Equality 101

Getting my students to write is really important to me at the start of the year, especially my juniors taking AP Language and Composition. Even though they are clearly capable writers, electing to take an AP course in English, many of them begin the year intimidated and just in the summer-slump of not wanting to take the time and energy to put pen to paper. Writing is hard, and I never try to tell my students otherwise. But I do have a variety of ways I “trick” them into writing.

The first way I tricked my students this year worked really well, so I thought I’d share it here so students around the country can be lured into writing whole essays without even realizing what they are doing. I got this idea from a workshop a few years back, but had never had the time to think about how to apply it to my curriculum. Like many of my great teaching strategies, I can’t claim this one originated with me. Good teachers share; and good teachers know when to take an idea and run with it.

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Today is the first day of school for my students, and surprisingly, I’m not nervous like I was last year. (This may be the first time in my entire school career that I’m not!) I have my syllabus ready, my supply list, and my parent contact form all set to go. I have a plan for a brief get-to-know-yourself unit the first week of school (Proust and Multiple Intelligences surveys, followed by choosing and writing a narrative essay based on common college application essay prompts). I hate the survey I gave out last year (what is your favorite color? etc.) and I resolved to make my class more applicable to the real world and my students’ lives from day one. My students also told me that they get the same kind of thing in each class, so I am hoping mine will be slightly different. However, I still wish I could find something more interesting and/or geared toward team-building to do with my students on the first day or two. Read the rest of this entry →

As we approach our week of in-service, many of my colleagues and I have been discussing tweaking our classroom expectations (or, as most refer to them, rules) before the year begins. Some teachers have decided to let the students in each class create their own set of expectations, sort of like a contract between teacher and student. Some teachers are trying to make their guidelines more specific to avoid argumentative and creative students try to get out of consequences. On the opposite side, other teachers are trying to reduce the number of rules they have since students tend to adhere well to a few short and simple rules.

Last year my number one rule was respect, and it will be again this year. Above all things I believe that students should never feel uncomfortable or unwanted in my classroom. I specifically ban use of the phrases “that’s retarded” or “that’s gay,” because, after all, we’re in English class – figure out a more appropriate phrase to express yourself! I wish I could say all teachers felt equally about the demeaning nature of these phrases, but at least I show my students that there are people out there who disapprove of these terms being used in that manner. If nothing else, at least my students begin to understand why these phrases are not okay, and they also begin to navigate the world of politically correct speech. Small steps, but the sooner they learn this, the sooner they will appear more educated in the eyes of those who are listening to them speak. Read the rest of this entry →

I start work today. If I was going straight to in-service, I think I’d be lamenting the end of my summer more than I am. Instead of sitting in meetings and thinking about all the things I need to get done before my year can officially begin, I will be working with a small group of teachers and upperclassmen who want to make sure that the year starts off right for some very important people: Freshman.

I’m not sure if all high schools have a camp for their incoming freshmen; I’m pretty sure, actually, that not even all high schools in my district do what we do at my school.  But for the past four years I’ve agreed to end my summer early to be a part of this program that builds community in my school, that shows our pride to our newest members, that takes what can be a very scary and intimidating time and tries to make it feel more exciting, more fun.

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This year I will be teaching American Literature to Juniors in addition to my sophomore level courses. We have four major fiction works (no major non-fiction, but I’ll get to that later) on the curriculum right now: The Crucible, Of Mice and Men, Fahrenheit 451, and The Things They Carried. (I would like to add that I plan on replacing one of these works with The Great Gatsby because it strikes me as something my students can relate to much better, though I haven’t decided what it will replace yet.) I have been re-reading these ‘classics’ throughout the summer and rolling around lesson ideas in my brain – scratch that, I’ve been trying to think of ways to ‘sell’ these books to my generally unenthusiastic students. I have been brainstorming connections to modern events, projects they can do, and ways to get them searching through (thus thinking about) the books. My creative juices have been flowing…until I began to wonder if perhaps, just perhaps, I was trying to do something I shouldn’t. Read the rest of this entry →

I’m going to a meeting at school todaythat I am sort of dreading. I am not the type of teacher to sit in meetings and agree to whatever is tossed on the table as new policy; I voice my opinions. And this meeting is on a subject I’ve voiced my fair share of opinions about already. And it is also concerning a topic that, despite having strong opinions about, I certainly don’t have the “right” answer.

