Do You Speak American

Hey fellow code-switchers, I found this very interesting website today at pbs.org called "Do you Speak American?" I put the link under the "Culturally Responsive Teaching" category, but here is the address incase it doesn't work:
http://www.pbs.org/speak/ If you click on the "Educators" link at the bottom it has some interesting lessons too.

Link Update

The Spanish Lit. link for kids and adolescents should be working again. I added another linked called: "Advocating for Human Rights" under the "Culturally Sensitive Teaching Links" category which has many excellent links for anyone interested in incorporating social justice in their classrooms.

By the way, I think we have all reached our 6 mandatory blogs for the Literacy class, so if anyone wants to open up the floor to broader topics welcome to.

Art & Writing

These comments articulately raise a case for teaching code-switching in the elementary and middle school classroom. Certainly, all of us who taught last year in urban middle schools see the value and the need for teaching code-switching.

I perhaps didn't clarify my point enough, in that, at a certain point in education, once one has developed the skills of code-switching, sometimes writing in informal or dialectic English is the best choice. I think that many accelerated students, even in middle school, do have an understanding of code-switching (especially when you look into Advanced and gifted and talented classrooms), and I think that in many ways, as teachers, we have to support their choice to express themselves in the language they choose. I guess this is a pressing personal topic, because I loved creative writing when I was in middle school and high school and was always finding, what my teachers considered, "unconventional" ways of self expression--often in the form of prose-poetry. This often resulted in a lot of "Fs" and red ink on my paper. Granted, I was a bit of a pain in the a** in middle school anyway.

I read a number of high level proficient 7th grade portfolios during scoring last year. These high-level proficient portfolios used Standard English beautifully. You could tell that they had been coached well the whole year; that someone had been working very hard with them to incorporate figurative language, to develop amazing leads and to write stellar conclusions. However, the portfolio that stood out the most, and which I said was borderline distinguished, was a girl who, in her selection of poetry, consciously chose to use informal language, beyond dialogue, to express an idea. It was easier to mark it distinguished for me, because she had demonstrated a mastery of formal English in her other pieces, but the porfolio went through several readers to finally make that call. It will be harder to make those decisions with only three pieces in a portfolio next year and I believe that the poetry piece was the hang-up piece for many of the other scorers.

It concerns me sometimes that standard English is so valued in schools, when I believe, in creative writing, sometimes, the literature that moves you the most is the literature that takes the most risks and speaks from the authentic "you." I think we can accidently, and unconsciously, snuff a kid's artistic expression. So I guess I'm making a case for still valuing the practicality in writing, in which standard English is a key player, but also valuing the art in writing, in which case non-standard English can be a key player too.

Some More Notes on Code-Switching

Following Lisa's suggestion, I'm currently listening to English One's literary discussion. Needless to say it made me very hungry as I created one of my genres for the Readers-Writers Project!

I thought their conversation provided some great insights on grammar, its debatable usage, and the power that comes with knowing and understanding the ever-changing rules. Naturally, however, I found my heart beating a little faster as the conversation turned to code-switching, and Mike suggested it impossible. Of course I disagree, as code-switching is my baby. When Mike claims that kids are not smart enough to code-switch between IMing, texting, and emailing because he finds his students using much of the technological abbreviations in their formal classroom writing, I think he's not giving his students enough credit. He expects them to master a skill he has not taught them, which would of course be nearly impossible. Because we will never be able to (nor should we) force our students to write or speak in formal "Standard" English in their own media spaces, as teachers we must teach them with respect for what they bring to the table. One way to do so is to teach code-switching, or to explicitly say to them: "Where you use "4" in texting, you must use "four" in formal writing. Anything else is unacceptable." By directly telling this to students, teachers will not only get the results they desire, but also help raise a language consciousness among students formerly not activated.

