End of Term Exhaustion

One of the buzzwords this year has been "grit." In the reading I've done, I've heard it explained that students who take responsibility for their achievements are more likely to be successful than students who attribute their success or failure to external factors. This makes sense on the surface, but when I was reading my students' reflective essays, I noticed something interesting.

I had asked them to write about a standard they had mastered and a standard they still needed to work on. And for quite a few of the students, they claimed that the standard they mastered was because of their own skill and hard work... then went on to give all sorts of excuses I mean reasons that they'd been less successful. There were very few students who took responsibility for both their successes AND their failures. Needless to say, this was enlightening for me, but also somewhat discouraging. According to my students, any learning that happens is apparently in spite of me, not because of me.

Grit is variously defined as a mixture of determination, resilience, motivation, and courage. Here are some recent articles and blog posts that discuss it:

• Got Grit
• Grit Plus Talent Equals Student Success
• The Best Measure of Success
• The Grit Test
• Does Teaching Kids to Get Gritty Help Them

But while these all exalt the value of getting back up after failing (and in fairness, students who don't do that won't succeed) the truth is that simply trying again, or even trying harder, may not be enough to ensure success. Because if you did something that didn't get you the desired result, if you just do the same thing again, you're likely to get the same less-than-desirable result you did the first time. Perseverance alone isn't enough.

One of the skills that I don't see mentioned in the articles that talk about grit is reflection. After experiencing failure, but before charging back into the fray, it's important to take a good look at what led up to that failure. What were the factors that caused it? Which can I influence directly? What can I do to compensate for the factors that I cannot change? But while we practice this on a regular basis, I'm not entirely sure how I can break it down into smaller steps or try it at an easier level or provide support to help students who are struggling with it. (A lot of my students seem to equate "helping them" with "giving them the answer.")

How do you teach effective reflection? Do you teach it? If not, how do you encourage students to look for ways to improve?

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Counting Down the Days

This year is devolving rapidly. So far we've missed three and a half days from the storms (and the other half of our half-day was mostly spent sitting out in the hall during the tornado watch) and we've had two delayed starts. We're scheduled for delayed starts on Thursday and Friday as well.

I'm almost surprised the students haven't started eating each other alive.

There's not a lot else to discuss in detail. Little bits here and there, really, is all.

* Prom was last weekend. I got fairly dressed up, though my hair is at an incredibly uncooperative stage. It isn't yet long enough to do anything with, and it just kind of sticks out in this 'fro that everyone says is adorable and I think is horrific. Fortunately, gel. Gel and an elastic headband from Walmart. Anyway, I wore my slinky black dress with silver sparkles that has a boat neck and a drape down the back and a slit that I didn't realize went QUITE so far above the knee, but fortunately it's well to the side so I can be discreet. And a pair of strappy back shoes that, while adorable, were not comfortable enough to wear while standing for hours at a time. And some crystal costume jewelry - dangly earrings and necklace and some bangles. Consensus? I clean up nicely. ^.^
* Cap and gown portrait proofs came back WITH NO NAMES ON THEM. I got them this afternoon; orders are to be returned by the 10th. Yeah, srsly. Not happenin. Fortunately I took my case to the AP who's been micromanaging everything and HURRAY! she totes took my side on it and now it is no longer my problem. Yey!
* Ad money is coming in and we're going to make budget. WAHOOO! The relief is exhilarating.
* OH! HUGE NEWS! My enormous book list got funded through DonorsChoose! YAAAAY! Unfortunately the books won't ship until the start of next school year. So I have to wait. (I hate waiting.) Still, YAY BOOKS!!
* Almost forgot! Isn't it Teacher Appreciation Week? We had a basket of individually-wrapped wintergreen LifeSaver mints set in the mail room for us. I feel so loved.
* Neither the crazy storms nor Osama bin Laden's death will be in our 'World Beat' supplement. Sadface. Wondering if there's a way that we can work them in without using photos we don't have rights to.

Lately I'm just trying to stay in the game. I popped in to #edchat the last two weeks but one of the things I hate, hate, HATE about Twitter is that the updates are set up to drop in top-down. So you read each comment left-to-right and down to the next line, but then to read the NEXT comment you have to look ABOVE the one you just read. It's awkward and IT SUCKS. And #edchat moves fast enough that I couldn't really follow the flow. So. Mih.

What's been goin' on with all y'all? :)

(See? Even this Damn Yankee can play at bein' a redneck!)

