CF Scavenger Hunt!

Last Tuesday, Jean and I teamed up for our Central Falls Scavenger Hunt! Between traveling around on that Blustery Day and our dear old friend, the internet, here are 10(ish) things I learned about Central Falls, Rhode Island!

1. Central Falls became The City of Central Falls, rather than The Village of Central Falls in 1895. A vote was taken and the residents of CF were EXACTLY SPLIT on the issue. It was the voters in rural Lincoln who swung the decision, wary of devoting more resources to rapidly industrializing CF.

2. Central Falls was home to one of America’s first Chocolate Factories. Chocolate Mill Overlook, located within the 6 acre River Island Park and Campground, is how local residents remember this fact today. 

3. In the late 1800’s CF had its own newspaper, The Weekly Visitor. Today, the city reads the Valley Breeze and the Pawtucket Times.

4. Jean and I found that copy of The Valley Breeze at the CF library. It’s a pretty sweet library I have to say. There was a great YA section, with resources for students applying to college and tell of a sporadically attended Manga Club. Their downstairs was a beautiful room of children’s books with a stage for story time.

                                        Replay by Sharon Creech is a          These trashy pulp fiction YA 

                                        great YA book!!                              books look great! 

5. Speaking to librarian, Jean confirmed her suspicions that woman who “became wealthy during the Gold Rush of 1849” was indeed Caroline Cogswell, and she had Cogswell Tower constructed when she passed away.

6. Oh look! Right next to Cogswell Tower was Jenks Park. Sweet swing set! Too bad it is snowing like mad!

7. It turns out there are LOTS of places for CF youth to play sports or get moving. For example, the Higginson Avenue Complex, and Macomber Stadium. Macomber Stadium, by the way, is home to PANTHER FOOTBALL!

8. I had done a little research before Jean and I headed out, and was hoping to find the monument to the four strikers who died during the Saylesville Massacre on September 10th, 1934. CF was home to many mills around Blackstone Valley, and it looks like has a quite an interesting labor history. The incident in CF was part of a larger strike across New England organized by Textile Workers. I was under the impression the monument was at Moshassuck Cemetery but…

9. Jean and I found this instead! There is a large monument to those who died during the Civil War.

There's me, displaying an inappropriate level of joy for the setting.

10. I learned this morning that CF has an active and successful Chess team! Last year the middle and high school teams went to the Super-National Championship in Nashville, TN. The High School placed 8th out 65 teams, and the Middle School tied for 7th out 53 teams. Tonight they're hosting a fundraiser, taking on local politicians!

Courtesy of the their Facebook page!

OK SO WHAT?
          Thing 1: I loved learning about the Saylesville Massacre. I had this moment where information clicked into place. There is a lot of interesting and important labor history surrounding Blackstone Valley and connected to Slater Mill because of the intense industrialization during the later part of the 19th century. THIS IS NOT ISOLATED IN PAWTUCKET. Central Falls has an intense and important history with unions and strikers, as a place so close and also filled at one time with mills and factories. I wonder how this is included in CF classrooms? I remember growing up in RI hearing a lot about poor working conditions in factories, and specifically Slater Mills. However, the labor history was left out. I think stories of people in their own communities working together to make change are important and should be shared. Finding out these histories about the communities I end up working in will be important.

          Thing 2: The Manga Club! When Jean and I went to the library and I saw the poster for the Manga Club and the Anime section I thought it was super cool! I imagined a group of local kids who got together and talked about Manga and shared some drawings. Then I remember a story from a really good friend from the Bay Area in California. He and his mother were at the library one day and he realized that people from the community could rent out rooms during the week for meetings. He a friend got really excited and decided to form an Anime Club!! They booked the room, and made flyers!! They hung them up at school and in the Anime section at the local book stores. The day for their meeting finally came.....  I imagine my friend, young and Ernest, with high hopes! He and his friend wait by the door, expected droves of other young folks reading to poor over their anime collections. Well guess, what? One other kid showed up. I laugh out loud at this story (which I guess is a little cruel?... Whatever we're friends).  But you know what? Three people was just fine for the three of them. I asked the CF librarian if she gets a lot of students for the Manga Club and she shook her head. I am afraid that some people would hear that not many students go to the clubs at their library and shake their heads muttering something negative about CF. For me, the moral of the story is that kids are kids everywhere. Learning about all the parks, Panther Football and the Chess team was great because the narrative of CF being a national disaster is really powerful. In my experiences, that is far from true. I'm not saying it's a place free of problems, but it's definitely not a place full of rowdy directionless youth like so many people would have me believe. 

