A video that I can't stop thinking about.

Battling Disillusion

I haven't updated this blog since June, though I have done much written reflection about the things I've read and my experiences with teaching. Every potential post stays in draft mode or in my composition notebook. Without sounding too dramatic, the reason for my lack of writing is that I have just felt so incredibly disillusioned with academia and formal education that it has been difficult for me to write. Sitting through classes and discussing theory has become damn near intolerable. I see truth in the things I read, but I recently realized how much I rely on theory rather than practice or experience. The more I reflect on learning, the more I come to understand that authentic learning happens through practice. I do not currently feel like I am able to practice.

Yesterday in my Pedagogy, Curriculum, & Assessment course, Amanda Thein, co author of  Teaching To Exceed The English Language Arts Common Core State Standards: A Literacy Practices Approach For 6-12 Classrooms, skyped my class to discuss the book. When speaking about formative assessment, she said that assessment should often be a meta-cognitive activity. As a teacher,  you should identify your own personal teaching goals (as well as the goals of your students) when assessing how well your learning community is learning. I found a lot of truth in this idea, and so I set out to attempt to write out my overall goals for teaching ELA in a public school classroom. My first overarching goal for teaching ELA is to empower students with their own literacy. I want my students to understand and use their voice. I want to be and help create agents of change within our society. Great idea, yeah? Except I'm a big ol' hypocrite. A phony. A sham. I dazzle you with a fancy phrase like "agents of change" and yet I do nothing to use my own voice and make changes within my own community. I have turned into exactly what I feared: I let go of my identity and isolated myself in academia. I stopped focusing on my own development as person that exists in a real world that deals with real issues. I let these abstract ideas stew in my brain and do nothing to bring them into the world with action.  I have sat in circles in a college classroom and spoke about connecting community and classrooms and yet I have not even begun to take the small steps to connect with the people in my own community. I cannot be a teacher that speaks about using literacy to affect the world if I do not do that myself.

Even worse, I have let the pressures of social norms and academic standing take hold of myself and my writing. I no longer feel like I own myself, my writing, or my own education. I think I may have accidentally fallen into a system I hate, and I'm not sure how to jump out. I do not want to be a woman that shields her true self in order to maintain her position in society. I want to challenge social norms! I want to stand up and be unafraid to share ideas even if I'm wearing a Mrs. Frizzle rainbow skirt or have purple hair. Right now I feel as though I am help back by anxiety about how my less-than-conservative identity will be received. I have compromised aspects of myself in order to fit into academia. A few days ago while writing log reflections about my classroom time, I wrote about an episode in which a student questioned my authority as a teacher because of my age. When searching for solutions to this, I actually wrote down "dressing more maturely and asserting myself as an authority figure." Who am I? Why have I become like this?

I think my main issue is that my college classrooms seem so very isolated from the rest of the world. I have begun to gauge my intelligence based on my school performance (grades) rather than HOW I have used what I have learned. In fact, I am so preoccupied with my school performance that it has become my ONLY performance in the world. I am gauging success based on a product (a degree/grades) rather than the learning process and the connections I make within the world using literacy. At some point, I began boxing myself into the classroom and stopped making direct connections between the classroom and the rest of society. 

I am desperately trying to find my place within the school system, but I question how I feel about the amount of teacher agency I am willing to sacrifice to fit into this system. I am in now way abandoning teaching, but I think that perhaps I need to step back and reexamine my goals and expectations of becoming a certified teacher in Louisiana. Can there be a space in a schools in which I can be myself as well as an effective teacher? I feel like I am threatening the authenticity of learning because I am censoring my personality and conforming to social norms. I see a huge disconnect between my education and my life. 

I think all of this might be calling for a break from the academic life. I am contemplating taking a year to focus on experience and reexamine my reasons for attending college. If my primary motivation is to get a degree and make money and work, I'm doing this wrong. 

I am losing the joy of discovering knowledge and I can't pin point where I went wrong. As I told my husband earlier, I feel as though I got onto a bus to happy passion town but somewhere along the way I got off at a stop and got on the wrong bus. I think I might be in the right area, but this bus just isn't cutting it for me. I need to find the right bus. 

