Teaching Reading and Civic Responsibility

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This week I listened to the audiobook of Allegiant, the third in Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy. I also read a bunch of Twisty Little Passages a book about interactive fiction. I caught up on the last two issues of Brian K. Vaughn’s Saga. I finished reading the business book The Year Without Pants (despite the goofy title, I think there’s some awesome “stuff” here for educators to consider and it makes me want to consider how to use P2s in classrooms). I am planning on starting A True Novel and The New Jim Crow as I travel to the NCTE Annual Conference next week.

The above paragraph may come as a mean-spirited humblebrag about my use of time and my incredibly-amazing reading habits. However, I offer it to begin a reflection on a discussion we had in my “Teaching Reading” class on Thursday.

Preluding the prompt with a quote from Linda Christensen, I asked my class to respond to the following questions:

How will you decide what texts you should teach in your class? What books are you excited about teaching? What are you dreading? How will you know what your students need?

The discussion that followed turned primarily toward an up-and-coming writer you may have heard about: William Shakespeare. We English educators regularly get into a tizzy around the question: To teach or not to teach? As I told my class, Shakespeare’s words are personally meaningful for me and I know many of my students reinforced a passion for literature as a result of how we interacted with his texts in my classroom. However, the key word in that previous sentence is passion. We can just as easily quelch enthusiasm when we are not very excited about the books we teach in our classrooms.

And so, on my brain today is the question that extends beyond our conversation on Thursday. As was mentioned in the class, most schools are going to require students to read Shakespeare’s works in their English classes. For better or worse, English teachers have to be able to teach texts they may not be passionate about. Whether it be Shakespeare or Cisneros or Hemingway or whatever canonical-ish author you are expected to utilize in classrooms, how do you teach effectively, enthusiastically, passionately to texts you may not personally identify with? On the other hand, you could also refuse to teach that text. Even better, do it… in the name of “social justice, man.” (My friend Other Chris and I joke that every everything can sound sarcastic by adding “man” to the end of it.) By either teaching without passion or by refusing to teach a text you feel negatively toward, do our students miss out? What kinds of lessons about the value of students’ time laboring in classes do we demonstrate when we fumble?

These are the questions I’m left with on this sunny Saturday morning.

Hustle, Flow, and adventures in #PWFWriMo & #RPRGWriMo

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Last week, I talked about where I was wobbling in my teaching practice. This week I want to describe a new pose I am trying out.

This week month I’m trying out a pose of sustained writing and “hustle.”

This month is National Novel Writing Month–colloquially NaNoWriMo, which challenges participants to write a 50,000+ word novel in the month of November. It’s a daunting number of words, but when broken into daily amounts (just shy of 1700 words per day) it’s … less daunting (?). I’ve never actually done it. However, I did challenge my 12th graders to participate several years ago. One of my students, Sam, was already a novelist in her own right and the month of November was one where she was co-teaching the class with me and coaching her peers with myriad writing strategies. I talk a bit more about this process of student-driven writing instruction in my book.

In any case, while I’m not writing a novel this month (or in the foreseeable future), I am using the online momentum of NaNoWriMo to focus on getting significant wordage on two current research projects: my work with Cindy O’Donnell-Allen on Pose/Wobble/Flow and my work exploring the literacy practices enacted in tabletop roleplaying games. I am calling these two projects, respectively, #PWFWriMo and #RPGWriMo. (There’s also a contingent of academics tweeting to the hashtag #AcWriMo that I’ve been lurking around.)

I want to describe my writing practices briefly. First of all my rules for my month of #NaNoWriMo are as follows: every day I will publicly update my progress on Twitter – it forces me to feel accountable and to feel bad on the days in November when I don’t write. A day of writing starts when I wake up and ends when I go to sleep. That means even if I’m writing well after midnight, it’s the same day (so chill out imaginary time-sticklers!). I’m also keeping two tracking systems. On my computer I have a simple Excel file where I list the actual words I write each day. It looks like this:

In my notebook I have a chart that measures writing in increments of 250 words at a time. It looks like this:

I will write, at a later time about how I am using Scrivener to allow me to organize my jumble of verbs and haphazard sentences into something useful. For now, here is a screenshot of in-progress messiness and varying writing prompt:

What I think is important to share here isn’t how awesome it feels to be 15,000+ words deep into a couple of projects that I am working on. Instead, I am interested in how reading and writing are fundamentally different in 2013. When I write in the morning and add my progress to a growing number of tweets, I am joining a community of other writers. I feel accountable because of how technology is connecting my literacy practices with others. It also allows me to engage in some good ol’ shit-talking with my friend Daye:

