Monthly Archives: July 2011

Clutter Crazy

Posted by Jackie in all about me, family life, personal goals and tagged with , ,
Cover of "The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee:...

Cover via Amazon

This summer, I’m tackling the clutter in my house, which by the end of the school year had reached epic proportions. It’s been a challenging task, one I’m not nearly finished with, that has been alternately satisfying and discouraging.

I’ve never been the kind of person who cleans obsessively, the kind who can’t go to sleep at night if there are dirty dishes in the sink, and conversely, I’ve always been the kind of person who has clutter issues. My bedroom was always messy as a child and teenager, and now that I’m an adult, I still haven’t figured out what you might call an adult-type cleaning routine. Instead, we let things devolve while we’re “too busy,” and then we do massive cleaning strikes, often reserving an entire weekend.

Lately, though, it’s just not enough for me anymore. I look around my house and all I see are surfaces piled with things to be dealt with, and it’s making me uneasy and unhappy in my own house, my shelter from the external storm, my little nest. I’m losing more things than I’d like, and spending more time than I’d like to find them. I don’t have excessive issues, but I do feel stressed when I look at a cluttered area. What is that stuff? Where does it belong? How did I let it pile up like this? I get discouraged and frustrated, and do something concrete like sweep the floors or do the dishes, and the clutter remains unresolved. I think we are also very susceptible to the keystone demise, when we start letting one thing slide after our big cleaning binges, and all of a sudden everything is sliding.

I think what we’re going to end up with is a chore chart, but not for the kids: for us, a list of tasks that need to be done every day, so we adults can check them off and feel more structured in our daily cleaning. Recently, I’ve been rereading The Blessing Of A Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children, one of my favorite parenting books for once you’ve passed the potty-training stage, and one of Mogel’s theories is that it’s not enough to try and teach your children good habits if you are not practicing them yourself. Making it a whole-family effort can make it more effective, and bond your family together as well. We’ve used chore charts before with the kids, and they’ve been great, but I’m feeling hypocritical preaching to my kids about keeping their rooms clean when I’m struggling to keep the house clutter-free myself.

So far, my biggest efforts have been in our spare bedroom, which became the catch-all storage space in our house and was chock-full of stuff. I’ve loaded up piles of trash bags and have donated piles more, and while the room is not finished, it’s clearly and definitely in much better shape. This was the worst clutter-flashpoint in our house, but now that I’ve tackled it, the smaller sites are getting on my nerves even more, so that I’m itching to tackle them as well. Once the decluttering is over, I want to set in place new behaviors and habits for all of us, so that we don’t get this far gone again (and also buy some cute new bins and things to help organize). I’m trying to see this as a positive thing, a big accomplishment, and not spending too much time getting frustrated with myself for letting it all pile up. It’s hard, though.

It’s not the most fun or exotic way to spend the summer, but I’m hoping to feel lightened and proud once I can look around my house and see clean, clear surfaces, as far as my eye can see.

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Spotify: My New Obsession

Posted by Jackie in media mentions and tagged with , , , , ,
Image representing Spotify as depicted in Crun...

Image via CrunchBase

So I know there’s been a lot of hype about Google Plus, but if you can score an invitation, I think Spotify is much more exciting.

I’ve been a longtime Pandora user, and I have loved being able to create stations based on my favorite artists, and also have those stations introduce me to similar artists. However, Spotify has several advantages: a library of 15 million tracks, but also the ability to make, share and subscribe to playlists. For example, I made a playlist of my girls’ favorite dance tracks this morning, but I also subscribed to four playlists Britney Spears made (80s music, workout mix, her kids’ favorites, and a “me time” mix), as well as linked up with my Facebook friends who are on Spotify already and also subscribed to a playlist of Mercury Prize nominees as well as a 146-track “America” themed playlist, both made by Spotify staffers. I can see myself using this a LOT, both at home and at school while I’m working and grading. Once more of my friends are there, I’m looking forward to checking out their playlists, as well as making collaborative playlists.