I attached a great link I stumbled accross. It's the BBC's learning English site, which has some great QandA about teaching English to ELL students and can easily be adapted to code-switching lessons.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/index.shtml

Some Notes On Code-Switching

I attached Lisa Delpit's article, "Other People's Children", even though I know Lisa and Jessie have already read it. Tonya, I thought you might be interested in reading it before you begin teaching - her book of the same title has been the single most influential piece of writing on my teaching I have read thus far. (i.e., I highly recommend it.)

Last year, I had a lot of issues with teaching "Standard" English, because I didn't want to devalue my stduents' authentic voices and home languages. Now I know I did them no favors by celebrating everything they wrote, and the guilt is painful enough to motivate me into designing a unit, detailed in structure and system, on code-switching for this this fall (I'm also presenting this unit as my Reader's-Writer's Project.)

I believe code-switching is one of the most valueable things (besides literacy) we can teach our students, and I honestly believe the two - code-switching and litercy - go hand-in-hand quite nicely. While I do believe in the value of self-expression for artistic merit (creative, literary writing), it's obvious to me that literary writing without a basic understanding, a consciousness of grammatical language patterns is not going to raise these kids out of poverty. That is my one true goal as a teacher - to give my disadvantaged students equal access to power, choice, and democracy.

That said, I do believe literary writing ought to be taught to students in poverty. Many times these children are the ones who need desperately to express their emotions and painful experiences in the medium of the written word. But I think that can only come within a rigid structure (something I used to cringe at the thought of) with ample drilling and rote memorization activities. (If anyone has any suggestions on where I can find some templates for memorization and drilling of grammatical patterns, please let me know - I'm on the hunt.) Until we bring these kids to a level where what we've taken for granted as automaticity is also their own, we cannot even hope for their success.

Literature can be a great way to access grammatical patterns, particularly literature with a language pattern and narrative that the students relate to. Couple that with Beers' strategies for independent reading, and soon I think you will have empowered students to read, write, speak, and (most importantly) be conscious of language in such a way that no one will ever be able to take away from them.

Links

If you have any links you'd like added along the left column, just give me a shout. :-) I tried to add all the ones that were brought up in the blog conversations and the ones that were mentioned in class.

Decoding in "Creative Writing"

One of the things I emphasized this past year when I discussed decoding is that in a lot of cases, beyond dialogue even, it is absolutely fine to not decode everything into formal English. Alice Walker's THE COLOR PURPLE and Sharon Flake's THE SKIN I'M IN are both prime examples of excellent literature written in informal English. Walter Dean Myers also uses a lot of informal English, for example in his book SLAM!. Of course, then comes the discussion that the authors are still incorporating basic rules of grammar and that the authors are consciously choosing to write in informal English for purpose's of narrative voice...which leads to a whole other discussion on authentic voice in writing.

At any rate, I find it perplexing that we emphasize creative writing so much in middle school, but then put a cap on creativity and personal expression. If we are talking about creative writing then I feel students need to be conscious of their language, but not necessarily choose formal English as the language of discourse. Of course, one must look at the way the students are then being assessed in their portfolio writing, because I would argue that the majority of students who would have been classified "novice" writers from my class last year would have been classified "novice writers" because of their choice of language, even though they were following a very specific and consistent structure. (And that is why we are now teaching decoding anyways.)

On the other hand, I was very particular that when my students wrote transactive pieces, editorials and letters, that they make every attempt to write in formal English since their audiences were people like the principal, the youth director, the school board. However, you could make an argument that depending on the audience a student could also use informal English in a transactive piece. So, as I'm working on some decoding lessons, I have found that to teach decoding without a discussion on voice and audience is quite difficult, which goes back to my whole discussion about structure and connecting concepts over the course of the year within a finite amount of time.

If I were really teaching creative writing, I certainly wouldn't limit my students to formal language. If the emphasis on writing was more expository, I can see a bigger case for using formal English. I know we tell kids they can use informal language in dialogue, but many successful creative African-American and Hispanic writers are now using informal language across entire bodies of literature. I still, of course, intend to teach decoding and formal English, because I know my students will be assessed poorly on their writing portfolios if they do not demonstrate a mastery of formal English. Additionally, even if my students do become creative writers, they will need to know formal English to a certain extent to be successful in life after school. 