Reading comments in this post from last week, I’ve been thinking about my writing practices this week and the day-to-day stress of work and teaching and home life. I mean, it’s not like my workload is reduced during the month I’m choosing to put (digital) pen to (digital) paper. I think about those frustrating years of working a weekend job and teaching at the same time–trying to cram in grading student essays while working the graveyard shift at a newsstand on Sunset Blvd. Not fun. Cindy talks about GYST: Get Your Shit Together. I wonder if that’s an appropriate “pose” I can take on. It sure is something I wobble with on any given day. One of my early teaching mentors, Jeff Duncan-Andrade, talked about being a teacher and having to “hustle.” And I think about treating my writing and “real” responsibilities as hustle. In the past when I’ve played around with things like NaNoWriMo, I have approached it like this:

And this month I’m trying to approach it like this (while still keeping everything else somewhat together):

I’m only a quarter deep into what is a long month of writing, so we’ll see how long I can keep this pose going. I know there will be days I am not productive but I also know (and have felt) the awesome flow of cranking out 2,000 words on a beautiful Sunday morning. We’ll see where this pose takes me.

What new pose are you trying out?

 

[Also: it’s not too late to jump on the #NaNoWriMo bandwagon! If you get some awesome writing done, be sure to let my friend Daye know how much better you are doing.]

NCTE Position Statement: Formative Assessment That Truly Informs Instruction

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I was recently honored to get to work on an NCTE Position Statement as a member of the NCTE Task Force on Assessment chaired by Cathy Fleischer. The statement is written to be accessible and useful for classroom teachers. As assessment in an era of the Common Core is being re-defined by organizations like PARCC, this statement offers specific guidelines for how formative assessment can be crafted and utilized meaningfully in teachers’ day-to-day practice. I’d encourage you to take a look – I think this statement turned out great. The entire statement can be read and downloaded as a pdf here.

Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy: New Article in Radical Teacher

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My article, “Beautiful Dark Twisted Pedagogy: Kanye West and the Lessons of Participatory Culture,” is now  available in the most recent issue of Radical Teacher. It can be read here.  Here’s an abstract:

 This article builds off of the author’s classroom experience as a high school teacher in South Central Los Angeles and looks at how cultural shifts with regards to media consumption and production impact liberatory pedagogical practice. Using media superstar Kanye West as a case study, this article argues that today’s classroom practices must expand in ways that reflect a more participatory culture. In particular, West’s marketing and engagement with his audience during the release of his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy highlight how mainstream media practices offer pathways for renewing critical pedagogy in the 21st century.

This article started as a series of rumblings and throat-clearing on this blog here and here and here. I owe thanks to many of you for helping to continue this conversation with me online and at conferences. As I briefly mention as a footnote here, I am intrigued by West’s latest musical direction (even if he cancelled his recent show in Denver, effectively killing our Sunday night plans). I hope to continue to push on contemporary notions of critical pedagogy through looking to what’s happening in popular culture.

Vulnerability, Public Wobbling, and “The Best Ever Dog in Fort Collins”

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Digital Is Crash and Burn

So here’s what happened: my class, “Teaching Reading,” was using Digital Is as a space for online discussion. I’ve reiterated in this class that I value the sense of public discussion. I am appreciative of the ways Digital Is brings my preservice students into the same digital space as the career teachers I continue to learn from. I value the notion that our dialogue is one that other teachers can infringe upon with new insight and ideas. Of course something something the best laid plans blah blah blah Digital Is moved to a new layout and my discussion system went bust-o.

And so my mid-semester quandary was one of deciding if I should lock up our discussion behind some closed online site elsewhere or find a new digital, public space for dialogue. I chose the egotistical route and moved the rest of the semester’s dialogue here, on my own blog. Each week, you’ll see a rambling post where I detail what I am struggling with in the class and where I pose a few questions for my students (who are obligated to respond – hi class!). Feel free to jump into the dialogue with them!

Vulnerable Wobbling

My colleague Cindy and I have been thinking a lot lately about growth, struggle, and identity. We are working from a model called Pose/Wobble/Flow, which you can read a bit more about over here.