Also, as a teacher, this may put an end to frantically scrambling on YouTube to find the right version of a song I’ve just decided I want to play for my students, and also with Spotify, I don’t have to feel guilty about copyright issues. If enough of my students end up there, we could make book-themed playlists, or playlists for a certain time period, or ones a certain character would like today–imagine a Holden Caulfield playlist, for example, that all students could access, or a playlist one character would make for another. I’ve done these kinds of assignments before, but this way, all the students could hear the results, or could easily work together. I think Spotify will end up having some really neat teaching applications.

I don’t have any invitations to share, but if you end up using, I’d love to hear more, or maybe share some playlists!

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Review: I Read It, But I Don’t Get It

Posted by Jackie in book reviews, education, teaching and tagged with , , ,
Cover of "I Read It, but I Don't Get It: ...

Cover via Amazon

Decision made: I ended up going with I Read It, but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers first because it had some direct application for a project I’m working on with a colleague this summer. We’re developing a proposal for a summer program that would target struggling readers/writers in the first two grades of high school and give them a concentrated summer instructional experience to try and build whatever skills seem to need the most development. I think I’ll be going with Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme next, so look for the review in the near future.

Anyone who has taught high school English, no matter where you are in the country or what demographic you’re teaching, has probably heard a student say, “I read it, but I don’t get it.” What part was trickiest? What was most confusing? Why do you think you didn’t get it? These are tough questions for most struggling students to answer, but without them, it can be near possible to help a student strengthen their reading skills. Cris Tovani tackles this task head-on in this book with a mix of anecdotes, strategies and assignments that she has tested for years in her own classroom, as well as in her work with training teachers.

If you’ve read about different adolescent literacy strategies, you may already be using some of the tools Tovani recommends here; I was pleased to see anticipation guides and double-entry journals, both of which I’ve used very successfully before. However, I also found some really potent examples of framing language and classroom activities that I think will become key elements of my reading discussions in class. I’ve long pondered how best to scaffold my students’ reading in our Bible as Literature unit, and I’ve got some fresh new ideas based on this book. Another crucial point was that while struggling readers will benefit most from these techniques, we’ve all seen even stronger students hit the wall when they come to a particularly challenging text, and these strategies can work for them as well when built into whole-class work. The language Tovani uses to identify for her students what “good readers do” and how to model those strategies will be invaluable to me, and will definitely help frame how I address these stumbling blocks in class.

Another big take-away for me was that students want us to go over the reading in detail in class, not always because they haven’t read (though that can also be the case), but because they don’t have confidence in their own abilities to construct meaning from the text. The more we do that work for them, the more they give up on being able to do it for themselves. In other words, this is another argument in the ongoing sage on the stage vs. guide on the side debate (that is often more polarized than it needs to be), but an argument that shows concrete ways to be that effective guide-on-stage. For me, as a fan of Paulo Freire, and especially his theories opposing the banking model of education, this supports my own philosophy of education as well. That said, when a student asks me about a part in the text she didn’t understand, my first impulse is to explain it to her, which is probably a byproduct of being a big book nerd in the first place, as many English teachers are. Now, with Tovani’s voice guiding me, I hope I’ll be able to resist that impulse more often.

All in all, I’d add this title to the list of essentials for any English teacher’s bookcase, and even go further by saying that if you’re in a reading-intensive subject, you and your students could greatly benefit from this book as well.

Choices, Choices

Posted by Jackie in writing

Every summer I like to pick a book about teaching and use it to improve myself professionally or meet a certain goal of mine.

Okay, what has actually happened before is that I pick several books in a summer and only end up carefully reading one of them, while the others languish. So this year, I’m trying to really choose just one, but my list includes a wide range, from conceptual big-picture books to concrete strategy-based texts, and I’m having trouble picking. Want to help me choose? Here are what I’ve narrowed down to so far:

I Read It, but I Don’t Get It: Comprehension Strategies for Adolescent Readers

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

Fresh Takes on Teaching Literary Elements: How to Teach What Really Matters About Character, Setting, Point of View, and Theme

25 Quick Formative Assessments for a Differentiated Classroom: Easy, Low-Prep Assessments That Help You Pinpoint Students’ Needs and Reach All Learners

The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids

The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Reader in Every Child

Cast your votes in the comments!

Teach Like A Champion, Revisited

Posted by Jackie in book reviews, education, teaching and tagged with , ,
Cover of "Teach Like a Champion: 49 Techn...