Perhaps, this is more of a concern for upper level writing curriculum, such as gifted and talented programs and college programs. As a creative writing concentration, I know that if I taught creative writing in an upper level, I would say bring everything you have to your writing, your language, your voice, your culture, your experiences--don't hold back at all, that's what makes your writing poignant and meaningful. Now, as a middle school teacher, teaching creative writing, I'm feeling a little torn and I was wondering if anyone else felt this way.

Reading Kylene Beers WHEN KIDS CAN'T READ really changed the way I taught this past fall. I used so many of Beers strategies in both my language arts and science classes. A lot of the strategies are built into the Read XL program which is a mandated program for all of the level 3-6 stanines at my school. I had the opportunity to attend some professional development that went into specifics of how to use a lot of these strategies--like making inferences and buidling predictions. Even as I reread this book now, I am overwhelmed with the amount of information in it. Sometimes reading these types of books makes me feel more inadequate then enlightened. It is clear to me that becoming an excellent teacher is more an act of patience and dutiful hard work than anything else.

Beers talks about providing individual attention to "specific students with specific needs." In her final chapter she talks about all of the obstacles that get in the way of that. Atleast in my classroom last year, every student had specific needs and while I'd read a number of great books with reading and writing strategies throughout the year, I never felt like I could have possibly reached all of my students with the tools I was given. And that is a frustrating thought, which many of us first year teachers have expressed. You can have a whole garage shed of tools and strategies in your back pocket, but it is so difficult figuring out what the right moment to use them is and how to balance them. I feel that is my greatest worry for next year... how do I structure my year, how do I balance what my class needs as a group and what each one of my students needs individually? Right now I'm reading a bunch of books on teaching writing at once and trying to meld everything into some comprehensible structure; it's such a daunting task...
Has anyone come to some wonderful epiphany about structuring your class for next year? I'd love to hear it. :-)

Maus: A Peculiar Ending

The idea of using animals to portray one of the most despicable moments in world history admittedly unnerved me at first. To compare the mass genocide of over 6 million Jews in Poland to a cat and mouse war bothered me from the moment I saw the cover of the book; however… after reading it and now in retrospect, I did find the story engaging and poignant. That being said, I rarely looked at the pictures and ended up reading the story as a play rather than a graphic novel, which might of saved me from a vehement disapproval.

I would not chose this particular book to teach middle schoolers; I believe it would be best suited for 11th or 12th graders, particularly if it could be an interdisciplinary unit between a social studies and English teacher. The Holocaust is not covered in the middle school curriculum in Jefferson County and I think that to truly appreciate this book you need a solid background on the intricacies of this historical moment. The frontloading for a book such as this is just enormous. We start with such an adult beginning—how the father ultimately chooses a wife. That alone serves as a teaching hurtle, how do your kids relate at all to these characters; when have they had to decide whether to love for money, or beauty, or kindness? The word list I came up with as I read this, of all the specific terms that relate to the Holocaust that would have to be explained, was huge—anti-Semitism, heil Hitler, Jewish, Polish, German, Torah, extermination camp, immigration, rabbi, parshas truma, genocide, prejudice, Aushwitz……….

Sure, a middle schooler could read it, even a high schooler could read it, but, I think it would be a huge mistake to assign it at this level without a really excellent knowledge of your students. It would be a disservice to the memories of all those who were impacted by the Holocaust. I think a child would miss the real issues that are being brought up in this story and there are plenty of stories on the Holocaust that could be used instead—the reoccurring themes of the destruction of family, the disintegration of human ethical and moral values, the betrayal of trust, the question of human dignity. What is love? What is faith? What is family? What does it mean to be dead? There are so many frustrating and unnerving moments in this novel that, even as an adult, I have a hard time grappling with, like the mother killing herself after enduring the war; how much can the human spirit endure before it disintegrates? Even adults don't often understand what is being portrayed by the father's idiosyncrasies that the son and Mala harp on--that he is desperately trying to hang on to his dignity in the face of death, just as he fights to hang on to his dignitiy under the shadow of genocide and the Nazi Regime. ... And the destruction of so many families, that even the narrator of the story, the son, leaves his father and the novel hanging on the last, bitter, betrayed word, “murderer.” I couldn’t teach this novel if my students couldn’t make it to those moments when you have to question the very foundation of all the things you have ever believed to be true about people and about life.