Heated Agreement!

Teachers must model the skills they want their students to develop. Yes! We must do this all over the place, including with our Reading Diets! I find myself in heated agreement with the ‘windows and mirrors’ concept (Daniels, Zemelman p. 59), and I want it to be a guiding principle for selecting content in my upcoming days as a professional educator. I want to model this practice of windows and mirrors, I want to, no, SHOULD, explain my selections and how I found them. I know the pain of a long dry spell between good books because everything I picked up was b o r i n g. Choosing what to read is a skill (p. 57). It took me years to find sources I liked to keep up with current events (Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC, Rethinking Schools) and other joys and interests I have (this comic, this other comic, this tumblr). I’d love to share my years of experience finding materials with my students, and learn some tips from them! 

Some Big Ideas regarding the ‘mirrors’ end of things: If my classroom doesn’t spend time with material that reflects my students and their lives, I am saying “in effect and not by accident, ‘Hey [folks], this ain’t your place’” (p. 59). YES! Did you catch that everyone?! If your curriculum and classroom library doesn’t have some mirrors you are ACTIVELY and INTENTIONALLY telling students that school is not a place for them. Don’t do that!!!

Some Big Ideas regarding the ‘window’s end of things: students deserve an insight into the lives and experiences of others, building empathy is perhaps the most beautiful outcome of reading! I believe schools should build compassionate responsible citizens, so let’s work to make students (and ourselves!) know and learn about experiences that are not our own. Plus, you know how when you look out a window and there’s a little glare and you can can see a faint reflection on the glass? Seeing little bits of yourself in folks you thought you had nothing in common with couldn’t hurt either. Something else I really wanna do with my windows is show students a bit of the controversy and excitement that exists in my field (p. 62). I find myself again in heated agreement with the text that to get this to happen, a Reading Diet with a lot of variety is certainly the way to go. This practice has so many exciting potential outcomes! My students would know how to find opposing ideas, and how to develop their own opinions on the issue. Students would know I encourage a variety of responses and perspectives  and will feel safe in my classroom voicing their own controversial ideas. I mean, WHOA. What if I had a classroom where students were not just trying to guess what was in my brain?! So cool.

            A final piece of dietary advice I find myself in heated agreement with, before I leave you, dear reader, "We'll say it loud and clear: kids need stuff they can read. This is non-negotiable...If this means bringing third-grade materials into a ninth-grade room, fine" (p.59). Yes! Students will never think reading be enjoyable if we never let them experience joy, comfort, and fun while they do it. 

Understanding by Design Response

“Education thus becomes an act of depositing, in which the students are the depositories and the teacher is the depositor. Instead of communication, the teacher issues communiques and makes deposits which the students patiently receive, memorize, and repeat. This is the ‘banking’ concept of education, in which the scope of action allowed to the students extends only as far as receiving, filing, and storing the deposits…Knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry human beings pursue in the world, with the world, and with each other.” - Paulo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed (p. 72).

This weeks readings felt like a wonderful response to the problem Paulo Freire calls the “banking system of education”. The principles outlined in the selections from Understanding by Design (Ubd) focus on ways to plan units that will help students developing understanding of big ideas instead of regurgitating facts that will easily be forgotten. I believe that education should empower students to solve problems and UbD’s goal for students to “‘know what to do when they don’t know what to do’” (p. 78) really resonated with me.

