You got the MOVES! Writing Non-Fiction with Voice, Choice and Clarity in Creativity

Posted on February 11, 2014 by conversationeducation

“Your assignment for today class is to write your state report in the voice of a snowman.”

“ A snowman?” you ask.

“ Yes, a snowman.”

This was simulated out of a conversation I had recently with a 3^rd grade teacher where somewhere along the line someone thought it would be a creative idea to assign all 3rd grade students to write their state research reports in the voice of a snowman. A snowman? Yes. A snowman.

“A snowman?” I asked. Yes, a snowman. What does the voice of a snowman sound like? I wonder, as distant memories of Frosty’s voice pop into my head, “Haaaaaappy Birrrrrthdaaaaaay!!!” What do snowmen have to do with state reports? What if you have the state of Hawaii or Arizona where snowmen do not reside? Would it be a melting voice? A snowman? Yes, a snowman.

And then to top it all off the report was to then be written in the shape of, yes, you guessed it, a snowman. Now call me crazy, but wouldn’t it make more sense to have a state report in the shape of the state the report is on? Or perhaps just simply shapeless unless the writer chooses to make the report in any shape at all?

Wherever this idea came from, one must recognize that its’ intent, I believe, was to allow for creativity in writing these reports. My hunch is that what got in the way of this good intention was inexperience in writing, the writing process and how creativity can be discovered and is easily accessible to all writers through the study of authors and illustrators in ways that make sense for the writer and the purpose of the writing project. So many of us grew up without any writing instruction at all and many feel uncertain about how to teach writing. Most teachers see themselves as readers but very few will identify themselves as writers.

So this 3^rd grade teacher, Ashley and I decided to begin the journey encouraging students to create their own books on the states they were studying. We began this unit of study with an introduction to a non fiction book called, A President from Hawaii where we asked the students to read like writers and envision how they might use some of these techniques, or MOVES in their own writing. I read, did some thinking out loud, but not much before the students began to identify the many moves made by both the writer and the illustrator while Ashley charted their thinking on the white board next to us all.

As usual I found myself marveling at the kids “reading” of this text. Amy recognized that the illustrator used a variety of techniques which included a background image that was either watercolored or collaged and then actual photographs and images were layered on top of that.

Joe saw that the photographs were delicately framed in bamboo, but not on all pages. When we wondered why the illustrator might have made that move Michael wondered, “is the bamboo only shown on those pages where there were natural scenes in the background where bamboo really grows?” And in looking back we identified that it was shown on the images of mountains and beaches, but not on the pages that showed cities.

Shane talked about the bold words. Michael noticed how the information was embedded within the text. I wondered going into the class if this book had enough moves in it, but of course they went deeper than anticipated.

Next, I shared a variety of non-fiction texts and asked them to take some sticky notes and do some noticing with a partner and then come back to the larger group and share one on the moves made by either the author or the illustrator that they might try.

I like this word, move, because it is more accessible to students, teachers and even non-writers. In most professional texts these “moves” are referred to as craft, and the goal is to identify the different”craft” used by an author. I myself I have used the word craft in my teaching but often found it did not resonate with those who were not engaged heavily in the process of writing already. And by all means if “craft” resonates with you and your students then stay with it. Katie Wood Ray’s description of Craft in her book, Wondrous Words is beautiful. I am always seeking alternative ways in for writers.

Photo Credit: craftidea.info

The word, Craft, carries with it a sense of “crafty” in that it is something that is part of an artistic process and that some are better at it than others, or that some have a “gift” for it. Those with that gift are “writers” and those who were not lucky enough to be born with an affinity for “craft” are not writers. Craft can be a loaded word in that it also has an underlying assumption that there is a “right” way to make the craft. (See paper plate snowman) One teacher explained that because she didn’t know what craft was that it automatically distanced her from writing and made her feel even more inferior. She did not see herself as a writer and the idea of craft did not help her to move away from that identity.

The process of identification is a critical one when working with writers. Once someone actually manifests the idea of “I am a writer” then all things begin to change, as they “see” themselves as writers they find the confidence to play a little more, to worry a little less about doing it “right”, and discover the freedom to explore and try on some of the moves of others writers.

Image Credit: http://www.sodahead.com

“Moves” seem to be more available to some. Identifying these moves actually moves writers closer to that place of identification. Anyone can try out a move. In asking students (be they 3rd graders, 33 year-olds or 63 year olds) to try a”craft” is something that some cannot identify with. Trying a move in your writing is like trying a dance move. It takes out that ethereal sense of “writer” and brings it down to earth, making writing available to writers of all shapes and sizes.

When the students regrouped to share their findings, their books were loaded with sticky notes and “moves” they would like to possibly try. Each set of partners shared one move that impressed them the most. The possibilities seemed endless.

So when I returned to that classroom I was eager to find out what had transpired over the week and what I found when I walked in was a very busy writing workshop with paper and scissors and computers and crayons and markers and pencils and busy writers abound. There was a buzz in the room and so I began conferring to find out more.

What I discovered was that the “move” most decided to try was to write their reports in the “voice” of something significant from their chosen state be it the state bird, produce or in the Hawaii report in the voice of the waves. I had to laugh because this project started with the idea of voice and seemed to be ending here as well. The idea of personifying something from their state took on a life of it’s own so much so that the narrator from Alabama, “Fuzzy the Peach” actually “visited” the narrator, the Cactus Wren, state bird of Arizona, on the pages of the Arizona book. So now these kids were learning not only about their states, but about the states their classmates were studying as well. They were collaborating and sharing ideas and admiring each other’s work and ideas during the process, finding an immediate audience with authentic feedback. One gets an idea from another and it snowballs. It was infectious

I also noted how all of the writers were in such different places and stages and that for some, the gift of time to really work on an illustration with incredible depth and detail was appreciated. “I love making this book!” Josh told me. When I asked him why he said that it was fun, relaxing and enjoyable to show his information in a book. I could see from his writing alone that it was not something he excelled at as his letters looked young and his words were far and few in his research, but by focussing on what he loved about his state of California, the sports teams he was creating the most detailed images in the room.

Image Credit: inkygirl.com

I also realize having the eyes of the occasional observer are different eyes than those of the teacher who has a list a mile long of things to get done with her students and that handing that time over, even when we know it is valuable, can feel too long or too free or too unproductive. Fortunately, this young, intuitive teacher, Ashley, understands and sees the value in what each child is doing and how individual the process of each student is. It takes patience. Then it takes more patience. It is not easy for every student and there are always those who struggle, those who seem to be wasting time and those who are not engaged. It takes time and it takes a great leap of faith and trust in ones’ self and the kids themselves.

Finally, I noticed was how sacred the oaktag was to these kids. Some cut theirs into smaller pieces to make more pages, others just talked about how lucky they were to be using such expensive paper and how it was different than any other “paper” because it was so sturdy and perfect for book-making. One girl stroked the smoothness of the tagboard telling me how she just LOVED the feeling of this paper.

All of these things, all of these tools, all of these conversations, all of these moments are part of being a writer, of the writing process of a working Writer’s Workshop. It is messy, it is chaotic, it is time consuming, but it is organized chaos where the voices, choices, creativity and sounds of the writers are front and center and the snowmen, well, they are out where they belong, on the playground.

Letting Go: On Permission, Patience, Persistence and Possibilities…

Posted on December 20, 2013 by conversationeducation

Zachary is a senior this year and while I have tried to keep from writing about him, I find myself in the beginning phases of grieving his impending move from home to college. When I asked him if he was ready he simply said, “No, not really, but it will be great.” Zachary is my possibility person. He sees the world as something that is here for him to embrace and engage in every moment he is alive. He truly does live in the moment. My Dad always referred to him as the one who is always “tinkering” with something. In many ways I think he is a lot like my Dad in that his while his grades in school are not stellar, his ideas and his passion for possibility lies deep. It is rare he says he “can’t” do something.

His latest passion is this song, Let Her Go by Passenger (that I now know by heart as I have heard it a million times a day for about 4 weeks now) and so he has decided to learn this song on the piano. He does not, or should I say he has not ever really played the piano. That is Emma’s instrument. But he you tubed it (yes, I do think that is a verb!) and from watching has begun the process of two handing the keys to this tune. I marvel at his persistence, or in this day in educational jargon, his stamina to keep on keeping up with this endeavor. He has the first part down pretty well, and he won’t quit until he reaches the end. I know this because this is how Zachary learns. There is always some kind of creative process that invites him in and then he is all in.

What happens when we slow down and give each learner the permission to learn about and research whatever it is they are interested in? What happens when there is a structure, but the content is filled in by each individual in the group?

