Breaking Writing Down

It is that time of year again.  This week, the thermometer finally settled at a livable temperature, crispy yellow leaves began to fall from the cherry trees in our school plaza, parents gathered for our annual "Back-to-School Day", and the 11th graders set to work on their first major essay of the year.

In the past, I viewed essays as a largely independent endeavor: naturally, the students should be responsible for starting and making progress on their own time!  If I were merely teaching content, this might be true.  However, as I considered the skills I would be assessing this time (in particular, thesis and direction), I realized that I needed to give the students ample opportunity to practice.  After all, most of the students had not written a thesis statement, or an essay, for that matter, since their major 10th Grade "Who Am I" paper in the Spring.  What's more, students new to CAJ might never have written a thesis statement before, in which case this opportunity to learn is crucial!

With this in mind, I had my students engage in a thesis writing exercise in the 2nd week of school, following our discussion of labels, and how stories help us move beyond such assumptions.  Using an intuitive journalling tool on Moodle (the program we use for online classes), I had the students choose a prompt and write only an introductory paragraph, including a thesis.  Making my life easier, this particular Moodle function has a box for feedback under each student's submission.  I spent an hour reading through and commenting on each student's introduction.

Fast-forward to this week.  The rough draft of the first essay is due next week and remembering the panicked questions and emails that I would typically receive the day before an essay was due in past years, I decided to make use of the Moodle journal tool yet again.

Yesterday, I had my students write the introductory paragraph to their unit essay.  I found myself giving higher-level feedback than I had the first time around, and seeing (overall) a trend of improvement. For example, rather than finding myself needing to remind the students what a thesis was countless times (as has happened in previous years), I gave suggestions for how to make the main points develop more logically, or how to rephrase an idea to make it stronger.  Today, I asked the students to use their thesis to write up a brief outline of their body paragraphs, and to begin filling in possible support for each point.  While each student ended in a slightly different place, I no longer have to deal with the sneaking fear that students are putting off work for a big assignment in my class, as I put off work for so many of my own teachers' classes when I was in school.

For the first time ever, I caught myself thinking, "If only I'd had a teacher like me when I was in school!"  I mean this to be neither arrogant on my own part nor unduly disparaging to the English teachers I did have.  I just don't have any recollection that any of my English teachers ever walked us through writing as a process.  I'd find out only upon receiving a final grade that my thesis was either poor or completely absent, as though I should have been magically able to conjure up something I hadn't received direct, timely feedback on.  I cannot judge my teachers too harshly for this; after all, I failed to provide this kind of feedback to several years' worth of my own students.  On Tuesday, I will have my students workshop one of their body paragraphs in class, and then the essay itself is due on Wednesday.  I am excited--if these rough draft essays are the product of feedback and several days of effort, they will be leagues ahead of the rough draft essays I have received in the past, many of which were the product of a frenzied last-minute rush and quite likely a lot of caffeine.  I will have a clearer picture of what my students learned; what they are capable of; and what I can challenge them to work on for the final draft.

Grading is usually one of my least favorite parts of teaching, but this time, I genuinely cannot wait to sit down and read what the students come up with!

Teaching With Integrity... again

On a Tuesday afternoon in mid-June, I slumped in the chair by my desk in my newly-empty classroom, exhausted and a bit discouraged.  I sorted through my thoughts in a blog-post in which I concluded that over the course of three years, I'd drifted from my true self in my teaching.  This summer, as I studied and applied various other crucial aspects of teaching to my curriculum design, I aslo mulled over what I could do to teach with integrity.

On the first day of class, I delivered an "inaugural address" to my students in which I promised I would give them my very best, if I was going to be asking them to give their very best.  I vowed that I would sing, tell stories, give speeches, do voices, play characters, and write, all in the name of teaching.  Of course, these things require both risk and effort, so in essence, I was vowing to pour myself into my teaching at every turn.  I told the students that they were my witnesses to this vow and issued them an invitation and a challenge to join me on the risky, joyful path of integrity.

Three weeks in, I now look back and reflect on how I am doing thus far:

Singing: I sang "Colors of the Wind" to illustrate the theme of the "Noble Savage"--completely a-capella, the whole darn thing.  I got thunderous applause and cheers both times, though I'm not sure if they were clapping for my performance or because the song had finally ended ;)  Either way, it was a show-stopper, man.

