I was talking to students about where words come from, getting ready to teach the word etymology. I put the word checkmate on the board and asked if anyone knew what language the word came from.
One young man spoke up immediately. “It’s from Australia.”
“Australia?”
“Yeah,” he grinned. “Check, mate!”
Last year I put together a series of lesson plans for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In the process I read the novel several times and gained new respect for Twain’s subtlety. The book had me laughing and crying and angry by turns, sometimes cheering Huck and Jim, sometimes impressed with Twain’s writing.
Writing the lesson plans also reminded me of the 2 times I have taught the novel in a classroom. I was not satisfied either time. I wrote the first effort off to the fact that I hadn’t worked with the novel before and promised myself I’d approach it more effectively “next time.” The next time was more than 10 years later, and the experience left me with a firm conviction: Huck Finn should be reserved for college-level reading. High school students aren’t ready for it.
The offensive n-word (an issue handled inappropriately by Professor Alan Gribben at Auburn University) is my primary reason. After all, it takes a certain maturity to read a word more than 200 times and not let it slip into one’s own vocabulary or not to take personal offense at it. Some high school students may possess that maturity, but the majority do not; and forcing them to read this novel will not cause them to develop it.
Many other excellent novels, biographies, or autobiographies could replace Huck Finn. The iPod generation just needs more time.
Comedian George Carlin had a routine on euphemisms in which he talked about soldiers who were unable to cope with combat any more. In World War I, he said, the condition was called shell shock. By World War II it was battle fatigue. (“We’re up from 2 syllables to 4,” Carlin observed. “‘Fatigue’ sounds nicer than ‘shock.’”) During the Korean War, the term was “operational exhaustion.” (“We’re up to 8 syllables,” he said, “but we’ve squeezed the humanity out. ‘Operational exhaustion’ sounds like something that might happen to your jeep!”) By Vietnam, the same condition was called post-traumatic stress disorder. (“Still 8 syllables, but we’ve added a hyphen!”)
I couldn’t help thinking of Carlin’s words as I read my state’s Department of Education website. It referred to the people who had developed the state’s new standards map as “educational practitioners.” At one time the professionals who worked with children were called “schoolteachers” or just “teachers.” Then we started using “educators,” which included people like librarians, guidance counselors, and administrators. I didn’t mind using “educators” when I needed an inclusive term. I preferred “teacher” for myself.
But I’m having trouble with “educational practitioners.” Is this just the 9-syllable equivalent of ‘educators,’ or is it meant to include even more people? Perhaps an educational practitioner is someone who runs a Fortune 500 company and sits on the State School Board? Might it include a senator on the Senate Education committee? Or the administrator of a charter school who has never actually been a teacher? If that is the case, what is it in education that they are “practitioners” of?
I hope “educational practitioners” does not prove to be a term that hides the people in power. I want doctors and nurses to make health care decisions, not the insurance companies. I want parents, teachers, and local administrators to make educational decisions, not politicians, however well-intentioned and invested.
Because, as Carlin pointed out, language can hide meaning as well as it conveys it: “I bet if we still called it ‘shell shock,’ the guys coming back from Vietnam would have received the attention they needed.”
Educational practitioners should be the people on the front lines who make sure kids get the attention they need.
The test question: In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, “The Raven,” the speaker is sad because ___. Students who don’t remember anything else about Poe should remember that the answer has to involve the fact that someone, somewhere has died.
But so far today 10 students have chosen this response: “someone keeps pranking him by knocking on his door and then running away.”
“I don’t want to take notes. I’m not going to need this.”
Cody sat in the back row, his arms folded across his chest, his mind made up about the value of Emily Dickinson in his life. I smiled and encouraged him to take some notes, anyway. He sighed — the deep, eye-rolling sigh of adolescence — and picked up his pen.
That night I came home and logged into my webmaster tools in search of a way to improve the page loading time at Web English Teacher. I was quickly introduced to new vocabulary and some slick tools. I followed directions, and in no time at all, the entire site had gone from a solid green background to a bad case of green stripes. So I tried again. And again. Eventually I had my solid green background back and a slightly faster page loading time. I had also picked up some geeky words. But I couldn’t help thinking of Cody.
When I was in high school, computers were the size of whole rooms, and the internet was a gray cable on the floor between a couple of computers at UCLA. We watched men walk on the moon, though, and we knew that technology was changing; we just didn’t know how. How did my teachers prepare me in the 1970s for a job in the new millennium that they didn’t know anything about?
They taught me to read, to write, and to think. The rest was up to me.
That’s really all we can do for Cody and our other students. We can’t see their future any more than our parents and teachers could see ours. But anyone who can read and interpret a poem will be able to look with confidence at a lease agreement, a credit card contract, or a web tutorial and know they can figure it out. Eventually.
I mentioned this in Cody’s class today. For the record, he was unimpressed.