What should a high school late-work policy look like? Should it be the same in all classes? Should it be the same across grade levels? Should it vary depending on enrollment in AP or Academic track classes?

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For the last four days I was back sitting at a classroom at Rice University for one of their AP Institutes. I decided to take the course on teaching AP Language and Composition because I figured it would give me a lot of new information and techniques to bring back to my ‘regular’ classroom. Also, as an undergraduate, I was a Literature-focused English major, so teaching grammar, rhetoric, and writing in general aren’t my strong suits.

First, I must say that I highly recommend that all secondary teachers attend an AP Institute, regardless if they will be, or ever plan to be an AP teacher. Although these courses do have some focus on the AP test that comes at the end of the course, they also provide two very important things: tons of materials on higher-level thinking activities/projects/readings that even a teacher of ‘regular’ English courses can use in her/his classroom, and a forum where teachers from all over the country can share techniques/activities/ideas that have worked (or not worked) within their own classrooms. Essentially, I had a refreshing four days of collaboration with a new set of peers. Even the simple idea of making a reading list from all the books everyone shared as good reads or great classroom books will be extremely helpful. Read the rest of this entry →

Yesterday Shelly wrote about plagiarism and cheating at the university level, and it struck me because these are the exact problems we deal with at the high school level. At the high school level we teachers tend to first emphasize the ethical dilemma of cheating (cheating is simply wrong, you’re cheating yourself, etc.), but I also stress the importance of making it your education. I give my students the speech on how they are in one of the most educationally privileged countries in the world, etc., etc., etc. Truthfully though, when it really comes down to it, I challenge them to try and find ways that all the information they learn in high school will be useful to them (even if it’s simply preparing them for a state exam or preparing them for a college level class they’d have to take in it). As Shelly mentioned, students will not participate in something they do not find relevant, and if they have to, they will find all ways to cut corners and ‘get through it’ in order to get their grade and move on. In high school it’s all about keeping enough activities on your plate and maintaining a high enough GPA to get into college. Read the rest of this entry →

Research shows that students perform better for teachers who are invested in them. And by invested, I mean teachers who know their students. It’s a lot of work to build relationships in the classroom and a student/teacher relationship is a complicated one. As teachers we are authority figures, confidantes, parental figures to some students, role models, and guides. We facilitate our students’ educational experiences. It’s a heavy load, if you think about it.

One strategy I use to get to know my kids at the start of a year or semester is a bio-poem. I teach social studies, but I find that particularly when we are doing biographies or examining a historical figure, I can pull my students in most easily when I can relate the content directly to their lives. The bio-poems help me tease out personal elements that I can use as the connective tissue between the student and the history.

Even if my kids can’t read, they can relate to Gandhi, to Malcolm X, to Alexander the Great. And it’s incumbent upon me to foster that engagement by knowing my students.
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AP scores are in. For someone like me, who teaches only AP and Pre-AP classes, this is the day where testing data hits me, where I assess my own success in teaching, where I am inevitably hit by all the contradictory aspects of “teaching to a test.”

I love teaching AP Language and Composition and the freshman Pre-AP class that comes before it. I remind my students all year that while I am preparing them for one day in May when they will sit for over three hours to take a test,  I am ultimately preparing them to go on and be well-read, well-rounded citizens who know how to read, think about and discuss their world. My class focuses on reading skills, close reading of a diverse set of difficult texts and writing three particular kinds of essays – an argument where the students take a side or examines both sides of an issue, a synthesis essay where the students again take a position and use sources provided on the test to back up their ideas and a rhetorical analysis, where the students are asked to decipher an author’s message and then to clearly write about how that  message is delivered in a rhetorically meaningful way. These are skills I believe all students should have. These are skills I would teach my students whether they were on a test or not. Read the rest of this entry →