So this year I decided to try out some of what I was preaching on my group of teachers in Dover Middle School. I have been working with this group for years and they have one of the best collective senses of humor I have ever known. The group has come together, I believe, even more so because of the writing we have been doing together every time we meet. I am always surprised at what I learn about one of these dedicated teachers through their writing and I love hearing their voices develop and change with each piece they try. They are always willing to read their writing and give feedback to each other. In our conversations about the Common Core State Standards we also question and wonder about where the idea of freedom comes into play in public education.

And so I walked into the first class and said, “I have no class text, I have no syllabus, all I have is a workshop model and ways to guide and facilitate us through the processes of learning of your choosing. What is it that you want to learn about? What are some of the questions you are wondering about that you feel you don’t have the time to discover? There were wide eyes of excitement looking back at me as the possibilities ran across the faces of some and panic across the others. I quickly realized that one of the first beliefs we needed to look at was that of the “right answer” as some asked me, “What is it that you want?” “What exactly are you looking for and what does it look like?” Immediately I saw that although we talked the good talk of freedom, that we as adults are as entrenched in this kind of thinking as our students, seeking that “right” answer. In the words of Socrates, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And so we have spent a great deal of time examining our attitudes, beliefs and biases. Some of the work we have done together I took on the road as I have told this group that they are my research project as I work beside them and experience the same processes they are experiencing.

I recently presented some of this research at NCTE in Boston with colleagues and friends, Louise Wrobleski and Terry Moher. We engaged in a playful study of “Reading the Visuals and Visualizing the Reading” and along the way we rediscovered the power of the visual everywhere we went. Every day we sent each other new ideas, articles, links and images to spark our thinking. It was exhilarating because we were all engaged in thinking about, reading and researching the same thing at the same time and yet we each came at it from completely different angles. It was these differences that gave form and texture to our presentation as we each defended and wrote up just what it was we intended to do with our 20 minutes of fame while at the same time weaving a common thread among us. It was challenging and exciting.

Ultimately my part in the presentation came from the deep seeded belief that if we want our teachers/students to engage their students then they must first experience the process themselves. Classic Don Graves. When our participants sat down there were pictures of faces staring at them from the middle of the table. They were asked to take one that spoke to them and then to add something to the face. Instantly I could feel a shift of energy in the room and so I asked, “How many of you think you can’t draw?” and almost all of the hands went up. And while I told them not to worry, it was evident that it was a challenge for many as everyone tried to add some kind of body to their chosen face. Here are some images I shared with them from my work with my Dover teachers and many mimicked this same behavior by adding what they “thought” was expected of them, a body.

Then I showed them some images from this wonderful blog, busymockingbird.com where a mother collaborates with her four year old daughter and allows her to put “bodies” onto her faces. Here are some of those images.

And after showing these images suddenly the world of possibilities opens up as each person is granted permission to be playful, to think beyond what they “thought” the expectation was in terms of a “right” answer, even though I said there was no right or wrong way to add to their faces. After sharing these as well as images from Terry Moher’s students work I then asked them to turn over their faces and give it another go. And again the energy shifted and people began to envision, talk and even giggle at what might be, based on what they felt confident about drawing and the images took on completely different shapes and forms. After sketching I asked participants to write either about their process or to bring words and life to the images they had created. Or as one Dover teacher Lisa stated on her second go, I looked at this face and as I was trying to think outside of the box, I thought, boxes, yes, I can draw boxes! And this is what she came up with.

These two images above are of particular interest to me. The first was drawn by an elementary teacher, Pam. The second by Ben a middle school teacher. What I found fascinating was that these were their first drawings. What was it about Pam and Ben’s thinking that they got to where others often only got to on the second go? They both talked about how they couldn’t draw bodies, so they looked at the faces and tried to come up with something that fit the face that they could draw, but that was not a body. Essentially Pam and Ben gave themselves permission to add to the faces in any way they felt would work. They allowed themselves to just let go and were not confined by the idea of what was “right”.

Well you only need the light when it’s burning low

Only miss the sun when it starts to snow

Only know you love her when you let her go

Only know you’ve been high when you’re feeling low

Only hate the road when you’re missing home

Only know you love her when you let her go

And you let her go.

~ Let Her Go by Passenger

And while these lyrics ring in my head I think about how we all need to let go, if even just a little bit. All of us. I need to let go as a mother and allow my son to make his way in the world, and as teachers we need to let go. Let go of the “one answer society rules” demands of the testing world and open up our hearts and minds to the infinite possibilities that lie within.

Stories and More: A Daughter’s Encyclopedia of Her Dad

Posted on December 9, 2013 by conversationeducation

There are so many ways to tell a story. We just had an intimate celebration of my Dad’s life for those who knew him. It started with cocktail hour and then it was story time. I heard so many stories about my Dad that I had never heard. I loved hearing about his life as a boss, a friend, brother-in-law, Bumpa and of course as a father. In the words of Eben Alexander in his book, Proof of Heaven he writes, “A story–a true story–can heal as much as medicine can.”

So how was I going to talk about Dad in 10 minutes or less and really give a sense of who he was to me? I was thinking about the text, “Days With My Father” which started on line and is now a book, but that did not exactly capture what I was hoping to do as it only reflected the end of his father’s life. I wanted more than that. And then I thought back to the last time I wrote about my Dad, using Wallace Steven’s, “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”. I wrote up 13 Moments with Dad and took it to the service.

I only got through maybe half of them, but then as I went back to the piece I didn’t like it. I envisioned something different and then I remembered the book, The Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. If you have not read this book then it must go on your list to be read. I scoured my shelves and re-worked the piece again. I am thrilled with the possibilities and so I will share a few of them and they are rough. There are so many that have yet to be written, but this is where I am now and I am still struggling with each subtitle as well as how many to write. Yet another piece of writing that is never done, but is just done enough for now to make my point here on this blog, that writing and thinking takes time and that honoring where our students are in that moment is priceless.

And again, while I realize this is a very personal piece on an educational blog and even somewhat self-indulgent, I have come to realize that living a literate life is very personal and that we need more of these personal connections to allow us to see each other, face to face.

So here we go…

A Daughter’s Encyclopedia of Her Dad

A for Always

“You need to leave the hospital right now, ”Dad’s voice echoed, quiet yet firm. After 13 days of never leaving my leukemia-ridden 3 and a half year old Emma’s side, she was overdosed in one of her surgeries. My Dad was the first to arrive and he was the only one who told me to leave. And so for the first time I left. Dad drove me home to see Zachary and spend one night out of the hospital.

What I have come to realize after his death is that no matter what Dad had my back. I just knew that if I ever needed anything he would have been there and just knowing that keeps you from ever really needing anything at all…

“This too shall pass”, my Dad’s words of wisdom he shared with me when in the throes of Emma’s illness. And eventually it did.

B for Best Friend

My best friend, Krissy stopped by to say goodbye on her way to her new prep school hours away, Northfield, Mount Hermon. As we stood in the driveway sobbing together and lamenting our impending separation she said, “Why don’t you come too?”

And so I went and checked out the school, knowing that we did not have the money for me to go to private school, but interested to see where Dad had also gone when he was younger. (That was a story we all knew too well. How he hitchhiked there 3 times and begged them to accept him and yes, they finally did. “It changed my life,” he would say. ) Did I need my life to be changed?

He walked into my bedroom, pitch black and through the darkness he just said, “If you really want to go to Northfield, we will figure out a way to make it to happen.” And then he left the room.

I did not go. I didn’t need to go. I think I just needed to know I could go.

C for Call

I picked up the phone to hear Dad’s voice. “I haven’t seen you in a while.” And I would tell Dad what I had been up to and he would listen and respond. One day I was telling him the latest woes of parenting and he stopped me and said, “You have raised great kids.” Again I was left silent. The man of few words was speaking… and he was saying something from the heart. “No, I mean it. They are great kids. You have done a really good job with them.”

What he could not see were the tears running down my cheeks as I flipped the bacon and then Mom got on the phone. Per usual at that point he would make his exit and say with sarcastic contempt, “Well I will let you two talk for the next few hours” and he hung up.

And what he needs to know is that he too has raised 3 really great kids.

D for Dancing

I made my Dad do a Father Daughter dance at my wedding. My mother had often lamented at the lack of dancing and nights out on the town with my father. He resisted the idea of that dance, but just like one day when I came home from college and hugged my parents and forced my Dad to hug me back, I forced him to do that dance with me. Not only did he dance, but he even did it with a smile.

But you must know that dancing with my Dad was more like standing in the middle of a floor where there was music playing and making slight shuffles to the right and to the left. Rhythm was not really involved, but even standing there as he held me in dance position, right arm up left on my waist was enough. And Mom, I don’t think you missed much not making those nights out dancing with Dad!

