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The New Normal



Day 3 of week 1:  On-line, virtual learning.

How do I manage volunteer work, family life, department responsibilities, and four activity classes with a total of about 165 students in an online environment successfully?  The jury is still deliberating as I contemplate the best route to take to manage our community’s emotional, mental, physical and social well-being.   That is the question I have been trying to answer and today I shared a response in the only way those over 50 know how how… Facebook.  Yes, I admit it.  I can be old school even as I am eager to learn the new technology.  There is comfort in leaning on what is familiar. And so, my Carondelet family, I decided to share my thoughts here too.

xx
Steph
———————

I know we have had a ton of sad news lately. We are experiencing our new “normal”. All of us are having to rethink how we do things on a daily basis. Who would have thought?

Tonight… I am grateful.

I started the day with an online prayer service. I connected with students on a new-for-me platform… Zoom. I left an annual oncology appt with good news and hope. I survived.

I am practicing being imperfect, uncomfortable and present.
And. For. Today. That. Is. Enough.

May you find joy in the days ahead and remember… this too shall pass and WE will be stronger for it.

Love to you all. ❤️”

And Now for Something Completely Different…

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About a week ago, my husband and I started watching a limited documentary series from 2009 about Monty Python called Monty Python Almost the Truth: The Lawyer’s Cut.  My husband, my kids, and I are huge Monty Python fans.  As we spread this documentary over the whole week, watching it 20 minutes of it at a time (which is the amount of time it takes for exhaustion to take over and sleep to arrive), I found more nuggets of wisdom beyond just the comic relief that we so desperately needed.

The documentary covers how the six members of Monty Python met, struggles with the BBC and with finding money to make their first movies.  However, the comedy group also discussed what it was like to collaborate with each other and the ins and outs of the creative process.  Although these six men were friends, they did not always get along.  Creative and personal tensions actually fueled some of the comic genius.  For example, when John Cleese left the BBC show, the remaining members only lasted one more season, partly because the creative disagreements between Cleese and Terry Jones sharpened the wit of them all.  I also found the discussion of how they worked separately, then in writing teams, then all together interesting.  They weren’t afraid of telling each other if something wasn’t working.  They tried to play up to each person’s strengths, and relied on each other to speak the truth.  I found it all fascinating.

Anyway, I highly recommend this series which can be found on Netflix.  We all need some humor in the coming days.  You will also get the side benefit of watching and listening to this group discuss collaboration, creativity, and problem solving.  Note:  Language and some nudity is found in this documentary.

Getting to the Point: One Teacher’s Journey to Embrace the Single Point Rubric (Don’t Like Long Posts? Just Read the Memes!)

