Whew. Rereading my last post reflected the usual June enthusiasm. I did accomplish several of those goals, but even I knew in the moment that they were stretch goals at best. Yet, I could have easily accomplished all if them given a little motivation and time management. Time management. It always nabs me. For instance, despite knowing that I have a 25 page paper to write, I’m writing this blog post that I’ve been putting off for months (I’ve been putting off the paper for almost a year, too. Good call, right?!).
Anyway, I’m jumping back in to blogging at the inspiration of my friend & master’s cohort member Missy. She’s over here: http://themrshauptsteen.weebly.com/ and her insights are fantastic. She’s a great teacher who advocates for kids and I always admire her work with middle schoolers. Anyway, she’s participating in the 30 day blogging challenge found here: http://www.teachthought.com/teaching/reflective-teaching-30-day-blogging-challenge-teachers/ and I’ve decided to copy her idea. I’m late to the game (it was supposed to be a September thing) but I don’t care. I’m going to do it. This is post #1: Goals. My goals for this school year were ambitions last June — and that’s good. Ambitious goals result in things getting done. For the school year, however, I need to be a little more sane in my goals so I don’t feel totally overwhelmed. My goals for this year include: 1. Better, more consistent communication with parents. 2. Continue to update and enhance my Weebly website: kgossling.weebly.com 3. Change to the new teacher evaluation system and update my online portfolio 4. Update, refresh, and adjust my lessons to provide the best possible units. And write down those units for future reference. 5. Reflect on experiences/readings/etc (that’s you, blog!). So, hang on for the write. I’m planning to spend a lot more time on here reflecting and analyzing my experiences.
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Well, tomorrow is the last day of school for teachers at GHS. Grades are finished (or at least I sure hope they are — but I’m afraid to jinx myself!) so I’ve turned to my summer professional development. Here is what I will be up to this summer:
Today I am attending a conference on learning management systems. In front if me , I am switching between my iPad, cell phone, and the conference pamphlet seamlessly. This is what my students would be capable of doing if we would simply allow them to bring In their technology and help them learn not to be distracted by what they are doing. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Yesterday I read the link below about the 70% shift toward nonfiction for students in high school. Many literature teachers, incorrectly, are interpreting this to mean students will spend 70% of their LANGUAGE ARTS classes reading on nonfiction. The standards do not state this. Rather, the standards state that 70% of a high school students assigned reading should be nonfiction.This, contrary to popular belief, is an attainable goal. When looking at my own reading I spend most of my time reading nonfiction: newspapers, blogs, text messages, teaching magazines, online news sites, teacher’s guides, memos, calendars, invitations, letters, maps, coupons, biographies, memoirs, — the list can go on for quite a while. My nonfiction reading is focused on gaining information about the things important to me. Even a lot of my viewing time is nonfiction: Youtube how-to videos, newscasts, videos of my friends’ kids, etc. This shift toward nonfiction is not the scary shift some dinosaurs afraid of change are making it out to be. Rather, this “shift” is acknowledging that adults in the working world read nonfiction at their job and in their home life and our task as teachers is to prepare students to be successful as adults.