One thing I’ve been wobbling with lately is confronting vulnerability and uncertainty within the classroom. My friend & mentor Travis instilled in me the value of articulating to students that it’s okay if teachers don’t know everything. See:

On Thursday, a group of students in the class led us through a writing exercise where we adapted a favorite poem or song. I chose this classic:

I was thrown for a loop when trying to adapt this at first – I think John Darnielle (aka the Mountain Goats) spins great portraits and vignettes. I like the concise way he turns a funny sounding title and opening verse into an impassioned condemnation of authority. Obviously, my adaptation has to do with this rapscallion:

The best ever dog in Fort Collins

The best ever dog in Fort Collins

was a small mutt that’d been digging holes since the summer.

Her name was Olive or Olivia Agadorus Garcia

and she walked ’round the lake every day.

 

The best ever dog in Fort Collins,

never actually caught a cat

but the most grisly kills – after weeks of practice

were a bird, and a rabbit, and another rabbit without a leg.

 

Olive believed in her heart that she was destined for hunting greatness.

So in the backyard she made prominent use of the running space

and prepared for her eventual takeover and escape.

 

This was how she got out

and how the fence was rebuilt to make it taller

and why her howls of frustration ring out in the night

and why she made plans to get even.

When you punish a canine for dreaming her dream

don’t expect her to thank or forgive you.

The best ever dog in Fort Collins

will in time both out-jump and outsmart you.

Hail Satan!

Hail Satan tonight!

Hail Satan!

Hail hail!

Yeah, I know that whole last “hail Satan” part came from the original … but if you’d met Olive you’d be cool with it.

In any case, I remember writing not-so-light-hearted poetry during the annual unit plan when I was a student many a year ago. I remember when it came to the “who wants to share” part of the class feeling the terrible top-of-the-rollercoaster mixture of fear and excitement about sharing my work. A part of me really wanted to. A part of me was firmly dead set against it.

And so, thinking about the young me, I am wobbling with: how do I get students to move beyond feelings of vulnerability within my classroom? There are strong voices in both of my classes and there are those that are often missing. Particularly within the context of teaching reading, how can I support students who may be feeling more dependent–wanting more models for teaching & curriculum development (as examples of dependent reading within the context of an upper division course)?

Likewise, there are lots of reasons for feelings of vulnerability to manifest within a classroom. Some come from being afraid of not knowing what the teacher or professor wants. Some from not knowing what your peers expect and feeling out of place. I realize I can be both intentionally and unintentionally vague in my class and in my expectations of the work I would like students to turn in; this creates vulnerability. What if you do the assignment wrong?* Part of limiting vulnerability can be seen as increased efforts of clearly articulating goals. But part of this, too, is guiding students to understand that they–as much as the teacher–can define what is correct or incorrect, when to share and when to remain silent, when to–as our course norms dictate–“step forward and step back.”

Anyways, that’s what I’m wobbling with. I am asking my students–in the comments below–to explain what they are wobbling with this week, or to respond to my own wobbling above.

 

* “doing it wrong” is a socially constructed conceit and one I think about with regards to technology often.

Learning Alchemy: Digitally Mediated Collaboration and Game Design

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[The tl;dr stuff:] This is a long post. After the jump I detail how Chad Sansing and I have been collaborating on developing a card game  called Learning Alchemy. Amongst the screenshots of Google Docs and card examples, I try to explore how collaboration is mediated in 2013. The short story: Chad and I have only met in-person 3 times and after both participating in a webinar in July we decided to begin an epic collaboration. Moving from wanting to create … something and play around the with rapidly-shifting landscape of gaming due to crowdsourcing, the narrative below is one of free-flowing thought being honed into something tangible. As I explain below, we are currently playtesting our game, soliciting card-remixes, and looking to “bring to market”* a product for people to enjoy.

* Note: I use this phrase very loosely.

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“You won’t believe how bad the district is now.”

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That’s how a friend started his email to me on Saturday morning. He’s talking about LAUSD (obviously). And it’s not about Superintendent Deasy’s likely departure. Instead he’s talking about the dismal situation for English language learners as described in this article. In particular:

As a result of a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education, which had accused the district of doing poorly by its English learners, the district was required to submit an evidence-based plan for improvement, and that plan calls for sorting the students by English skills.

Here’s my friend’s full email update about the situation:

You won’t believe how bad the district is now. The district decided it needed to do something about the Long Term English Learners, so it through them all into classes together with huge class numbers 35 plus. The curriculum they gave us was a crappy old work book and then after two months they sent some really cool young adult novels- Book Thief, 13 Reasons Why, The Fault in Our Stars and some others. They sent the books with no plans, but wanted us to read the books and only teach the parts that are school appropriate and to ignore the rest of the book. Crazy stuff man.

Crazy stuff indeed.