So it has been awhile since I blogged and I am ready to get back at it. It is amazing the impact that writing can have on your life, especially when you don’t get time to do it.

Friday I had a unique opportunity to present at the Michigan Council of Teachers of English(MCTE). My presentation was about boys and literacy, mainly writing. I was very surprised at the number of people who attended my session. I think there may have been 5 or 6 seats open and that was it. I only write about this particular point because it was my first time presenting at this conference and i have heard from other colleagues that they didn’t have a lot of participants. Needless to say, I felt humbled.

I asked my participants to shout out some words that described boy writers. Those words included insecure, unmotivated, and reluctant. After hearing all of the words thrown at me, I proceeded with my presentation and before I knew it, my time was up. I received a round of applause and it was time for me to pack up and attend other sessions. As I have reflected on this past Friday’s opportunity, some thoughts have come to mind.

First, there is still a very real need to reach our boy readers and writers. I wouldn’t have had almost 40 people in my session on Friday if there wasn’t this need. How about we give them some choices when it comes to reading. When October 1st arrived, I put out all the books I could possibly find that dealt with Halloween, ghosts, and goblins. My favorite thing to do is to carry around a book or my kindle and have my kids ask me what I am reading. I love having a conversation about books and authors with kids.

Second, boys are feeling insecure about writing because we aren’t doing enough for them to not be insecure. This week I am going to try a boys writing club once a week during lunch time. If I give them an environment where they feel comfortable, perhaps they become more positive about writing.

Third, if you use technology in your classroom and in any of your lesson plans, you aren’t going to reach the boys in your classroom. The students in our classrooms are digital natives and their world is about cell phones, video games, and computers.

Finally, be open to the ways boys write in your classroom. I got a chuckle out of the people in my session on Friday and the look on their faces when I told them I let my boys write about guns, violence, and humor. Obviously there is a fine line, but at least let your boys be boys and write what is in their world.

Now, I know these aren’t all the answers, but at least give something a try in your classroom to help the adolescent boys resist the urge to put their pencils down.

Cheers!

Any of my readers who are from Michigan and are part of the education world knows the M.E.A.P. is upon us. After our students were done taking it today I had a great conversation with our special education teacher. He asked my opinion on if I thought the M.E.A.P test was one big reading test. His justification was the students basically have to read everything, even the math and science portions of the test. He continued to back his claim by explaining the science portion of the test is informational text that must be read by the students to answer questions. As I stood there listening, I can’t say I disagree with my colleague.

As we continued our conversation he asked a question of me that I am not sure I answered correctly. That is, if there is a right answer. He asked why reading isn’t taught anymore. What he meant was why isn’t it a separate class. I reassured him I do teach reading in my classroom. Not disagreeing with me, the conversation turned quickly to a discussion on how language arts classrooms are set up completely different than what they used to be. At one time reading its self used to be a separate subject taught in schools. English was basically writing and grammar. When I was in elementary school I vaguely remember, but I do know this was the case. We always received a separate grade for reading and English. Now, there are many reasons I could list here for why the two are combined and taught as language arts. I believe the biggest reason is because of the connection between reading and writing and how they go hand in hand. Ok, I am a language arts teacher, a reader, a writer, and I am on board with this. However, here is the dilemma I proclaimed to my colleague. We have seven hours in our school day. Each of those seven hours are divided approximately into 55 minute blocks of time for teaching. Being a language arts teacher, I barely have time to breathe because of everything I have to get through. Maybe my colleague is right, reading should be separated again into a separate class. As I have discussed before in my blog, I am struggling to find that balance with my students. I don’t think it is beneficial to my students for me to do a reading unit without there being some sort of writing assignment connected to it. For me, this is a no brainer, but how do I have time to do both reading and writing instruction in a 55 minute time slot. Oh, and I have grammar to teach.

Taking all of this into consideration, I still don’t feel the pendulum will be swung back to the way things used to be. Reading probably won’t be taught as a separate entity. With continuing education cuts across the nation and other professionals I know, who are my NWP colleagues, they are feeling the same pressures I am feeling. I am going to be keeping a watchful eye on how my classroom transforms over the next few years and how other classrooms transform.

Cheers!

Some teachers, if given the chance to walk into my classroom, would have said I didn’t teach my students a damn thing today.  I beg to differ!