Ubd’s model of backward design emphasizes the importance of determining what acceptable evidence will be of the learning teacher’s want to take place. Designing ongoing and authentic assessments must happen at the beginning of planning a unit, not during or at the end.  A shift in thinking I experienced is that the goal of assessments should primarily be to collect the evidence of learning rather than to generate grades. This shift represents an increased value in looking for and documenting learning, which has been encouraged during my time at Central Falls. This shift in the goal of assessments is one that could be felt by students. As the hypothetical 5th grade teacher Bob James posits, “...one thing that has always disturbed me is that the kids tend to focus on their grades rather than on their learning. Perhaps the way I’ve used assessments - more for grading purposes than to document learning - has contributed to their attitude” (p. 16). James wishes to see his students value learning. To see this shift, he must shift first. At the heart of UbD is the assertion that learning will be valued when it honors the big ideas that live beyond the classroom. This echos Freire’s call for us to acknowledge that knowledge is built “in the word, with the world, and with each other” (p. 72). I hope that this shift in how I perceive assessments will help me make my classroom a place that is interacting with my student’s worlds. This emphasis on classroom learning transferring to real world experiences is again reflected in the passages discussing what makes an essential question essential. Essential questions are alive, they are “essential for students to continuously consider so as to gain insight, make connections, and facilitate transfer of learning” (p. 76).

While many of the Essential Questions listed on pages 74 and 75 I found wonderful, one that aggravated me as future English teacher was, “What is the author saying? What makes you think so?” (I was under the impression that the author is dead.) I believe identifying the purpose of text is a useful skill, but a dangerous place to stop. The task at the heart of this essential question asserts that finding out what the author meant to say is the ultimate interpretation of a text.  It disregards that the intent of an author can be very different than the impact of the text. I would submit for replacement: “What is relationship of intent and impact?” I think this would work nicely in a social studies unit as well.

  What is your response to my critique and suggestions?

What were your reactions to the list of EQ’s? Any favorites? Any you might critique?

"Subjects Matter", Chapter 1 and 2 Response

The anecdote provided in Chapter 1 about the Fast Food Nation at Best Practice in Chicago encourages me to believe that when you help students fill their reading and writing toolboxes, they can really rise to any occasion. I’d be lying if I said the idea of my students distributing flyers and causing a bit of scene in a McDonalds didn’t worry me. Basically, I read that and my mind says, “What if someone called the cops?!?” I am really trying to imagine that… Did these students discuss the level they were going to push their protest with teachers before doing it, and what to do if someone called security or the police? Am I being alarmist? Daniels (2004) suggests later that teachers should “prefer to see students overly worked up than not worked up at all” (p. 13). This seems reasonable to me. A curriculum where students need to be reigned in does sound preferable to a unit where I need to pull them out. I loved that Daniels emphasizes that the reading and writing skills being taught are just as important as the content in allowing the students to get so worked up and be so engaged, “In this unit, for example, the teachers made use of text coding tools, book clubs, dialogue journals, bookmarks, post-it notes, text annotations, admit slips, and exit slips” (p. 4).

I appreciated very much that Daniels says “there is a robust industry of public school debunking, with think tanks pundits and publications deployed in loud unanimous doom saying” (p. 12). When community schools who need assistance are successfully portrayed as beyond assistance with the help of standardized tests, it makes room for for-profit companies to come in through the rapidly changing charter school movement. Stan Karp (2013) suggests in his article Charter Schools and the Future of Public Education that “Gradually this charter movement attracted the attention of political and financial interests who saw the public school system as a “government monopoly” ripe for market reform.” In a time where the very existence of a school can be at stake when student success is examined, it is very important to use the practices that Daniels describes which “have scientific research showing that these practices work - and plenty of it” (p. 17).

The reading exercises in Chapter 2 did a wonderful job of reminding me that much of the reading I do has become habit, I tend to just ‘click’ along. I certainly feel as though as I have “cobbled together [my] inventory of reading/thinking skills” (Daniels p. 31). The reading exercise regarding Columbus truly underscored Daniel’s point that activating a student’s prior knowledge is key, and that a student’s trouble reading is probably not an issues of poor phonics. I’m looking forward to the strategies the rest of the book will provide.  