Audio Link to CHEW ON THIS discussion

Click on the link to listen to our literary discussion of the book CHEW ON THIS:


http://leader.louisville.edu/edtl/kajder/podcasts/disc2_languagearts.wav

Taking Action

I've always been passionate about equal rights and justice for all, but after reading Chew On This, I've been even more troubled about social justice, locally, nationally, and globally. (For example, when Lisa led me to discover that my beloved Target had hardly better labor practices than my arch enemy Wal-Mart, I was devestated.) In any event, it is McDonald's and other Fast Food Franchise's labor practices that have my knickers in a wad (as Jessie would say ;) Tonight I found a great website that could help adults and students alike take action after reading Chew On This or Fast Food Nation. It specifically posts links to McDonald's transgressions and shows easy ways you can fight back - particularly through persuasive letter writing, which is "write" up our ally. (sorry for that...)

Enjoy!

Organization: Jobs with Justice
Website: http://www.jwj.org/

Reflecting on Maus

Maus was a powerful graphic novel, to say the least. I'm glad I finally got to read it; I've always heard it was amazing and since I was little I've loved reading comics. Although I don't think I'll be using the book with my students at this point, I definitely think I'll use it at some point in the future. And even though I won't specifically use Maus this year, reading the novel inspired me to do more with comic books. Calvin and Hobbes was a huge favorite of mine growing up, and it's a strip that handles some really "higher order" issues. I think my kids would enjoy reading them, and be able to "get there" with the right scaffolding.

If I do use Maus in the future, I would definitely have to do a lot of front loading. I think in order to really understand what's going on in the book, you have to have a lot of background knowledge and a solid understanding of what happened in Europe before and during WWII. Without that crucial knowledge I suspect my kids would be lost, and therefore not buy into the book, or gain the appropriate understanding of these very serious, and horrific, events in our recent history. In that same vein, I might worry that my students wouldn't take the book seriously because animals are used to depict humans. Even with a discussion of the symbolism, I'm not sure I could convince my students (many of whom already have a difficult time distinguishing between fact and fiction) that these were real people and real events. That issue would also have to be addressed. But maybe I'm not giving them enough credit; maybe they would understand symbolism all the better for reading this book. I might follow it with Animal Farm to make similar connections.

In any event, I really enjoyed reading Maus, and I'm sure it will be beneficial to my teaching in the future.

Chew on This: Digital Recording Summary

The digital recording of our group discussion of CHEW ON THIS went well today. For the most part our group members felt the book was valuable and worthwhile to use in the class either as a whole or as excerpts. Tonya expressed a slight disappointment in the book, but still found many passages worth discussing as a group. We discussed the useability of the book, the ways we saw it playing out in our classroom, the ways we could collaborate with other teachers, the responses we expected from our students and the troubleshooting areas we foresaw.

As a young adult book, we found the text features, white space, large font, pictures, subtitles and captions, to be very helpful. The writing was clear and seemed accessible to a variety of middle school levels. Jessie had many wonderful insights on how the book could be used in the classroom, because she created a unit for her 6th grade class using FAST FOOD NATION this past year. She addressed many of the strengths and weaknesses CHEW ON THIS had with it's more adult version, noting that FAST FOOD NATION had some sections which were perhaps more riveting for a young adult audience. She also suggested a clever way to use class time to cover all of the text, through a similar approach to jigsawing, drawing on reading strategies she had worked on throughout the year.