Image thanks to http://www.timetoteach-mhughes.com/

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Tired of it

Sometimes I feel like such a fraud. *sigh*

I really don't enjoy reading the stuff my students write. Or, well, at least not most of it. It's just... gosh, I'm not even sure how to explain all of this. There are so many things that bother me about their writing that I'm often not sure where to begin when responding, let alone where I should begin with this blog post.

First of all, the topics. I get SOOO tired of reading about teen pregnancy or drugs or tattoos/piercings/dress code/fashion or favorite XYZ or Bigfoot ...

Seriously, why are teen pregnancy and teen alcoholism and teen drug use even ON the List of Acceptable Topics for a persuasive essay? They glom onto the idea that "teen drug use is bad" and want to use that for a thesis. UGH. Really? Really? You honest-to-goodness think you have to persuade ANYONE of that? GAWD.

So I get tired of the same old topics but those are the ones we're stuck with because that's what we have books on in the library. Hate, hate, hatey-hatesmith. Pouring on the Haterade.

And then they're soooo wishy-washy. Like the student who wrote about tattoos CLEARLY believed that people should be able to do whatever they want to their own bodies without being judged (negatively) for their appearance, BUT she also felt she had to say "but some people think tattoos are bad and that's okay too!" FFS, kids, it is not immoral to have a spine! GAWD.

Also apparently? the entire universe is about what is most pleasant for THEM. Like we should totes allow indiscriminate cell phone use. Except cheating would be bad. And also? Dress code, shmess code. Students should be able to hoochify if they like because that is SELF EXPRESSION and we are CRUSHING THEIR INDIVIDUALITY.

I find that I am enjoying this more the snarkier I get about it...

And then there is the grammar. We're not just talking fragments and run-ons here -- oh no. No, these sentences are so warped that I can't even begin to describe what's wrong with them. Some recent gems, grabbed from a cursory scan of what is supposed to be a re-revision of a typed final:

• Is it because they are jealous, I think so?
• these are the things we think about at first had but when we are stranded in the middle of the ocean we tend to think of things we never think to think of at first hand.
• To these age groups, school, for lack of a better word to say it, SUCKS.
• They can ruin their potential to have a great life, though some teenage mothers go back to school and have a great life while having a child others do not and that's because having a baby is a lot of work, feedings every two hours, changing constantly, keeping you up all night...etc, having a baby isn't easy, it's a very stressful job.
• The big fight is Facebook vs. Myspace.Ok, that one's not as bad... but the image makes me giggle.
• At a young age 15-19 some teens are not even mature enough to have sex, because they're not laying down thinking about what could happen for example becoming pregnant, at that moment all the teenager has on his/her mind is the sex and only sex!
• Being abstinent is hard for many people, but being careful means more than just having sex, and not being cautious.
• At least you know you tried to stop the prevention of being pregnant.(WTF?!)
• Everyone has opinions, Walker least appetizing meal choice was the roast beef and cheese sub, he said it looked "Greasy".

I'm not even halfway through the stack. :P

Keep in mind, this is after a rough draft, conferencing with me for direction, revision, printing a new draft, peer revisions, proofreading, and printing a final draft. THEN. Another conference with me to look over the three articles for which they did that, choosing the best of those three, and RE-re-tooling it.

*headdesk*

This is yet another reason I will NOT be teaching Journalism next year.

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Here we go...

I am cheap.

The reason that I avoid purchasing materials for my classroom is the same reason I avoid credit cards - I know how very, very easy it would be to continue past the point of sense. To a lesser extent, it is a matter of setting a challenge for myself - given these limits, what can I accomplish with what I do have?

I scavenge pens and pencils from the floor before leaving each day. I rifle discarded notebooks for usable paper. The computers in my room are hand-me-downs from the "real" computer labs.

But I have personally bought a classroom set of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World - even though it is not on our school's list of approved texts - in the hope that one day I will be able to teach it.

***

Dystopian stories in general raise questions which are central to those who are just about to take the first steps into society as adults: what are my responsibilities to other members of society? to myself? what are their responsibilities to me?

This tension between individuality and community shows up in many of the day-to-day choices we face. Who pays on a date? How do you say "no" gracefully? How much should you spend on a birthday present for a relative? Whose responsibility is it to do the dishes, and what happens if/when that person shirks?

[AN: As I read this to the Hunk for review, he is pouting. Hmmm. I wonder why. *impish grin*]

I am fortunate enough to be able to choose among classic and current works, such as 1984, Hunger Games, Fahrenheit 451, Uglies, and Anthem. But I strongly believe that Brave New World is the most important of these works because its society is internally maintained rather than externally controlled.

If people desire security and comfort, and choose to achieve it through submission and conformity, and someone comes along and somehow forces democracy upon them - are they truly free if freedom was not their choice?

