Category Archives: Elizabeth Woo

How Forcing my Students to Write Has Made me Happier

Posted on by

My last blog
outlined some of my past struggles with finding enough time to inspire a joy of
reading and to provide relevant, timely feedback on writing—as well to get
students to do more of both. Now I would like to share some of the processes I
adopted from the book 180 Days: Two
Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher
and Penny Kittle (Heinemann).
            The authors suggest setting the tone
on day one that we are a community of readers and writers.  A daily routine is thus put into place right
from the start. The routine consists of regular reading time and writing time,
in addition to time for a passage study from a model text. Today’s blog will be
about setting the tone that “we are writers in this class.”
            On the first day, every student
received a composition book. This is their judgment-free place to craft their
writing. Ideally, every day (but in reality, about twice a week), we do a
quickwrite in this notebook. We write about a short excerpt from a book, or a
poem, or a prompt that gets us thinking. First day of school, we wrote about
what empathy means because I wanted to establish empathy as an overachieving theme
for the year. Monday, we wrote “two-sentence horror stories” to get in the Halloween
spirit. A key feature of this method is that the teacher writes in front of her
students. New for me this year: I consistently put my own notebook under the
document camera and project my process. We share our first drafts in small
groups and whole class. Frequently, I model how I might revise my first draft
and then we go back to our notebook to try a revision move in a different color.
We share our revisions.
File:Composition book.jpg            Over one quarter into the school
year, and I feel good about the reading and writing tone that was set on the
first week of school. My students are familiar with the routine and it gives me
pleasure to see them using their notebooks. I’ve made it clear that writing is
not perfect the first time, and that it is normal and desirable to revise. I
think modeling my own vulnerability helps. I regularly reiterate that writing
in a community benefits us because of the feedback we receive from our peers. (And
yes, I welcome student feedback on my own writing—more on that in a future blog
post.)
            As a bonus, I have felt more
connected to myself as a writer from being forced to participate. I love the
crinkly pages of my notebook with poems and passages glued in and annotated. I
love the sketches and scribbles and colorful revision marks. I love getting in
touch with my creative side on a regular basis. I’m happy when I write.
            I love that my students this year
are writing so much more than they did last year, and they write without
expecting a grade. They accept the exercise because my expectation was set on
the very first day.
            On Back to School Night, a
repeat-mom approached me to comment, “You’ve changed, haven’t you? It seems
completely different … and she is responding.” These were encouraging words, and
despite many challenges in living up to the standards in 180 Days, I keep trying. On
my next post, I will share about another new practice for me: regular
one-on-one reading and writing conferences.

Teaching angst subsides with a new approach

Posted on by

            Part One: The Problem.
            Toward the end of last year, I was
missing some of the thoughtfulness that my credentialing program had infused
into my teaching. I craved a more intentional approach and some backwards
planning. Not only that, I didn’t get a sense that my students were engaged in
reading and writing as much as I’d hoped. I think English teachers in general try
to solve the problem of students who “fake read.” (It hurts when students don’t
LOVE books the way we do!) English teachers also regularly reevaluate how to
teach writing effectively.
            Time is a factor. Most teachers
would agree that students simply need to read more and write more, but that we don’t have unlimited time to
read in class or to collect and grade a constant flow of material if we want to
give meaningful feedback.  We also find
that once there is a letter grade on an essay, written feedback is not as relevant
to the student; therefore, it is not as effective. Ideally, students should
receive feedback on multiple drafts before they receive a final grade. (Some educators
argue that the process ought to count for part of the grade because isn’t
process more important than product?)
            I used to be an editor, and I came
to grading essays with an editor’s mindset. I thought it was my duty to circle
every single mistake. Of course, now I know how demoralizing it can be for a
student to work hard on articulating her ideas, only to have them thrown back
at her, all torn apart. But with each year of teaching experience, I’ve noticed
that I feel far more energized and effective when I meet with students on an
individual level. I’ve also noticed that the most effective time to meet with
them is not when they are “finished” (can you ever be finished with an essay
you’ve had less than two weeks to write?).
            Rather, if I conference when their
ideas are in development, I can help them find their passion on the topic. And,
when they feel strongly about their thesis, they will take more care with their
craft. A little further along into the drafting phase, if I have time to meet
with students again, I can convey customized grammar lessons, pass on
compliments, encourage engagement, and have a conversation about writing. I think it’s a more positive experience all around.
            Last year I felt stuck in a loop of
collecting essays, spending inordinate amounts of time marking them up, and
dreading the next stack of hollow arguments, especially when errors were
repeated. I tried grading on Turnitin.com to see if I could go faster and offer
more pointed feedback. I tried various rubrics and checklists. I tried asking
students to process my feedback and reflect on it. I tried giving them revision
opportunities. Still, I found myself crunched and wishing that the whole thing
seemed less chore-like (for both me and my students). Even more critically, I
found students wanted me to do the thinking for them: All they had to do was
implement my edits and receive a better grade.
            Then, I saw an advertisement for a
new book. It’s called 180 Days: Two
Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents by Kelly Gallagher
and Penny Kittle (Heinemann). The
book is part creed (the authors make a case for ten “we believe” statements
about teaching and learning), part detailed description of how they structure
their year around those core beliefs. The authors’ philosophy resonated with me,
and its practical, organized approach to planning curriculum with the purpose
of creating engaged readers and writers, spoke to my angst and need for
direction.
            I read it—and annotated it!—over the
summer, and what resulted was a major overhaul to several of my approaches. I plan
to blog about my changed approach as the school year progresses, both my successes
and challenges. Stay tuned.

