Tyee Visit

Last week Melody and I visited the Tyee Educational Complex, which is a cluster of three small high schools housed on a campus in the Highline school district. We both came away impressed with the the professionalism, dynamism and strong chops of the teachers we saw there--and also a bit sobered by the challenges that these teachers take on.

In the classes I saw, the students appeared engaged and productive and often quite communicative with the strange lady visiting their classroom. This was pretty impressive just weeks before the end of the school year. It is perhaps more impressive if you consider that between 65-75% of the students qualify for Free or Reduced Price lunches. One of the students I met had had to leave school in October, moved back a few weeks ago and is ineligible to receive credit for this academic year. He comes to school because he likes it. Global has informally agreed to this arrangement, as has the teacher who corrects his papers and works with him.

In order to serve a broad variety of students, both ACE and Global have adopted a workshop model, which builds in a lot of room for student choice. Instead of having a "class novel" which serves as the point of departure for organizing the class, students work towards a "learning outcome" for each unit: for example, Use Academic Discourse to Articulate, Revise and Defend My Thinking about a Book--or Use Outside Sources of Information to Help Me Understand a Current Event. The teachers I spoke to acknowledged that assembling a library for this model requires an initial investment of time. Though you don't have to read all the texts concurrently with the students, you have to be familiar with the material--and it works best if the material is organized according to some sort of unifying principle: e.g., Love Stories or Identity or Social Justice. You then create small groups to discuss and write about the texts they have chosen. (This model also works just fine with using a single class text.)

The main virtue of this system, of course, is how nicely it can accommodate differentiation--working with a broad range of learning profiles in the same classroom. In a mini-lesson (10-15 minutes), all of the students are introduced to the same purpose--Understand Dramatic Structure--and given a task to help them achieve this purpose: apply Freytag's model to a text. You then allow them time for independent work, which can be organized in whatever way best meets the students' needs: students working on their own, working in pairs, working in small groups or signing up for conference time with the teacher. The period ends with a Share Out of some kind, which makes the students responsible for a result and gives them experience presenting and defending an idea.

Obviously, the workshop model requires a double period to work with. It is a bit of a radical model in that significantly prioritizes skills over content and minimizes teacher-centered time.

Across the Pond

I've been meaning to share a few things which stood out during my visit to Overlake this winter.

Thing One: Like Northwest students, students at Overlake keep portfolios of written work. These are stored in the classroom and periodically, time is made for students to review the feedback they've received on written work: how do thesis statements from September compare with those written later in the year? What kinds of mechanical errors are no longer showing up in papers?

Thing Two: Standard Operating Procedure is to return written work with comments but no grades. Students have a chance to respond to teacher feedback in writing; only then does the student receive a grade. The English Department Head emphasized the value of this opportunity for students to process feedback separately from grades. Students can defend their choices, make adjustments or make adjustments and explain the thinking behind their original choices. As at Northwest, students are free to fully revise written work. In our department, conferences create an opportunity for students to process feedback with their teachers, but it was interesting to see that Overlake has also built in this kind of intentional dialogue.

Thing Three: I was impressed by the systematic use Overlake makes of Diane Hacker's Pocket Manual for Writers. Many Overlake teachers grade papers using a rubric which references page numbers in the Hacker text. The teacher checks "Run-On" on the rubric; the rubric refers students to the run-on section of Hacker's text. If additional work is needed, Hacker's web-site offers an extensive menu of supplementary explanations and exercises. How efficient is that? Do we still use Hacker? Are we missing an opportunity to tap into some free stuff?

Facing History

JB recently sent me a link to Facing History, which is an amazing resource for Humanities teachers. It offers ideas on everything from teaching strategies to lesson plans to complete units on topics which are already part of our curriculum: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Identity, Stereoptypes, Civic Participation. (The list goes on and on.)

As part of his work with Teacher Education, JB saw a colleague in South Africa present some of the techniques featured on this website. These included a "Quaker Read," a "Shadow Read" and a "Silent Discussion."