Edit 10/14/14

So after posting this, I had some really great conversations with other pre-service teachers, experienced teachers, and one super fantastic awesome great convo with my college adviser. I realized that a lot of the issues I am having stem from my realization that I am not making meaningful connections to the people around me. I have been stepping back and avoiding "the work" of friendships. The more experiences I have in English Amped, the more I come to understand that there is real power in physically being present with other people and sharing stories. Right now I am an not actively engaging. I don't know nor understand many of the issues members of my community face. I really have isolated myself. That being said, I am acknowledging my problems and I am finding options for growing and developing this part of myself. I'm looking into some volunteer organizations around Baton Rouge and I'm feeling optimistic about my future in education. Right now, I think that I need to trust that I am expert in my own life, and that I should follow my heart about exploring where my place is within the education system. I don't want to be another teacher that propagates the cycles in which our society is stuck. I also don't want to be a teacher that emphasizes the power of language, but doesn't use that power herself. I need to take a step out of my comfort zone as a student. I need to get to know myself, my voice, and the people around me. If I can't at least make an effort to start to get to know these things, then what am I doing becoming a teacher? 

6 New Adult Texts with Interesting Structures and Formats

This week I am a part of a workshop put on by Sharon Kane called "Best Foot Forward: Using New Adult Li to Promote Civic, College, and Career Readiness." This workshop is a part of LSU's first Young Adult Literature Conference. I chose to join Sharon's workshop because the title was incredibly intriguing. First of all, just what the hell is "New Adult" lit? How is it different than Young Adult (YA) lit? Is it different than YA?
I also couldn't help but be curious as I have only heard the phrase "college and career readiness" about a million and four times since I decided to become a teacher, but I had never heard this phrase used when talking specifically about young adult literature. As a matter of fact, I had just assumed that "college and career readiness" was a buzzword created by politicians and education reformers that held no real meaning.

On the first day of the conference, I received the article "What's New About New Adult?" written by Sophie Brookover, Elizabeth Burns, and Kelly Jensen. The article gives a bit more clarification into this emerging New Adult (NA) genre. The article explains that though YA literature already has an established "coming of age" sub genre, YA coming of age is about a teenager's (usually age 12-17) first few experiences and steps towards deciding who they are and what they want to become. NA literature is about the story of actually becoming that person. NA adult literature typically has a main character age 17-26.

So essentially New Adult books are books for older teens and early twenties new adults that are making the transition into adulthood. Amy Bright described it as "If YA literature is about 'firsts', NA literature is all about 'seconds.' " These books tackle issues like establishing a life after high school, establishing adult identity, working towards a career, gaining independence from parents, and establishing "serious" romantic relationships.

So while learning about this emerging genre this week, I have discovered that NA literature, like YA literature, is not at all literature that's "in a box." NA literature spans many genres, styles, and perhaps more interestingly, many structures and formats. Below is a text set I created of New Adult texts that are outside of our usual classroom canon, but could potentially supplement the canon if needed.  I'll include some common core standards that might be used to justify or defend their use in a classroom.

6 New Adult Texts of Various Structures and Formats

Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

 by David Leviathan and Rachel Cohn

"It all starts when Nick asks Norah to be his girlfriend for five minutes. He only needs five minutes to avoid his ex-girlfriend, who’s just walked in to his band’s show. With a new guy. And then, with one kiss, Nick and Norah are off on an adventure set against the backdrop of New York City – and smack in the middle of all the joy, anxiety, confusion, and excitement of a first date."

Why it's on the list:

Nick and Norah is written in alternating chapters. Each chapter is the inner monologue of Nick or Norah, presenting a unique book that gives both both and female perspective of dating, college, independence from parents, and quite a few other new adult themes. 