Cover via Amazon

Last summer, I read Teach Like A Champion, and wrote that entry about how much I expected it to influence my teaching. Towards the end of this school year, I found myself reflecting on this book again, and how it had affected my teaching.

Overall, what I found was that the phrasing of these techniques in short memorable phrases helped me remember them often during the school day and therefore employ them more consistently; what I found in reading the book was that I had employed many of these, but did not honestly employ them daily in my classroom.

The strategies I returned to again and again this year were: Lemov’s phrase for the ideal teacher’s demeanor, “Warm But Strict”; Cold Calling (calling on students even if they hadn’t raised their hands), Right Is Right (only stopping when a student has given the right answer) and 100% (striving for 100% engagement in the room). In my original entry, I talked about the need to protect each classroom minute, and by the end of the year, I was very comfortable saying, “We’ve only got five minutes left and I need every one of them” when I felt my students’ attention wandering.

Looking back on my original entry and some of the ones I linked there, I realize that I have still not solved the bathroom visit issue, so I need to think again about whether I want to use a hand signal or some other visual cue, rather than a raised hand. I also see that I intended to revisit the book during the year: better late then never? Perhaps this is another goal of mine that can be served in the teaching journal goal I’ve set for myself. Also, now that I feel I’ve mastered those strategies, I’d like to revisit the book and see if I want to add any others. I remember Miss Teacha saying in her post that out of the 49 strategies, she already used 14, and would recommend that new teachers aim for mastering at least 15. While I’m not a new teacher, I think it would be interesting to count up how many I feel are already in my toolbox and then think about what I’d like to add.

While I’m reflecting like this purely for my own interest, I think the fact that the book has lingered so long with me reinforces my original statement: it’s a must-buy for any and every new teacher, or indeed, any teacher who wants to feel more confident with questions of classroom management (which is probably all of us, from time to time).

Professional Development: Why Do It

Posted by Jackie in education, personal goals, teaching, writing and tagged with , ,

It seems to be a given that professional development is a must for the continuing growth and progress of teachers: witness the plethora of resources and attention devoted to it on the federal and state level. Knowledge in our fields is constantly growing and changing, and ideas on how to effectively teach are ever-changing, so if we want teachers stay abreast of these swings of the pendulum and be able to incorporate them into our work, we must have access to dedicated time during the year for professional development.

At my independent school, I’ve had access to some wonderful professional development sessions through AIMS, which comprises over 120 schools in the MD/DC area. One that stands out for me in particular is the annual Making Schools Safe workshop, which has greatly informed my work in sponsoring our school’s Gay-Straight Alliance, but also has helped me think carefully about making my classroom and school a safe place for all students. I also had the thrill of presenting at the AIMS annual conference one year, which I hope will only be the first time I get to share my efforts with other teachers, and have heard some inspiring AIMS sessions in the past as well.

I try to keep a running “wishlist” for different aspects of my professional career, and my PD dreams include attending NCTE’s annual convention as well as someday presenting there, and publishing lesson plans on sites like ReadWriteThink and the NEH’s EDSITEment (remember, it’s my dream list!). I strive towards presenting and publishing for several reasons; I have gained so much from the contributions of other teachers, that I want to be able to return the favor for the greater community of teachers as well. However, I think that striving towards this also helps me work towards being more creative and rigorous in my teaching as well, so that I have something new and valuable to bring to the conversation, and keeps me invigorated in a profession that can be notoriously draining.

I’ve heard/read teachers before who say they take the whole summer “off” from going into school or going to workshops, but while I do log many pooltime hours, the summer is when I have the mental space and energy to do some of the big-picture thinking about my teaching practice, the kind of meta-thinking I just don’t always get to during the school year.  Professional development has been a big part of that, inspiring more of that big-picture perspective and giving me the tools to put ideas into action.

In fact, I just returned from an amazing PD week-long session that I’ll blog more about soon. It’s inspiring just to be around the kind of teachers who flock to PD sessions, who are dedicated and creative and thought-provoking, who are able to tell me about a story I’ve never read or give me a perspective on a text that never occurred to me. I took so many notes and pictures during the week, and even on the plane ride home, I was jotting down ideas and connections to better plan the upcoming year. Who knows how much I will actually realize for the fall, but I know what I’ve learned will continue to provide inspiration for years to come.

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