Sonnet 1, for my Creative Writing Students

By Allison Berryhill

I wanted for them each to find a muse

And push like Sisyphus against a thought--

To hear an inner voice and set it loose

And touch the place where soul with sound is wrought.

To give them tools to carve onto the page

The exquisite release of hidden self,

To gift them ways to transform joy and rage

To poem, essay, book upon a shelf.

But hour six too often slid away

With chattered scattered shot and little more

And what I’d hoped for them to learn each day--

Abandoned, crumpled drafts upon the floor.

Ah, did they learn the lesson of the pen?

Revise, revise, and let me try again.

Process Analysis: How to Break up a Fight

Last week during a department meeting, I heard an angry shout in the hallway. In a flash, I morphed into the intrepid fight-stopper that hides inside this mild-mannered English teacher. I flew to the hall, my orange sweater flapping like a cape. As it turned out, the shout had come from a good-natured exchange between a student and Mr. Woods. No fight this time. But had there been one, I was ready.

Step One is to act. If a teacher stops to think, to weigh the consequences and possible outcomes, she will at best lose precious moments; at worst, she’ll decide not to intervene. Any teacher unwilling to stop a fight can lay this essay aside right now and go back to shopping on the Internet. I believe our job includes protecting students from harm. A fight is harm.

Once committed to step one, a fight-stopper will, at the first sign of a scuffle, launch Step Two, which is to dive between the contenders. While school protocol likely instructs teachers to avoid positioning themselves between snarling students, the best way to halt a flailing fist is to create a barrier. Furthermore, deep down students want someone to break up their fight. If a teacher steps in, the pugilist will instinctively pull his punch. Furthermore, if the teacher’s adrenaline is peaked, she won’t even feel a glancing blow. Regardless, it will hurt less than, say, an hour of Wednesday’s PD. Remember, the teacher who breaks up a fight is Superman, and Superman isn’t afraid of a bruise or two.

Once wedged between the combatants, Step Three is to block the line of vision. If Punch and Judy are still looking at each other, they’re still fighting. Break their eye contact by turning one away from the other and proceeding quickly to Step Four: calming with words.

I’ve found murmuring “There, there, Sweetheart...Oh dear, Pumpkin...Everything’s all right, Precious...” and similar sweet-nothings will coax the Incredible Hulk back to Bruce-Banner sanity. For one, it shocks him. He’s expecting to be upbraided, not to be lulled by a grandma voice. Second, the student is more likely to accept guidance (“Let’s walk-”) and less likely to sock you in the jaw if you’re calling him “Sweetie.”  This is the same psychology used in painting the opposing teams’ locker rooms pink. It does a wash on the testosterone.

Step Five is the walk. Without some distance between Rocky I and Rocky II, they’ll be back at each other’s throats before you can wail “ADRIENNE!” I’ve seen burly teachers escort fighters with a headlock or a firm grip on the elbow, but I adhere to a continuation of the grandma approach. Put an arm gently around the student’s shoulders, or pat his back. Kindly link his forearm. Any touch should be soothing and calming, not rough or aggressive. The goal here is to de-escalate, and that is better done with dandelion fluff than thistles. I encourage the student to breathe in, breathe out. I assure him everything is going to be okay. (I’m careful not to divulge that “okay” means three days of OSS.) While walking, I lean in, saying “Are you okay?” and “I’m so sorry--,” which is shorthand for “I’m so sorry you resorted to physical violence.” As long as the words are leveled in palliative tones, they’ll do the trick: calm an out-of-control child.

The walk, ultimately, leads to the principal’s office, where  Step Six is to remind the student he is safe. As his adrenaline devolves into the shakes, I play flight attendant, asking if he’s comfortable, offering a drink of water. If I’ve done this right, my gentle response has disoriented our hallway Achilles. I’ve tapped his heel. By the time he visits the principal, he is a lamb again, wondering why he ever fought in the first place.

Working hard or hardly working?

Our superintendent cautioned us that not all students would thrive in a Student-Directed atmosphere. I will say that a few seem to flounder without explicit direction from me each day in student-directed Journalism Production (JP).  But I also have several students producing far more than they did last semester in the teacher-directed Intro to Journalism course.

Each week my Student-Directed students report out on their learning and productivity. I use Google Forms as a quick way to get their feedback. I like to change the questions I ask from week to week to help Friday Form feel more like a conversation than a time clock. This week I included this question I hadn't asked before:

"Do you put as much/less/more effort and time into this class as you do your other classes?"