Story-telling: I tell stories often--probably daily--but likely the highlight was telling the story of one of my own teachers from high school, who responded to a student miss the garbage can by dumping the entire trash can onto the middle of the floor.  I used this story to teach how to use movement, gestures and tone to bring a scene to life while telling a story.

Giving speeches: Obviously, I opened the year with the inaugural address I mentioned earlier, but I also delivered a 5-minute speech on becoming people of justice, which is our major course theme.

Doing voices: This happens almost every day, but just yesterday as my students were divided into three groups researching the different regions of the colonies, I tried my best to talk to them in the accents from their respective regions.  My Georgia accent was the best.

Playing characters: After the students had finished their research on the colonial region they'd been assigned to, I asked them to represent their colony at a convention during the next class period.  I found a cardboard crown and a robe in my classroom closet and put on a pompous, affected accent to play the role of a generic King of England.  I then personally interrogated each group in character regarding the society, economy and challenges within their respective colonies.  This morning, I wore a long coat and played the role of a Puritan school-teacher as my English 11 students spent a class period in a Puritan school-house, studying the Puritan Primer, Anne Bradstreet and John Winthrop.  I did my very best Alan Rickman-as-Severus Snape impersonation to make the dour severity of this role come alive.

Writing: Aside from attempting to blog with greater regularity, I've also written along with the students several times.  When I assigned them to write a one-sided dialogue poem addressing stereotypes, I did so, too, with my computer hooked up to the projector so they could see me wrestle with the writing process.  This week, as we took a class period to work-shop introductory paragraph/thesis statement-writing, I wrote an introductory paragraph of my own (even walking away from my computer to manually mark up my writing, which was projected onto the white-board).

All in all, it's been a wonderful start to the year.  I'm putting a lot more work into my teaching than I can ever remember investing in the past, but the pay-off is incalculable.  I have a genuine sense of joy in each class I teach, and the students are responding very well to what I am doing.  Though the extra time I spend in preparation has come at the expense of activities that had been important to me in the past, the sacrifice has been completely worthwhile.  I recognize that these gifts are not native to me, but have been entrusted to me by God.  To not use them would be poor stewardship on my part.

For the first-time, I feel like my teaching matches where I am in life.  I am truly happy with the work I am doing, and will continue to strive to teach with integrity to who I am.

Community Through Story, Part II

The students closed this school-week by sharing their own stories in class on Thursday and Friday.  I'd intentionally made the prompt somewhat vague: the kids simply needed to relate one or several watershed moments in their lives that brought them to where they are today (whether that be an explanation of how they came to CAJ in a geographical sense, or talking about events that shaped them into the people they are).
What an incredible variety of stories we heard!  We listened to stories about moving across the country, we listened to stories about moving across the world.  We listened to stories about struggles fitting in, we listened to stories about the power of friendship.  We listened to stories about speech impediments, learning disabilities, torn ACLs, and the sting of not making Varsity basketball.  We heard stories that made us laugh and stories that made us cry.  Nobody was tuned out; nobody was sleeping; nobody was furtively working on something else.  Everyone was riveted.
We started school only ten days ago, but 1st period English 11 and 3rd-4th period Humanities 11 no longer feel like new and unfamiliar groups chaotically clustered by dint of fate and scheduling.  Instead, these groups have become communities.  When we hear another person's story, a piece of their experience becomes part of our story.  When we laugh with someone, we are invited into the joke.  When we cry with someone, their hurts become ours.  It can be terrifying to be so vulnerable, but the result is a connection nourished by empathy.
My students' newfound appreciation of their class community will be tested next week as we gain two new students, and another new student returns after nearly two weeks away.  Will my students apply what they've learned?  Will they seek out and listen to the stories of these new classmates?  Will they make the space for these students to tell their stories?

Perhaps not everyone will, but I am confident that many will.  I saw inclusion happening around me today after my classes were over: an invitation for a new student to sit with the Junior group in Study Hall; an ever-so-slight shuffling of seats in the cafeteria; conversations between classmates who usually do not talk to each other.  I am satisfied with how this year has started, and I firmly believe I've found my stride as a teacher after several years of trial and what sometimes felt like lots of error.  As I finish this blog-post at Tully's on Friday evening, I am exhausted on many levels and my eyelids are heavy.  I will cherish a weekend of rest at home with my wife.  Yet, I'm also excited to dive into the next week of school.  It's wonderful to look forward to each day!

