Why my students call me HollyAnne

Recently I visited another school's campus. This is a very wealthy private school, with incredible facilities.

Although this was not the purpose of our visit, it was a nice reminder to see how other schools work, to observe the formal relationships between the students and the teachers, to see the kids in uniform, to see how traditional private schools are structured. It was sort of a breath of fresh air that put my life on campus in perspective. 

Frankly, it made me more thankful than ever to be at my relaxed, tightly-knit school for low-income students. In fact, I might go so far as to say that I like our system better. (Well, the informal aspect of our system.) Here's why.

My students here call me HollyAnne because that is my name. My friends call me HollyAnne, my family calls me HollyAnne, my coworkers and employers call me HollyAnne. The students know me the same way that everyone else does, because I am the same person in all of these settings. I do not change my personality around the students. That would be a. a lot of work for me and b. unrealistic for them. They do not have to guess how I act during the weekends, or how I would react if I were to get extremely mad. They know the real me; there is no formal facade for them to try to break. (Not only is this less effort for me, but it also means that the students ask me fewer rude questions and spend less time trying to push my buttons.) 

My students come over to my house (I live on campus) because I live there. My friends, my family, and, on rare occasions, my employers come to my house. The students come to my house the same way everyone else does; I invite them over like I would anyone else. They have cooked in my kitchen, worn my sweatshirts on cold days, and cried into my couch cushions. Not only does this help my students understand me better, but it also shows them ways of life or traditions that are different than the ones that they experience in their own homes. In the same way that study abroad and the resulting interaction with cultures is a positive opportunity for growth, so is seeing the everyday lives of other people in their own community. 

My students are treated the same way as my family, friends, coworkers, and employers. I do not classify them according to age in the same way that I do not classify my friends by race or economic status. In my opinion, treating individuals with equal cognitive ability as lesser because of their age qualifies as age discrimination. I do not think that any sort of discrimination is appropriate in a teacher-student relationship (or any relationship, for that matter). Furthermore, by treating the students as equals, I am asserting their inherent value.

We do our students a disservice when we are distant and "adult-ish" because that promotes the idea that adults are somehow different. I've spent my entire life thinking that adults are somehow superior to younger folks, only to realize (at the age of 24 -- since apparently now I'm an adult too) that adults are just as petty, hurtful and self-centered as children are, if not more so. Why do we perpetuate this idea that adults are a different class of being? What is purpose? Have we found there to be positive results in this formalized system that exceed those of informality?

Some might argue that this informal approach doesn't give our students the chance to learn how to interact with respect and deference with their elders. Quite the contrary, I think that our students act with more respect towards their elders because they deeply understand what it is like to be an adult...because of their relationships with their teachers. Adults for them are not far-off, untouchable idols, but real human beings with emotions and needs. 

Fundamentally, our informal system supports my decision to treat students as valued, albeit less experienced, equals: it gives me the freedom to behave as myself (thus affirming my own value as an individual) and it shows the students the type of respect that I hope they will emulate in the world beyond our campus.

Changing the world through writing

This year, I was assigned to teach 9th grade Language Arts. Exciting, indeed, but completely unknown territory for me. This summer, I decided that the entire course would have one goal: to change the world through writing.

So we started by writing about our personal passions, those things that excite us, that put that feeling in our stomachs or in our minds.
Frankly, I was expecting to hear a lot more about MMA street fighting or shopping, but as always, the students helped the old adage about assumptions come true (except that I was the only donkey).

Our next step was to think about how those passions could help other people. Most of their interests had to do with other people anyway, and so in most cases, the connection wasn't much of a jump. Jose, who came alive after a summer camping experience, immediately decided to create an outdoor education trip of his own. Christian, who is obsessed with all things fashion, began creating his own clothing line that would be modeled after Toms' One for One business approach. Yadi wants to become a missionary surgeon; German is determined to make pacifist decision making an option for everyday Americans; Diego wants to help "normalize" mentally impaired people...for some the connections to other's needs was immediate.
Then there were others, like Elizabeth. Elizabeth loves to perform. She is naturally dramatic. But how does theater help others? I decided to like Elizabeth figure that out for herself, and she came up with some decidedly relevant propositions. First, she said, performance is a cultural activity that brings people together, helps express emotion, and retain and promote socio-cultural identity. Therefore, performance should be accessible for all, not just those who can afford to go to professional performances or who have theater programs at school. I was impressed: that is a very clear link between her interest and the well-being of other people.