These are the responses I've received so far:

• Either as much or more depending on the week. I work on EON [Eye of the Needle] outside of class at least twice a week.
• I feel like I haven't done a ton lately in here but there are some weeks I'm in here more than others.
• I put A LOT more time in this one then my others. I really enjoy this class. I come in every study hall and work.
• I put in more effort in this class than most classes. I usually dont do much in other classes and I feel like I am more productive in this class then most others.
• I put in quite a bit of effort since I like working on the yearbook and want to make it great for my friends who are graduating.
• I put in just the same effort if not more in Journalism because I know people want to have a great yearbook.
• I put more into this class then I do my other classes.
• I would say I put as much effort into JP as I do into other class. Maybe even a little more because I often do things outside of school for JP. I just think some people work less because of how "relaxed" the class feels.
• More
• more
• More, I never do math outside of class.
• The same or more because I work on it in study hall.
• Yes I did, because I worked on the story outside of class as well as my other classes.
• yes i do put the same effort
• Yes, because I'm always checking on the backside [of our website] or working on stories and constantly thinking about journalism even when I'm not in class.

I will use their responses as the starting point for face-to-face conferences on Monday. I will show them their answers, then ask them to explain WHY. 

Measuring the Learning

I (re)learned something about cappuccino and doors and balance this week. Did I learn an "A" or an "F"?

LIST #1
Some of the things I observed students learn to do this week:
1) Write March 16 instead of March 16th (AP style).
2) Upload pictures to the journalism server.
3) Make arrangements and interview the superintendent.
4) Adjust the camera settings when pictures are blurry.
5) Understand the meanings behind slang expressions before using them publicly.
6) Access and decipher the "Google Analytics" behind our web site traffic.

LIST #2
Some of the on-going efforts I observed students work on this week:
1) Edit each other's writing for clarity and mechanics.
2) Find effective, polite ways to tell each other to get to work.
3) Analyze pros and cons of various approaches to news coverage.
4) Consider ways to focus on an issue rather than on an individual.
5) Spark their internal initiative flames.
6) Choose to step up to "save" a story when another student dropped the ball.

Would you like to put a grade on that? I suppose I could put a check mark by the items in list one when a student shows me he/she can successfully do the task. But in Journalism (real life), we can't agree on the definitive list of skills to put on the check list. Furthermore, who's to say if a student knows how to access analytics this week he/she'll remember how three months from now? Is short-term learning valued as much as long-term learning?

My second list is even more problematic. These are skills/mindsets developed over years. Item #2 stymies teachers--and principals!--every day. I am writing this blog right now because I'm avoiding a stack of research papers I need to grade (Item #5). We may grow more comfortable and confident in these tasks, we may develop strategies that have higher chances of success than others, but I'm not willing to say anyone fully masters this list.

My son, a math major who is currently earning teacher certification in New Zealand, shared some thoughts on grading after receiving a 9/10 score on a classroom presentation this week:

My son's thoughts re-boiled my ever-simmering struggle with grading. I love watching students learn, and I like to think I'm good at nudging them along. But I have never relished attaching grades to students' learning. An SDL classroom opens up possibilities for re-defining how (if?) a grade is calculated. More on this next week...I'd love to hear ways you make grades meaningful in your classrooms.

"Courage to be less helpful"

I sense a recurring theme in my SDL experience, and educator/blogger Peter Pappas captures it with this directive: "Teachers, have the courage to be less helpful."

Last night I was sharing SDL thoughts with my son Max, who is working on his education license in New Zealand, where he will teach math.  We talked about how small children learn as they struggle in their play. The learning is in the effort, and the caregiver who can't resist the urge to grab Barbie and stick those claw-like plastic fingers through that miniature sleeve has robbed the child of the learning.  I don't know how many times my children came back from the farm shed, disgruntled because they'd been welding or pounding something and their helpful dad took over their project (to improve it, of course). We must remember that "theirs" is better than "best."

Teachers have my husband's well-intentioned urge to smooth the learning--and the cost is ownership, which I'm coming to believe is the peak of the SDL hierarchy. 

This week, again, I see my SDL thinking seeping into the more traditional classes I teach. I'm reading my comp students' research papers right now, and I have to slap my own fingers when my pen tries to re-write another sloppy sentence.

Research projects, awaiting corrections or sincere reading?

That's not to say that modeling doesn't have its place. But my eyes are opening to the many ways we hobble students' real learning in the name of helping. Highlighting unwieldy sentences, or marking them with a question mark tells the students I had difficulty understanding. The job of re-working the sentence to communicate with their reader is then theirs. 

But backing off my role as Sentence Perfecter involves risk. My students will be sharing their papers with "real" readers (as opposed to their "fake" reader: me) after their final revision. So in refraining from polishing their writing (grabbing the welding wand), I will allow some less-than-elegant prose to be read by our community members. And this calls for courage on my part: courage to be less helpful.

Trusting the Process

When I introduced SDL to my students five weeks ago, I told them that while they were free to explore learning in the modes and means of their choice, we had three classroom responsibilities:
 

Þ   We have the responsibility to publish and promote AHSneedle.com (news site).