E for Employee

As a new summer employee at my Dad’s newspaper, The New Hampshire Business Review, I was excited to finally be a bigger part of the family business. I envisioned learning the ropes of journalism and seeing what made a company tick. I was assigned to work for my sister under the term “data entry”. Day after day of entering information and categorizing it. God forbid I actually ask a question of my beloved “boss” as she would look at me in disgust and say, “I already told you how to do that!!” Never before had I felt like such a peon in a job. Even waitressing was easier than trying to fit into this very tight system that had been established so many years ago where I quickly realized that being a family member only meant there were higher expectations of you and no family bennies whatsoever. In fact, it began to seem like being family was more of a curse than a blessing…at least at the office!

One day while I was sitting in my Dad’s big black chair and spinning around like I used to when I was little I opened his top drawer to find a pen and instead I found a one and a half inch stack of checks. My gut sank as I looked to see that the check on top was made out to Don Madden. As I flipped through them all the same name appeared over and over and over again. A flipbook of Don Madden checks and the implications that he was paying everyone else made me gasp. His investment in this business ran deeper than I had ever realized.

I finished that summer and never complained again. It was my last time working at the paper.

F for Faces

Hey, do you see the face?” Dad would ask as he pointed at a picture, a painting or even out the window at a tree. Whereupon we would all look and sometimes we might see it and others we would have no idea what he was seeing. He “saw” things that others did not see be it in the visual, looking out the window or into the future political arena.

Since my Dad’s death I have started to “see” faces everywhere!! I am taking an intense course to become a yoga teacher and in that course we are studying anatomy and all through the lessons I see faces. Faces on ovaries, kidneys with eyes staring at me and then the profile of a young man peering out of the liver. Every time I see one I say hello to my Dad and am forever reminded that we must look, look and then look again with an open mind and you never know just what you might “see”.

H for Hugging

Hugging. From that day forward every time I saw my Dad I hugged him. Over time he came to expect it and dare I even say that he might have even leaned in first once or twice himself! He was an interesting hugger, more of a leaner really, but still I didn’t care. Some say huggers are buggers, but eventually they give in and realize that hugging isn’t so bad after all.

I for Indulgence

“Daddy, will you PLEASE do your Donald Duck voice?” we would plead for hours on end and usually the answer was no. To this day is amazes me how few times we actually heard it and it was something that tickled us pinker than pink as we would laugh and laugh. What was it that kept him from wanting to do it more? To indulge his kids just a few more times and yet if you think back, it made it all that much more incredible when he did it. “Less is more,” he would say if he was helping me with my writing. “Less is more”

L for Late

Driving home after curfew one night in the yellow bumblebee I devised a plan to pick up some speed down Page Road and then cut the engine and drift into the driveway with the lights off in hopes that I could “sneak” in and not be discovered. As I turned in, the car slowly moved towards the barn, activating the sensor bathing me in bright light. Damn, I thought as I began to open the car door and realized there was movement all around. As I looked closer I realized I had coasted into a sea of raccoons. Big raccoons, little raccoons, raccoons swarming the car and coming towards me. I slammed the door and began to scream, “Dad!!” “Dad!!” Of course he couldn’t hear me and so I layed on the horn. Eventually Dad appeared in his boxers and shooshed all the raccoons away, saying, “Get outta here ya saps!” As he was getting rid of them I made a dash for the house. He followed me in and said, “You’re late.”

M for Moving

“I am calling to check in with you because we looked at a house in New London and well, I just wanted to be sure that you were okay with that.” I paused in disbelief. Was my Dad actually calling to ask me about their life decision? The silence lingered and he said, “Are you there?” “Yes Dad, I am here.” “Well, you and your mother spend so much time together and well, I just wanted to know what you thought about us making this move.”

“Do what you need to do Dad, and I will be fine.” And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me that our relationship had shifted so dramatically over the years but that I hadn’t even realized it. The older he got the more he said and the more he said the more I listened. I am so glad they lived nearby for 10 years.

S for Swearing

Dad announced as we sat on the lime green carpet during a major heat wave in 1975 that we were going on a family vacation. Lisa, Jamie and I screamed and shouted with joy as visions of Disney rides and beaches and pools danced through our heads he said we needed to pack as we would be leaving at 4 in the morning just to get a good head start.

We woke at 4 filled with Christmas morning anticipation and settled ourselves into the blue paneled station wagon. Lisa and I settled into our makeshift bed in the very back complete with blankets and pillows and Jamie in his own bed in the middle seat with the cooler. Little did we know that we would never get out of the car except for the occasional bathroom break and over 14 days and 4,000 miles later having seen all of Newfoundland and even Labrador. Oh the stories from that trip!

It was the first time I ever heard Dad swear as he got back into the car at a random gas station as Mom was handing us snowballs and candy bars to keep us quiet and we were fighting over them and anything else from being in such a confined space for too long when Dad snapped and yelled, “All you kids do is fight, fart and swear!” I remember thinking…did Dad just say fart?

T for Tomasen

My name. Thank you Dad for making up the most incredible, bestest, most awesome name in the world just for me. Something about having my name always made me feel like I was different. (It also helped that Lisa was actually a tiny bit jealous of it too as I was jealous of most everything she had, especially that incredible cassette recorder she had in Weare, but I digress!) What I love most about my name are all of the stories it has generated. As a man of stories, and as a great storyteller I would imagine you might have thought, what kind of name would bring great stories?

W for Wondering

“I would like to come over, there seems to be something wrong with my computer.” He would arrive, laptop under his arm, and I would pour the coffee as he would begin to describe in detail just what was or was not happening with his laptop. We would sit together and I would map out the steps, write them down and he would thank me profusely for being so patient with him. “We always knew you would be a teacher,” he said. “The hours you would spend in your room with all of those imaginary students, we just knew you would be a teacher.

During one of those visits he told me that he was ok with dying. He talked and talked and told me that I was the “listener”. I didn’t know what to do with that information today as I wonder…years later…if he would have said the same thing on the day he died.

So, as you can see there are many pieces missing, many in process, and just a sampling of an attempt to remember the stories of my Dad.

Jeff Wilhelm in his book on narratives tells a story about a decision-making process one of his kids was making and asked this question, “Which decision will make the best stories?”

My Dad’s life in stories was what he would have hoped for. Of that I am sure. What I am not sure about is how many stories are still out there, untold, about my Dad and about all of those students we work with.

We are only as good as our stories and honoring those should be a part of our daily work with students, whether reading them, writing them and absolutely always celebrating them. Period. I mean, in the end, what else is there really?

Stupid is as Stupid Does: More on The Common Core

Posted on November 19, 2013 by conversationeducation

The other night we stumbled upon the movie Forrest Gump. Man, I forget what a great movie it is on SO many levels. The scene that really made me pause was when Forrest’s mother, played brilliantly by Sally Fields, is at the local public school and the principal holds up a life –sized graph with 3 sections. He points out the top section and says this is Above Average, then to the middle section indicating Average (duh!) and then to a point in the Below Average section stating, this is where Forrest lies. Her response is what I wish all of our responses are to the numbers we use to sum up our youth, our schools, our teachers and beyond. She looks at the Principal like he has lost his mind when he says Forrest will need to attend a special school where she retorts in her perfect southern accent, “Oh for God’s Sake, It is only 5 silly little points, the boy will be going to school here.” And that is the end of the scene. Soon after you see Forrest getting on the big yellow school bus.

Of course as you watch the embedded history lessons and how Forrest had a hand in so much that we never knew the one line that really sticks out is “Stupid is as stupid does.”

And that is where we are in education right now. Stupid is as stupid does. We are so caught up in those graphs and charts and data that we cant even see what is right in front of us. The more I hear the more stupid it all becomes and I think we need to be more like Mrs. Gump and stop giving these tests and everything that surrounds them so much energy and weight. Part of the problem is that there are so many stories, myths and misconceptions around the Common Core that nobody even knows what is going on.

See here to read “Ten Colossal Errors of the Common Core Standards: http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2013/11/common_core_standards_ten_colo.html?cmp=SOC-SHR-FB

Did you know there are some schools here in New Hampshire who are saying “NO” to the Common Core? And while they ARE being penalized in terms of funding, losing about $100,000.00 they are looking forward realizing that to implement the tests surrounding the Common Core is going to cost their district over $200,000.00. Why are we so incredibly short sighted when it comes to these top down mandates. What are we so afraid of?

I have said it before and I will say it again, if my kids were starting in public school right now I would get them out! Or in the words of Jenny, “Run Forrest Run!” Run from the shackles of numbers and testing! Our kids are being used as lab rats and caught up in a sea of bureaucratic and political snares that have nothing to do with a better education for each. Our educational system is being bullied into the dregs of privatization where companies can and will dictate what happens in our schools.