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To say I am a fan of rubrics would be an understatement. I am a rubric queen. I have rubrics for everything: discussion skills, text annotations, graphic organizers, visual rhetoric, and essays in a variety of genres. I am a little obsessed with rubrics because as I wade through the turbulent waters of planning a new unit or course, they help me tune out the sirens call of everything I would love to teach and help me focus on the criteria for success for my summative assessments. We only have so many weeks, days, and hours with our students each year, and I want to make every one of them purposeful to help them grow as people, readers, and writers. So, yeah, rubric writing: bring it on.
Don’t get me wrong, though. Writing rubrics (unless we are collaboratively writing about how to build a snowman) is not fun. But the process is so worth it. Writing or revising a rubric requires me to examine standards and models, and to identify a continuum of learning that helps me identify (and therefore proactively address) common misconceptions and challenges students may have for each sub-skill. And they provide concrete data points for me to measure and communicate students’ progress. I even used to refuse to enter a holistic grade for students’ essays, preferring instead to enter each rubric row skill individually so they could really see grades as a reflection of their strengths and areas to grow, and so I could use my gradebook to track the effectiveness of my teaching throughout the year.
Because this tool has been so useful to me in my planning and assessment, for years I have tried to make it useful to students as well. I invest time in breaking down each column and row of the rubrics with students, having students score models with the rubrics, having students score each other with the rubrics. It was my hope that having a shared language around common pitfalls that define weaker assignments and a shared language around how to exceed the standard would lead to increased student success. And yet, most students struggle to accurately self-assess or peer-assess using these rubrics, and the language of the rubric is still stubbornly elusive in their comments on each other’s essays.
Are they just getting circle happy and not really reading the rubric? Despite all the work with the rubrics, are they still not internalizing what this criteria means? C’mon people.  Just read it, read the essay, and circle appropriately. It sometimes felt like I was beating my head against the proverbial wall.
But since I focused my professional development goals around innovating to improve the quality of student writing by enhancing their ability to give each other accurate and supportive feedback, I began to reconsider. Over the summer I had read about single point rubrics in Gallagher and Kittle’s 180 Days, and decided they were a hard pass for me. They seemed antithetical to my practice for all the reasons listed above. However, what matters most isn’t what works for me: it’s what works for students. After hearing Tiz talk about doing single point rubrics with her classes and seeing her models, reading about them on a blog she recommended (The Cult of Pedagogy), and seeing a stray copy of a single point rubric Jenny was using with one of her classes, I decided to venture into new territory and try it out with both my English 2 and AP Lang students. I chose the simplest variation with one column of criteria flanked by empty space for students to comment on glows and grows.
And I’m so glad I did. While I loved the specificity of the analytical rubric, that all means nothing if student’s don’t actually read it, struggle to internalize it, or if their developing brains just can’t process it in all of its glorious complexity. What the single point lacks in specificity, it makes up for with giving students more room to process and communicate their thinking. Just giving the criteria for meeting the standard and leaving room for them to explain glows and grows allows me to see their developing understanding better (yay, more data!), and actually pushes them to internalize the criteria more than just circling a rubric row. They wrote SO MUCH feedback. Most of the students I informally surveyed after the pilot gave rave reviews, saying that they strongly preferred the single point rubric because they could really focus on what they were looking for in their partner’s draft, and they felt less socially awkward because there was room for glows and grows for each indicator so they didn’t feel like they were being mean.
So cheers to simplicity. They said they liked a rubric and were engaged in giving each other meaningful feedback! So much yay! We still have work to do. We will practice evaluating models with the single point to develop a stronger understanding of what good glow and grow feedback looks and sounds like, and continue to assess whether their feedback is aligned with mine (or the College Board or ACT or SAT standards), but for now I consider this a huge win. I want to experiment with having them rank without my explicit criteria and then task them with explaining their rationale. I am also curious to see if they can identify trends in their own comments that can define each level in a way that makes sense to them (and would approximate my detailed rubrics in student friendly language). I’m sure I will try out many variations, but from here on out I will keep the criteria as simple as possible.
Through innovation, I unlearned a key part of my practice. I will still always create my rubrics behind the scenes, but I am committed to learning from my students about what works best for them and taking action to meet them where they are.

The Quest for an Answer

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Since I feel like I have tried everything to get rid of my writer’s block, I thought that writing about my writer’s block might make me feel better. I have already warned everyone that my writing skills are not nearly as sharp as my speaking skills, so if you choose to read this, you’ve made your bed. Let’s see how this edited stream of consciousness goes.
One of my professional goals is to “Develop student leadership curriculum and programming that reinforces the ISOs of women of Heart, Faith, Courage, and Excellence.”