             

Millennials don’t know about Holocaust, according to survey

Posted on by

April 12th was Holocaust Remembrance Day. Sadly, people are
forgetting about it. See the sobering NY Times article
linked here.
We are so blessed to host a survivor here at
Carondelet Friday, April 20th, during 5th and 6th periods, in the Garaventa. The
number of living Holocaust survivors dwindles as the years go on. As
the article states, “Holocaust remembrance
advocates and educators, who agree that no book, film or traditional exhibition
can compare to the voice of a survivor, dread the day when none are left to
tell their stories.”
Our guest, Hana Berger Moran, is
in her 70s and was born in a concentration camp. She will be here to tell her
and her mother’s story, as chronicled in the recent book, Born
Survivors by Wendy Holden.



Our freshmen learn about the Holocaust in their history
curriculum, and the English department teaches it with the classic graphic
novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. Church History classes also
address the Holocaust. Thank goodness our school continues to educate youth
about the horrific events of the Holocaust. The Catholic faith is immeasurably
linked to the Jewish people. Let us never forget.

Thank you for supporting this important event. I know that
losing instruction time gets tricky. I welcome all of you to attend along with
our freshmen, if you can make it. Please
join us even if you can’t stay the whole time. 
Particulars: Hana will start at 12:30 and continue through the
end of 6th period. Fifth period teachers of frosh: please take attendance
before escorting (or sending) girls to the Garaventa Center. Sixth period
teachers of frosh: The girls won’t be checking in that day. Students have been
given Teacher Notification forms for you to sign.

Late work consequences have me in a Tizzy

Posted on by

Late work consequences have me in a Tizzy
I knew boundaries were going to be a problem for me when I
entered teaching a few years ago. Teachers need boundaries in order to maintain
sanity. For example, I am slowly learning that it’s important to allow the
evening to be family time, even if parents email me. I am learning that if I
give myself the entire weekend to plan, I will use the entire weekend to plan.
I may explore this work-life balance in a future blog,
because it’s a struggle for me to put aside work and focus on self-care and
family. Perhaps it’s because I am a newish teacher, still excited, still
exploring, still learning, still idealistic. Still insecure.
But today I need to reach out to my colleagues about a
different sort of boundary. I am terrible at following the policies I put down
on my course outline at the beginning of the year. One of the toughest
categories for me centers around late work. Practically speaking, it is hard to
be consistent and to track who I gave an extension to, how many days late
something is, how many points I said I was going to take off for lateness … not
my forte. Not to mention I am confused about the interplay of toughness and
redemption.
In my credential program, I learned that tying points to
behavior is considered passé. My general sense is that at Carondelet, we don’t
believe in it either. Grades should reflect mastery of skills. Behavioral
issues should have non-grade consequences. I’m going to digress from my
struggle about late work for a moment to provide a dual example of a logical
consequence and my own ineffective enforcement of it. If a student comes to
class unprepared and asks to go to her locker to retrieve a book, I do not take
points off her grade. Instead, as I said
in my course outline, she will receive a tardy because coming unprepared is
almost the same as arriving late. But … I haven’t kept up with this rule. If
one of these sweet Carondelet girls asks me if she can run to her locker for
her book I smile and say, “Sure. Go ahead … hurry!” I may, depending on mood,
add “But next time you need to come prepared.”
I think I am a softy, and knowing that, I want to be more
careful about the policies I set up: Am I willing to enforce them? If so, I
need to do it, or I won’t feel very good about myself down the line. That’s the
thing about boundaries: we set them for ourselves. They represent a line we
draw about what is acceptable to us. Letting people cross my boundaries makes
me feel gross inside. And if I know that I can’t enforce my boundary, perhaps I
need to question why I set it in the first place. Is it because I thought I
should, based on some classroom management guru’s advice?
Sometimes, though, we know that the boundaries we set are
for our students’ benefit. We want our students to grow into women of heart,
faith, courage, and excellence. They need guidelines and parameters. My
question for you all is, what is a logical consequence for turning in work
late? And how can I be true to our culture of redemption and encouragement
without doing a disservice to these girls? I have some students who are one
month late on an important assignment. I want them to complete the work and to
learn. I want to assess the work fairly. But there has to be some consequence
for being this late. Otherwise, students are learning that deadlines do not
have to be respected. Meeting deadlines is a life skill; one students will need
in college and the workplace in order to succeed. Beyond that, we are talking
about an interpersonal skill. Students need to learn respect for other people’s
time and feelings—they cannot cross others’ personal boundaries without
consequence. I am troubled by the message I send when I accept one-month late
work without a consequence that stings. Even if I am well-intentioned in wanting
to be merciful and supportive. I often find myself expressing gratitude to a
student for following through so that I finally
can change the zero placeholder in the grade book. I think the zero has
bothered me more than it has bothered the student all this time!
I recently came up with one logical consequence, but it only
applies in certain situations. In the same spirit of learning, I try to offer
my students the opportunity to rewrite their essays after receiving my feedback
and a grade. When some students turned in their essays a week late, I decided they
had lost the privilege of a rewrite opportunity because now I was grading their
first attempt at the same time I was grading their peers’ rewrites. The
insanity has to stop somewhere.
I have thus far been comfortable with taking off a little for
lateness … but a month late? Is 10% enough of a consequence? Is it fair to the
other students? Should I say that the highest you can earn is a C- if you turn
something in that late? My son’s middle school core teacher won’t accept late
work and he feels quite clear and secure in knowing what the boundary is. He
gets two late passes per year, and they allow him to be one day late. He said
that after one month, he wouldn’t even expect his teacher to accept anything.
But, I tell him, I do want my students to finish the work because it’s
valuable.  We go back and forth. He wants
me to be tougher.
My final musing on the subject goes like this: Maybe turning
in work late isn’t a behavioral issue that must be treated outside the grade
book. Maybe meeting an assignment’s deadline is an integral and crucial part of
the nature of school work. Even if I can get my head around that, and I think I
can, I wonder what the magic numbers are. How late before we don’t accept it at
all? What is the ratio between late days/weeks and percentages off the grade?
I want to hear from my colleagues on this. Do you struggle
as I do? Do you have a good system you can share?

