San Antonio–I Have Arrived!

I have arrived at my hotel and ambled down the River Walk to register for a Monday workshop at the NCTE convention. At this moment, all Monday sessions still have availability, so if you were like me and chose not to preregister for Monday and now are having second thoughts, get your credit card out and get yourself down to the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center Exhibit Hall C. But bring a MasterCard or Visa because as I just found out, they don’t take American Express. That is what brought me back to my room sharing this tidbit with you!

Oh, and by the way, there are sessions going on today…they start at 2:30, so shut your computer down and enjoy a walk to the Convention Center!!

Should I or Shouldn’t I???

Okay, I wrote a poem and it’s not my first. I have written many poems and so have you, I am sure. But the question is, since I have a blog, should I post this poem? The reason I consider posting this poem on this site is because I read it last night at the IRA Poetry Olio, the focus of yesterday’s blog. What in the H—heck, come on…. is “olio”? Well today, I was informed that is an Irish stew; I digress, in that I am going to now unveil this poem. My caveat is that I only wrote it over the last couple of weeks which means it is still in the cooker: 

Six feet–six inches of monochromatic black

slowly shares painful memories of the past:

“Don’t remember kindergarten;

first grade neither.

Remember fourth and fifth;

a cacophony of teacher cursing.

“Then Chicago Public became my past.

Beyond the city lay my future,

In the School of an Open Heart.

“I remember Junior High:

Caring Teachers

Shared Direction

High Expectation.

Teachers who talked to us, not at us.

Teachers who guided with questions

And helped with homework.

“Yet, here, too, was cacophony–

Not of teachers cursing

But of students pained by

stress

poverty

ignorance.

“Eventually, teachers without immunity to local disease

Fell victim to epidemic attitude.

“Teachers, please hear me–

 I who don’t remember kindergarten or first grade.

I who hear only cursing when I think on years

evoking spelling bees and field trips in your minds;

Hold conversation with your charges; build antibodies to local disease.

Tell jokes and laugh; relieve yourselves of pain.

Call me by name: Marvelle.

 

Make New Friends and See the Old… I mean the Longtime…

I have had a great week at IRA. Each morning, I walk through Centennial Olympic Park undisturbed by traffic or bustling people on my way to the World Congress Center. Sometimes, as I walk through this well-kept community space, it is hard for me to imagine the size of this city.  Today, on my way back from convention meetings, I stop to watch the children and fountain frolic together, playing and toying with one another. A few minutes later, the fountain’s tenor changed from a child’s water wonderland to choreographed dance that mesmerized children and adults alike.

I met more people today. If you’ve read any of my other blogs this week, you know that I have been making the acquaintanceship of many interesting and thoughtful people. But today was especially fulfilling! Can you imagine out of some 25,000 teachers from countless points on the globe, I ran into an old a longtime friend from college days that I hadn’t seen in years. It’s not that we live that far apart, but our lives don’t intersect as frequently now as in those days gone by. Marilyn asked me if I was planning to attend the 14th IRA Poetry Olio–something I had never attended but felt compelled to visit.

I have got to tell you that was an experience. There were four or five professional poets who did interpretive readings and groups who set poetry to music. My favorite was probably Dead Poets , a group of three gifted musicians who interpret classic poetry (Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and Langston Hughes among others) to music. Some of the tunes and ‘tudes are reverent and others, well, let’s say they take some poetic license. But all of their work is meant to bring positive attention to language and poetry.

Flocabulary, another group that kids would love performed a scene from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Their approach to langauge is meaningful and memorable in a modern sense. I wish I were back in the classroom so that I could share them and Dead Poets with the kids in my community. Their website has music samples, lyric texts and primary source documentation.

Day Two at IRA

Georgia World Congress Center, the host of this year’s IRA Convention, is as expansive as the ideas about literacy that we are sharing with teachers, researchers, and educational publishers from around the country and the world. The message of this year’s workshops is not about the conventional teaching of reading with a focus on strategies or silent sustained reading or text based writing as in the past. Rather, this year’s focus is on conversations that engage thinking noting that only through thinking can students really acquire and retain knowledge, or learning.

So I thought that was pretty cool. I have always believed that kids need to be allowed to talk through their reading and share their reactions rather than complete worksheets that ask for regurgitation, superficial responses or literal text information. I spoke briefly with Kathy Collins Block about her work in setting two process goals to improve comprehension—this too is essential to active thinking. We are always multitasking, sometimes without even being cognizant of the complexities in the tasks we are processing. And today’s students are stimulated by the very act of multiprocessing.

It’s been a good day…learning and laughing with Harvey Daniels, Stephanie Harvey, and Anne Goudvis in their presentation, ”Active Learning through Inquiry and Investigation”; engaging in a new poetic genre, “Practical Poetry” and feeling hope for my latest passion: incorporating wikis and blogs in the improvement of reading comprehension and response! Harvey Daniels has a great sense of humor and a knack of pulling out the most apropos cartoons that simultaneously convey message and lighten moods. Though this is not one of the cartoons he used, I thought this was good. Where can you go to get cartoons to bring humor to classroom and faculty meetings? Just google: political cartoon, educational cartoons, and on and on. Some require permission and some don’t.