Since I arrived in 2017, I have tweaked the structure of our ASB (Associated Student Body) Council each year in an effort to accomplish my goal and to find the answer to the following question: how can we elevate student leadership from being about start to finish event planning to being about larger scale initiatives where events are a byproduct of long-term programs? A long and difficult question that brings up many issues.
When I started ASB consisted of 36 students. In the 2018-2019 school year, that number went down to around 30. Now, we have 24. I started shrinking the program because I remember in my first year that about two thirds of the girls said their primary role on ASB was to be “a helper”, and did not view themselves as leaders.  I thought that having less girls would strengthen each girl’s individual role, would reduce an individual’s ability to hide from responsibility, and that everyone would rise to each occasion due to scarcity of woman power. 
I have learned from sharing my experiences with faculty members that some of the experiences I have had are similar to those of classroom teachers. I learned that just because you make hiding more difficult, that means that some students will learn how to do it even better. I learned that when students are not given a “study guide” to planning an event that many students become paralyzed to not have the solution spoon fed to them. I learned that some students are so dedicated to looking good on their college apps that they will wake up before 6am to arrive to a class at 7:05am just to check a box.
And I learned that those girls that called themselves helpers were the closest people to actually being leaders on the council. They led by example by always asking if anyone needed help, or just went ahead and did things without being told because they knew they had to get done. 
There seems to be a communally held opinion that “a certain type of girl” wants to join student leadership. The stereotype of the girly-girl who thinks she is better than her peers, is a high achiever, and is an extreme extravert prevails when I talk to anyone about student leadership, adult and student alike. I have a student who constantly helps me with tasks who is not part of ASB, but refuses to join because of the perception of those who are on student leadership. 
I’ll admit, there are plenty of that stereotype present on my council this year, but I also have the shyest most introverted students, as well as ambiverts, artists, and self deprecating stand-up comedians. But my stereotypical students definitely make up the majority. I was, and still am, parts of that stereotype. I see myself in so many of the students, that I make sure that other people interview students to be on student leadership to make sure my own bias does not come through. But that is another part of the issue: who wants to be a leader.
I feel like each time I have made changes, a few of them have been great, and a few of them need to be refined. 
  • I went from having interviews for appointed positions to interviews for everyone. 
  • I went from three girls interviewing at a time to each girl getting her own time. 
  • I established a group interview where girls are challenged and assessed by how well they work with others. 
  • I allowed for students that have been previously interviewed to submit a video interview.
  • I have created Google Form upon Google Form to not only make the application process easier for students, but for faculty recommenders as well. 
  • I went from trying to figure out the changes by myself, to asking fellow Activities Directors and students what they felt were the best answers to our problems.
  • I switched the ASB model from individuals with unclear job descriptions to teams with slightly clearer job descriptions
Throughout the last few weeks, I have been preparing for elections season by looking at my structure, asking students how they feel, and trying to come up with yet another solution. Every time I think about making a change, a rush of questions floods my mind:
  • How do you find the student who is going to give their all and not try to coast?
  • If you shrink it again, will you be edging out the students who need this?
  • How do you validate having students arrive at school by 7:05am without concrete goals and initiatives?
  • How do you give individualized attention to such a large group that is working on so many different projects?
  • What have these schools who win awards for Outstanding Leadership Programs figured out that I have not?
  • Am I going to look incompetent because I keep changing my mind?
  • Am I not innovative because it keeps not working?
  • How will this structure work with collaborating with De La Salle?
As I have talked with De La Salle, and many other high schools, I have learned about how different schools structure their student leadership programs. All of them have shaped their student leadership programs so differently, and many of them feel like they haven’t figured out everything yet either.
I feel like I keep scratching the surface on what the issues are without exposing the true heart of it all. If you have any ideas of what you have seen, or something you think would be cool, swing by my office. I apologize in advance that I do not have any candy, the students keep eating it and I cannot control myself either.

Heart, Faith, Courage

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Pray for Peace
By 
Ellen Bass
 
Pray to whomever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Adonai, Allah.  Raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinhah, Queen of Heaven and Earth,
to Inanna in her stripped descent.
Then pray to the bus driver who takes you to work.
On the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus,
for everyone riding buses all over the world.
 Drop some silver and pray.
Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM,
for your latté and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.
To hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, pray. 
Bow down to terriers and shepherds and Siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.
 Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.
As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer: Water,
softest thing on earth, gentleness
that wears away rock.
Making love, of course, is already prayer.
Skin, and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.
When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step
be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.
Or crush their skulls.
And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer as the earth revolves:
less harm, less harm, less harm.
And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, twirling pizzas-
With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.
Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.
Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.
Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card.
Scoop your holy water from the gutter.
Gnaw your crust.
Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

Semester 1 Math Program Feedback

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One of the goals of our individually paced math program is to help our students develop skills in time management and goal setting while having them take responsibility for their own learning.  We’ve required students to fill in a quarterly pacing guide where they backward fill what they want to accomplish each quarter.  We have the students update this pacing guide every Friday.  Each student is assigned to a lead teacher who tracks their progress virtually as well as meeting with each student to check in with them and keep them on track.