Community Through Story

"I never knew Mrs. A. was a legendary prankster--she always seemed so quiet to me!"
"I'm gonna ask Mr. F for a story, I bet he has some good ones!"
"Did you know that one time Ms. L drove her motorcycle down the elementary hallway of the last school she taught at?"
Did you know Mrs. E. had a summer job where she had to cut up chicken parts?!"
"Oh my goodness... Mrs. F's proposal story..."

These were snippets of conversations that I heard in my classroom over the past few days.

With the overarching theme for 11th grade Humanities and English being "Becoming People of Justice", our first unit focuses in on what it means to live in community (more specifically, what it means to live as a genuine "City on a Hill").  Our first discussions brought us into confrontation with labels and assumptions--not only the labels used by others to define us, or the assumptions which others make about us based on our appearance, culture, family or interests, but also the biases we harbor, often unbeknownst to even ourselves.

We agreed that to push beyond our own biases, our own human tendency to categorize and label even the people around us, we absolutely need to get to know our neighbors and allow them to get to know us.

With this goal in mind, I turned the students loose on a pair of assignments related to story:
The first requires the students to prepare to tell their classmates how they came to be in the class of 2016 at CAJ.
The second requires the students to collect 6 stories from people in their lives--two from CAJ staff, two from classmates, two from family members--and write a brief summary of each.

I gave my students Post-it Notes which would serve as Story Collecting Hall Passes, and sent them out on a different kind of scavenger hunt.

I strolled the halls and was pleased to see groups of students listening raptly to not only their teachers, but also librarians, administration and office staff as these staff members shared significant stories from their own lives.

The excitement in the air was palpable and it was clear that each student emerged with a deeper understanding of the staff member they talked to, confirming that there is, indeed, more to people than meets the eye.

The students agreed during our class discussion that chipping away at bias and rising above labels and assumptions would require making an effort to get to know others.  Then they did just that, and found that what had only been an idea from an in-class discussion had become a reality.

My takeaways from the success of this assignment are two-fold:
First, this assignment would not have had the weight that it did without backward design.  Without being rooted in our unit goal of building community and our course goal of pursuing justice, this may have come across as a fluff-piece.  Because the assignment came after identifying and discussing our bigger goals, and after wrestling with the problems presented by bias and stereotypes, the action had a more profound meaning for the students.

Second, there's so much power in giving students the opportunity to apply what they learn.  Even more-so when it happens on a community level.  If our learning had ended with the discussion, I might have been satisfied.  After all, it was a good discussion.  However, as the weeks roll on, I wonder what kind of staying power the ideas from a discussion on the second day of class would have had.  I doubt the students will forget the stories they heard any time soon.  The stories they collect will be a link to the understanding they uncovered in our discussion; a means to ensure that they remember this small piece of what it means to build community; what it means to be people of justice.  Why?  Because the assignment called for them to actively build community.

I am excited to apply this realization to upcoming units, to make sure that each learning experience rings with the authenticity needed to cement the understandings arrived at in class.

All in all, it was a good first week!

Initiating Year 7

Because I first came to CAJ part-way through the '08-'09 school-year, measuring my time here has always been somewhat murky.  Do I round up or do I round down?  Part of me is motivated to round down, because I didn't start as a classroom teacher until the following August.  Recently, however, I've felt a stronger urge to round up.  I realized that this will be the 7th school-year I have been a part of at CAJ; the 7th High School Community Group I will advise; the 7th Senior Talent Show I'll watch; the 7th graduation I will attend.  For all intents and purposes, I'm calling this year 7, even though my six-year anniversary of arriving in Japan is not until January.

Today was orientation day, which entailed class mixer games, book check-outs, the annual fire-escape drill, and a brief assembly in the gym.  It was a day that somehow managed to be laid-back and brimming with excitement; perhaps a fitting transition from summer into the new school year.  This evening, I sent out an email to students who wish to join AP English, but made the decision just now and therefore missed out on the summer reading I had assigned back in May.  I explained that the summer reading/writings would be due at the end of September, and then offered to help the students plan out a schedule for finishing their work on time, if they wanted.