I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, stepAround a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pareTo fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hillAnd neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop–docile and omnipotent–
At its own stable door.(Emily Dickinson)
We tell our principals that we come to NCTE for the workshops, and we do. But just as important, we come to NCTE to spend time with like-minded people, to let our inner reading geek or inner writing geek come out and play with friends in an environment unfettered by bells. In that spirit, I’d like to offer some vignettes from the conference:
At the M. R. Robinson dinner Saturday evening
Another beautiful day at the NCTE convention in Orlando, Florida. Roses are blooming, and we have time to appreciate them as we move from room to room or take a shuttle to another building for one amazing presentation after another.
This morning I spoke with Marjorie Larner and Don Proffit of the Asia Society, an organization dedicated to international education. We had a great discussion about how to set up rubrics for multimedia projects that find a middle ground between the minimum expectations of the classroom (“The presentation uses good grammar.”) and the indicators of a common core standard. They have some great ideas that they will be unveiling soon.
I also enjoyed a presentation by John Schilb and his team on new ways to approach “old” texts. Among many gems in that session was Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog, a springboard to discussing common points between Chaucer’s world and today.
The Tech-to-Go Kiosks, organized by Sara Kajder and now in their third year, continued to be tremendously popular, with teachers crowding around for some one-to-one technical discussion. The number of presentations at the convention that are related to technology integration has increased, but nothing beats a chance to just talk an idea through with someone who has been there. I’m looking forward to my own presentations tomorrow; one in the morning on Moodle, and one in the afternoon on digital video/podcasting.
Lea Ann Spillane at the Tech-to-go Kiosk
In the afternoon the team that published Lesson Plans for Developing Digital Literacies presented a collection of teacher-developed and teacher-tested unit plans that develop communication skills and critical thinking. Approach Macbeth as a mystery? Use a Ning social network to assist with formal research? Wikipedia is not the enemy (and here’s why)? Sounds good to me: I picked up a copy of the book at the NCTE booth on my way out.
Teaching critical thinking with Wikipedia.
The Exhibit Hall was its usual vibrant collection of books, posters, tote bags, and authors signing their works. I was happy to visit with Carey and Jan Cook of My Vocabulary.com, a resource that has undergone a major overhaul in the past few months, and with the people at Townsend Press. They have expanded their popular Bluford Series to 15 titles and have added a Teacher Guide to their lineup. The Bluford books are designed for reluctant high school readers and priced for schools with tight budgets. They would be a great resource for differentiating instruction.
Climb Inside a Poem by Georgia Heard
More tomorrow!
I’m attending the NCTE convention in Orlando, Florida, where the weather alone would justify the trip!
I attended a Thursday session featuring Troy Hicks, Bud Hunt, and Sara Kajder, who discussed some of the issues surrounding technology integration as we move toward embracing multiple literacies, multiple media for communicating student ideas. I jotted down some websites they mentioned:
Sara Kajder discusses new literacies at NCTE in Orlando.
During the secondary section get-together I heard a delightful and moving presentation from author Lois Duncan, who described events in her career and answered questions from the audience.
Lois Duncan was a wonderful speaker!
While grabbing a bite to eat at one of the convention spots, I found myself next to writer Brandon Mull, whose new series, Beyonders, will be published in March. He has already posted a Teachers Guide to his successful series, Fablehaven. He talked amiably about writing for adolescents and writing in general, and it was clear that he has found his calling as a writer.
After attending the Opening Session in the evening, it was time to call it a day. Friday workshops await!
Bill Zimmerman from Make Beliefs Comix is offering teachers new printables from his new interactive comic book for reluctant boy readers entitled, “Your Life in Comics: 100 Things for Guys to Write and Draw.” These free activity pages can be downloaded from Free Spirit Publishing. A sampling can also be found in the printables section of MakeBeliefsComix.com. Zimmerman hopes teachers will try out these pages with students in literacy and English Learners Language classes and send him feedback at wmz@aol.com. He plans to incorporate that feedback into a similar book for girls that he’s working on now.
Make Beliefs Comix is an great resource that appeals to students of all ages. I have used it with my high school juniors with great success, and I can’t imagine that younger students wouldn’t also enjoy it. The site enables students to generate comic strips. Those comic strips can explain a process, summarize a paragraph, show a vocabulary word in use, restate an idiom — you name it.
Zimmerman writes
Comic strips provide a perfect vehicle for learning and practicing language. They don’t require long sentences or paragraphs to tell a good story. Only a few words are needed for characters to reveal their stories. When we see a blank talk balloons or thought bubble floating over the head of a character, we want immediately to fill it in with words and thoughts; doing so is the first step to telling a story.
Zimmerman has also written several books that a creative teacher will find useful.
How can we help students connect what they’re learning in English class with history, science, or the arts? The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts offers support via a collection of K-12 lesson plans called ArtsEdge.
Here are some samples:
Each of these lessons is an amazing resource for the classroom. I have linked to quite a few of them from Web English Teacher, but you may want to search for yourself for science or math. The lessons are alphabetized by title of the lesson, and the search feature is a little clunky (I found myself refreshing the page often), but these lessons are worth the time it takes to find them. Happy searching!