At the end of the first semester we asked students to fill out a survey giving us feedback on how this process worked for them.  We asked the students what their goal was for the semester and if they met that goal.  We asked students to elaborate on why they did or did not meet their goal.  We also asked them how many topics (i.e. chapters) they completed in the semester.  Students who are moving at a pace similar to a traditional class should complete between 4-6 topics in a semester, depending on which course they are taking.

We also asked the students the following questions:  

My lead teacher took an active interest in my learning.
  • Did you choose to remediate any tests over 70% this semester?
  • Did you attend direct instruction this semester?
  • Did you find direct instruction helpful?
  • How much did this Math Program allow you to develop skills to become a successful student?
  • What skills did you develop to become a successful student?
  • How would you describe your engagement as a learner this semester?
  • How much does this Math Program allow you to develop your time management skills?
  • How much did this Math Program allow you to develop your problem solving skills?
  • How much opportunity were you given to learn in a way that works best for you?
  • How student-centered did this class feel?

We had 307 students complete the survey.  The results are fascinating and will take some time to really analyze but I wanted to get an initial sense for what the students thought.  I grouped the students into 3 groups based on the numbers of topics they completed in semester 1.  Sixty-six students reported completing 1-3 topics (technically off-pace), 177 reported completing 4-6 topics (either on pace or ahead depending on the course they are taking), and 64 reported completing more than 7 topics (moving faster than a traditional class).  I randomly selected one student from each group to study their responses.

Student #1 is enrolled in Geometry and set the goal of completing through Topic 4 by the end of semester 1.  She only completed 2 topics and did not meet her goal because she stated she had to remediate some tests before she could move on.  Student #1 says she developed better listening skills this semester and has become more comfortable asking questions when she is stuck.  On a scale of 1 (low) to 10 (high) she reports that her engagement as a learner is an 8 and her problem-solving skills are a 7.

Student #2 is enrolled in Algebra and had a slightly vague goal of being almost done with Algebra.  She completed 5 topics this semester.  She said through this program she learned how to set goals for herself and that following her pacing guide was really helpful each week.  Student #2 felt that she learned how to motivate herself to take responsibility for getting her work done.  She also rated the class a 9 out of 10 for providing an opportunity to learn in a way that is best for her.

Student #3 is enrolled in Algebra 2 now but began the year in Algebra and had a goal of being halfway done with Geometry by the end of the semester.  She completed 13 topics and surpassed her goal by completing all but 2 topics of Geometry.  She rated the program 9 and 10 on all questions and commented that she loved being able to move at her own pace.  Student #3 said she had to develop planning skills and fine-tune her working habits because she knew she had set a lofty goal for herself.

Just glancing at the spreadsheet of student results is fascinating and it gives the lead teachers additional information into how their students are working and approaching the program.  I hope it helps students connect their progress during the year to the goals they set for themselves.  The majority of students who did not meet their goal were very honest and specific about why they did not meet their goal.  We plan on surveying students again at the end of semester 2 and I wonder how many students who did not meet their goal after semester 1 end up meeting it by the end of the year.  We have really tried to let students know that their feedback matters to us (many changes to our program for this year were directly linked to student feedback) and I think it is important to survey them to hear what they have to say.  I plan on referencing these results to my students that I track when I meet with them this semester.  