[AN: Are these paragraphs too short? 'Real' essays seem to have longer ones.]

I am not entirely sure why this story enthralls me so much, but I think it's because of the conflict - the dissonance - between the subject matter and the tone. It explores a society in which everyone is safe and happy and (apparently) free, but right from the beginning, with the "squat gray building" the description is clearly negative.

In most dystopian texts, it's easy to spot the villains: they are greedy, power-hungry, selfish, even sadistic. But Brave New World has at its heart a society that grants its citizens peace, prosperity, and happiness, ruled by a leader who genuinely cares for his people - who in fact sacrificed his own personal happiness to ensure their well-being.

I love how topsy-turvy and inside-out it is, and that it's not that way just for the heck of it, but because (as a dystopia) it creates a frame to examine the real world - the culture we live in.

[AN: OMG. it's like... it's like you're seeing things from the Joker's perspective. The protagonists, you see, are going to FIX things. Because this perfect, happy world is all wrong. Never mind that people like living this way - it is WRONG and must be FIXED. And if there's a bit of mayhem amid the fixin, well, them's the breaks.]

[AN: Ok, my brain is, I think, starting to leak out my ears. Need to wrap up my ideas here. Another part of what I like is how the topsy-turvy-ness makes it a great way to look at craft. What does the author do to make us see the World State as eeevil? How much of it is the resonance with our own culture and how much is negative description? and how does he DO that negative description and still somehow keep it under the radar? It's just so subtle and intricate and BRILLIANT!]

[WHEW. Gonna hafta revisit this. I have GOT to stop. :P Later all!]

[PS: Title? Do I need one? Ugh.]

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Staring at failure

Okay, so we are now definitely into January 2011 and I don't have my essay written.

*sigh*

I know, I know, there's still time, but the truth of the matter is, I don't know if I can do it, no matter HOW much time there is. I really have NO idea what I'm supposed to be doing. And I'm petrified.

I have all of my foundational stuff - I know which work I want to promote, I know what reasons I plan to give, I know how I want to frame the promotion... it's the everything-that-goes-with-it that I don't have. I mean, I figure I need more than 150 words, which is about what I've got if I just go with the bare bones that I have now.

And my style is SO very conversational. I'm sure I can take out the overuse of capitals and technically-incorrect ellipses, and use words that, you know, actually EXIST... maybe even finish a thought before going on to the next one.

But OMFG, I don't think I can do this. And it's pressing me through the shredder. I don't want to fail at this but I can't see success anywhere I look.

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Further Resolutions

Okay, I am not taking ANY student work home anymore. AT ALL EVER. I'm going to have to do ALL my grading here at school. Period. That means I'm going to have to be VERY careful about scheduling when I collect writers' notebooks - I need to make sure that for the next TWO DAYS there will be no interruptions to my planning period.

Also resolved: I am going to input assignments into the gradebook when I create my lesson plans. Which I need to do TODAY for the next two weeks. Uhoh. And I only have ten more minutes of planning. DANGIT! And I didn't even get my field trip form. DANGIT DANGIT DANGIT!

AURGH!

And I need to make a quiz for my J1s on the photo-uploading thingy. Which will be next block.

WHY AM I SO FULL OF FAIL?! AURGH!

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Where'd you GO?!

WAH! I can't find the blog with the post I was looking for about National Breast Cancer Awareness Month :( I swear I got to it from my blogroll... dangit! I read the post and knew I wanted to comment but my thoughts were all jumbled and I wanted to ponder a bit.

DANGIT DANGIT DANGIT!

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*facepalm*

Seriously. Seriously? Why would you take pictures of people standing around? Do you realize how boring that is? Why would you not wait for the team to start practicing before you leave? You know, so that you can have pictures of them actually DOING something? instead of just ... not?

AURGH!

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Status Update

Lordy, I hardly know where to begin.

First of all, I meant to post yesterday and I didn't. I guess I could've written something up during planning period, but I think I was grading. (I'm not sure. I'm still barely awake and it's hard to remember.) Wait - yes - I was. Not actually grading papers, but correcting corrections I'd made in the online gradebook. It's been fighting with me something fierce this year.

First of all, I had a number of students turn in make-up work, which I graded, put in the computer, and returned. Then, on the day AFTER grades were due to the office, I had a bunch of those same students come to me and ask why they had zeros for their make-up work. I'm not sure WHY they didn't save... and, well, it really doesn't matter. I'm going to have to re-do them. Along with filling out paperwork now that it's past MY due date. (But I think I'm going to hand the paperwork off to the students. You want YOUR grade changed? here's the form. ;p)

Then I had three students whose averages were below 50 (the lowest grade we're allowed to give for the first half of the term so that students don't 'log out' halfway through). So I changed those - but apparently I had the wrong column of the program active and changed the term average, not the marking period average.