The Quaker Read involves reading a text together in class silently, taking time to note words or passages which stand out. Students then offer up their impressions in the manner of a Quaker meeting--if they feel so moved. This sharing can be shaped into a full-on class discussion.

Shadow Reading involves dividing the class into pairs and reading two primary source documents. On the day JB was there, the pairs read two accounts of growing up in the USA in the 50's and 60's: one from the point of view of a black woman from Baton Rouge, LA and one written by a man who grew up in Enid, OK and Hiram OH. Each member of the pair read one of these accounts and responded in writing to a short set of parallel questions. The pair then shared their answers. Finally, they collaborated in writing a script for an imagined meeting between the two authors.

The Silent Discussion format also involved pairing students and having them respond in writing, this time to a primary source which could be either an image or a short text. The pairs wrote their reactions down on a piece of paper without speaking. Maintaining their silence, the pair left their work on the table and circulated around the room, reading and contributing to other "silent discussions." This too was followed by a full-on class discussion.

You can imagine how rich any of these formats could be. Thank you, JB, for sending this suggestion from Cape Town. We look forward to hearing lots more from you when you rejoin us in Quint V.

Reading Journal

We've all heard of Howard Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences: verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, body/kinesthetic, musical, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal. I see these different capacities all the time in my classroom and am always interested in ways to appeal to a broader range of students. In this effort, I find it helpful to stay abreast of Benji's on-going experiments with the Art of Teaching.

One of Benji's recent experiments: the reading journal. These journals were made of regular 8.5 by 11 paper, turned sidewise, lined and hole-punched along the crease in the middle. The students personalized the journals by choosing their own binding--colorful bits of ribbon threaded through the hole-punches.

Inside, the journals offered a variety of ways into the novel Beloved, which the 10th graders spend a few weeks on during Quint III.

There was a page headed "List of Characters."

There was a page set aside for "Themes."

There were numerous pages for reading notes and pages set aside for different kinds of writing exercises, including exercises in passage analysis and two personal responses. (Suggested personal response topics included: how the novel made the reader feel, connections with other books or ideas and questions which Beloved brought up for the reader.)

There was a place for the student to design their own reading quizzes--and to outline the answers they'd be looking for with these questions.

This approach had the virtue of offering a variety of ways into the novel--instead of a single "make or break" assignment. The specially designed pages freshened the delivery of these assignments in a surprisingly powerful way, even though some of the exercises were more or less variations on familiar approaches. Most of all, the care that went into making the booklets both lightened and deepened the mood.

Benji certainly isn't making any claims about Howard Gardner's theory, but these personalized reading journals do offer more points of entry into a work of literature than a traditional paper...while building some of the same skills that traditional literary analysis calls for. And I'm thinking that changing up the way we practice a skill looks could change the way the brain approaches it.

Quoting the Quote

Sometimes it is daunting for a teacher to realize how often a skill has to be practiced before it becomes part of a student's toolkit. In 11th grade, we recently assigned a paper that seemed to me a straightforward exercise in passage analysis. However, the results reminded me that students need lots of guided practice before they understand what "focusing closely on a specific passage" actually looks like.

Fortunately, we have Daren and Benji on our team.

Daren and Benji have created an admirable document called "Tips for Integrating and Analyzing Quotations." It describes a couple of different approaches to working with quoted material. My favorite part of this document is the use of mnemonic phrases, for example: your evidence is not self-evident. This point emphasizes that quotations in analytic essays must always be followed by your ideas about what the quote shows. Quoted text is meant to support your argument rather than stand in for it.

Even more memorable for me has been the exortation to "quote the quote!" This catchy phrase captures the idea that one way to work with quoted text is to pull out and focus on individual words or phrases and relate them back to the idea you are trying to prove. This high focus on particular elements of quoted material is called "quoting the quote."

I have been getting a ton of mileage out of this document ever since Daren left it lying around carelessly on his desk...If you'd like to get some mileage out of it too, it is available on my teacher page (and Daren's).