We needed more information, so we spent about a week online, researching their topics and finding an "e-mentor" (someone or some organization that writes about their field of interest). We spent a day learning about commenting and they all made comments on their various blogs.
Lo and behold, some of the e-mentor answered. Christian received a reply from Toms. "They think I'm a real adult!" he said, quite triumphantly, but not without an honest dose of surprise.
Diego received a detailed email from his e-mentor, who told him that she was impressed by his ideas.
German received answers back from professionals all over the United States, including university professors, priests and social workers.

At this point I got a bit nervous. Is this ok? Am I crazy to think they can do this? Looking for some outside input and in a bit of a leap of faith, I asked the students to write essays for our school's Board of Trustees. These essays explained why they are passionate about these topics, what they are planning to do and how the Board can help them in their process. I shipped off four sets of essays and one of our school's largest donors wrote back. She said:
"I was most impressed with your thoughtfulness and ideas for improving our community.... While I have spent a great deal of time as an adult trying to make the world a better place, I know that when I was your age this had never entered my mind. I am greatly inspired by you."
Now that was a jubilant day in class.

This is all very exciting, don't get me wrong. But this is also not yet any sort of real change. So I set them free. They could do whatever they wanted as long as it involved writing or reading, it was related to their topic, and it was school appropriate.
Magic happened. Christian started designing dresses and calling fabric stores for donations. Diego invited the entire school to participate in a charity walk for disabled students. Elizabeth made phone calls to local hospitals with children's wards, asking if she can come teach the kids the basics of performance. Jose wrote business letters to the local chapter of Leave No Trace and No Child Left Inside.

Are they getting better about comma splices and sentence fragments? Marginally. Can then parse a sentence? Probably not. But here's what they are getting:
-They know that writing is useful in real life and not just something they'll use in school.
-They know that writing is not boring.
-They know that their dreams are not merely fantasies but instead valuable and actionable plans.

Facilitating group-based discussions

Today we had fantastic group-based discussions. Students presented the ideas contained in an essay that they wrote late last week. This very basic outline produced fruitful, positive conversations. I even asked the class to put their heads down and raise their pinky finger if they felt uncomfortable and no one did. I'm so impressed because they were discussing their personal passions, something that is very touchy for all of us; I think the key was in the listener's responses that I prewrote for them.
Best part: when one of my new students left today she said, "You know, that was actually fun! I'm not used to having fun in school."

Here's the script. I write scripts because it allows me to play out all of the steps of the class before we actually have class; this way, I am much more ready to focus on the students when we do the real thing.

Today, we are going to respectfully discuss each other’s central ideas.

What did we go over for homework?

                -Why does this matter?

                -How is this important?

So this is exactly what each person is going to present to their small group. The listening group members will listen respectfully and silently as the presenter speaks.

Then, one at a time, the listeners will play devil’s advocate. Can someone please elaborate on what that means?

(students respond)

Dictionary definition: “A person who expresses a contentious opinion in order to provoke a debate or test the strength of the opposing arguments.”)

Why would I be asking you to do this for each other’s essays?

(students respond: help make arguments stronger, define why we are interested in these topics)

What larger life skills does this activity foster?

(critical thinking, communication, politely expressing difference)

Mmk so how are the listeners going to act as a devil’s advocate without being a jerk?

(solicit student responses, have them role play specific possible scenarios)

If you are sort of stuck on what to do, here are some phrases you can use to help you get started:

I liked ________ but I don’t understand why __________.

I disagree with your point about _____ because _______.

Have you thought about ______ before?

What if _______ happened?

I see that you’re passionate about _______ but I don’t see how it connects with _______.

Oui, mais _______.

As the presenter, you are then allowed ten seconds of silence to think, if you want it. Be very careful to respond directly to the question. IT IS OK IF YOU DO NOT KNOW THE ANSWER.

If you do not know the answer, you need to write the question down and come back to it after the other listener has asked their question.

The presenter will receive and answer two of these questions from the listeners. Then the presenter will return to answer any questions that they could not answer the first time, and all three participants will work to answer the question together. At this point, you will not need to use the “devil’s advocate” format.

I strongly suggest that you take notes during this process, writing down what you learn even if it doesn’t have to do exactly with your project. Especially if you are the presenter, take careful notes of 1. what they ask you, 2. how you answer and 3. how you FEEL. 