*sigh*

This week was pretty much a total loss for my English IV class. I'd hoped to be done with Macbeth LAST Friday, and we haven't even finished Act IV yet. AUGH! We had three days at school and I didn't get them ONCE for a full period. Quite frustrating.

Journalism has gone a LOT more smoothly. We have a system for sending everyone out on interviews that seems to be working well. The boundaries are (1) no class is interrupted more than once per period, unless that teacher asks the journalism students to come back later on in the class, and (2) only two days of class time were given for preliminary interviews - this is down from three or four days last article. I'm hoping to move to just one next time.

The idea is that we choose articles Monday, plan out the angle, figure out what we need to know, and from that choose ten potential sources and what we're going to ask them. Tuesday we go do interviews. Rough drafts are due at the beginning of the period Wednesday, and during class we conference in small groups. Homework Wednesday night is to determine which sources we need to revisit for more depth or additional information. On Thursday we'll re-interview. Final drafts, correctly formatted, will be due on Friday.

I need to wrap this up. I really wanted to write about our trip to Disney, but my parents are on their way here and there are clean dishes in the dishwasher, dirty dishes on the counter, clean laundry in the dryer and on the spare bed (which they need), still-packed suitcases and bags in the living room, pizza boxes left out, papers and notebooks and DVDs piled up on the kitchen table...

OH! and I didn't get to post yesterday evening because I was IN A CARNIVAL. But I think THAT will get its own post as well. ^.^

TTFN, darlings!

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How did I get here?

I have not forgotten! Last couple of days have been nuts, with deadlines for both yearbook (internal) and newspaper. I can't believe it's already after 9:00! It feels like I'm perpetually tired.

please, God, don't let me get sick.

The Carnival will be up tomorrow, but alas! it'll be in the afternoon. I haven't even looked at the submissions since Saturday. So I definitely have to get things in order.

Do I stay up and grade, or do I go to bed & put it off yet again? *sigh* sleep beckons... yet with grading looming over my neck, can I truly rest???

time to find out!

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Hitting a Roadblock: Where's the Detour Sign?

Ugh. Just a couple weeks in and I'm already looking at missing my goal because I just can't think of anything to post about.

I don't just want to say "here's what we did blah blah blah," because I really want Epic Adventures to focus on reflection and exploration.

But I haven't given up yet! And besides, the Saturday post was a tough one last week, too. I think maybe it's because I have dance class, we often go out to eat, and then usually I take a big ol' nap in the middle of the day, and so it feels like the day's over and I haven't written anything. But the day really isn't over until a good bit later, cuz of the nap :)

We'll see what happens...

Wish me luck!

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Selling Out

So I've got a donorschoose proposal for two digital point-and-shoot cameras that's almost fully funded. I've got another under review - that one is for supplies for writers' workshop. I've got four more in draft, waiting for me to write an essay that will convince people to donate money.

And I am just outta words.

I have a vague idea of what I want to say for the one I'm working on. I'm requesting a set of children's picture books that my high school students can use to practice reading out loud, because I am SO TIRED of listening to droning voices. And I know that if I'M bored, there's no way that they're fascinated.

I could just blah blah blah through it, but if it's not going to be something that gets me funded, it's a waste of time anyway.

The beginning asks for one line that will inspire or grab the attention of donors. I don't even have that. (I do think my title is pretty kickin', though - I see it as a shout-out to both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Bon Jovi's "Bad Medicine," though it's a common enough phrase.)

It definitely frustrates me that you have to meet the word count before you can save. It's easy enough to work around - at least one of my drafts has a few inspirational quotes (I haven't decided which one I want to use yet) and the rest filled out with 'essay here essay here essay here.'

I guess I really ought to be over there, grinding through it, and I'll head that direction in a minute, but sometimes it just helps to acknowledge the struggle.

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Seriously bummed

When your new yearbook rep meets with you, then goes to meet with your administrator, saying she'll stop back by your room to let you know how it went, but doesn't - how long do you wait before your worry is classified as 'legitimate concern' rather than 'paranoia'?

Also? Arranged with my department to fan-follow an author who'd offered a Skype interview to his 1000th fan. According to the counter, one of our teachers should've been it - but an update today named somebody else. :( Bummer, but not too big a deal, because I was already planning on Hautman and Doctorow. (yey!)

I just - I hate not knowing what's going on with the rep. I know that this admin has approached other teachers about co-sponsoring the book. I've also told her several times that if she thinks she needs another teacher to take care of the yearbook, I will support her decision. It's always "no, no, no."

