teaching universe would collapse, literally and physically, if it weren't for command.  Thank you, 3M people, for an awesome product.)

I am pretty pleased with the result.  The staff has moved right in, and I think we will be more organized.  Not bad for $10 and a few minutes spent playing with duct tape.....

Newspaper

This year, we are trying to resurrect our school newspaper.  Several years have passed since we had one, and a school our size really should offer our students the chance to be a part of a newspaper staff.  The original problem was a conflict with block schedule, but by the time that was gone, the teacher who had been our sponsor for years was ready to retire, so the program was never restarted.

I've been trying to find someone who would be interested in taking it on, but everyone declined, politely or otherwise.  This year, I decided that if nobody else would do it, I would try it myself.

Lord Jesus, what I've gotten myself into.....

I have no training for being a newspaper adviser other than my own high school journalism career.  I was editor of our paper my senior year, but those days are dim memories of the "been there, done that, bought the t-shirt (literally)" kind.

So I'm learning as I go.

It's been a long time since I had to seat-of-the-pants it like I'm doing with this.  I am constantly ordering books, looking up resources online, finding strategies, and asking for help.  I feel like my usual juggling act has had about five more balls added quite unexpectedly.  I worry about keeping them all in the air.

There's something a little exhilarating about it, too, though.  I am learning so much, and I enjoy few things as much as I do getting new knowledge that I can apply to the world around me.  As I've been learning about the style and structure of the various parts of news stories, I have become me aware of the subtle and not-so-subtle ways the sources I get my news from are using their genre and, in some cases, bending their genre to their own purposes.  I catch myself evaluating leads right now since that's one of the focuses my students have in their current article.

I also enjoy watching my students discover how much they are capable of.  One of the hardest things for me to do is sit down and let them do, but I know it's absolutely critical to get out of their way in a class like this.  Part of me, the Type-A part, itches to sit down and "just get things started" with the new SNOsites website we have.   That's not the right thing to do, though.  My job is to establish a framework and help them fill it in.

And they're doing such a fabulous job of it.  Every day when we meet, I am amazed by how focused they are, with how independent they are becoming in looking for information, doing interviews, using equipment, and finding solutions.  One of my reporters was complimented by my head principal for the insightfulness and thoroughness of the questions the reporter had asked during an interview.  I was so proud, not because it reflected anything to do with me, but because the student is discovering talents he wasn't even aware he had.  It's an amazing thing to be a part of.  I feel genuinely privileged.
I don't know that our publication will ever win awards.  I would like for us to reach a level of competency and enthusiasm that would make us produce work of quality.  I would like for us to be of use to our school and the surrounding community.  I'd like for us to recognize the full spectrum of activity at MHS.

Most of all, though, I want to keep watching this tiny little staff do wonderful things.  It much more than compensates for all the scrambling to gather materials and knowledge.