Sabriel 

by Garth Nix

"Sent to a boarding school in Ancelstierre as a young child, Sabriel has had little experience with the random power of Free Magic or the Dead who refuse to stay dead in the Old Kingdom. But during her final semester, her father, the Abhorsen, goes missing, and Sabriel knows she must enter the Old Kingdom to find him. She soon finds companions in Mogget, a cat whose aloof manner barely conceals its malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage long imprisoned by magic, now free in body but still trapped by painful memories. As the three travel deep into the Old Kingdom, threats mount on all sides. And every step brings them closer to a battle that will pit them against the true forces of life and death—and bring Sabriel face-to-face with her own destiny."

Why it's on the list:

There simply isn't enough awesome fantasy novels being used in a classroom. I'd love to see that change. Sabriel is a book about a 19 year old young woman that comes to terms with the powers inside of her, and her role in the world. It's a really neat books with a strong female protagonist (so of course I was immediately sold.) The story is engaging, but most importantly it explores the fear and excitement of new adulthood through the fun of fantasy. The book also draws heavily from Greek, Aztec, and Egyptian mythology.

Lost at Sea

By Brian Lee O'Malley

"Raleigh doesn't have a soul. A cat stole it - or at least that's what she tells people - or at least that's what she would tell people if she told people anything. But that would mean talking to people, and the mere thought of social interaction is terrifying. How did such a shy teenage girl end up in a car with three of her hooligan classmates on a cross-country road trip? Being forced to interact with kids her own age is a new and alarming proposition for Raleigh, but maybe it's just what she needs - or maybe it can help her find what she needs - or maybe it can help her to realize that what she needs has been with her all along"

Why it's on the list:

The popularity of graphic novels has been explosive over the past few years. Lost at Sea presents a textual and visual story that explores the story of how a young adult grows up and learns from her experiences during a road trip to find her soul and reclaim her identity. This graphic novel would pair nicely with a unit dedicated to visual literacy.

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

Developed by Hank Green and Bernie Su.

An online modernized adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

Why it's on the list:

What new adult doesn't love a good vlog? This web series, which stars new adults, retells Pride and Prejudice using problems that modern new adults are facing: living with your parents as a new adult, battling the trials and tribulations of college life, and of course finding and starting a career. 

Looking to justify this with common core?

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.7
Analyze multiple interpretations of a story, drama, or poem (e.g., recorded or live production of a play or recorded novel or poetry), evaluating how each version interprets the source text. (Include at least one play by Shakespeare and one play by an American dramatist.)

Born to Rock

Written by Gordon Korman, Read by Billy Hammond

"Leo Caraway, president of the Young Republicans Club and a future Harvard student, has his entire future planned. But Leo is soon thrown for a loop when he discovers that the lead singer of punk rock's most destructive band is his biological father."

Why it's on the list:

I was given this audiobook at the start of this week and just finished it up this afternoon.  It is a fun book made better by engaging and often silly voices and rocking sound affects in the audio version. Rock and punk music is often played while the narrator is speaking, and the plot of the books is 100% new adult: a summer after high school road trip to establish independence and identity, while obsessing over college, financial issues, and of course new relationships. 

Death Coming up the Hill

By Chris Crowe

"It’s 1968, and war is not foreign to seventeen-year-old Ashe. His dogmatic, racist father married his passionate peace-activist mother when she became pregnant with him, and ever since, the couple, like the situation in Vietnam, has been engaged in a 'senseless war that could have been prevented.'

     When his high school history teacher dares to teach the political realities of the war, Ashe grows to better understand the situation in Vietnam, his family, and the wider world around him. But when a new crisis hits his parents’ marriage, Ashe finds himself trapped, with no options before him but to enter the fray."

Why it's on the list:

I can't wait to read this book. It is historical fiction told entirely in haikus, and each syllable of the book is dedicated to the fallen soldiers of the war. There are 52 verses, one for each week of 1968.  Besides the unique structure of the book, this text helps bridge the gap between history, literature, and present day issues. This narrative history presents opportunities to broach subjects that are based in history, but are relevant to the student. 

Can we connect this to Common Core? 

