I got My Middle Schoolers to Like Reading and Lived to Tell About it!

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It’s almost May, we are all wrapping up the end of the school year and for some of us, we are already dreaming about the summer days on the beach with a margarita in hand. For this teacher, I am getting increasingly sad as the days go by.

This year has been by far my most successful year when it has come to reading and writing. I have more students reading on their own. Furthermore, I see them having conversations about books without me prompting them. I am not a magician, but boy do I have a lot of students reading on their own this year and they are always wanting to talk about books. Though I am going to share insights into my classroom and some of the ideas I use in my classroom, it may not work for all.

1. Oral read to your middle school students. The idea was introduced to me this past fall during a professional development session I attended on Twitter called #titletalk. Donalyn Miller and Colby Sharp co-lead the PD on the last Sunday of each month. I chose to read The Hunger Games to my students and I had countless students check out my copies of the 2nd and 3rd book, not to mention I had countless students order the books through Scholastic. They could not get enough and we had multiple conversations about the books. I even witnessed students talking about it at lunch.

2. Bring in authors. As my 7th graders finished up the myth and legends unit, I was able to bring in a Michigan author by the name of Frank Holes Jr. He talked to the students about the dogman myth and legend that exist here in Michigan and how he was inspired as a writer. It gave the students a unique opportunity to ask an author why he writes. Using a Michigan author helped keep costs down for my school. If costs are a concern, consult your student council leader for help, your librarian, and your principal. Boxtops for Education could potentially help too. I strongly believe this also showed my students that writers are real people instead of individuals who are untouchable.

3. Visit your school library. Early on I coordinated with my librarian for my middle school students to visit the library every two weeks. As the school year progressed, we have not visited it as often, but I still have students who request to go to the library to check out books. In addition, my librarian has done an excellent job of asking staff members, especially the language arts teachers, to give her book suggestions. She has taken our suggestions and put more books on the shelves for the students.

4. Read with your students. Every Monday we have designated time for our students to do silent reading and I make it a point to read with them. As teachers, we can’t preach to our students, especially middle schoolers, to read and not model it ourselves.

I could list a ton of other strategies for teachers to use. In addition to the four strategies I have listed, I am a firm believer in giving enough choices to both boys and girls in your classroom to be successful. More importantly, having a lot of choices when it comes to books is detrimental to their success.

Cheers!

Middle of the Road and Self Reflection

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With the weather outside finally looking frightful, I figured I could do more good writing my blog than spending time outside like I have the last couple of days.

Today was very interesting in a number of different ways. I can’t tell you how much I have been really enjoying our staff meetings this year that are led by our principal. He truly is trying to think outside of the box and make changes in a positive direction. His leadership is excellent and I always feel really good when I leave our meetings.

Today, we first discussed the idea of “tracking” students. What this would mean for our school district is students would be put into classes based on abilities. For instance, higher achieving students would be placed in one class and the lower achieving students would be placed in another class. Though we didn’t place a concrete definition of “low achieving”, the conversation revolved around students who were C, D, and F students. Furthermore, the low achieving students tend to be more chatty, and have difficulty turning in their homework. During the conversation, the term “middle of the road” students reoccured. With the idea of tracking being discussed, curriculum itself would stay the same. However, the higher achieving students would be able to move at a faster pace and essentially do extra “work”. Now, if you think about the lower achieving students, they still need to meet the same standards set by the curriculum. If these lower achieving students are supposed to meet the same standards how are they going to achieve this feat if they are not moving fast and we are tracking them in a lower level class. My counselor put it best when she said we pay so much attention to the lower achieving students and and on occasion we will help higher achieving students reach new heights, but what about the students who are in the “middle of the road” who are not doing well with the curriculum or meeting our expectations? Too me, this is a great question. In reality we need to think about how we approach these two group of students. As my brain was soaking all of this in, I wanted to say we need to stop being selfish and realize we all need to make changes with the way we teach and approach the students. If we open our minds to new ideas, we may have an impact on more of the student population.

