Sunday Salon: What I Read Online April 2015

It's been a while since I've shared a Sunday Salon post and that's because I've been reading, writing, traveling, parenting and enjoying life in general. Here are links to some of my favorite online readings in the past month.

Musical Instruments at EMP in Seattle!

Creativity 
April is National Poetry Month, and since I'm a long time Shakespeare fan, I loved this article, Shakespeare's Sonnets, All 154 Reimagined Through a New York Lens

Why Creative Writing is the Better Way to Study English on a blog by my thoughtful friend, Gwyn is worth your time because it's a good reminder about why we need creativity in learning experiences.

Innovation for improving life. This Guy Invented Shoes That Grow Five Sizes in Five Years for Kids in Developing Countries.

Creative Picture Books for Young Hearts is a fun read for parents and their children or for anyone who enjoys music and art.

As a long time believer of the importance of liberal arts, and as a liberal arts graduate myself, I loved this article Why We Need the Liberal Arts More Than Ever in Today's Digital World.

Yet another great article read earlier today about liberal arts.

Another amazing article about the work of Sir Ken Robinson.  "The real driver for creativity is an appetite for discovery and a passion for the work itself"

Literacy

Vocabulary, Wonderous Words or Busy Work? by Todd Marshall on the Literacy Learning Exchange speaks to the ever important topic of vocabulary which I, too, have previously blogged about.

Literacy Coaching in the Classroom on the LDC.org Blog. Read results here.

Don't miss this free article from NCTE on math and rhetoric working together.

I'm a long time fan of Nabokov's Lectures on Literature, Maria Popova at Brain Pickings shared the article What Makes a Good Reader.

Not to be missed--What Books Do For The Human Soul by Maria Popova at Brain Pickings.

Learning and Teaching

When Students Become Entrepreneurs, Real Learning Happens. Yes!

As a National Board Certified Teacher, I'm always interested in reading research that shows NBCTs are more effective. This article explains policy implications from a new study.

Read My Teacher Leader Manifesto by Sandy Merz to hear her vision of the profession and ask yourself what your vision is too.

Testing isn't going to cure what's wrong in education from this blog Our Top Priority is a blog that should be shared widely because the author, Tricia Ebner, clearly captures what so many of us feel right now about over testing and insane test prep that's ruining our children's education.

I found the article What Undocumented Students Bring to the Classroom to be extremely interesting and meaningful to me because I have a fourteen year old niece exploring immigration issues and expanding her own values and thoughts. Sharing this article with her was meaningful for us both.

From the Atlanta judge trying the case of the educators convicted of cheating in one of the biggest cheating scandals in America, "We have messed up schools so much. Well, tests and grades do not make you educated."

Five Reasons Why Math Worksheets Don't Work! It's always nice when to know I'm not the only one who does not prefer worksheet driven learning.

We can't let testing companies control how we run our classrooms or how we interpret the standards.


Kentucky

It's always interesting to read about up and coming advancements where I live right here in Lexington, Kentucky. This article is especially interesting to me because of the focus on improving our community.

We knew our Kentucky Education Commissioner planned to retire, but something about seeing it in national news makes it more official. I'm grateful for the opportunity to have worked with Dr. Holliday.

Dr. Holliday awards me KDE Employee of the Month Feb.2011
(Trophy rotates each month)

International

Cake and Whiskey launched the Sip and Slice blog recently, and not only have I enjoyed contributing to the blog, it's also been fun to read many of the posts, including this post about celebrating birthdays in Germany.

Eleven Lesser-Known Cities for Street Art explores cities from around the world that value art in their communities.

I enjoyed this inspiring article about a woman running in Saudi Arabia and hoping to send a powerful message.

Parenting

I enjoyed this article by Jessica Lahey because she writes about the way we are solving math problems, and she challenges parents to consider the way they learned mathematics and whether or not that's really the best way for our children to learn.

Certainly I can relate to this mother's thoughts on Proving Parental Love, on Snowshoes and Roller Coasters.

A Teenage Speaker's Mom On How She Encourages Her Sons to Innovate. Loved the TED Blog, and since I had the great fortune of meeting Jack Andraka and hearing him speak earlier this year, this post was even better for me as a mom of two sons.

What My Ten Year Old Reminded Me This Christmas

My ten year old brought home from school a handmade Christmas gift for me and my husband.  His
artwork represented his thankfulness--thankful his mom and dad have money.  Inside I was chuckling to myself--"if he only knew."  After all, we've been living primarily on my educator's salary for his entire ten years of life, plus the adjunct instructor pay my husband receives and periodic consulting or writing work I do on the side or random editing jobs Chris picks up when they are available.   If you know anything about adjunct pay, it's not much.  When Chris finished his PhD a few months ago, I was sure our financial situation would change because he would finally have full time work with benefits (I had plenty to learn about how one finds a full time faculty position--whew!). Many people equate a hard earned degree with a job, but things don't always work out that way.  Well, the job market for people with PhDs in English leaves plenty to be desired.   Needless to say, my husband and I have been just short of wallowing in despair this Christmas because of the ongoing job situation for him. 

Leave it to a ten year old to remind us of what we have.  We have money, just enough for what we need, and a full-time job for my husband will come along eventually.  We also have so much more--love, family, friends, a home, food, and education--lots of education.