I started today with allowing my students to use their cell phones and our wiki page to do our writing into the day.  Today I asked the student to write about their strengths and weaknesses as writers.  The responses were phenomenal.  Answers included students favorite types of genres they have confidence in writing.  Other responses included their creativity and their ability to include a lot of details in their writing.  When it came to my students discussing their weakness, it was what I expected as a language arts teacher.  Most students wrote about specific conventions such as spelling, grammar, etc.  After a short discussion with them about over coming their weaknesses and how fixing conventions can be easy if you have other people check their writing, I focused on their strengths.  I talked to them about not focusing on the negative aspect of their writing, but to focus on what it is they do best.  I challenged them to explore their creativity.  Some students expressed concerns about never having an opportunity to write a mystery or a love story.  I simply told them to write it outside of class and I would do my best to find some contests where they could submit some writing they liked to do.  Oh, and extra credit isn’t always out of the question.  I talked to them about how at some point their switch was turned off for writing.  I reassured them, I would do my best to turn that switch back on.  Some of the boys reassured my ongoing research with boys and writing.  They were frustrated with the topics and types of writing they had to do.  They wanted to know why they couldn’t write about guns, war, and mild violence.  I smiled and said, why can’t you?  They looked confused, like who the heck is this guy and why is he letting me write about what I want to write about?  Yeah, I am that teacher. Get over it for those of you who think that I can’t.

Next, my 7th graders and I finished our wall charts for revision and editing.  I tallied up from all three sections of my 7th grade classes what were the most important areas to look at with revision and editing.  I was really bothered by one of the areas my students put as being important.  Proper heading was listed as one of the most important areas we should put on our classroom wall chart.  After doing some quick detective work and continued interrogation, I discovered they would lose up to five points in sixth grade if they didn’t put the proper heading.  So, what you are telling me is that if I am a student and I have a twenty point assignment and I mess up on my heading, I am going to lose five points and be at a C before my teacher even reads it?  No wonder students lose their passion to write.  We aren’t grading on proper headings.  Is it really that important my students can put their name, date, and hour in the upper right hand corner?  Ummm, let me think, NO!  Lets get real, we are after content here people.  Anyways, I calmed down and my students were feeling pretty amazed I would only knock off one point for not putting something right in their heading.

What are you focusing on in your student’s writing?

Cheers!

Okay! After last nights awful blog, I have learned my lesson to not try and write a blog between 11:00 p.m. and 12:00 a.m.  I am going to redeem myself today by writing about students who share their writing.  By the way, I trashed the other blog and I apologize to those that follow.

Many of us are well into the school year and it is hard to believe we are approaching the half way mark to October.  Since September I have seen a slow but powerful transformation in my students as writers.  On occasion I like to sit on the floor with my students in a big circle and give people an opportunity to share a piece of their writing.  When I did this at the beginning of the school year this year, I saw very few hands rise in the air or most students simply stated, “Pass.” Developing a writers workshop where students are comfortable enough with their writing takes time.  As the teacher, you have to put yourself out there on a pedestal and be just as vulnerable as your students when it comes to sharing a piece of writing.  If students know you take a vested interest in writing, they will want to as well.  Over the course of just a month I have witnessed a unique transformation in my classroom.  Students are actively engaged in writing when it is time to do writing into the day, or it is independent work time for an assignment they need to complete.  Furthermore, I see more and more people share during our circle time in class.

One of the most wonderful things I like is students who approach me with their journals and want me to read what they wrote.  Seeing students genuinely excited about their writing gives me goose bumps.  I really appreciate students who want to share their creativity with me by walking up to my desk and leaving their journal with a page marker where they want me to read.  Students are starting to not only trust their classmates to hear their writing, but they are trusting me to read it.

In spite of the many strategies that are thrown at us as language arts teachers, I truly believe gaining a students trust is a chunk of the battle.  I had a student today comment on how she never liked to share before, but she felt more outgoing. I asked her if she was more outgoing or she just felt more comfortable and she replied that she felt more comfortable.  That is huge in my classroom.  Students need to feel that they have some worth, especially when it comes to their writing.

I am seeing some miraculous writers starting to emerge from their shells, boys and girls alike!