Þ   We have the responsibility to produce and promote the Javelin (yearbook).

Þ   We have the responsibility to adhere to legal standards of student press.

Under the huge yellow umbrella of journalism that graces my wall, I've posted these SKILLS FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY that dominate our learning:

CRITICAL THINKING

PROBLEM SOLVING

COLLABORATION

LEADERSHIP

AGILITY

ADAPTABILITY

INITIATIVE

  

ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT

EFFECTIVE ORAL COMMUNICATION

EFFECTIVE WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

ACCESSING & ANALYZING INFORMATION

CURIOSITY

IMAGINATION

During the first weeks of class I watched my student burst out of their cages. They wanted to make video and paint ceiling tiles and design t-shirts, and figure out how the button-making machine worked. They started blogs and made some posters and stickers. A lot of this felt like Art-and-Crafts time. My rooms were strewn with poster-paint and glitter. This didn't look like a newsroom.

But I trusted the process and reminded myself that what we were sacrificing in news production, we were reaping in ownership and enthusiasm. My hungry students were telling me through their project choices that they are starving to create and play. They crave glue guns. They long to make things. THINGS.

Last week, after teaching a three-day journalism lesson to 5th-graders, two of my SDL students came to me with a problem. In preparing their lessons for their students, they turned to our news site for examples of incorporating student quotes. What they found there disappointed them. They told me that our news coverage had fallen off since the beginning of SDL--in quantity and quality. I reminded them that we had been working on other things, but agreed that our raison d'etre was, indeed, student journalism. "Everyone needs to write stories," they said.

On Friday we had no school, but the girls came in and organized their plan for holding our news site to a higher standard.  They've committed to taking on editor responsibilities (which then frees up our seniors to finish the yearbook), including story idea generation and assignment.

They wrote up the expectations for news contribution and coverage and developed the system for selecting and assigning stories. Together we sent out an email explaining the changes.

This shift of emphasis from craft center to newsroom needed to happen. But I love how organically it transpired. The ownership is huge. The commitment is personal. I'm anticipating good things.

First Prize! Hamster Cake!

If you could award only ONE hamster cake for classroom excellence, who would win it? You, for your spectacular teaching? Or your students, for their spectacular learning?

Hamster cake!

I suppose this doesn't have to be an either-or proposition; excellent teaching and learning are hopefully two sides of the same coin. But while "teaching" my Student-Directed classes these past weeks, I'm having a wee identity crisis. Mainly, I'm realizing that in my years' quest to be a rock-star teacher, have I let slide opportunities for students to shine as the best LEARNERS possible.

You see, I've built a fat ego around my teaching ability. I can not only lead that sloggin' horse to water, I can make him want to drink the stagnent slime awaiting him at the brink. (Wait, I can transform stagnent slime into sparkling ginger ale!) Dangling modifiers? Booyah! Lie/lay? Done! Want to document a research paper? Analyze a poem? Interview a reluctant witness? Pow! Bam! Whack! You need it taught, I'm your gal: persuasive speaking, interpretive reading, essay writing, beanbag juggling! Nothing I like more than to break down a task and TEACH it!

And the more interactive the better: my students use play-dough to learn phases of revision; they use colored blocks to better understand how clauses fit together; we use markers and kites and gobs of paper--plus GoogleDocs and GoogleForms and Twitter and Jing. And puppets. And hop-scotch. We write for real readers and we annotate texts collaboratively. I know how to get a room of sullen, awkward adolescents to engage in SUSTAINED HIGHER-ORDER CONVERSATION about the a writer's rhetorical methods! I deserve that hamster cake!

But "teaching" in my Student Directed classroom forces me to put my role in quotation marks--and to re-think how to best help students learn. I may be good at driving my students from ignorance to knowledge, but if my room is Student Directed, I'm no longer at the wheel. They are. And my goal must be to keep the power in their hands.

This means I have tamped down my razzle-dazzle "Let's do this great thing MY WAY!" teaching show and found--surprise?--my students stepping bravely onto the stage. Meghan is writing a blog that is utterly delightful. Josh is producing tech-help videos for the journalism department. Lisa organized the yearbook sales over conference times. Sierra and Lillie taught a three-day lesson to fifth-graders.

Because they are polite young people who have been trained by 11 years of teacher-directed teaching, they are inclined to use my ideas if I offer them. And this is a danger, because each time they tilt toward my (very good!) idea, they sacrifice a bit of ownership. And students' ownership of the learning is the key to Student-Directed Learning success. Nothing fizzles enthusiasm faster than a teacher puffing her way in. This means I have to submerge my teacher ego. I have to re-frame my goal. I've got to stop fighting for the hamster cake.