Pearson already is! Pearson is an enormous conglomeration that has tentacles that reach into more areas of education than you cannot even imagine. This octopus of a machine has created the tests that children will take that are too hard on many levels. The other day I was sent a link to the Smarter Balance site where I could go in and “take” the test at many different levels. I chose 3^rd grade and went to the LA section. Immediately, I thought of all of the hundreds of 3^rd graders I have worked with and my anxiety level started to rise. The first question is about a Chinese child, Little Lang, who is learning his or her characters. I think of those who don’t have the background knowledge that Chinese characters are letters. This character goes off with his brush…how many 3^rd graders “write” with a brush? And it just goes from there. At the end there were multiple questions to answer and of course lots of places for written responses.

As a highly analytical person I can often see at least 2 very distinct answers that “could” be true or right. And after that question I went on to the second one and then realized this was only 2 out of 50! And that is JUST the Language Arts section.

Here is a link to the test. See for yourself!!

https://sbacpt.tds.airast.org/student/

And once the numbers come out we will see exactly what these tests are designed to do, to create a new narrative of the epic failure of our public school system. But as with every magical story there will be the night in shining armor who will show up in shiny new textbooks wrapped in bubble wrap, a colorful collage of books and workbooks to fix all of your districts woes in one fell swoop. And the publisher will be….yes, you guessed it, Pearson. The one who set up the tests in the first place.

And even more disturbing is that if you are really worried about test performance Pearson has test prep materials ready for sale to get all of your little lemmings in line. In fact one teacher in New York City found one of the exact prep test questions on the “actual” test! The message again? If you want to do well on these tests then you must have Pearson test prep. Do you see the irony here? Do you taste the incredible conflict of interest?

There are many things that have started to rumble around the country that give me hope! One group of parents in New York State sent all of their kids test scores back to the school and the company. Great! But the kids still had to suffer through the tests! Other groups are opting out of these tests and the more we get on board with this the more likely is that we can take back our educational system and begin from the ground up to rebuild it. Top down…stupid is as stupid does.

A link to Fair Test listing the many ways to Opt Out locally and Nationally: http://www.fairtest.org/get-involved/opting-out

And although this video is showing up all over my Facebook feed I am going to link to it here as well because this kid has guts and makes some great points!! Again, he gives me hope. Imagine if more of our students stood up for what they think is right and just and fair.

http://youngcons.com/legit-tennessee-high-school-senior-decimates-common-core/

He is something huh? And as Forrest says “Momma always says life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you are going to get.” In this case, if you dig to the bottom of the box you can see quite clearly what we are gonna get, and it tastes nothing like chocolates!!

Learning as a Deeply Personal Experience: On Teaching Readers and Writers

Posted on October 6, 2013 by conversationeducation

The buzz of Mentor Texts has been around for quite a while now and while I like this idea, what I don’t like is that our young writers are often instructed to use a particular mentor text for a given time as assignments. Using a particular structure to do this, instead of exposing them to a variety of ideas and texts and then helping and guiding our students to figure out what would work best for them, the writers.

What would happen if we asked our young writers to first think about what it was they wanted to say, to write about, to read about, to discover and then come up with the best way to express this?

When my daughter was first diagnosed with leukemia I kept a journal and wrote down every single little detail of our experience. It was exhausting to get onto those pages all that I felt I needed to. Her every reaction to every drug, the times she received the doses, the different emotions experienced, missing my 8 month old at home. I quickly fell behind and was angry that I was missing so much of what I thought I needed to get down, in the name of control.

Book of Poetry by Dan Rothermel

And then one day someone brought me this small book called, Sweet Dreams, Robyn written by Dan Rothermel. It is a collection of poems he wrote about his daughter with cancer. This book transformed my writing life. Suddenly, I had the permission and allowed myself to write in poetry finding it easier to get down all that I wanted to without getting muddled in all of the pros it took. In the words of my Dad, “less is more” in writing.

With the death of my father I had this same experience as I was meandering through the blog world I found a blog that just spoke to me. She writes a fictional piece about the death of her mother and says,

“It came together when I was working on a blog post about Wallace Stevens one of my favorite poets. His “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” was on my mind while I was reading Paul Harding’s Tinkers.”

Her mentor Wallace Stevens gave her what she needed to capture what she wanted to write in fiction and I instantly knew that this too would be the perfect way for me to capture and process my father dying. Snippets of strong images that I needed to get down on paper and so her blog became my mentor text. It was more than perfect.

You can find her blog at http://deborahbrasket.wordpress.com/

So here is my version, based on the ideas I stole from her that she stole from Wallace Stevens.

13 Ways of Looking at Death Just Before, During and After

I called him on the phone, his voice weak and wavering as his hand fought to keep the phone still. “Hey Dad, how are you feeling?”

“Bad. This is Bad. What I have is really bad.” I cringe, as I know he knows it is bad. Sepsis. Blood infection on top of pneumonia not to mention his COPD, heart disease and diabetes…

He has never said it was bad before. He always said, “It is getting better.

It is bad.

His oxygen cord lies on the dirty floor as it takes her a moment to realize there are no lines crossing his face, lines of plastic jewelry tubes that have become as permanent as his glasses. He is not getting any air.

And she wonders…just how long has he been without oxygen?

She calls the nurse and insists he gets a new one. Nurse never responds to the absence of his air or how long he has been without it.

Idiots.

III

She is alone with him, Red Sox images flashing in the dark room, sound blaring while she simultaneously plays Candy Crush. He wakes, peers over and says, ”You are still here? I really appreciate that.”

I smile.

And we go on like that for hours.

The Sox won.

Won the AL East Title. He is not aware.

She hoped it was a good sign.

She is always looking for signs.

Today is a good day. He is out of bed, sitting up in the hospital chair as she enters. He starts talking, “You know I sat up all night trying to remember the kids names.”

She thinks it must be all of the grandkids that he is forgetting…he continues…

“I know I have 3 kids. 2 daughters and a son.”

“Yes that is right” she replies, as he looks up at her and says, “The first daughter is Lisa.”

“Yes Dad, Lisa is your first daughter.”

“Then there is another one, you, what is your name?”

Her 10-year-old self emerges and screams inside, YOU named me Dad!! Don’t you remember? I have the coolest name in the world because YOU made it up.

That’s enough of this name game.

We gotta get him the hell out of this hospital.

Me, My Dad and Lisa

My once virile father sits perched on the kitchen island pursing for air. How did he get in the house so quickly? My brother in law carried him in, like a baby in his arms, but he was amazed at just how heavy he really was, all filled up with 9 days of hospital IV fluids so he had to stop to rest.

We still laugh at the absurdity of my Dad sitting with his feet swinging on the kitchen counter. Who says you don’t go backwards?

He then carries him the next leg into the bed where he will remain until he dies.

Each breath is a struggle and you can tell it actually hurts. Never mind when he coughs. He just wants to feel better, but he doesn’t really as he tries to negotiate in his head that he is now home and how he thought being home would make him feel better…but he doesn’t. Now what? You can see it coursing across his forehead like the GMA banner in Times Square. Now what? Now what? Now what?

VII

Doctor came to the house. Yes, in 2013 a Doctor actually came to meet the needs of his patient. There is a God. (See previous post on Systems)

Dad chose hospice. Visions of nurses, social workers and support at our side danced her head as she wondered…does he really know what he is choosing?

She is sent up to the Local Colonial Pharmacy to get the “hospice kit”. A box filled with drugs and lots of other things medical that you don’t want to know about never mind even think about using.

She is the chosen one to give her father his first dose of comfort packaged in a needless syringe to be administered orally. Flashbacks of shoving chemo filled syringes disguised in chocolate pudding to her 3 and a half-year-old smack her in the face.

Click…she re-enters that mode and just does what she has to do. She has been here before and she just does it. Nurse Ratched is back in the house.

VIII

My brother arrives a few minutes after giving my Dad the morphine.

The pill that he was begging for.

The morphine that I was afraid of.

The morphine that came without the nurses and the social workers and the volunteers to help us through this process.

Where in the hell were those hospice people she had heard so many wonderful stories about?

All they got was hospice in a box that had to be refrigerated.

It was just My Mom and I with my Dad yelling at us, “Will you just give it to me for God’s sake, I don’t care if it is the wrong dose.”

He begged for relief as we became more and more agitated and unsteady in the moment, dropping syringes, reading and rereading the prescription and even calling the pharmacist.

And finally I just gave it to him as he gasped for air and I suddenly realized we too had been as negligent as the hospital.

His oxygen tank had run out. No wonder he was desperate for something. How many ways are there to torture a man?

And they left the room when her brother arrived.

Jamie and Dad

Morphine overdose. Her brother horrified that we left him alone with a his father who was fine and talking with him one minute and then was suddenly hallucinating and trying to get out of bed. His strength mammoth as my mother got in bed behind him to restrain him. He could not walk on those big boats of feet filled with fluid.

I call the VNA. I reach out for those hospice people who were supposed to be there and tell him we need help ASAP!!!!!