Journaling and The Artist’s Way

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Journaling and The Artist’s Way



My students journal every day at the start of the class for five minutes give or take. I wish there was more time. They are encouraged to write about whatever they choose, whatever they want to flush out of their heads, no exceptions. They know they are not graded for it and that I will never look into their journals. I just need to see their hands moving.
There have been some complaining about this but it has become a habit for them and from a class management standpoint, a gnarly way to get the class settled before we start with the day’s business. Overall, this has been a positive. It gets my first period students very focused. My second period will need some heavy artillery, but I digress.
I got the daily journal idea from a self-help book by Julia Cameron called “The Artist Way.” Some of you reading this entry will be familiar with this title. It is currently in its 25th edition and it is almost required reading for artists and writers going through a “block”, wrestling with confidence issues or other demons. I must confess I was a little skeptical of this book, as I am with self-help books in general. I thought it was kind of corny.  I was however, intrigued by the “daily pages”, a ritual which is a little bit like what I asked my students to do only at a larger scale (you have to fill 3 full pages daily.) A few months after I was introduced to this book I had filled several notebooks with sometimes illegible written pages and I found the process to be very positive for a number of reasons that would require a new blog entry.


When we revised the results of the Panorama Survey in the last In-Service day, I joined the small group where we looked at results under the category “Social Awareness”. In every aspect, students scored really high except when asked the question: “In the last thirty days, how clearly were you able to describe  your feelings?” Look at the comparative results below. The percentage dropped sharply, almost half compared to the other response.


There seems to be a great need for effective channels of self-expression. Art in general and journaling in particular are perfect avenues for this. 

When I asked my students what they liked the most about journaling, being able to freely express their thoughts and feelings without prompt, judgement or direction seem to be the general response. This world bubble below gathers the words of the responses to the question: What do you like most about our daily journaling activity.

When we write our thoughts down they become a thing of their own, separate from us. This purging allows our mind to have more clarity. We are no longer “our thoughts”. They have the potential of taking an abstract form, outside of our identity and sometimes they can become raw material for new ideas and projects.



If you are more interested in “The Artist’s Way” here are some links to a the New Yorker Magazine article as well as one of my favorite blogs: Brain Pickings by Maria Popova.




Just Ok Is Not Ok

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You may have seen the television ads from AT&T that use the slogan that “just ok isn’t ok”. There is the one about the tax professional, another about a doctor. It was strange that I couldn’t figure out why these ads bothered me. Then I realized why. Simply put, I used to think that saying I just ok was a sign of being less egotistical and being modest about my profession. Now, I can’t stand to say that I am “Just ok”.

Let me say right off the bat, I do not think that all of my students love me. I’ve had complains about teaching too much, giving tests in religion, having them write essays in religion (I know, the nerve) and not just handing them an A because Jesus loves them. That being said, I believe I do a great job of helping them make connections to the faith they are being taught, and connecting that to a variety of areas in their lives and the world.

Sometimes I wish it would be as easy as teaching them how to solve an equation and always get the correct answer. Instead we have myriads of history and theology (as well as a slew of other subject areas) that brings them to more questions than when they began. Let me give you an example in the last unit that I taught.

We looked at the persecutions (sometimes the lack there of) to the early Church in the first four centuries. While looking at the impact on those persecutions, we had to give attention to Christian theological developments in the early Church and writings that preached the truth about Jesus and the Church, and ones that didn’t. The funny thing is, one of the biggest observations from the students is that they had never heard of some of the writings in the early Church. I admit that in elementary school these would have caused confusion with the students. Now with the intellectual maturity that they possess, they are faced with examining the text for themselves and understanding the writings role in history and why they were eradicated from history. The students now have a greater understanding of what happened, but also see that people have been confused about God for centuries.

Teaching hurts my heard. Being able to wrestle with challenging issues myself and then translate that into student friendly language while still holding theological integrity… ouch. But a sore head and being proud of being a good teacher, a least to me, is better than just being ok.