Sarah pointed out many of the key themes and ideas that could be discussed in a range of middle school classrooms and offered some excellent ideas on how the text could be used in classrooms to foster authentic learning. Tonya expressed some concern for the lengthy historical background provided in the book. We varied in our opinions on this matter, some arguing that it was interesting and others arguing that it was indeed a little much. We agreed that in order to get kids engaged in this book, we would have to find a very alluring hook. Jessie suggested reading a passage from FAST FOOD NATION that describes in great detail the conditions of the slaughter house, as this worked well to motivate her students this year.

I think the discussion went well considering we did not follow roles like we had during the last literary discussion. We created 5 questions before beginning the recording to keep us on track during the discussion. I think the digital recording did add an uneasy element to our discussion at first and we certainly exchanged some funny glances when there was an awkward pause. I'm not sure that the digital recording made a significant impact on the quality of our literary discussion, as I would say last week's discussion was equivocal. It did make me hesitate to contribute to the group on a number of occasions, which I did not feel the weight of as much in last week's un-recorded discussion. I feel that middle schoolers probably wouldn't be as bashful towards the recorder; however, I can see a problem arising from attention seekers taking over the digital recording performance and leaving their literary companions on the sidelines.

Student Digest

Eric Schlosser's book Chew on This should be a great book to excerpt for my students. Like Curious Incident the book is broken with several text features, headings, and pictures with captions. I think the subject matter should be really intriguing for them, and will push their critical thinking about advertisements and corporate manipulation of the wider public through the media. I will definitely use this book in the persuasive writing unit, because it connects nicely with a critical exploration of the media, and the persuasive techniques advertisers use to draw in their victims. Last year we analyzed advertisements as we learned persuasive techniques, and those lessons proved to be pretty engaging, so I'm sure this book will work nicely.

I think my students will also enjoy thinking about the ideas posed, but I'm not so sure it will actually change their behavior, as far as frequenting fast food restaurants, that is. I think it's important to remember that a lot of these students don't have much control over what they eat, because they are still under the care of their parents, many of whom are working two jobs, some of whom are single parents. In these types of households, it's very difficult to plan for meals, because of all the other responsibilites that weigh upon the parent or guardian. Perhaps I can couple these excerpts with some ideas for easy, healthy meals. Even those that come in a box are probably better than what they serve in fast food joints! It just comes down to how much my students buy into the book, and how much they're truly willing to digest.

Will "The Incident" Awaken My Students' Curiosity?

After reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, I’m wondering if I could use this book with my students. I worry because of the profanity and some of the more “adult” scenes, but when I worry, I’m not worrying so much about whether or not it will damage my students (of course it won’t: they’ve heard and used all the words before, and TV, popular music, and movies have far worse content than this book), I’m worrying about parental complaints. I almost don’t think it will be a problem, but I plan to send home permission slips to have my students read the book. If the students do not return the permission slips, I will call those specific parents and have an oral verification as to whether they can read it or not.

In the end, I think the benefits of reading this book far outweigh the risks of parental objection. There is so much cross-curricular substance to build on, as well as a frank and open discussion of the writing process. It will also be easier for my students to read, because of the white space, short sections, illustrations, and syntax. It also provides critical points for discussing code-switching, learning about English geography and culture, text features, sensory details, simile and metaphor, rhetorical questions, tone and voice, character development, dialogue, and reflecting on the writing process itself. In addition, the larger higher order questions about the truth, the literal, the logical, and what it means to be human are also addressed in the book, which could serve to really help push my students’ critical thinking and higher order reasoning skills.

Finally, I want to use the book because I’m hoping that the book will grab my students’ attention and keep them interested with its humor, suspense, and mystery. (I hope it will!)

Summary of Our First Literature Circle

Our group had a great discussion today of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I was personally really impressed with everyone’s contributions, friendly discussions, and respectful dissents or expansions. We had a very productive hour in which every group member contributed usefully multiple times, and it never seemed like anyone was dominating the conversation or was fully removed from it. In part that was Chris’ great leadership as Discussion Facilitator, and the entire group’s willingness to cooperate and enthusiasm over the book.