He responds that giving morphine is an “art” and not that you gave him too much but that if he had been there he would have started with a lower dose. After telling her this for the 4^th time she wants to reach out and punch him through the phone…then why the HELL would you hand it over to an amateur?

He arrives at the house and starts talking about the “art” of dosing morphine again!!! She sees red and runs from him to avoid physically clobbering him.

Next Time…I give him ¼ of the recommended dose.

Thank you, Honorary Dr. Brother James. It says you can give it every 30 minutes. One quarter of a dose lasted him 12 hours.

Insanity.

He lays in bed and sleeps, or so it seems, soundly for days on end.

The question dancing through the house…”when will it happen?”

The family has their own form of hospice in a “Come to Jesus” kind of scene from a bad Lifetime Movie. We all give him permission to go, hands on, tears flying. Sister Lisa actually seems to be cheering him up to the pearly gates. Everybody says their peace and then we all continue to sit with big red puffy eyes, exhausted and we wait.

He doesn’t go.

When will he go?

He doesn’t go.

From the background Cousin Anne tells us, “He isn’t going to go right now, it doesn’t happen like that.” And snaps us out of our delusions that we can will him to go in that moment.

The sleepless nights wear on as brother and sister get up at different times to peek in to see my mother sleeping next to my yes, still breathing, father.

Exhaustion settles into the house and takes a seat on the couch alongside us.

Maybe he is not going anywhere. Maybe he will live forever.

Meals are delivered. They are all amazed at how they just show up and are so thankful because eating and food have not been on their radar.

Dad has not really eaten or had anything to drink for over 12 days.

Unless you count 4 little bird bites here and there. I fed him his last scrambled egg from Lisa’s chickens a couple days ago. No solid food since eating 5 bites of that egg. No water. Nothing.

How does the human body beat on? Especially one we all thought was so fragile?

His Hands don’t even look like his anymore they are so filled up with fluid, boxers hands.

Every moment stretches on as you wonder…when will his last breath be? Who will be with him? She wonders all of these things as she crawls into bed with him and rubs his back and quietly cries for her Daddy while the Red Sox blare on the radio from the bedside table next to us.

“How can something so natural be so unnatural?” son James wonders.

XII

She wakes at 8. Walks downstairs past her sleeping brother and sees her mother making the bed around her father’s still body. His breathing has changed. It is short. Very short. She says, get the morphine.

I know I must give him him the rest of the syringe…the same dose I administered 5 days earlier…it was what he needed. He was hardly breathing.

Mom is on his right. She is on his left.

He opens his eyes for the first time since the morphine began. The biggest widest eyes you have ever seen and he looked over at my Mom and she said, “Look at those big beautiful brown eyes. I love those eyes. They have not been that open in years. I wonder why none of you got those eyes? I am the dominant one.”

“I always wished I had gotten those brown eyes I respond as his eyes then slowly trail to find me on the left. He stares right at me for a moment and then it is as if he is looking to something beyond me. He holds that gaze for what seems like forever before he moves his sights straight ahead and opens them even wider. He was seeing the light. He liked it. He felt peaceful as he took one long deep breath and closed his eyes.

“Is that it?” Mom and I looked at each other. It seemed to be. No pulse.

And then out of nowhere one last little breath just to mess with us as we laughed.

Dad died.

8:15 am on Sunday, September 29^th, 2013.

It was beautiful.

Dad and Mom taking flight on Chappy

XIII

She misses him. They all miss him. She is not sure what to do so she talks about him. She remembers him. She reads. She writes about him. She laughs at his Donald Duck impression stored away on her computer. She shuffles through years of pictures and marvels at how great he looked for so long regardless of his health issues. She thanks her Mom for keeping him so healthy for so long. She misses him. Every day.

He was a great man.

He had 9 lives.

He lived every one of them fully.

He was her Dad.

I love this piece because for me it captures all that I want to remember and all that was there during this incredibly intense, scary, weird time. I feel better after reading about others experiences and then writing my own.

What would have happened had I been in a student in class and I was asked to write a recipe or a persuasive essay from one character in my assigned book to another when all I could think about was my Dad? Do we consider the lives of our writers, where they are and what they have to say and what they are interested in reading about?

I would argue that right now we teach the writing and not the writers. We teach the reading and not the readers. We think about checking things off. Persuasive Essay, check, Informational Reading, check, Memoir, check, Close Reading, Check.

What would happen if we trusted and guided readers and writers to know, to figure out what it was they wanted to know more about, what they wanted to say and then focused on helping them discover the best way or ways to read about it and say it? If we gave them the time to read others and think to themselves, “Hey, I could write something like that!”

Reading and Writing are my “go to’s” when I am trying to figure something out, process emotions, inform, wonder, preach, question, express, persuade, create, think, communicate, get lost and so many other things. What if the goal of every reading and writing curriculum was to help our readers and writers see reading and writing as a “go to” and not just a series of assignments to be completed, but tools for life?

And while this all may seem incredibly personal for a blog on education, I believe I am finally finding my stride in that a real and true education is deeply personal.

And I wonder…are we afraid of this authenticity? These truths?

And even as I consider posting this, putting it out into the world, I question myself. Do we want to hear or read these truths? Why do I put it out there? And while I know none of these answers I only know that I will…

Follow the link below to read my Dad’s obituary beautifully written by my sister, Lisa.

http://www.chadwickfuneralservice.com/fh/obituaries/obituary.cfm?o_id=2263261&fh_id=12966

Honoring Space and Time

Posted on August 19, 2013 by conversationeducation

I walked out on the back deck this morning and to my horrors of horrors there were leaves strewn about. The first leaves fallen, physical evidence that slowly but surely the seasons are and will be changing. And with that change I hear all of my teacher friends talk about going into their classrooms with excitement and anticipation at the prospect of a new year. How will they set up their classrooms this year? What kinds of “areas” can be created in this space where they will live with their students over this next year?

Photo Credit: catchingreaders.com

This time of year seems to get earlier and earlier every year though. It used to be that none of this was even contemplated until the official “end” of summer, Labor Day. But no more. College students are out shopping everywhere you go. Sons and daughters with Mothers seeking out that perfect comforter and wall hangings to create their own sense of space, the home away from home. My son, a senior, just out the door for his official soccer tryouts. And yet…it is ONLY August 19^th! Much too early!

Space matters. I find myself wanting to nest in my own home as I wake each morning with the urge to move furniture around and make things a new. I stop myself though, reminding myself that it IS still summer and that my summer arrangements must stay as long as possible for it is, after all, our shortest season of all.

Photo Credit: http://www.photoinpixel.com

And this summer I found myself not writing at all. This blog was unintentionally left to have it’s own summer vacation and that gets me thinking about what I need as a writer and one of the major things I need is space. And while that may seem incredibly obvious, with 2 kids in the house it is quite difficult to come by. And while I realize I could create the space and time and get up really early with the birds and get to my keyboard, the truth is that when I am up early I am out tending my gardens. You see there is so little weather here in New Hampshire that is conducive to early mornings outside. My routine is to water my plants and survey each garden to see what has happened over night. And things do happen.

Photo Credit: reelswellblog.com

I tried roses this year though. They are tough little buggers and as soon as we got them into the ground they up and died. Not really, but they looked as though they were dead. And so I left them. I pruned them here and there, gave them food and water and just waited. Not until yesterday did I start to see 2 tiny roses on one of the plants. Why now? I wondered? Perhaps they just needed time to adjust to the new soil. Perhaps the food finally kicked in. Perhaps they got just the right amount of sunshine and water for a few days in a row. Who knows! Maybe all they needed was a bit of space.

My roses FINALLY bloom on one bush!!

How often do we hold these spaces for our students? Our teachers? Spaces where they can be who they are, take the time that they need and figure out how to write or grow or bloom on their own? We talked a lot about this “holding of space” in my summer course (last entry!) on Passion, Purpose and Play: Creating Real Readers and Writers. EVERY day during our 2 weeks together these students, made up of teachers and interns had the time and space they needed to do their work. We devoted the last chunk of our day to “workshop”. Time where students could choose what it was they wanted to work on and how. They could choose to read or write anything they wanted. It might be reading for the next day in class, a novel or magazine they were interested in, or the writing they were working on. They could go to the library, go outside to read and write. They could confer in their triads, in partners or with me. They could write in notebooks, on their laptops or even on the floor if they so chose! They could choose to use this time to express themselves artistically with watercolors and other art supplies provided.

Christian and Lexe during Workshop Time, Summer 2013

I loved this time every day as it gave me time to sit with individuals and confer on their processes on what was working and what was not. IF the work, the homework, is so important, then why don’t we ever provide the time and space for that work to begin to happen in class? It seems so obvious and yet on my evaluations there was a resounding appreciation for that time given. Respect. That is what happened. There was a great respect for the work when there was a place for that work to happen. Many left each afternoon with clearly defined goals on where they wanted to take their reading and writing that night.