Literacy Profile

            A truly significant literacy I’ve been developing over the last few years has been my feminist literacy. I am learning, growing, and owning feminism through conversations with amazing women, blogs and books. From that feminism, I am constructing a breathable armor and an arsenal of weapons that allows me to name the patriarchy where I see it and defend my position. It is an armour that is always under construction, ready to hear from veterans and allies. It is for an army that is fighting ideas, not the people who have not finished undergoing the radical unlearning needed to truly give equity and love to all people. Because who has truly finished that unlearning? Not me, not Gloria E. Anzaldua, not Gloria Steinem.  I believe my feminist knowledge and my supportive relationships have protected me from the full force of oppression, and this beautiful shining armor I made is something I want everyone to have. Yes, even folks who don’t identify as women! The patriarchy is trying to keep everyone in a box! To bring this around to my future classroom for a minute, the idea of being feminism’s recruitment officer in my classroom is something that really excites me about teaching.

            To explain how I got here, I will back up to Finlandia. Finlandia is the Co-op on the East Side of Providence where I lived for two and half years starting in 2011. It was the first place I ever met young women who vocalized their enjoyment of being friends with other women, and young men who didn’t ask me to acknowledge that my gender sucked just a little bit before being friends with them. “I’m one of those girls who doesn’t like girls, I usually just have a lot of guy friends,” had been this secret password used my whole life between potential female friends and I to make sure we were going to get along. “You’re not one of those caddy girls who spends all her time at the mall,” had been this weird stamp of approval from male friends which meant I could socialize in groups of mixed company. None of this happened at Finlandia. I felt comfortable there right away, but putting my finger on (one of the big reasons) why I felt so comfortable only happened over time. I also realized that these attitudes were not accidents. These folks were compassionate about learning to be better people, and about creating equity and love. Between living at the Co-op and deciding to become a teacher, I have become more politicized in the last 3 to 4 years than the rest of my life combined. It feels great!!

            My literacy in feminism grew in very small increments out of conversations with my fellow Co-opers. I got pointed to blogs like Jezebel.com (which I have since come to question greatly) and BlackGirlDangerous.org. I stumbled upon The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas and relished in its radicalism. More recently I read The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir and felt joy digging into her thorough arguments. As I had more honest conversations with my female peers, I realized that my personal and frequent experiences with sexism were the rule and not the exception. This fact remains one of the most compelling reasons for me to be vocal about feminism and why the world needs it.

            A significant development in my feminist literacy is realizing that it has meant and continues to mean different things to different women along barriers of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and class. American Feminism has consistently privileged straight, white, middle and upper-class women. In other words, women like me! Realizing this, and trying not to commit the same mistakes as I practice my feminism is really really important to me. The fact that the American Feminist movement had a racist history had been brought to my attention before but I only understood it on a superficial level. What really made it sink in for me was a talk between Melissa Harris-Perry and bell hooks at The New School in November called “Black Female Voices”. Those two women blew my mind. I had never even heard of either of them before, but the video was posted on colorlines.com which I try to read frequently because it has amazing articles and clues me into amazing things. I now regularly watch Melissa Harris-Perry on her brilliant program on MSNBC and have recently just finished Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks. Feminism is super important to me, and these two women remind me to look at the many aspects of a person’s identity which intersect.

            Developing my feminist literacy feels similar to traditional ideas of literacy to me because it has a lot to do with developing content specific vocabulary, exposing myself to published works, and discovering trustworthy sources. However, a really important aspect of it to me has been reading the ways people treat each other in day to day life with a feminist lens. For example, reflecting on the way I formed friendships in the past and realizing I was internalizing and perpetuating the idea that women are less desirable to be friends with. To be able to see these hidden aspects of sexism and to point them out in a productive way is not a part of feminism I am yet literate in. In some situations it is clear that after a warm, polite conversation someone will realize that the word “girl” should not be used as an insult. Sometimes the way a woman is written in a movie aggravates me, and while acknowledging this makes makes me angry can be satisfying, not letting that anger go doesn’t really get me anywhere. I’m working on it. Something I do know, is that feminism is a kind of literacy that empowers me and impacts my life in positive ways, which pretty much guarantees I will be a lifelong learner of it. 