Definitely. Should we? I don't know, you tell me. At any rate, not only can the above stories teach and engage new adults, but they can do those things while fitting into the common core standards. 

Here are just a few standards that can be used to justify the use of the texts above:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.2
Determine two or more themes or central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to produce a complex account; provide an objective summary of the text.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.3
Analyze the impact of the author's choices regarding how to develop and relate elements of a story or drama (e.g., where a story is set, how the action is ordered, how the characters are introduced and developed).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.4
Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in the text, including figurative and connotative meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including words with multiple meanings or language that is particularly fresh, engaging, or beautiful. (Include Shakespeare as well as other authors.)

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.5
Analyze how an author's choices concerning how to structure specific parts of a text (e.g., the choice of where to begin or end a story, the choice to provide a comedic or tragic resolution) contribute to its overall structure and meaning as well as its aesthetic impact.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.11-12.6

Analyze a case in which grasping a point of view requires distinguishing what is directly stated in a text from what is really meant (e.g., satire, sarcasm, irony, or understatement). 

I mean come on, what new adult books doesn't have at least a little bit of sarcasm?

Parting words:

These texts and this genre is important...yes even the  These are the texts that new adults are already reading/listening to/watching, and they are the texts that are influencing the way new adults perceive the world. Why shouldn't we use them in the classroom? They fall in line with the same standards that we already use with canonical texts. The issue, of course, is how these texts would be received by parents. Even as new adults,   I look forward to seeing how this genre develops! 

"The Midterm"

Shortly after midterms, Dr. Peckham and I agreed that I would write something that "tied in" the objectives of this course and what we were assigned to read on Thompkin, Freire, and Strickland.

Of course, being Raven, every time I sat down to write it all out, I blanked. I thought up perfect sentences in my car and while standing in the line at the grocery story, and yet every time I tried to write I froze. The things I managed to write, I saved as drafts and they sat in my blog, waiting.

I did literally every project of my semester before I started this. It just felt too important. I couldn't bring myself to half-ass it. If I was going to do this, I needed to do it right. So here I go.

THOMPKINS, FREIRE, STRICKLAND  (AND ME.)

I didn't go into this class expecting to find relationships between fear and education so often. However, after completing this class, I'm wondering how anyone ever has a conversation about our education system without mentioning fear. Fortunately for me, fear became my English 3301 class' intellectual center of gravity. Our class ripped fear apart and then examined its insides. It was an eye opening experience.

My relationship with fear and education is most clear in my fear as a teacher. I fear that one day a boogie man is going to step out, rip off my "teacher disguise" and reveal me as an ignorant fool, unworthy of respect and someone that has no business teaching how to know my ass from a hole in ground, let alone teaching English and writing. Thompkins touches on this, writing about fearing "being shown up for who I really am." Is this a fear all teachers experience, or just the insecure ones? I'm willing to bet its much more common than we hear. As teachers, this fear certainly follows us into the classroom, where our fear influences the way we interact with our students. As writers, this affects the language we use, and we carefully construct our words, doing our best to tell our stories in such a way that people not only "get it" but are impressed. So what do we do to combat these fears?

Tons of things, though what I have done is to try to learn as much as I possibly can before I open my mouth, and then to also over think everything so much that when I attempt to communicate it to another human being, it comes out "i hav much smart u shud listen 2 dis."

But seriously, fear can be a major influence in the way teachers interact with students in a classroom. Ignoring my "teacher mindset" for a moment and focusing on my experiences as a student, students have much more to fear from teachers than teachers have to fear from students. The most fear students face is grades. It makes sense, as grades are only a subjective judgement of WHO THEY ARE. I mean, come on! Of course students fear grades, and how can that not affect the way they approach school? One thing my Engl 33301 class discussed was how this fear of grades can in turn oppress a student's natural abilities and interests while in school. Students fear stepping too far outside the box to point where it affects their grades, which in turn limits creativity and innovation. If we turn to Stickland for solutions, we find the idea of a constantly confrontational classroom in which everyone (including the teacher) challenges the pedagogical authority. I love the idea of basing education around intellectually questioning the knowledge presented, but I wonder at how this approach affects student/teacher relationships, and how intimidation and confrontation can affect writing. (Here, I am reminded of our writing inventories, in which many students in class wrote about extremely negative experiences with writing due to "bad" teachers.)