Graduation Day May 2013

 
“I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future."                                                 
                                                                                                  ~~Dickens

Close Reading, Text Dependent Questions, & Academic Writiing = Nothing New

...or Considering a Balanced Approach to Literacy Instruction

As a teacher who was educated at a liberal arts college, close reading, text dependent questions and academic writing have been part of my educator tool box since I began teaching in 1998.  Now, however, these practices are seeing a resurgence of emphasis because of the Common Core State Standards. 




This was one of the ways I introduced my students to what it means to be a good reader. 
We would discuss which four were accurate according to Nabokov.

Some of my most vivid college memories include my English professors asking us to defend our readings of various poems, stories and novels with evidence from the text.  We read the works of Keats, Kipling, Yeats, Shakespeare, Woolf, Faulkner, Nabokov, O’Connor and more.   Most of my professors didn’t lecture; they taught us to read closely and defend our responses.  We discussed great literary texts and were encouraged to leave our personal responses behind.  In fact, I often say I never really learned to read critically until my first poetry class with Dr. Whited in 1994.

In my junior year of college a new, dynamic, and cutting-edge thinker joined the English faculty, and she believed we should be taught multiple ways of reading and interpreting text.  She challenged our formalist readings and asked us to consider the ideas of Foucault and Barthes.  While I considered the idea of authorship coming from outside the text, read the theories, and practiced them in this professor’s course, I had a difficult time thinking an approach to reading a text other than the New Critic approach would lead to an accurate reading of a text.  I successfully argued my point in my final Master’s Capstone Presentation and went on to teach high school English for the next seven years, utilizing primarily a formal close reading of text to teach my students to read and comprehend. My formalist teaching style worked effectively on the Cherokee Indian Reservation where my students’ performance in writing and reading improved each year I was at the school.

Flash forward seven years from my master’s capstone presentation.  I was in a new state with a new curriculum and a new, more diverse population of students and was working toward my National Board Certification.  A major part of working on National Boards is the intense analysis and reflection required.  I was also mentoring student teachers from the University of Kentucky.  One student teacher, in particular, challenged my thinking with her dynamic approach and different ways of considering text.  She reminded me of my college professor.  She understood the ideas of Foucault and Barthes to be relevant to our classroom and she considered poetry beyond the traditional cannon I so loved and faithfully taught, even as I paired literature with non-fiction texts.  Accordingly, I acquiesced to the importance of a balanced approach in my high school English classroom and sent an email to my college professor telling her I should have listened sooner.

So when The Atlantic published Peg Tyre’s article and Applebee’s response, I decided to reply with my own thoughts on the importance of academic writing in our classrooms today.  Two days after I blogged about Tyre’s article, I had the opportunity to hear Manuel Scott speak to my district about his personal experiences in public education.  He shared the story we all saw in the movie Freedom Writers and shared that his story most resembled that of Manny, a character created by combining multiple individuals from the original group of Freedom Writers.

Mr. Scott shared the story of his teacher, Erin Gruwell, and her persistence, patience, and passion for helping her students learn.  She started the year with “dead white guys in tights” and ultimately combined the beauty of Shakespeare with lyrics by people like Tupac to make learning more relevant and meaningful to her students.  As Mr. Scott shared, his teacher didn’t stop teaching Shakespeare and the power of words to tell a personal story—she just hooked the kids with Tupac.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Erin Gruwell’s interview with The Atlantic and her defense of teaching students memoir writing.  In our rush to improve public education, I hope we all remember to keep a balanced approach to literacy instruction because it doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario.  We can teach academic writing and memoir writing, and we can teach the Cannon paired with other non-traditional texts, both fiction and non-fiction. 

My favorite resources for close reading and text dependent questions in order of  personal preference.

Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov

Reading Like a Writer: A Guide for People Who Love Books and for Those Who Want to Write Them  by Francine Prose

The Great Books Foundation:  Shared Inquiry http://www.greatbooks.org/programs-for-all-ages/pd/what-is-shared-inquiry/

 Douglas Fisher: Close Reading and the CCSS, Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w9v6-zUg3Y

Douglas Fisher: Close Reading and the CCSS, Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhGI5zdjpvc

Text Dependent Questions & the Common Core http://www.achievethecore.org/steal-these-tools/text-dependent-questions

 

What a Liberal Arts Education Did For Me

 With all the talk about College and Career Readiness in our nation, I have been thinking  intentionally about my own college experience at a small liberal arts college in northeast Georgia.   My liberal arts education was not intended to train me for a specific job, nor did I even dream I would become a teacher until after I graduated.   A liberal arts education prepared me for life beyond the world of work because it taught me the benefits of lifelong learning and much more.

My values of tolerance, sympathy, and respect for others were enhanced in courses, internships and service learning projects where we studied cultures, people, humanity, literature, sciences, music, art, and philosophy.  At Piedmont College I learned to think critically and analytically, to communicate effectively, to solve problems, to collaborate, and to create--all integrated (not isolated) skills which are never obsolete; these skills allow me to thrive in an evolving global society.  These skills and the desire to continue learning enabled me to become a teacher who--

• Established rapport with students
• Engaged students in authentic learning opportunities
• Employed effective instructional strategies
• Empathized with students, parents, and colleagues

 Since I'm not currently in the classroom, these same skills--Critical thinking, Collaboration, Creativity, Problem Solving, Communication and a desire for lifelong learning allow me to provide leadership and oversight of projects in education.

Sometimes I question myself and my choice for leaving the classroom, as I've blogged about previously, but colleagues and former students remind me of the possibility for impacting change in public education.  And, thanks to numerous esteemed colleagues, I am reminded that we need more lifelong learners making decisions.