The discussion comprised larger philosophical questions, mostly posed by Lisa and Chris, but reflected upon by all. We discussed the autistic perspective, the family members’ tribulations and the book’s focus on “Truth” as opposed to lies, the literal as opposed to the metaphorical, and the empirically observable as opposed to the spiritual or intuitive. We spent a lot of time pondering the nature of the characters, whether or not their actions were justifiable, forgivable, and rational. We found that all of us had strong feelings about the father, either of sympathy or dislike. Jessie, as Literary Luminary, continuously drew our attention to passages to which she had great insight, and provided reflections which led to some great discussions. Jessie brought up how nicely the descriptions provide information about the characters without outright saying so: such as the socio-economic class of the family.

As far as we saw this book relating to our students and our curriculum, I think our discussions produced some very practical ideas. The vocabulary in the book could offer support for several lessons on code-switching, if we were to compare the British English with our own commonly used American English (comparing “take-away chips” to “french-fries” and “housecoat” to “bathrobe” and so on.) We also thought the book might be used as a scaffold for Sherlock Holmes novels or excerpts. We liked the use of pictures, text features, and graphic organizers in the novel itself. Lisa also brought up the insightful point that the book was also strongly about how to write – Christopher is after-all reflecting on writing the book as we read it. Some useful reflections that may lend to writing mini-lessons are his use of text features, commentary on descriptions, rhetorical questions, and how to leave out insignificant details, etc. Mike also suggested that the book serve as a reminder that we as educators strive to make our instructions as explicit as possible, because so often what seems obvious to us is not to our students.

We also saw some great drawings from Lance and Tonya that served as multi-modal expressions of understandings of the text.

Overall, I was very impressed with our group’s caliber of discussion which I believed pushed our thinking and reinforced positive professional relationships among us. Great job, all!

A Curious Choice

I think that a good way to hook kids with this book THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME would be to have the body of a dog taped out on the floor, a pitch fork nearby, and police tape surrounding the scene, sort of like the demonstration described in Fisher Chapter 2. :-) I would be more captivated by that, coupled with a read aloud, and maybe some sort of digital story discussing autism than having to read an article on autism and matching emotiocons. Unfortunately, I'm only to page 12 and I'm finding the book boring already. I'll say that pages 1-8 were interesting, but as soon as the narrator told me that he wouldn't be telling any jokes and then started to talk about math, my brain shut off and I had to reread pages 10 and 11.

From my experience teaching 8th grade language arts (tracked students all with reading stanines 1-6); I would not use this book. I think the language is manageable with some vocabulary frontloading, but I'm not sure how a number of my students would relate to this strange narrator and his fascinations. The lexile score for this book (1180) places it at a 10th-12th grade reading level which I think is more appropriate, especially considering the profanity. I'm interested to hear more about how this book went over when it was taught in the 8th grade setting Ms. Kadjar started to describe in class.

.... ....After finishing the book. I'd say the book was so-so. I admired the writing that went into it, but I didn't find it particularly engaging and might not of been inspired enough to finish it had not someone given me a synopsis of the ending, which sparked my curiosity. I did love how the book in itself served as sort of a map of Christopher's journey in finding his identity, his place in the world and his place among people. I also liked how the book itself taught how to be a good writer, a good mathematician, and and a good detective; I felt I was learning a lot as I was reading. I thought the use of narrator in this story was excellent, not only in that it let us get glimpses of the complicated and sometimes depressing realities going around Christopher in an objective way, but it also allowed us a glimpse into a mind that we would normally be shut out of. I found myself relating to Christopher's idiosyncrasies and ideologies of life as I read. The conclusions that Christopher comes to on his search for self were compelling and real to me. As a writer, I was impressed how the author took an ordinary story and infused it with orginality. However, I'm not sure that my eighth grade students would have truly appreciated what the author was ultimately saying about human behavior and emotion, intuition and logic, the intricacies of our world, and the rationalizations we all have for our actions. I feel that a truly struggling reader would have been discouraged by the jumpy narration, the long and sometimes boring descriptions, and the fragmented and sometimes slightly esoteric digressions that on the one hand made the story "original," but on the other hand made me question my investment in reading.