A moment of celebration

As the year ends and a new semester is knocking at the door, I thought it might be prudent to take a momentary break from my hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing over a new grading system and look at a few successes from this past semester.

May you find many successes to celebrate in the coming year!

1. This is NOT an AVID student:

This kid isn't a valedictorian, and perhaps not even on Honor Roll. But this kid is a solid, good student who regularly takes Cornell notes, interacts with them, shares them and learns from the process.

It's taken a mountain of work from teachers, students and admins across campus for this success to materialize, and it's a particular dream of mine for students across our district to adopt a process that promotes inquiry, collaboration and ownership of learning among our adorable kids.

When I saw this kidlet reviewing notes just before taking the final, I knew we are on the right track.

2. Reflection and student self-assessment:

When I started running, I remember reaching nine minutes of continuous running was a huge milestone for me. It took weeks of effort, and it was HARD. I try to remember those moments, now that running for nine straight minutes wouldn't even grab my attention.

I'm somewhere in that early Couch-to-5K stage with my efforts to increase opportunities for reflection and self-assessment in my classroom. One part of these early "training runs" was a major culminating assignment for my students: creating blogs and reflecting on the semester.

I gave a few guidelines: write four posts, each with a particular focus. I asked for a minimum of 250 words, showed them how to create a Blogger account and sent them on their way.


I was pleased with the variety of responses from students. Nearly every reading and writing assignment was identified by at least one student as the most powerful. Most students' work was truly insightful, focusing on growth and goals that might be impossible for me to notice among more than 100 students.

And kids had the chance to exercise their writing chops in a personal and unique way.

I also used more Learning Logs and Cornell note summaries to promote reflection.

We're moving, slowly, toward the goal of student self-assessment as a cornerstone of learning in my classroom.









3. Coming soon to the airwaves: The voices of my students!

For more than a year, I've been trying to figure out the best way to have my students create podcasts, which could build their skills in reflection, self-assessment, speaking, listening, understanding audience ... I could go on and on.

Thanks to a very generous gift from folks on Donors Choose, and to my awesome friend who strong-armed me into creating a Donors Choose project, you may soon hear these kidlets, loudly and clearly.

Check out this beauty:
 

The plan is for my students to continue their blogs, with an emphasis on goal-setting for the semester, and then use those musings to start making podcasts. Eventually, I'd like kids to podcast about issues important to them, as we navigate what for most of my students is the last semester of high school.

I'll keep you posted. :)

What successes are you celebrating?

An open letter to the men who tried to kill me ...

First, thank you.

When you broke into our house on December 22, 1981, you weren't able to put your hands on me, but you did swat my life into a new trajectory. Your actions that night remain a defining event in my life.

When there's a quality in the air, the misty sensation of this time of year, and this day comes around again, I can feel my senses heighten, and I see more, hear more than at any other time of the year. I no longer have to remind myself, as Hemingway noticed, to be strong in the broken places. It's simply a time for observation and reflection. That this coincides with the Christmas season has brought great joy into my life, and for that I thank you again.

Throughout all these years, I've imagined what I would say to these men if I ever had the chance to encounter them. For the first few years, I would imagine this sit-down would have to include lots of security, as my main feeling was fear. Fear that enveloped my entire soul.

Then, I grew angry. Angry that I'll spend my whole life scanning the scene for possible threats, possible exit strategies, items I can use as weapons. When this became too dominant in my life, I sought professional help, and that led to lots of inner reflection about other forces in my life, and for that, again I thank you.

On some level, when you picked our house, you set in motion the forces that would make me a teacher someday. As a secure adult, someone staring down 50, with hobbies that inspire me, good friends that support me and a husband whose voice still makes me weak, I'm now just curious about who you were.

I wonder where you grew up, who your family is, what happened to you in school. Did you struggle as a student? Did someone try to help? Did you have a connection with a successful and caring adult at some point? Did a coach challenge you, show you how to play on a team and work hard to meet each little goal? Where did the break happen, where robbery and murder became a path for you? (I'm not naive - I know these men probably had mental health issues, likely drug problems, and really, they're probably long dead, as such a violent path usually doesn't translate to a long life.)

I sometimes try to look at my kids through this lens. If we are all batting each other around, affecting each other's lives for better or worse, what can I do to swat my kids onto a path that will inspire them to treat each other well, to work hard at something that lifts them up? When I get it right, I owe you thanks for giving me the questions.

You might want to know that your influence now runs into a new generation. Because I was able to escape that night, I lived long enough to give birth to a beautiful little girl, who is now preparing for a life in social work. Her passion for her studies inspires me, and I'm so proud of her for making it her life's work to help others.

So, I owe you a great deal.

You had no way of knowing my father would die on this same day, many years later. This will be the 15th Christmas without my dad. It's impossible to calculate the impact a loving, supportive and educated man has on a girl when he believes she can do anything, be anything she wants. My dad lives in every cell in my body. I wonder if you had someone like that in your life.

You are a part of these two December 22 anniversaries, and while you may not have ever known it, you and I are forever connected. When I manage to do good in this world, I do it - partly - in your name.

Thank you.

Like asking Sinatra for help singing ...

I try to be an elegant, erudite and articulate professional, but sometimes I turn into a geeky fangirl, and I just can't help it.

It happened again at the recent AVID National Conference in San Diego. Super Hero Educator Pedro Noguera was the key note speaker Friday morning and then hosted a "continuing the conversation" session, where I was willing to stand for more than an hour to soak up his insights into all things education in our country. (Luckily, a seat in the front opened at the last minute, and I made a mad dash for it.)

And then, when he finished his Q & A and nobody approached him, I sprinted to the man to see what he had to say about my current nagging problem:

With a 50-point grading scale, students can do well with tons of missing work. So my whole goal of focusing on learning instead of racking up points seems to have resulted in possible learning with no regard for completing assignments. Not exactly the purposeful journey into student wisdom that I had in mind.

Here I am, trying to explain this while simultaneously shaking with nerves in the presence of Dr. Noguera:



His advice: If I want students to do the work, I have to be there while they do it.

Sure enough, the assignments kids blow off are the practice stuff I assign as homework. The rhetorical precis in my AP class, AR in my senior classes. The tasks we work on together, such as collaborative, multi-step exercises along the lines of Cornell notes and essays, my kids ARE turning in those assignments. So ... hmmm.

I will certainly change how students complete rhetorical precis next semester. Those are such an important key to developing analytical reading and writing skills that I will refocus and carve out class time for those assignments.

However, in the same way I cannot keep my cool around really awesome people, at some cellular level, I cannot devote a bunch of time to good old sustained silent reading in my class. Come at me, if you will. But SSR in my classroom has resulted in a huge waste of valuable face-to-face time. I only see those kids for two hours every other day. That's my only time to work with them, create a culture, simply be with those little folks. No way I'm spending that time watching them turn pages. But ... I'm thinking about book groups, book chats, something collaborative that ties out-of-class reading to meaningful in-class reflection.

Chime in, folks who make that work.