The second part of our meeting was about teacher evaluations. The state of Michigan is supposed to have an evaluation piece in place in April. This evaluation piece will let school districts know how teachers are supposed to be evaluated by an administrator. Our principal today shared how he will do non-formal evaluations and it was very intriguing. He found an application for his Ipad and it looks like a very informative assessment tool. I really like what my principal said about having evaluations done. He told us that evaluations are tools for us to help us be better teachers. They are not tools in which to ridicule our teaching style. We need to be able to handle constructive criticism and be able to change things about our teaching to help the students. These past few weeks I have been considering ways I can improve my own teaching. I know I am not reaching every student and I know I need to work on being better organized in certain areas. Furthermore, I need to look at different ways to assess certain standards in the curriculum. I think we need to self evaluate ourselves to be successful in addition to our more formal evaluations. We need to be willing to change what doesn’t work in our classroom. I sense big changes coming for me second semester as I evaluate myself and I sense some heated discussions that will lead to making more of our students reach success.

Cheers!

Finding A Male Mentor; Is it Possible?

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Fifteen years ago I decided to become a teacher and I have never regretted my decision. A majority of my decision was based on wanting to be a mentor to students and athletes who do not have a positive male role model in their lives. Today male mentors are becoming more increasingly difficult to find. I have had my fair share of positive male role models in my life. Besides my father, I can distinctly remember both my grandfathers, a handful of teachers I had, and my high school basketball coach. On the other hand, I could also discuss a few male role models in my life that were complete dirt bags and were hypocrites. I won’t waste my time discussing them here.

With all negativity aside and tomorrow being Veteran’s Day, I want to tell you about a mentor in my life that is exceptional. He is my brother-in-law. My brother-in-law is a former Marine who served in Desert Storm. Besides wanting to extend a big THANK YOU! to him for serving our country, I thought discussing why he is such a great mentor would be be more appropriate and meaningful.

My brother-in-law is one of the most unselfish people I have met. He is always willing to open his home to other people and not just family. He sets time aside for his family before himself. In addition, he is willing to help out someone in need, even if the job may seem too big. I witnessed him working 3 jobs because he felt it was his duty to support his family. He is a reader, which never hurts when it comes to his own children and other children he comes into contact with, including my own. His work ethic is without a doubt superior! He works very hard at whatever he is trying to accomplish. One of the most important aspects about my brother-in-law is that he listens. He always has an open ear and is willing to give a different perspective on situations. Sometimes, that one quality is all someone needs.

I want to thank my brother-in-law for serving our country and making sacrifices for me while I could sleep better at night. Thank you for being a great family member and always wanting to sped time with my children and my family. I love you!

Quality male mentors are difficult to find, but they are out there. Perhaps if you are a male, you can take a minute to just listen to a student, or player. Most of the time boys need to learn how to handle themselves emotionally as well, and that can be very tough without another male role model in their life that can show them.

Colby Sharp discusses in his blog http://sharpread.wordpress.com/ about how there are increasingly less and less male protagonists that are STRONG male protagonists. Is this the trend we are going to see? Check out his blog!

To all of you positive male mentors out there, thank you!

Cheers!

Students Viewing Writing Through Different Lenses

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The last two days in my 8th grade classroom have made me sweat profusely. I have been very intense with my two groups of 8th graders, while we discuss compare/contrast papers. As any language arts teacher know, teaching writing correctly takes a lot of hard work and preparation on our part. I started yesterday by handing to my students an exemplary example that was provided by the Common Core Standards website (corestandards.com). I discussed with my students that the student who wrote the paper was given an assignment to compare and contrast two different characters from two different genres, a movie and a book. I then instructed my students to do nothing but read the piece of writing and have a “conversation” with the writing. I wanted them to ask questions, write down things they noticed, etc. As my students were finishing up their reading I posted two simple questions on the whiteboard:

#1. Underline where the writer of the essay tells you the reader, what the essay is about. (AKA – underline the thesis).

#2. Circle any transitions the writer uses.

As our time was up yesterday, the students needed to finish the 2 items for homework. My last class of the day exited and there were a lot of disgruntled students who blurted out the dreaded term, “I don’t get it!” One of my students approached me afterwords and wanted to understand better was I wanted. He was completely lost by what he read and didn’t understand what the paper was even about. I then knew the students had not looked at the essay from the lens I wanted them to. They were reading it for understanding and they were reading it for comprehension. This was not why I wanted my students to read it. My students were reading it with the wrong lens.

Needless to say, 8th grade language arts class was very intense today after what I deemed a failed class yesterday. Today’s class was much more productive as I discussed with students that we have to put on different lenses or hats when we look at writing and literature. I told them as important as it was to get a general understanding of what the paper was about, they needed to put on their teacher or critique hats and ask themselves the question, “what makes this a quality compare/contrast essay?” After some very intense group work today analyzing the writing and my 8th graders finally putting on the right lenses, I felt very good about the conversations I had with each group. My students seemed to have a better grasp of what I was trying to accomplish.