The other shift I recognize in the Common Core State Standards has been coming for some time. This shift refers to the idea of “literacy” and who teaches it. The CCSS have come out and said that a teacher who assigns reading therefore teachesreading. This no longer falls solely on the English teachers. It is ludicrous to assume an English teacher who’s specialty is literature is the most equipped teacher in the school to teach a student to read and correctly comprehend an advanced physics textbook. These shifts aren’t tough shifts to make — it’s still a chicken, we’re just calling it a hen now. Here is a rebuttal to the piece linked above that I think is quite eloquent. I wanted to write it myself, but someone beat me to it. Anyway, we shouldn’t be freaking out about the Common Core — we, as quality, reflective teachers, should be embracing the idea that it rewards great teaching practice with research to prove why it’s great–something no set of standards ever needs to tell a teacher. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/curriculum/2012/12/the_common_standards_vision_fo.html?cmp=SOC-EDIT-FB I’m doing a summer purge of papers and making room for more Common Core related materials. Last Spring I went to the Connections Conference in St. Charles, IL and attended several sessions on school reform in light of the CCSS. I wanted to share a few of my notes with you:
Key Note Address: Willard Daggett, founder/chairman of the International Center for Leadership in Education: “We have the best schools in the world in both excellence and equality and that’s why you can’t compare us on a global stage” — referring to the fact that we educate everyone, not just those who want to/can afford to go to school CCSS: It doesn’t say college OR career ready, it says college AND career ready “The very institutions charged with challenging kids for their future have become museums and we’re the curators.” We have the shortest day/year of any industrialized nation: India/China go to school 270 days/ 8.5 hours on week days/5.5 hours on Saturdays for those they choose to educate “Our job is not CCSS–that’s a means to an end. Our job is making kids ready for an ever changing world.” Today’s students are natives in a digital world, but we try to stop that by making them conform to our 20th century school model. Are you curators or agents for change? Important question to ask: Who is doing the work in your classroom? All of these are important things to consider when shifting our thinking to fit the Common Core models. I recently purchased this text to help me update my curriculum to the Common Core standards. Since I am also a nerd I’d like to start using Essential Questions with my students, too, and this book has proven itself beneficial for both. I like the suggested texts, the ideas of theme and literary elements, and the way it includes enough units to get you through the year. I think it is a fabulous resource and I look forward to using it more in the future. Nobody paid me to say this, I just wanted to share!
I came across an interesting article today. This article talked about what Required Reading in high schools. This is a discussion I’ve been having with my graduate class as well. We discussed the levels of required reading, voluntary reading, whole class reads vs voluntary reads or choice reads. With the implementation of the Common Core, there is a paradigm shift back to the whole-class read because of the emphasis on challenging texts. This shift, I worry, will result in the same old problem we had that got us to a need for the common core: kids don’t like to challenge themselves, especially when it comes to reading. I do, however, believe that students need to experience culture in the classroom. This list from the Huffington Post presents lots of great books that Madeleine Crum feels should be included in the high school curriculum. Like Crum, I consider myself an avid reader but I have not experienced many of these texts. The course I teach primarily is American Literature, which means I am bound to teach a lot of the classics. This, by no means, is a bad thing. I think some of the cannon literature is great — Gatsby, Catcher in the Rye, and The Crucible being among some of my favorite reads as a student and as a student an an adult. I think students should be encouraged to experience different cultures, too, though. I think of my American Literature class as a melting pot of text, so I look forward to finding some things to add from this list as I redesign my curriculum goals for the Common Core standards.
This article, however, is a fantastic read for an eye-opening look at what is missed by standardizing curriculum around the cannon. Students should be encouraged to explore all cultures and to enjoy reading fluently throughout their lives. Link to the Huffington Post Article: “9 Books You Should Have Read in High School” I’m working on my final project for the common core course I’m taking, with Pandora playing nicely in the background. Jack Johnson’s song “Questions” starts, and I had to stop and think about the lyrics. Johnson sings about people’s internal need to be asked questions. We like to talk about ourselves and the people we love when given the opportunity to answer questions. Now, the goal of the core, is to get students to see that the world is run on questions. Without questions we don’t get improvements or knowledge. We stay stuck. Our new goal as a teacher is to teach students to ask quality questions, and then help them learn the tools to find answers to those questions. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways, but I really enjoyed watching the video about using the pinwheel discussion from teacher tube. This lesson challanges students to make connections between texts, back up their claims with evidence, and to ask insightful and meaningful questions — a common core dream.
I think I’d like to try this with my War Lit unit with the Juniors and my short story unit with the Seniors. I plan to flush out those details more fully in the next couple of weeks. |
The views on this blog are mine alone and do not reflect those of my employer or anyone else. AuthorKari teaches English I to 9th graders (!) and other electives in rural Iowa. Her husband is also an English teacher, and their friends have sworn to never help them move again because "even libraries don't have that many books." Archives
March 2017
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