To my surprise, I had several responses within half an hour, asking if I would help them organize a work-schedule.  My first thought was "Wait, since when was I in a position to help anybody with organization?"  I am notoriously disorganized, myself, though I think the "method" shines through the madness just a bit more brightly with each passing year.  My second thought was, "I wonder how many of my non-AP students need help organizing their schedules?"  I may make this a standing offer going into the school-year.  I want my students to succeed, and perhaps the obstacle for some is not a lack of motivation or understanding, but rather a struggle to plan or organize their time... a struggle to which I can definitely relate!

I approach this task (and my 7th year of teaching as a whole) with awe and humility.  I am grateful that God sees fit to use even crooked sticks to clear a straight path!

Reflection on the value of teaching from a Biblical worldview

This is a reflection I wrote on the importance of worldview in education (and the impossibility of "neutral" teaching) for one of my Master's courses:

And the house on the sand went SPLAT! While my NIV words this a bit differently, Jesus’ point remains the same: foundation matters. The core beliefs that we choose to build our lives around? These matter. Moreover, it is clear that there is always a foundation. We cannot help but build on something. This is why a claim of neutral teaching is as ludicrous as a carpenter claiming that they can build a mansion atop a cloud. No indeed, every teacher is building on something--some set of core beliefs which filter, shape and inform every aspect of our classroom. The popular claim of neutrality in public school education is not only impossible, but in fact destructive, and it is crucial for Christian teachers to make sure that the Bible provides the basis for their teaching. 

It is both fascinating and disheartening that the myth of a neutral public education persists. There are few in education today who would not acknowledge the influence of Dewey on modern public education. Even elementary school children pick up something of Dewey as they learn to navigate their school libraries. And, none can deny that Dewey himself was anything but neutral on the subject of religion. Why, then, do contemporary proponents of public education so effortlessly ignore the influence that Dewey’s anti-religious views have had on public education? Why do people, whether principal, professor, pupil, politician or parent find it so easy to take a carving knife to Dewey’s beliefs and demarcate those which have endured in education and those which haven’t?  Dr. Robert Marzano tried to do exactly this in a 1992 speech by separating Dewey’s worldview from his views of education. In another, later context, Marzano acknowledged that worldview and teaching are inextricably bound. One can almost hear the masses try to justify the discrepancy: Oh, of course, this is a logical thing to suggest in general... but surely it cannot be true in Dewey’s case! For some reason, this seems to be the predominant perspective on public education. Unfortunately, under the compelling guise of neutrality, faith has been trivialized by insistent and inconsistent removal from the classroom. Insistent because anything that whiffs of Christianity is swiftly stifled, and inconsistent because so many other worldviews are given time and consideration not given to Christianity. The result is that a century’s worth of children have received an education that they are told is fair and unbiased in its perspective, but which actually paints the world with colors disdainful of faith. Worldview and education are inseparable--what we believe shapes what we teach, how we teach, even why we teach. So what, then, are we teaching, as Christian educators? 

We criticize the compartmentalization conducted by Dewey’s followers as they draw a line between his personal beliefs and his teaching, and yet many Christian educators fall into the same trap. We pray, we do devotions, but then our actual teaching may be indistinguishable in practice from teaching in the public school classroom. I have some personal experience with this: in my first few years, I never intentionally started planning with Biblical principles in mind and as a result, had to tag on a Christian perspective later. Aside from those tags, which felt about as relevant as hangnails, my teaching was secular. This was perhaps the most meaningful discovery I made during the process of creating my curriculum map for one of my Master’s courses last summer: as I properly engaged in backward design for the first time, I realized that I was not allowing my beliefs to enter into the equation until far too late. The project offered a wake-up call and an opportunity to do better: for each unit, as I crafted my essential questions and enduring understandings, I tried to determine the Biblical perspectives which lay at the foundation of my own beliefs about each topic. When I made these principles a core part of my curriculum, they came up organically in class, and wove through the curriculum in a way that they hadn’t before. The Bible simply has to be our foundation, our starting place, as we build our curriculum. Of course, we have standards and goals that are given to us that we need to build around, but these are not antithetical to a Biblical worldview. Rather, our task is to interpret these goals through the lens of our Biblical worldview and let that drive our planning, our assessment and our instruction. 