When writing for an academic purpose, the words never just "flow." Why is this? Personally, I think it is because of the extreme expectations and restrictions we have placed upon writing assignments in the classroom. They are no longer "fun," but rather a purely instructive exercise, used really just get you to the next unit or lesson.

and students hate it.
It turns students away from writing, away from using their literacy as a tool of empowerment.

The heavy focus on academic writing not only takes away the student's voice, but it creates a wall between the teacher and his/her students. Because most of us have only ever had authoritarian teachers while in school, it becomes difficult to imagine a classroom in which there is no real "power struggle."  With the current state of education system, I simply refuse to believe that there is no legitimate alternative to how students/teachers must behave in academic institutions, particularity that of a classroom dedicated to teaching writing.

One of my favorite "alternative" classrooms that we read about this semester is Thompkin's classroom in which she creates a syllabus, and then literally allows her students to teach the class. Each student is assigned a topic, and then she allows them to create a lesson and teach the class. According to her, this technique drove student engagement, discussion, and though it was chaotic at times, she swears that this is an effective way to teach. This is certainly a change from the traditional classroom.The level of trust that goes into giving your students that much power! Yet Thompkins knows that allowing her students' choices, feelings, and thoughts guide her classroom will create exactly the type of environment for learning.

Still, there seems to be an exorbitant amount of trust involved in this. With that thought, I feel like we have no choice but to turn to Freire:

"Trusting the people is the indispensable precondition for revolutionary change."

What a sentence, huh?  Yet I think it might be one of the most important things I've ever heard, even if I'm still not 100% why just yet. To apply that to education:  if we can place our trust in students, and place our trust in their experiences and knowledge, what could happen? Would the world explode? Would we create a classroom environment that breeds learning and innovation?  By allowing the students to use their experiences and knowledge in a classroom, we can battle the fear we associate with authoritarian relationships (like that of a teacher and student.)

I think that many teachers in our society are so "caught up in the system," that they forget they are teaching other humans. Individuals. The ridiculous amount of test scores and grades are blinding us. We are unable to see whether or not students are actually learning and actually growing because we have dehumanized  students.

It is my belief that we need to check our preconceived notions about what a classroom needs to look like at the door. We need to contemplate genuinely trusting students and allowing them to insert their own experiences in writing and in the classroom. By releasing the "control" we have as teachers, we create an open and honest learning environment full of students that might just respect us for treating them like human beings instead of little knowledge machines.

Grades

Note: This was written on March 24, 2014, but stayed as a "draft" in my blog because I was not sure it was relevant to what I wanted this blog to be. I decided that if I wrote it, and its about education- it's relevant.

Today, I graded a paper for the first time. My mentor teacher handed me a student's short story and a rubric and said "You can try to grade this...if you want." Clearly, my mentor teacher had very little faith in my ability to grade a paper, and it turns out- she was absolutely right to doubt me. I didn't even make it to the first page of the story before I found myself absolutely torn between the student's work and my mentor teacher's rubric.  I struggled on, grading the student on grammar, creativity, use of detail, and the use of dialogue and dialect in the story using the carefully outlined rubric (no name on title page? -10.)The student wrote a wonderfully creative story about a character's search for her long lost twin sister, but the essay had quite a few grammatical errors and the student definitely needed to add more description to her characters and setting. I wrote some constructive criticism regarding the story, and then added up the "points" the student received based on the rubric my mentor teacher had given me. Based on the rubric, the student had received a 65% D. I was shocked. There was simply no way I was about to give this student's creative writing a "D". I mean, is there a better way to absolutely crush a student? Fortunately, the bell rang, ended my observation time, and I simply handed the essay and rubric back to my mentor teacher.

Driving away from the school, all I could think was "I am so, so , so not cut out for this."