In Praise of Nonfiction Books

Posted on by

Our colleague Tiz won a prize at our Christmas party. She could pick any book in our library as her own. This week Tiz chose a book I love – Meta Maus by Art Spiegelman. I cannot explain better than the New York Times Book Review why this is such a good book , “Richly rewarding…The book also serves as a master class on the making and reading of comics”. I was so happy when Tiz choose this and pondered a bit why I was so happy. Part of the reason is I love nonfiction books. I have learned more from nonfiction books than anything else in my life. For me, and I believe for many, they are the best choice as a learning tool. And they offer me learning on my own time, schedule, interests, needs and wants.

Synthesizing information takes a lot of time, and a well-written book allows me to grasp a lot of information quickly and succinctly. I learned much about memory from MoonWalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer, without having to do all that research myself! Really, it is amazing when you think about what a well-written book pulls together for you. I learned about memory, the brain, visualization, storytelling, memorizing, and about something I didn’t even know existed,  the U.S. Memory Championship.

A good book can ignite a passion to search for more. The Shakespeare Wars by Ron Rosenbaum did that for me with Shakespeare. Before I read this book, I just could not agree with the crowning of Shakespeare as the literary king of English. “C’mon!” I would think, “it has been 400 years!” The Shakespeare Wars is about people with a passion for Shakespeare and a willingness to go into excruciating detail with and battle for his works.  By reading their debates, and experiencing their passion, I became more and more convinced of the top spot for Shakespeare.  The variations of O in the folios of Hamlet and the difference they make just astonishes me.  I had never paid any attention to the folio differences and was mesmerized by this knowledge.   This book opened up Shakespeare for me.


Books let you explore at your own pace, and in the context of your own needs.  I recently visited Boston and my daughter took me to a wonderful breakfast sandwich place, Mike and Patty’s.  This is located a block away from a Knox Street, and I asked my daughter if Knox Street was named after Henry Knox, a hero of the American Revolution, who organized a difficult transfer of cannon from upstate New York Fort Ticonderoga to Boston.  This extra artillery was key to the end of the Siege of Boston, and I would not be at all surprised if Knox was celebrated by Boston. I knew all this from having read 1776 by David McCullough and was able to pull down the appropriate chapter from my Audible account to confirm this information.  I don’t know if Boston’s Knox street is named after him, but Fort Knox is.

Michelle is working on creating a Joy of Reading in every section of the library.  Books are so important and have everything the educational buzz is all about- putting the path of learning in the reader’s hand. 