Cheers

Many of you who are my colleagues already know I am a huge advocate of boys literacy. It is my passion and it is my goal to help other teachers and educators understand the world boys live in and what will motivate them to read and write.

Today was one of those days in my classroom where I had to smile and say to myself WOW! So far this year I have incorporated some of Kelly Gallagher’s strategies for reading and writing. My students are doing one pagers, they are doing article of the week, and I am taking the approach he does with his students and letting my students read a novel without me interrupting every chapter and incorporating worksheets after every three chapters. In addition to the Gallagher strategies, I am infusing some of Ralph Fletcher’s ideas about letting boys choose their own topics when it comes to writing. Today I was seeing the pay off. First, in one of my 7th grade classes one of the boys commented on the novel we are reading and stated,”It is nice to read a book without having to do a summary after every page.” All I could do was smile. Upon receiving that positive feedback, another young man spoke up saying,”That is why I don’t read anymore.”. Can you say Readacide? I smiled again, but I know I have a long road ahead of me to get these students excited again about reading. On the other hand, it has already began.

Later on in the day, I had the students do writing into the day and I had two separate boys write short stories. One was about a girl scout getting shot over her delicious cookies. He proceeded to describe it like a hunter watching his pray through a scope on a gun. I thought it was about hunting deer, not a girl scout. The other boy wrote about a man who was diagnosed with cancer and was told by his doctor he only had so long to live. He then went to the diner to eat breakfast and was shot prematurely in a robbery before he died of cancer. His story continued with the man’s family suing the doctor because he died sooner than what the doctor said. I am not a huge fan of violence, but both of those students had some brilliant creativity. Both stories even had elements of humor. I applauded both of them and asked them how they came up with their ideas. They both shrugged but wanted to continue their writing. They were actively engage in their writing and they wanted to write. In the words of Vector on the Disney movie Dispicable Me, OH YEAH!

Today I became more convinced boys will like reading and writing if you give them the chance to like it. I know I won’t reach every young man, but I can sure try!

Cheers!

I normally don’t blog on the weekend due to just stepping back and giving my brain a break, but I missed a few days this past week due to pure exhaustion from a very whirl wind week at work. I just noticed the alliteration there, sorry. Anyways, I also can’t help the emotions I am feeling on this cold Saturday night.

While driving back home tonight with my family we came across another family who had hit a deer. We slowed down to make sure no one was hurt or needed a phone to call the police. I think the buck they hit was bigger than their car. Myself being a hunter I wanted to weep because of the sheer size of the buck they hit. Well, everyone was doing fine and the police were already on their way. As I was speeding away, my four year old son was really concerned about the dead deer. He kept telling my wife and I that the deer was going to miss his family and he really wanted to know where his family was. Needless to say, my heart was melting and I had to fight back a few tears. My son knows at four years old how important family is and what it means to miss someone. We eventually convinced our son that his family would be okay and what was important is that the humans were not injured. Not a small task when you figure in a four year old.

This whole episode made me recall a conversation I had with a few colleagues about a student who we have all been having trouble with in our classrooms. We all have had students like this in the past. Whether it is a class clown, an attitude problem, or a child who just refuses to learn; these types of students can make or break our day as a teacher. These students usually make us go into a rage about what we’re going to do or what is wrong with this child, maybe it even makes us take an occasional glance at their files in the office to gain some insight into what makes them tick.

This past week I was reminded not to forget where some kids come from. What do I mean? Most of us go home to our families and we see our spouses, kids, the dog or cat and sit down to a nice meal with each other. We have a nice warm bed to turn into at night and our bellies our more than likely full. Their are students out their in all of our classrooms that don’t get these luxuries. Students come from split homes, sometimes have to watch their younger siblings, and might even have to cook supper. How about those students who have parents that can’t afford health care and has to sleep in a room where there is a mattress on the floor? I have heard of students sharing a bedroom with six other siblings. It really doesn’t matter the situation. My point is as educators we need to keep in mind where some of our students come from. Before we jump into a student about them not completing their homework, check to see what kind of home life they may have. I am not saying to give them excuses, but perhaps this allows us more compassion into our hearts. I know after this past week and what my own child said; kids find value in family, love, and daily routine. Sometimes we may be the best part of their day!

Cheers!