Going forward, I am committed to making sure that my teaching is distinctly Christian and that I am actually fostering Christian thinking and Christian action rather than just stapling on a perfunctory Christian Post-it. My students will not remember everything that I teach. In fact, it’s likely that 10 years from now, much of the content will have escaped them. What they won’t forget is how I taught them; what will stick with them even years later is the foundation that I impart to them. I better make it good.

Book Review: "S" by J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst

The glossy black book jacket has an ornate letter "S" across the front, but when you remove the book, you find a simple, gray, worn-looking library book from 1949: The Ships of Theseus by V.M. Straka.

Opening the book, you can't help but do a double-take, because the margins are filled with scribblings in black and blue ink: a written conversation between two strangers who have found the book and are trying to get to the bottom of the enigmatic circumstances surrounding Straka, about whom there are many theories.

Meet "S": the protagonist in The Ships of Theseus, an amnesiac man on a quest to discover his identity.

Meet Straka: the author and suspected anarchist whose identity is shrouded in mystery, the only apparent clues to which have been left behind in his writings.

Meet F.X. Caldiera: Straka's translator and editor who seems to be leaving coded messages in the footnotes.

Most importantly, meet Jen and Eric.  She's a college senior who found the book during her shift working in the library, and he's the Straka-obsessed ex-graduate student who left the book.  Read along with Jen and Eric as they puzzle through the novel, the footnotes and the dozen supplemental materials they've left in the book, including a clipping from the college newspaper, postcards from a faraway place, a napkin with a map sketched on it, and much more.  Watch as the duo realizes that the mysteries surrounding Straka are much more sinister than they ever imagined, even to their own endangerment.

Truly J.J. Abrams and Doug Dorst have done something special here.  Abrams, of course, is best known as the TV producer and filmmaker responsible for creating "LOST", as well as directing the recent "Star Trek" films, not to mention the upcoming "Star Wars" sequel.  While Abrams' film credentials may be a turn-off for some avid readers, it is clear that he has a deep and abiding appreciation for the written word.  In an interview, Abrams revealed that the inspiration for S came from an airport layover years ago where he picked up a book that had been left on a seat at the boarding gate, and found a written message inside instructing whoever found the book to enjoy it and then leave it for someone else.  In Doug Dorst, novelist and professor of creative writing at Texas State University, Abrams found the right writer to realize his vision.

The reading experience is richly layered: one story unfolding in the text, another in the footnotes, another in the margins, and all three somehow connected.  The Ships of Theseus itself is a surreal and at-times creepy polemic against heartless corporations, rich with subtext that is not always immediately decipherable.  The footnotes are alternatively informative and fallacious, and serve to paint a back-story not only for Straka, but also for Caldiera, the editor.  Jen and Eric's conversation in the margins helps to illuminate both the novel and the footnotes as they immerse themselves in the collective body of Straka's works, researching what they can about the author and the editor and sharing their findings in several passes through the book.  The reader can even tell the chronology of the margin notes based on the color of ink used by Jen and Eric.  First, blue and black, next green and orange, etc.

I found it impossible to put the book down, but unlike Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was unable to finish this in one sitting.  In fact, it took me 10 days to finish S.  Though it is not a particularly long book (at roughly 450 pages), it is a long read.  Each page spread took between 5 and 10 minutes to read, depending whether or not there were footnotes, and on the amount of margin notes.  It does not take long for the reader to become immersed in the mysteries around Straka, just as Jen and Eric have, and that makes the time and effort seem worthwhile.

I rarely write book reviews, and I tend to only do so when I find a concept creative and worth commending.  The last review I wrote was for David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas several years ago.  Like Cloud Atlas, S presents the reader with an imaginative and brilliant premise which involves versatile writing on the author's part.  Each piece of the book is so distinct: Straka's personality comes through in his novel, Caldiera's personality comes through in the footnotes, and Jen's personality comes through in her loopy cursive script and Eric's personality comes through in his neat and orderly handwriting.  As someone who takes a deep joy in writing, I cannot help but admire a work such as this one, imaginative, thoughtfully planned and versatilely written as it is.

I would highly recommend S to anybody who loves reading for the sake of reading, or writing for the sake of writing.  It will not disappoint.