Lectures, lessons, and student-centered learning

Posted on by
            I think, in hindsight, I performed a
little educational research last week in my classroom. Nothing groundbreaking,
by any means. Nothing new … not even to me. I heard about all of this last year
in my Ed Psych class and throughout my teacher credentialing program. (You
remember constructivism? Piaget, Vygotsky, and friends?) And I know the concept
is all around us as we design the new STEAM center and the future of
Carondelet.
            But for me, last week was valuable
because I experienced a tangible reminder that what they say is true:
student-centered learning is more effective than teacher-centered. I believed
it in theory; I even believed it in isolated experiences. In fact, every time I
plan my lesson to be student-centered, I see the rewards. Here are some
isolated examples:
            For our freshmen, Kate Cutright and
I planned a round-robin sort of discussion for student groups to rotate to
different tables in order to discuss seven different prompts. Within the
groups, there were four rotating roles to be sure that every student would
participate. Another student-led project I conducted this year was a
problem-solving exercise in teams, where students had to choose from a
selection of picture books to find examples of literary devices. Each book
could only be used once, and not every book contained an example of every
device. In both of these examples, the bulk of my teaching was in the preparation;
on lesson day, students guided themselves through their own learning, and they
were actively engaged.

            However, the reality is that I’m not
always prepared. There are times when I choose to grade papers, or catch up on
the reading assignment, or enter grades, or email parents, or maybe spend time
with my family, so I don’t front-load the lesson. I find myself wanting to convey
some important ideas, I have 45 minutes or less to do so, and I slip into a
teacher-centered model.
            Last Monday was one of those days.
Over the weekend, I had read the two chapters of Jane Eyre assigned to my sophomores. Gosh, I love this book. It’s
an important book. I dutifully annotated those two chapters and figured that I
should prepare some notes so that we could have a class discussion on the reading,
in case anyone came with questions. I noticed some key passages I wanted to be
sure to point out. Monday morning, no one had any questions. Come to think of
it, they were fairly expression-less. I slipped into what’s familiar from my
college English major days: I asked students to take notes, and I pointed out
all of those key passages. I asked some questions. The usual star students
raised their hands. By the end, not everyone had been involved. I wasn’t
exactly sure how many students took notes or tuned me out. That was first
period. During fourth period, I tried something slightly different. I shared
some personal stories about my experience in college lecture halls. I told my
students about how I saved all of my notes from college and now use those notes
to help me be a better teacher (ha!). And then I proceeded with the lecture.
            I am being hard on myself; I tend to
self-evaluate and see the worst. Let’s look at the positives of Monday’s lesson.
Okay … I felt a connection with my students, and I could see some genuine
interest out there in the hazy lecture hall of Room 27. I think I saw some
students realize how important it is for Jane and Mr. Rochester to establish
mutual respect despite their class differences. Monday’s lesson hopefully
conveyed my enthusiasm for the material; and I think it’s important for
students to witness that fire in the teacher if they are going to buy in. And hopefully,
I shed light on a difficult text for some of the struggling students. Hopefully,
I modeled close reading for a deeper understanding. But most of this was about
me.
            I went to lunch feeling disappointed
in myself. All right. I know I can do better, and it just so happened that I
had already planned for a student-centered discussion on block day, thanks to
Lisa Xavier, who had shared with me about hers the last week. I chose three
relevant topics and divided the class into three groups. Each student needed to
find a quote from Jane Eyre based on
her topic, and she needed to write some analysis on that and come ready for the
discussion.
            Block day gave my students a chance
to shine. As each group discussed their topic in fishbowl style, I stayed
quiet, took notes, and marveled at their insights and enthusiasm. I could feel
the energy in the room. Each student participated multiple times. During the
debrief session, the “audience” on the outside provided constructive,
thoughtful, feedback to the group in the fishbowl. I told them I was so, so proud;
and I could see they were proud of themselves. One of my students who sometimes
falls asleep in class was a rock star self-appointed facilitator and received a
lot of positive reinforcement from the class. Another struggler told me it was
fun and she wants to do it again. For homework, every student is writing a
self-reflection about her contribution to the discussion. Jane Eyre is a challenging text, and it was gratifying to listen to
my students analyze it, to share their opinions, and to make connections and
predictions.
            This is not rocket science. I’ve
conducted fishbowls and Socratic seminars in the past, also with positive
feedback from students. Like I said, I have experience with student-centered
learning, and I was convinced about it intellectually a long time ago. It’s
just that this week, I saw the contrast between
Monday and block day. Same novel, completely different energy in the classroom.
So, that’s my little retrospective experiment. Not even intended; it just
happened and I noticed the difference. It won’t be published in the latest journal.
But here’s the value: I wasn’t told about it; I learned by experience–and
isn’t that better than learning from a textbook or lecture?