As teachers we definitely need to guide and teach our students how to look through those different lenses. As sad and disheartening as it is to say, students need to be able to understand what makes a piece of writing exemplary for their own assignments in class, but also for standardized testing. I am proud of my students for working through the challenges we faced these last two days. I am sure we will encounter more bumps on our trip this year.

Cheers!

Being Productive

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Today’s 8th grade class was rather interesting. I began class by reading orally to them and then we did our writing into the day. I don’t have a lot of rules for my students when we do writing into the day. First, they must write the entire time. Second, I tell them they need to not worry about spelling, grammar, etc. Third, they can write about anything and not just the given topic for the day. Finally, they need to ignore the critic in their heads. My 8th graders generally write for 7-10 minutes per day. We then take time to share our writing. We share many different ways in class. Some days students just stay in their seats and share. Other days, we get into a circle on the floor and share. In addition, I sometimes have students share with two or three other students.

My focus for the first 9 weeks was to try and build a community of writers where students can trust one another when it comes to their writing. Today, something told me it must be working. After the students were given the allotted time to write, I decided to let the students just share from their seats. I figured since it was Monday the students wouldn’t be too motivated to share. After all, the topic was about experiences with public transportation. In both of my 8th grade sections we spent about 20 minutes sharing our writing. Yes, I write with my students too. Some teachers grade papers, I write with my students. My intentions for each class period was to simply take no more than five to seven minutes to share, not take 20 minutes. Let me tell you, it was worth it. I loved hearing the student’s tone in their writing and seeing their genuine excitement to share out loud. Furthermore, the gasps of disappointment when I didn’t call on a student first or right away. This did not leave me with a lot of time to discuss our next formal writing assignment. As a matter of fact, we got as far as discussing topics for the compare/contrast paper and that was it.

Most teachers or individuals would see my class time as being unproductive and what I did a waste of class time. I, however, feel it was one of my most successful class periods yet. Why? My students engaged themselves when it came to writing today and they were confident enough to share their writing with their classmates. They were excited about their writing. Productivity doesn’t have to be measured in quantity, but rather in the quality. Here’s to a productive day in anyone’s classroom!

Cheers!

Follow me on twitter @Jeremybballer

To my wonderful colleagues

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Almost every day my colleagues and I meet as a team in our middle school to discuss various issues from student intervention to who is using the computer lab. Lately it seems we have all been overwhelmed with our class load, our paper load, our lack of working technology, and the changes in our school dynamics. Today another bomb was dropped on us and I feel it necessary to write them a letter.

To my beloved colleagues:

It seems like since the end of last year we have been faced with adversity we can’t overcome. We were told our teaching assignments were going to change, people were going to get laid off, budgets were going to be cut, etc. We all finished the year as best we could and as always we were there for the kids. Needless to say, we needed the summer to step away from our teaching jobs. Despite our renewed energy, it seemed each of us had a semblance of anxiety about where we were headed going into the school year. In four very short weeks I am seeing the pure exhaustion on everyone’s face. We are being challenged by the district, our governor, and our diverse classroom situations. Last year when we were dealt the blow about funding cuts and lay-offs, we were able to get back up and continue to fight for why we truly teach, and that is the kids. Once again we were dealt a blow to us with another change. Sheer disappointment encompassed all of our faces when we found out we were losing one of our colleagues to the elementary school. It appears this change is going to be temporary, but all the same, we were knocked down again. As a matter of fact, I honestly felt we were kicked in the gut while laying on the ground.

Now, even though our first four weeks have been a flurry, it seems we have been in school for almost an entire year. What I am seeing is falters, cracks, a failing foundation and I include myself in this equation I am spelling out to you. I am writing this to you to say this is not who we are. We are not a crumbling foundation. We are a strong, united group of educators who care about our students. We are fighters who need to pick ourselves up and continue to do our jobs the only way we know how and that is doing them well. Even when we haven’t always agreed, we at least try to come to a resolution. We have numerous factors trying to discourage us from being the supreme staff that I have come to care about and love with all my heart. We need to continue to persevere and be there for our students the best way we know how. I want to encourage all of you to keep your heads held high, and lets be there for each other. We are going to be the ones who come out on top because we care about the kids we come into contact with every day. We are the ones who make the positive difference in those student’s lives. Remember, if we only reach one student, we have done our jobs! Continue to lean on each other and help each other out. I love you all.

Cheers!

Jeremy Hyler