What else…raise the bar! Stephanie Harvey spoke of using nonfiction texts that are above your students’ reading levels to engage them in important issues. In order to get kids to question texts, there must be something controversial and / or interesting enough to question. That may require that teachers use topically current events—and those texts often scaffold the reader’s comprehension through pictures, captions, graphs, etc.

Frank Serafini, in a separate presentation, echoed the thoughts of Harvey Daniels and Stephanie Harvey. He, too, emphasized that the more controversial the text, the better it was for teaching. A point well made–when are we most engaged with any idea….when we are trying to convince people to see things our way. As Serafini said, “What is there to discuss in Brown Bear, Brown Bear? Where is the controversy or the surprise?” To engage kids in reading, there must be purpose for the reading and that purpose has to be more than a Friday quiz!

The emphasis is shifting from text to text talk and that talk includes connections through personal response, something teachers rarely have time to illicit in today’s high stakes testing environment. the message is, “Take the time. The learning payoff is greater than that of test prep!”

On a personal note, I made a number of new friends in the last twenty four hours: Melissa and Kevin with National Geographic; Jackie from Phoenix with Weekly Reader; Associate Professor Alice Klos from St. Cloud State University; Harriet and Taylor from Jackson Academy in Mississippi. Jackie and I talked at length about job satisfaction which I connected to another topic that in on the educational rise: caring. We must care about our students, but as teachers, we need to feel cared about ourselves. And that then goes to the community and administration. In order to make this whole educational structure nurture learning and humanness, we must begin to care about one another: students and teachers. It is not a one way street. Taylor and Harriet, reinforced this theme. They teach at what I infer to be a very caring school. They repeatedly credited administration as being supportive and that, let me tell you, is not something I always hear from teachers. We need to care more about one another, not only in the school setting but in the setting of life. And I found that all of those who have gone out of their way to strike up and engage in coversation with me over the last few days have had that sense of caring….humph, could I conclude caring is the nature of teachers?!

Literacy on my Mind

I arrived in Atlanta yesterday to attend the IRA (International Reading Association) convention. From the first leg of my journey, good omens flew with me. Although initially ticketed to fly from my home town to Chicago and there catch a connecting flight to Atlanta, I became a benefactor of fate due to unscheduled maintenance on the initial flight. Because of that, I was put on a non-stop flight to Atlanta (good omen #1) and having safetly & swiflty arrived in Atlanta, I struck up conversation with an equally social gentleman (good omen #2) while patiently waiting for the downtown shuttlealongside twenty other reading pilgrims. I was blessed on Saturday afternoon to make the acquaintance of Richard Hodges, author of numerous articles, book chapters and books and cited by others in support of seemingly successful literacy programs, such as Sitton Spelling. My 2008 literacy pilgrimage was off to fine beginnings with stimulating and engaging conversation that included all the elements of a memorable exchange: personal connections, theoretical discussion, pedagogical implications, practitioner application and more personal connections!!

Today, serendipity again had its way, and if you’ve read some of my previous blogs, you know how I appreciate the role of serendipity in my life. I had registered for a Sunday seminar last fall, probably the first week of IRA convention registration and of course chosen a topic that was relevant to where i was in that moment (but frankly, I had forgotten what that “thoughtful” choice had been. I can’t overestimate how satisifed I was with decision months ago: “Students Have Rights, Too: Creating Literary Experiences that Place Learners” first was the title of my full day seminar. The speakers and the researchers that spoke told stories and shared findings that validated the research I have been conducintg since January on caring in the high schools and resonated with my pedagogy as practitioner in the selection of culturally relevant texts and activities for contemporary youth.

I have spent most of my teaching career creating relevant, engaging lessons that connect across curriculum and beyond the schoolhouse doors. And that means advocating for appropriate text selection that reaches beyond the cannon. Well, today, I had the opportunity to hear Alfred Tatum speak about that very topic. However, he put a great twist on those words: “Don’t advocate for texts; advocate for kids!” His point was that Shakespeard is dead; he needs no advocators; our kids are alive, but dropping out right and left; they need advoactors. However, Tatum does not want a “waterd down curriculum” so don’t get the idea he wants Shakespeare out of the schools–rather he urges teachers to make the text choices relevant to the audience–have a real reason you choose Shakespeare that goes beyond “that’s the way it has been done here.”  

You may ask, “Why the excitement” and “Where is the serendipity?” Over the last several years, I have been narrowing the focus of my research for the completion of my dissertation and in the course of that academic winnowing, I have used Dr. Tatum’s work as a resource. In the last two months, I have been part of a professional learning community (some people may call them a committee) in an Illinois school district that is studying Tatum’s latest book and reflecting/projecting ways his theoretical framework could be applied in their educational settings.

If you are interested in the happenings at IRA, keep me posted in your reading regimen. I am anxious to share what is happening here. I sense a shift from previous conventions as I look forward to sharing the evolving nature of effective and relevant teaching with you.