Maria reading Poetry, Summer 2013

And while the cliché of students blooming has been used ad naseum, I am going to bring this back around to those damned roses. The ones that refused to just blossom. The ones, that given the time and space eventually did bloom! Next to it though, is the other rose. You know the one. The one that no matter what you do, it just stays the same. No buds, no roses, no sign of color. The scrawny little plant next to the blooming phlox that are going to bloom and shine no matter what I do or don’t do. But it is there….and nothing I did changed that plant for the better. In fact it looks much worse than when we brought it home. When first planted it it had gorgeous pale yellow and pink roses and now it simply stands alone, no flowers, no color. Lifeless. And yet it is not. And so I will wait and be patient and hope and try some new things and hope and wait that perhaps one day…maybe even next summer that it will again yield a beautiful bloom or two, but you just never know.

Sad little rosebush..no buds!

And that is the imprecision of teaching and learning in a nutshell. We can do all we can and still there may be those roses that will never bloom, at least not while you are around. And that is ok. Maybe it is not their time. Maybe what is happening on the inside is more important than the product. It is not always what we “see” that matters in the long haul.

And so we begin a new year…and I do so love the feeling of new beginnings. It is what makes me a true New Englander. As much as I hate the seasons I need the seasons. So little leaves on the back deck, I welcome you, but not entirely as I sweep you off and honor the space of summer as long as I can!

THINKING is Passionate, Purposeful and Playful

Posted on June 18, 2013 by conversationeducation

Lately I have been thinking about what creates real readers and writers. Much of this thinking comes out of the work I am doing in creating and planning a graduate course I am teaching this summer called: Passion, Purpose and Play: Creating Real Readers and Writers.

(See here if you are interested in one of our UNH Summer Literacy Institute courses as we still have some openings.) http://www.unh.edu/english/media/pdfs/Archive%20NHLiteracy/2013SummerInstbrochure.pdf

I think back…what made me a reader? A writer? And there are sharp moments in time that changed my thinking and the way that I saw myself forever. One of those moments was when I was a sophomore in High School and my teacher was Mr. Dave Krauss. We were reading Lord of the Flies. Nothing revolutionary as many high schools today are still doing the same thing and reading many of these same classics some 30 years later. But something in this experience for me was different.

I recall heated class discussions and at one point I even remember my face flushing to a bright crimson red as I stood up and shouted out, “That is NOT fair!” The entire class stopped and looked back at me and Mr. Krauss said, “Tomasen, I need to see you after class.” I was mortified. As a resident “good girl”, always sitting in the back of the class, don’t make any trouble kind of student, I felt as if my face might pop as it got even redder and my eyes begin to sting with tears.

Photo Credit: esioh.com

After class I walked up to Mr. Krauss’s desk full of shame and defeat he asked me to sit down and asked me what was so upsetting. Our discussion started with the idea of fairness and he assured me that “nothing in life was fair”. I argued that life should be. He did not disagree but talked about how there would be merit to thinking about things not in terms of fairness, but in terms of how each individual person is in this world. He didn’t yell at me. I didn’t get in trouble. In fact, it was the opposite. He encouraged me to speak my mind more frequently and the he welcomed my thoughts and ideas just like everyone else’s. For the first time in my life I realized that perhaps I had something to say “in class”. This was huge for me. My thinking mattered for the first time in my entire school career.

Photo Credit: Facebook

Fast forward 30 plus years to where I am planning for this course and out of nowhere jumps into my hands the original copy of Lord of the Flies that I read in High School. For the life of me I didn’t remember ever even having it, and yet here it was. The cover looked outdated and as I opened the book the spine cracked with a pop as the old book cardboard smell wafted into my head. What was revealed inside was sheer magic.

Marked in red pen and some pencil and then some blue pen was MY thinking as a sophomore in High School. Words and phrases were underlined and in the margins were the words, authority, changes in attitude, role of society rules? It had never dawned on me that perhaps the reason this book stuck with me, that this experience was one of great magnitude might also have been because I was able to actually WRITE in this book and keep track of my thinking.

I wish I could remember the circumstances around this annotating. Was the school getting a new set because these were worn out? Was this common practice? Not that I remembered. What did Krauss know that nobody else did? And as I looked at the red ink I was instantly transferred back to remembering the actual red pen, the one that I used to use in my practice teaching in my bedroom. “The” red pen of authority. It was old and clear and the ink was clotty. As I looked at my own handwriting I could recall moments of writing in this book and feeling so “grown up”. Grown up in a way that made me feel smart. I recall writing things just because I could even if they were not great thinking. I loved the act of writing in this book!! I don’t remember doing this again until college and again the nostalgia of marking and writing in between and around the lines makes me feel giddy!

So could it be that something as simple as annotating a text is playful and inspires passion and great purpose? These words, in our schools, are not in vogue. It is rare we talk about the passions, the purposes or the play anymore. And while I have always hated the red pen as a student and teacher of writing, it was this old crimson that recorded my thinking and allowed me to participate in discussions that made me a real reader with authority.

It was during this course that I decided I would be an English major. I wonder if Mr. Krauss understood the power of what he was creating for me as a student in the name of passion, purpose and play? And underlying all of these “p” is thinking. Thinking is fun! It promotes passion, creates purpose and is playful and discovering one’s own thinking is priceless.

Photo Credit: jackgallery.wordpress.com

I would love to find Mr. Krauss. The last I heard of him he was working at the Admissions office at UNH and when I was a student I visited him. He has long been gone and I have no idea where he ended up. As a fellow educator I wish he could read this and understand just what he did for me and how it created the path that I am still on…one that is still seeking equality. One who still stands up, turns bright red and shouts, “That’s NOT fair” regardless of the lessons learned years ago that we live in an unfair world.

Somebody’s gotta do it!

It’s only fair.

Think about it.

Reflections on Drama, Drama Worlds and the Land of Misfit Kids

Posted on June 4, 2013 by conversationeducation

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in him time plays many parts.” William Shakespeare, As You Like It.

I have always been a great fan of using drama and movement in the classroom. Here I look at the dramas that unfold regardless of what we do or don’t do.

As I enter the room I look around. Who is here? Who is not here? Who is talking to whom and who is not talking to anyone? What is the “pulse” of the group today? Is the energy high? Low? Medium? Do I read stress, playfulness, and exhaustion? What does this group hold today? What dramas are unfolding before my eyes? What will happen in this class today?

Photo Credit: hobbinol.wordpress.com

By observing drama worlds within our classrooms we then invite our students to “read” the drama actions going on in their worlds with a heightened sense of awareness, reflection and learning. Each classroom is unique just as each individual within each classroom is unique. Understanding one’s self, the group and being able to “see” from someone else’s point of view allows us to teach empathy and real life skills that will be forever invaluable for our students. We can call this “dramatic consciousness” where we ask of our students and ourselves to be aware of what is happening in and around us, within the books we read, the characters we create and the meaning that we ultimately make for ourselves.

“Dramatic consciousness means bring aware that there is dramatic action taking place in one’s life, in one’s work, in the lives of the people who make up the school community. It implies being present to that drama, engaged in its passions, struggles and adventures, rather than being psychologically distant, removed from the action.”

Robert J. Starratt, The Drama of Schooling: The Schooling of Drama

Photo Credit: http://www.adaptastraining.com

One year, my first year at a new school I had the privilege of getting a class of “misfits”. I say this with love for each of these children, but the truth of the matter was that I had gotten all of the students whose parents had not made requests for other teachers. I was new, the unknown and the keeper of all of the students whose parents did not know to make requests or were just not interested in doing so. This group of kids was one of the most challenging and consequently rewarding groups I have ever worked with. We spent much of the year working on group dynamics and accepting people for who they were. When I say misfits I am talking about all of those kids who had something incredibly special about them that had yet to be nurtured. They were a group for whom school was not a comfortable stage. They were a group, who by the end of the year became the tightest knit group of students I have ever had.

“And so faith is closing your eyes and following the breath of your own soul down to the bottom of life, where existence and non-existence have merged into relevance. All that matters is the little part you play in the vast drama.”

-Anonymous

As individuals they were as different as they were talented. The everyday work of school, sitting at one’s desk and performing a series of tasks was not going to work for not just a couple of them, but literally for none of them. If they were not coded then they were labeled with some kind of something that supposedly hindered their ability to learn. They were also the group that took to drama more than any other. It was a way for them to be and to show their learning through movement. It was what eventually made this group do things that were beyond comprehension. Every day was filled with dramatic activities and chances for kids to “become” someone other than themselves. Puppetry, theater, role-playing, Picture Book Dramas, Joke – Telling, Songs, Poet’s Theater were parts of every day often inspired by the students themselves.