Classroom Managment Observations in an AP Classroom

In Ms. ELA’s AP Literature class, classroom management is more about developing a reflective nature in her students than directly interfering during off task behavior. This is in line with her overall teaching approach for this class. Students are part of making decisions regarding reading material and deadlines and then asked to reflect on their decisions and how it affected their work. I have seen these conversations in other classes. The reasoning for this approach Ms.ELA explains as a response to the fact that students had to sign up for this class. It is the only AP Literature class and about 10 students dropped the class in the first week. The students that remain want to be there and are continually asked to show that.

This classroom management culture was evident as the class split into two groups to work on a project related to The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison. To receive one of their speaking and listening grades for semester (ohhh hi Common Core), students would stage a faux court case taking the roles of lawyers and witnesses. The class did not have a ‘do now’ or anything to really signify the beginning of class. This is in contrast to Ms.ELA’s other non AP classes which always a have a ‘do now’. I believe she does not do something like this as religiously for her AP class because she expects better behavior for them. For the most part she is right. They are pretty well behaved even though they are often off task. The class started with a discussion on attendance. It was filled in through a program set up by the school on her classroom computer. About 6 students were absent because they were on a field trip to URI. They were all from the same group. From that group there was palpable fear. How could they possibly practice as much as the other group? An absent student had all the work they’d done! She decided their group would have an extra day to work. It almost affected the level of fear in the group.

To start the academic work, Ms.ELA had the class break into their groups. She spent the first half of the class working with the group that had all its members present. She was helping them solidify their roles in the court case and helping them to flesh out their argument by citing the text. During this time the other group was not making any of their own progress and Ms.ELA was not addressing that. When she began working with the group missing students the first group began having conversations about their cousins and babies and weddings in a really obvious way. They weren’t loud but they weren’t trying to hide their conversation. She did not admonish them until it was time for the groups to check in within each other. She was calm but made statements like:

“Why weren’t you looking at this passage?”

“I don’t understand why you can’t put this together.”

Students responded with statements like:

“We should have been finding it miss.”

“Sorry miss. We’re procrastinating."

At one point during this class a student asked if they could go to the bathroom but it was too close to the end of the class. This was a school policy that prohibited students from going to the bathroom 10 minutes at the beginning of class or 10 minutes at the end.

I believe the way Ms.ELA conducts her classroom management is yielding some of the desired results. She is trying to have her students be cognisant of their learning processes. Acknowledging their shortcomings and areas that need improvement is the first part to fixing the problem. Ms.ELA comments that these students want to go to college next year, they won’t have someone collecting drafts or setting up checkpoints. I hope they develop the habits she is working to instill in them.

Observation Assignment #4

Oh my! I'm posting Observation Assignment #4 before #3! Can you handle it blogosphere? I think so! I have high expectations for y'all! 

I observed a lesson dealing with vocabulary from Krik? Krak! by Edwige Danticat and the following literary devices: antonyms, synonyms, metaphors, and similes. 

Accordingly, these are the objectives that I believe go with the lesson: 

- Students will differentiate between synonyms, antonyms, similes, and metaphors.

- Students will recall the meaning of the following vocabulary from Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat: ancestors, massacre, revolutionary, undetected.

What's that?
What level of Bloom's Taxonomy do these deal with?
Why comprehension, comrade!

I have developed the following 10 minute quiz to access the lesson:

Krik? Krak! Literary Device Quiz

Name _________________________________________________                         Date ______________

Circle the letter of the correct answer.

1. An antonym of ancestors is: 2. An antonym of undetected is:

a)forefather a)Haiti

b)descendant b)undiscovered

c)predecessor c) noticable

d)revolutionary d) blind

3. A synonym of massacre is: 4. A synonym of revolutionary is:

a) slaughter a) rebel

b) encourage   b) conservative

c) conserve c) witch

d) deliver d) night woman

5. Which of the following sentences contains a metaphor:

a) Little Guy worked like a dog to learn all his lines.

b) Lili was disapproving of the hot air balloon right from the start.

c) Everyone was thrilled when Little Guy was selected to play the role of the revolutionary.

d)The pain Little Guy felt was a knife through his heart.

6. Which of the following sentences contains a metaphor:

a) Princesse felt like a stumbling newborn at first.

b) Her first sketches empowered her beyond words.

c) Catherine was a beautiful gardenia in Princesse’s eyes.

d) Princesse thought she would cry for a million years when she learned Catherine had gone to Paris.