Keep it up, Profe: Our three-step process to (potential) success

Today, outside the library as everyone rushed to see their electives assignments on the library doors, one of my Spanish II students approached me. He told me that he has learned more Spanish in the past two days of class than he has ever learned before. "I don't really know what you're doing, but keep it up, Profe."

I don't fully believe him because
a. I know his teacher from last year and she teaches them tons of material! ;
b. it's the first week of school and we've forgotten how much work we put in last year;
c. he's one of those really sweet kids who says really nice things to help other people feel good.

That being said, this is an amazing compliment. More importantly, this means my crazy scheme might actually have a shot at some semblance of success. The basic plan is three-fold:

1. Speak only in Spanish (even though they are only in their second year). This quarter is Spanglish, next quarter they get five English words a day, and Spring Semester it's allll español.

2. The students teach themselves the grammatical material, both in and out of class, however they see fit for their personal learning style. I have divided all of the grammar learning standards for this year and divided them up by week and off they go! We do reinforcement activities in class. It is the fundamental concept of a flipped-classroom, except I don't ever explicitly teach them unless they ask specific questions.

3. When we're not studying in class or reinforcing grammar, we will be building an open-source online textbook for other students of Spanish. Not like a normal textbook, though. In addition to compiling all of the resources they find useful (Youtube videos, songs, web sites, news articles, animated GIFs, etc), we'll be using embedded VoiceThreads to facilitate communication and interaction with other learners.This way it is less of a textbook that just happens to be online but an online language forum (perhaps like LiveMocha but less uniform?) that is created entirely by and for students. Students aren't allowed to use technology in the classroom until the week after next, but we're already chomping at the bit.

In summary, I think the reason that he feels he is learning so much is because he is doing all the learning. This sounds rather simplistic, so I will restate: instead of being given the information, he is actively gathering, processing and learning according to his own individual wants and needs, instead of the style and constraint of the teacher.

I think I might just do as he suggests and keep it up.

Videos!

Today I have happened to find several fantastic videos.

A College Humor video that takes on modern education in a delightfully culturally relevant way:

Here's the original song if you're not familiar with it. Or you could just turn on any pop radio station and wait 30 seconds. 

From Mashable, I found this really interesting interpretation of Pixar's Rules of Writing. Absolutely fabulous for any creative writing class. Actually, for any sort of writing ever.

And then I kept looking on Mashable and found these sweet videos on really touchy topics (warning: yes, I am liberal).
Try this video on fracking:

And finally, an example of how being a parent can be the coolest thing ever:

Trip to Moscow

Thanks to a lot of hard work, plenty of generosity, and a generous heaping of luck, I was able to go to Moscow with a student of mine to accept an award that she won. The award was for a photograph that she submitted through my class. It was a great learning experience for both of us.

See the gorgeous photographs of our trip on Facebook. The page is managed by FotoCh, the Russian organization that hosted us. Given that the images are by two professional photographers and one pretty good teenager, I'd say they're worth the click.

Read the full press release here.
Below are screen shots of the release.

Online textbooks ≠ a textbook online?

UPDATE: I think that I am going to use VoiceThread, maybe VoiceThreads embedded on a website. Also def. using PowToons and thinking about ThreeRing for uploading hard copies.

Dear all,
My Spanish 2 class is going to write an online, open-source textbook this year. That is going to be our year-long project. They're going to learn the grammar and vocab traditionally taught during S2 on their own because, really, they don't need me to learn that. They can find all of that stuff on Google, or ask one of their native-speaker friends (our school is 75% Hispanic). It is important to me that this be more than just a source of information but instead a place where students can discuss linguistic details, analyze sources, and engage with real material. I want it to be an online textbook that is not just a textbook that is online.

Here is my question to you: what platform do you suggest we use?

One person suggested iBooks Author. Don't get me wrong, it looks gorgeous. But I am unhappy with the fact that it requires an iPad, that you have to "publish" it (thus making it harder to perpetually improve), and that it is basically just a textbook, a movie and a notebook mashed together. I need more dialogue and sharing from our platform.

@SECottrell mentioned GoogleApps. Might be nice because our internal email is Google based.

@Petreepie shared her class' Simplebooklet on Chile. Although their book looks great, again I am left wondering how to make a more dynamic, conversation-focused text.

Here's a sweet wiki I've found on making online textbooks. Still working through all the links and I'll update soon.

Please help support our learners as they actively craft their digital footprint, engage in student-centered learning and gather real-life skills, and practice their Spanish!

Thanks!