One beautiful spring day I was called to the principal’s office to discuss an upcoming “fight” that was to take place the very next day. The rumor was that many of the kids in my class were involved. Involved? That was putting it mildly. They had all gotten together as a class for each recess for weeks and worked on the planning and execution of this upcoming “event”. It was to be a showdown between two boys in our class who had agreed to “fight”. There was a marketing committee who went around at each recess talking up the upcoming event. There was a sales committee that created and sold tickets to the event. There were judges, participants and even prizes to be donated by various other students in the class. There were flyers made, and all of the the other third grade classes were buying the tickets and oh yes, did I mention, they were also placing bets on who would be the winner? In their own time they had created an entire drama world where each of them were the stars. The organization, thoughtfulness and planning that went into this event was amazing. But, we were at school and what were we going to do about this? The fight was cancelled, much to the relief of the contenders and monies were returned to the rightful owners. Letters of apology were written and yet, through it all there was a part of me that was actually proud of these kids and what they had almost pulled off.

“I love acting. It is so much more real than life.”

-Oscar Wilde

Photo Credit: http://www.tumblr.com

So, I took the pulse of the group and ran with it. We broke down the drama of the event they had planned, unpacked it and gathered on the carpet and discussed all of the skills they used to plan and eventually execute such an event. After mapping them out I proposed that we use all of these skills in order to plan an event that might actually help someone or a cause. The thinking began and the ideas started to flow. What would we do? At the time we were studying the rainforest and after careful consideration it was decided that we, as a class, would buy a portion of a rainforest. The efforts to raise money began as the kids headed up different committees and the money was eventually earned and we purchased an acre of a rainforest that would never be destroyed. We received a picture and a document stating it had been saved and the best part was that out of this planning and execution nobody got hurt and even better part of the world was saved.

“Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews.”

John Updike

It seems to me that too often in our school worlds we see things in black and white. Sure, what they planned was inappropriate for school, but as a group it was an amazing feat. Here was a group of kids who lingered on the outskirts of the popular kids, who became, as a group, the focus of the third grade recess. They had planned an event that every other third grader wanted to be a part of. As a group these students created and made a drama world where they were center stage and not behind the scenes where most of them had been most of their school careers. And even as I write this I realize that this is not completely true because many of those kids were front and center, but not in a place that was helping them. Many were in trouble with the “law” for numerous accounts and even in this we need to ask, what is the drama action that is happening and what need is it fulfilling? Attention. Working together they were able to get this attention in a positive way.

We spend a great deal of time focusing on everything that is wrong. What is right? These kids were brilliant….but school was never a place where their genius was discovered. I just think we can do better. And part of better is helping kids to see their roles in life, in school and as individuals. Lights, Camera…ACTION!

Photo Credit: shakespeareinaction.wordpress.com

The Joke is on You

Posted on May 21, 2013 by conversationeducation

“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear,” Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in “The Wisdom of the Ego.”

“Why did the cookie go to the doctor’s office?”

“Because she was feeling crummy!”

“Do you get it?”

My 4 year old daughter, Emma loved to tell this joke when she found herself in new strange hospital situations. Humor is one of those incredible gifts that we all have for making human connections. This was her way of taking some kind of control over her illness and she loved to tell this joke over and over. The delight in her eyes in seeing who “got it” was sheer heaven, thinking she was so clever and loving the joke over and over herself. There was something in this joke she could see that made her enjoy it every time she told it. She “got” it and was always sure to ask, “Do you get it?”

Photo Credit: http://www.fun2video.com

The getting it is like the ultimate secret that she is privy to; the delight is making sure that everyone is able to enjoy the magic of the punch line in the same way as the teller. And there is an art to telling a good joke and the feedback is instant…did you get a laugh or not? You can always tell those who get it as an expression of knowing crosses their faces, and then there are those that laugh to be polite and those who are laughing as they are still trying to figure it out. We have all been there, at one end or the other and of course the worst place to be is to be the jokester that gets no laughs at all. It is a tough lesson, but one that you can do something about right away.

In the classroom one part of our morning meeting was joke telling. There were some rules surrounding the telling. First the joke had to be appropriate for school. Yes, of course there were those who pushed the limit, but for the most part kids were able to discriminate between those that would be acceptable and those that would not. Just trusting them allowed them the freedom and the responsibility to make good choices.

The second rule was that you had to practice the joke at least three times and that you had to get a laugh at least one or two of those times before volunteering for morning meeting. This was for two reasons; one was to work on the delivery and to work on making it funny. We would talk about what made a good joke and what didn’t. We talked about the emphasis being on the punch line and how to deliver an effective punch line. These could be classified in our under reading with expression, the importance of audience and comprehension studies. (How is that for meeting standards?) It was a clear test of whether the child understood the joke or not based on the reaction of the audience. If it was not funny we worked together as a group to think about what could be done with the joke to make it funnier. This is revision in real life. Then the child would take his or her newly revised joke out into the world and wait until it was funny enough to bring it back to the class.

Everyone had ownership of the joke by then and often there would be many versions of the same joke told over and over again. This gave us time to talk about the fact that authors do this all the time. Once someone has a great idea then other authors try to take the basic idea and make it their own. We talked about how this often happened with jokes and that jokes changed regularly in their details because joke-telling is typically an oral form of literacy that is passed on from person to person. The game of telephone is a great way to show how things change based on the oral telling and that people all hear things differently.

I would always begin the year telling a joke to model how to tell a joke. I would overemphasize the telling in order to be able to point out to the class just what it was I was doing and that there are things that you can do to tell a good joke. The joke I told was about a chicken that goes into the library to get a book. He goes up to the librarian and says, “Book, book book”. This is said like a chicken saying bok, bok, bok with a high voice. (This is hard to put into writing!) The chicken takes the book and returns within 10 minutes shouting the same thing to the librarian, “Book, book, book”. The librarian thinks this is strange but gives the chicken another book. Sure enough if you have heard enough jokes you know that this chicken is going to be back in no time. This structure allows us to look at it closely and see there is predictability in jokes and that if you wanted to make up your own joke then like fairy tales, the magic number of 3 often appears. Well, the chicken magically does show up again but this time the librarian wants to know what is going on, knowing the chicken could not have read either of those books so quickly. She gets on her coat and decides, after giving the chicken yet another book, to find out what is going on by following the chicken. The chicken leaves the library, heads up a big hill, out into a field and through the forest to a clearing. (Again here is a way a leading the audience into what we know is going to be the punch line. I talk about slowing down here and that when I do the audience almost leans in waiting, waiting, waiting and thinking get to the punch line already!) At the edge of the clearing is a pond. The chicken walks over to the edge of the pond where a frog is sitting. The chicken pulls out the book and shows it to the frog. The frog looks at it and promptly replies, “READ IT. READ IT”. Of course this is said like a frog instead of ribbit it is read it. These slight changes in voice are very important because without them the joke is just not funny! So, okay you are thinking this is a dumb joke, and it is. It is also, however an excellent model for kids because it is clean and it contains so many elements of a good joke. This gets kids thinking about their own jokes and jokes they have heard in the past. Often one of the hardest things to do is to just remember the joke. I tell the kids that having one or two good jokes in your pocket is a great way to be in a new crowd. Everyone loves a good joke. But is has to be a GOOD joke. A bad joke won’t get you very far. This also encourages kids to think about themselves in social settings and to think about when it is appropriate to tell a joke and when it is not.

Photo Credit: http://www.randyshomestead.com

“Jokes compact the elements of storytelling into bite-sized mini-narratives. They are not just funny. For writers and editors, they are models that can help teach storytelling” Chip Scanlon, the Poynter Institute.

Joke telling is a form of storytelling; something that we can use to help our young readers and writer’s to see the elements of a story in a very compact version. To tell a good joke the teller must prepare the reader by setting the stage introducing main characters and setting, the chicken, the librarian and the library.

Next is to provide some kind of background for the reader, in knowing the structure of many jokes, one is sure that the chicken will be coming back at least a couple more times. Also using the voices allows for the characters to know more about them. She is a female chicken with a high voice; the librarian is suspicious about a reading chicken from the beginning.

The joke relies heavily on creating scenes that the reader can follow. The chicken comes and goes, comes and goes and does these actions very quickly, leading the librarian to become even more suspicious.

A good joke creates suspense, engaging the reader as they sit and listen, leaning in to find out what in the world is going to happen next and often this is done through conflict. The conflict here is for the librarian who is miffed that this chicken keeps on coming back without having read a book!

Next it builds to a climax and a clear resolution. We know that when the chicken leaves and the librarian follows that we are going with her and that we will find out instantly just what the chicken is up to.

Finally, is that wonderful element of surprise, the “aha” moment where we wonder how we didn’t get it all along. It is funny that the chicken is trying to get the frog a new book and so we laugh with this quick resolution and twist that we can visualize as being very funny.