My Christian Living Class Couldn’t Articulate What The Ideal Christian Community Should Look Like

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So to set the scene. We just looked at the first four centuries of the early Church and have now fast forwarded a thousand years to the Protestant Reformation. The student see Martin Luther look towards Rome with a gleeful feeling of anticipation. Anticipation of seeing the holiest place on Earth. What was he thinking.

I’ll tell you. A lot more than all four of my Sophomore classes. Sorry for throwing shade at my beloved Sophomores who I adore. My students couldn’t envision what the ultimate Christian community should look like. Why in blazes not???

I have a few thoughts and hopefully none of them are correct.

Is it because what they’ve been taught for years in Catholic education (in schools at home and in the parish) has shown them that there is no such thing as the ultimate Christian community. If you’re thinking along the lines of God’s Kingdom on Earth, yes we are talking about the same thing. Have we perhaps separated the Saints from reality so that we don’t see what we can and should all become?

How about this. Are we modeling a Christian community and that’s the best they think it can be? We have a school of grades that judge, bells that demand that we sit in a certain location for a specific time, friend groups that teach exclusion far more than inclusion, and a belief that everyone’s truth is correct and so act the way you want unless you’re breaking serve rule.

Is it possible that our version of God and Jesus isn’t relatable and so they can’t fuse faith with their lives?

I Hate Reading!

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I hate reading. 


Just kidding, I love reading, but many of my students do not. Boo.

I ask my students why they dislike reading and they say: 

  • “It’s boring.”
  • “I’m not interested in the material.”
  • “It takes too long.”
  • “I don’t understand.”
  • “I don’t care.”
Many students don’t enjoy reading in English, let alone in another language. I’ll be honest, I have avoided assigning many reading activities for fear of “wasting time” and for lack of student engagement. The reading assignments I do give are usually for homework, on something that isn’t particularly exciting for adolescents (holler, Aztec Empire!). I threaten with a reading “quiz” the next day, and what do you know? Most kids don’t do well on the reading quiz! Why? 
1. They didn’t read 
2. There aren’t any Sparknotes on that particular text on the Aztec Empire. (shocking, am I right?)

Studies show that to acquire a language more effectively, students must constantly be reading at a level that is appropriate for them, and they should be reading texts that are interesting to them. What do you mean Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Magical Realism do not satisfy these criteria? I struggle internally because if I assign “Independent reading” I see many students staring blankly at a page and all of a sudden everyone has to go to the bathroom, and now I’ve wasted 10 minutes of valuable classroom time, and my students are bored and resentful. So I avoid it. But the studies! And now I have the “teacher guilties”…

Recently I attended a workshop by Mike Peto on Comprehensible Input in the language classroom. He HIGHLY emphasized independent reading for students to acquire language. He also insisted that students must be reading books that are appealing to them. This means, students can pick and choose their topic of interest and level (as long as it’s in Spanish, in this case). This also reaquires a well-developed language book library that has been cultivated over the years, and I don’t have one. Sad. 🙁

I also recently attended a webinar by Bryan Kandel titled “Succeeding with Novels in the Language Classroom”.

In his webinar, Bryan emphasized the importance of reading to gain language input. The task is to make reading ENJOYABLE for students by using compelling texts. “Compelling texts contain the following:


  • humor
  • relevance
  • unexpected, incredible details
  • debate”.
If a text contains these elements, students will enjoy reading. Yeah…Okay. 

In this webinar there were several techniques and strategies for a teacher to use to engage students in reading and coaxing them to enjoy reading. One strategy really stuck out for me: 

SCREENCAST A READING OUTLOUD. This screencast is from a mini novel titled “¿Dónde Está Eduardo? by Blaine Ray:



I am not sure if this will work for English teachers, but for language teachers, I find it to be really great. The students can listen and read along, and also use the images, or even film excerpts to associate with the text being read. This provides them with a mental image for what is being described, and they will better associate the vocabulary with the text. They can also hear how the words are supposed to be pronounced, not just how it sounds in their own heads. They can listen to intonation and emotion when the text is being read aloud, which will facilitate reading. Overall this might just be some progress for enjoying reading more in Spanish.