7.Which of the following sentences contains a simile:

a) Josephine’s mother when to great lengths to flee the Dominican Republic.

b) To Josephine’s mother, the rituals they performed were as good as gold.

c) Some readers are surprised to learn of the violence portrayed in “Nineteen Thirty-Seven”.

d) The name, Massacre River, paints a vivid picture.

8.Which of the following sentences contains a simile:

a) Caroline’s love for Eric burned deeply.

b) Ma expected her bone soup to work like a charm.

c) Grace thought Ma was being Morbid when she requested her belongings be burned after her death.

d) The weeding loomed over the rest of Caroline’s family.

Krik? Krak! Literary Device Quiz Answer Key

1. B

2. C

3. A

4. A

5. D

6. C

7. B

8. B

Microteaching II

Hello Sarah, Emily, Mi- I MEAN NICK, and Ryan!  Thanks for being a a great class on Tuesday. Looking forward to your comments : )

I Had a Great Time at NCTE Even Though Tony Danza Didn’t Show Up

         The third weekend in November, I attended the 103rd Annual Convention for the National Council of Teachers of English in Boston, Massachusetts (Whew! Try saying that ten times fast!). I attended several panels and was lucky enough to see RIC’s own Dr. Johnson present some of her research. I had never been to a conference before and it sometimes felt a little bizarre. For instance, one of the keynote speakers was Tony Danza. The actor of ‘Who’s the Boss?’ fame had apparently spent a year teaching at an urban school in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and was coming to tell a bunch of teachers who felt they had their work cut out for them that boy were they right! Whatever. But it looks like teachers really are the tough, resilient type because even with the last minute cancellation from the ‘Taxi’ star, the conference was ultimately really empowering and energizing. Who knew there are hundreds of teachers who hate the 5 paragraph essay as much as I do and have come up with a bunch of great alternatives? My favorite part of NCTE was realizing that there is a whole community of educators who see the work they do as social justice work. Who, if they wrote a book about their experiences would take a little responsibility for their own actions and not title it “I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I’ve Ever Had” (is it chilly in the shade Mr.Danza?). Turns out, these people call themselves social justice teachers and there is a whole body of academic research on the subject. What?! So cool!

   
         The best panel I attended was a roundtable discussion with a teacher who formed a Social Justice Book Club at his Title One middle school (went home and googled Title One….eep there is so much I don’t know!). He selected three 8th grade students who were well liked and had leadership potential. He let them pick 9 more students from the 6th and 7th grades using some simple guidelines. There could not be more than three students of the same ethnic background, and there had to be an even number of males and females (I spy with my little eye actual diversity!). Students then worked together to select books with social justice themes and develop reading schedules. Students discussed topics such as equity vs. equality and why only Title One schools in their area had a standard mode of dress policy. The most awesome thing they did was successfully campaign for more freedoms during their free period. After meeting with the principal and drawing up a contract, 8th graders were awarded more free period privileges. How fun would it be to work with students who call meetings with their principal (and to have a principal who is into that sort of thing)?
         
          Before attending NCTE, I knew that I wanted to create a classroom where social justice was at the heart of my lesson plans and was a topic that was often and openly discussed. However, I didn’t really know what that looked like or how to articulate my thoughts regarding the issue. I still have a long way to go in that department, but NCTE gave me all this new vocabulary and all these new ideas about what it means to be a teacher committed to social justice. For example, I now see the importance of making students realize they can be agentic forces of change in their own lives. To help them see inequity and leave it at that is a great way to create life long cynics, especially in middle school. Since the conference, I feel really excited and hopeful about being able to create a classroom I’ll have a wonderful time teaching in, even I didn’t get a chance to pick up some of Mr.Danza’s pearls of wisdom. It was wonderful to hear teachers talk about the ways their students responded so positively to social justice oriented classrooms. I am once again incredibly eager to get my own classroom and incredibly terrified because there is so much I still don’t know! At least now I am getting in touch with a whole population of like minded educators who can help point me toward some answers when I find myself, as I often do, a bit discombobulated.