But is it?

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ARGH.

JMJ. I am honest-to-God sick of students asking me if I've graded their crap. Especially when they turned in research papers to a sub while I was away at the GCTE conference and they ask me the DAY I GET BACK. Um, hello, I just got the folders out of my mailbox thirty minutes ago?

There is a related discussion over at the English Companion ning. The consensus seems to be that specific feedback is much more useful/helpful/taken seriously by the students than a grade. Give feedback regularly, and grade only the final draft.

WTF? Where are these students and how do I get some? Because if they have the slightest INKLING that an assignment isn't going to be graded, they don't do it.

It just feels like this is the way we're supposed to do things because it works - yeah - it works for everyone EXCEPT ME. I'm sick of it. I'm tired of being confused and feeling helpless and incompetent.

Maybe it's because we're smack in the middle of February and I'm not going to get a break until April. I dunno. But I'm getting really annoyed at having to answer the same brainless questions over and over again. You know how they say "there are no stupid questions?" They're right.

It's not the QUESTIONS that are the problem. It's the people askin' em. ;p

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On Not Writing

It has been said that not writing is the easiest thing in the world.

Anyone who believes that has never had book-buddies. Because when you start talking about books and why an author did this or that and character motivation and unintentional allusions and layers of meaning, all of a sudden you have people saying, "oh, YOU should write a book!"

And it has taken me years to come to the point where I am quite comfortable replying "no."

Don't get me wrong - I love story. Story and conflict and action and drama (within a story, that is) are YUM. But I'd ever so much rather pick it apart and daydream about it than actually go through the work of making a story.

Now, when it comes to creative mostly-non-fiction, I can create what others think of as "good writing." I still have a piece from ninth grade that my teacher read out loud to the class because the sensory detail was so vivid. But when I think about that piece I feel somewhat uncomfortable - because I made it up. The experience did happen (it was a day at the beach). But the details that were so highly praised came not from my memory, but from my imagination.

I did it again in college. We were supposed to go watch a performance and describe it. That time, I made up the whole darn thing. In fact, my grade probably wouldn't've been nearly as high if I'd followed the instructions, because I had a lot more freedom to create "good descriptive writing" since I wasn't constraining myself to what I might actually have observed.

In reflection I only feel a LITTLE bit guilty (like when I think about how as a Christian I should show respect for our government by NOT SPEEDING) because if truth was that important to the assignment, it should've been checked.

But isn't good writing supposed to be about not faking it? These sorts of experiences leave a bad taste in my mouth. Why is it a good thing to sacrifice honesty for artistry?

So these days, this is the kind of writing I do. Blogposts and other conversationalish niblets: book reviews, comments, forum replies, emails, donorschoose proposals, that sort of thing. And I'm good with that. To my recollection, I have never written something so important to me that I worked on it extensively Nor have I ever felt the desire to write something like that -- except when it's a case of the "oughtas." I do draft my posts, but that's more a case of typing up notes on the fly and then going back to explain them more clearly.

Oh, also, I write lists of things that I better not forget to do. I have LOTS of those. And speaking of my lists, I have one telling me I better put my flash drive in its little pocket while I'm thinking about it!

Yeep!

Image thanks to http://nogirlydrama.com/ and http://flickr.com/photos/leafblower/

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Never Again

Have you ever been completely, utterly, and miserably disappointed in yourself?

Last Thursday was it for me.

I'd had an AWFUL day, everything was going wrong, and then during the last period I had six or seven students each trying to ask me something at the SAME TIME, AFTER I'd asked everyone to sit down so that I could address the class as a whole. And I closed my eyes and I wanted them to sit down and listen, but what came out was "Everyone please shut. Up."

Dead silence.

(As one of my students pointed out today, it did work!)

To top everything else off, nobody from my department was on planning, so I called up to the library and asked for someone to come cover my class for a few minutes, and I went into the bathroom and BAWLED.

I meant to apologize on Friday, but things were still pretty hectic and in the rush, I just didn't remember. So I talked with the students about it yesterday, and told them that while it might not seem like a big deal to them, it was important to me to be a model of what I expect them to be. I said something similar in a comment to a post over at the English Companion ning:

...while I introduce these to students as my Classroom Expectations, I really think that they're expectations for MYSELF more so than my students. I don't expect these things of my students - I hope for them, certainly, but I'm also certainly NOT shocked or horrifically distressed when I see students act contrary to them. I guess my expectation is that if I emphasize the importance of these behaviors and model them consistently, students will BEGIN to follow them.

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