Derek was a small fourth grader who had a hard time fitting in. Not only was he smaller than all of his classmates, but also he was somewhat goofy looking and gangly. He had a hard time finding his place in the world and was often seen getting into it with kids. If there was trouble, then Derek was in the middle of it. In the classroom he struggled. As a reader he struggled the most. For Derek, this opportunity to tell jokes, this place where being the class clown was encouraged was his place to shine. By the end of the year he had found every joke book in his local area. I will never forget the day he showed up with a book the size of Webster’s heaved up under his arm. It was titles “A Million and One Jokes.” Derek would sit for hours pouring over this book in search of the perfect joke. It was a ridiculous book for him as it was laden with jokes that were so out there that I didn’t get a lot of them. Many of them politically motivated from cultures all over the world. The schema one would have to have for many of these jokes would put Google to shame! The print was as small as anyone could imagine, but he continued to read over it, searching for that one joke that he did get! And he would know when he would get it. You want to talk about serious close reading. He was getting to know himself as a reader through this insurmountable task he had set for himself. He would carry that book everywhere…and did I mention it must have weighed 25 pounds??

Photo Credit: blogs.women24.com

At first he would tell jokes that none of us got. Eventually, though he was able to work on finding a good one, practice it and in no time Derek became one of the classes favorite joke tellers. This was his forte’. This was his place to find comfort and acceptance for who he was. This also gave him a very real reason to read and to read for meaning and with purpose. It also gave him a real reason to write as he then went on to write his own jokes. At morning meeting it would be Derek that everyone wanted to tell a joke. Each day we had time for three jokes. On days when nobody else would volunteer, they would all chant Derek’s name and he would get up and do his own version of a Leno monologue telling joke after joke. He was good. I don’t know where Derek is today, but I have a hunch that someday I may see him on stage at the Laugh Factory!

We need to value children, for who they are, not who we want them to be. We need to look at each child and find the strength inside of him. Derek could also easily have dropped out of school. It was not a place that he “typically” succeeded and joke telling allowed him to have a place in our classroom community for who he was. Don’t get me wrong. This was not that all magical cure and Derek continued to struggle each and every day in the classroom and on the playground, but offering this as an option allowed for Derek and other kids to use their humor in an effective and constructive way. It also allowed Derek to take some of the painful anger in his life and poke fun at that as well. Doris Kearns Goodwin writes in Team of Rivals, a study of Abraham Lincoln where she focused on “the vital role humor and storytelling played in Lincoln’s melancholy personality.” , “He laughed, so he did not weep. He saw laughter as the ‘joyous, universal evergreen of life.’ His stories were intended ‘to whistle off sadness.’”

Photo Credit: http://www.worthychristianforums.com

We should each laugh as many times in the day as we can. I remember reading somewhere that we use so many more facial muscles to frown than to laugh…therefore frowning causes more lines in the wrinkles of life. So heck, let’s laugh or in the end…the joke is on you!!

The Power of Modeling, Connection, Trust and Play

Posted on May 14, 2013 by conversationeducation

When my daughter Emma was three, she was playing happily in her corner of the kitchen where I had created her own little “house” complete with a wooden hutch, oven, highchair and cradle for her own dolls. She spent hours creating her own reality of being a Mom. One day I was about to wander in when I stopped and peered around the corner (yes mothers do spy!) and as I watched her rock her baby and look into her eyes adoringly, one of those warm washes of love and perfection poured over me. It was a moment that I wanted to sink into and enjoy.

Emma took her baby, placed her into the high chair and began feeding her and gently said, “Eat, dammit. Eat your food, dammit.”

Emma

I stood there in horror, unable to move and continued to watch. After the lovely meal, Emma placed her baby into the cradle and in a very nurturing way, covered her up with the blanket and said, “Now time to go to sleep, dammit.”

Again, that word hit me, smacked me right across the face and left a sting. What had happened to my perfect mother moment?

“Emma”, I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Putting my baby to bed. She is tired.”

“I see that. I heard you use a “D” word that I was wondering about.”

“A D word?” she contemplated. “Oh, Dammit?”

“Yes that is the one.”

“Oh, that is my baby’s name Momma.”

Silenced again.

The power of modeling…

I have been known to tell this story when working with teachers to show how modeling is one of the most powerful tools we have and that we can use it to show our literate lives for our students every day. It is what we do, not just what we say. We need to talk about what we read, write and wonder; to show them first hand that literacy is not about school, it is about life and how we choose to live this life. When students see that we are interested in writing, reading books, articles, blogs, on-line periodicals, newspapers etc., they can “see” how we live each literate day. When we talk about a great book we found at a used bookstore or bring in our favorite children’s book, they can catch a glimpse of our lives beyond the four walls of school. And they begin to consider theirs as well.

Bridging the gap between “school” reading and “life” reading is critical. As an instructor in the English Department at the University of New Hampshire’s Learning Through Teaching professional development program, I have the privilege of going into classrooms and supporting teachers in their coursework. Every time I enter a classroom I have my Writer’s Notebook and other sundry of books with me. It could be a couple of children’s picture books, the current novel I am reading, or more recently my Ipad. Kids ask me about the ever-present essentials (appendages?) that I carry with me. They are curious and I can open them up and share small pieces of myself with them. It is an entry point for conversations about reading and writing.

When I am modeling a lesson for a teacher or group of teachers, I start by talking to the class about my passion for reading and writing; my excitement over a new author I have found, what I am working on myself in writing or how a word looks or sounds. And it is authentic. I love words. I love to read and write and when kids feel that from me, they too want to be a part of that energy. It is infectious and it is not hard to get them to buy in as I ask them to repeat a word with me, a nice long juicy word like onomatopoeia, that they can take home with them and share with their families. “There is a world in a word,” Lev Vygotsky wrote and it’s up to us to open up those worlds.

Toting Libba Moore Grey’s, My Momma Had a Dancin’ Heart under my arm, I entered Emily Spear’s wonderful and familiar first grade classroom where I was greeted with hugs and an offer for one of those famous birthday cupcake that are handed to you with great love and grey grubby hands. I received the confection’s love, knowing it would never get eaten and smiling at the gesture.

I settled into the comfy rocker and had a brief time to reconnect as they told me about their latest ventures in writing. Voices rang all around me as they shared their latest “sound” words. Three little girls got closer and asked about the pink necklace I was wearing twirling it in their hands and marveling when I told them it was a crystal. “ooooh…you must be rich!”. I explained it was a gift from my sister and that SHE was the rich one because she had ME for a sister. They giggled.

Taking this time to connect with these kids is a critical part of the modeling process. It only took a few minutes, but in that time my words and actions showed them I was interested in THEM. This gives me an advantage because I have re-established our working relationship and can then move into our writing time together. I am reconnecting and we are exchanging trust in these small moments.

I read aloud, knowing that I wanted to model Moore’s use of playfully hyphenated words as a craft the kids could name and experiment with. I stopped and wrote some examples on the white board:

tip-tapping

song-singing

finger-snapping

We talked about these words and wondered why the author would use the hyphen. They quickly identified that it made it into one word, made the reader say the word more quickly and created rhythm. For each dance in the book I asked for a volunteer to get up and “perform” each season’s ballet. They were eager to move and the movement brought this story to life for all.

We then brainstormed a name for these words and the list consisted of

1.describing words

2. two words in one

3. DASH-ing words.

It was democratically decided that DASH-ing words described them most accurately because of the dash (hyphen) and use of the suffix ”ing” on the end of each word. And while some may be thinking this is not correct it is playful and something the kids will remember. Let’s just call it poetic license! Next, I asked them to go and try out some of the DASH-ing words in their own writing.

And the play began. Some kids came up with what we called Double DASH-ing words such as tweet-tweet-tweeting. Morgan, who I thought was struggling was left to her own thinking for some time and arrived at my side with this incredible poem:

Swish-swash

Slush-sliding

Icicles-banging

Against the long

White world

But the world

Is not always white

Wow! I just love the image of the long white world…

We all came back to the carpet, shared our DASH-ing words and created a chart with all of the examples the kids had come up with, creating a classroom “model” that they could refer back to and add to.

Photo Credit: http://recoveringyou.com/trusting-an-addict/

I left the room, again humbled at the brilliance of these kids and just what they can do if given the time, space, place and a model of what is possible. Trusting our students. What a concept and something we can all do, Dammit!!

Conversation Education

Talking through what it means to lead a literate life and beyond.

Tag Archives: purpose

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Learning as a Deeply Personal Experience: On Teaching Readers and Writers

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Reflections on Drama, Drama Worlds and the Land of Misfit Kids

The Joke is on You

“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear,” Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in “The Wisdom of the Ego.”

The Power of Modeling, Connection, Trust and Play

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“Humor, like hope, permits one to focus upon and to bear what is too terrible to bear,” Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, writes in “The Wisdom of the Ego.”

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