How Teachers and Principals Should Collaborate to Improve School Cultures

Attention all educators, principals, and assistant principals (APs): 

         Do you want to effect positive change for your school's culture?

         Do you want to improve your relationship with your colleagues-- specifically, your

         boss, or subordinates?

If you answered "yes" to either or both of these questions, read on! As a new teacher who'd personally answer say yes to both queries, I say it's time that unite!
We all need to make concerted efforts to advocate for school improvements. After consulting with teachers, a cute principal, and college professors for school
administration, I've come up with a handy do/don't guide to getting sh*t done together. Let's do this!

Maverick Pictures/Shutterstock

Do:

• Chaperone that school dance (I know, I know...): 

       Nationwide, the teacher leadership movement is in full swing. More than ever, teachers are
being pressured to step up their game in terms of "showing up" for their schools. By joining
        the PTO, school-improvement committee, or helping out  sporting events, we're showing how
much we care about the the students we service. Believe it or not, principals and assistant
principals really do notice. Our actions can make our building admins care about what we
have to say, which can spur positive change on their parts. Principals and APs have the
power, after all.

                                                                                                      "Sometimes even Yoda has a hard time walking the walk."

Don't:

• Be selfish

        It's true that school budgets are shrinking while teachers' and principals' responsibilities are growing (seemingly exponentially). That doesn't mean;
however, that we should take out our stress on one another, or curl into balls and hide out from our workplaces 100% of the time that we're off the
clock. Lest you've forgotten, let me remind you: The problems plaguing our public schools are systemic. That means there's no point in us adding
insult to injury by being petty. 

Don't:

• Take interest in your colleagues' priorities and capabilities.

        In order to successfully strengthen our professional bonds, we need to know where our colleagues stand. Principals' powers can be far-reaching.
Even if they don't seem to have a say on key aspects of what teachers want to target to improve school culture, in actuality, they probably do. For
instance although they may not be actively involved in district curriculum development, charismatic and impassioned principals can indirectly
affect it. If you're tight with your principal and he or she values you, then they just might express your views on what's working and what's not at a
principal meeting. When confident, respectable school administrators act as liaisons for teachers, the  district personnel take notice. This is when
positive change can occur.

Don't:

• Get too close to your partners in school leadership.

 Clearly, there is a strength in numbers when it comes time to make important changes for a school's culture. At this same time, though, there's something to be said for repeating the age-old mantra of cover your ass. In this situation, I am not speaking about lesson plans or grading, but
instead, I am talking about teacher evaluations. In the district that I work in, teachers are frequently evaluated by their principal or AP. This year,
for example, I am being evaluated, and my evaluator is my AP. If I get too close with her and eventually slip up and say or do something that
doesn't reflect well on me, then our relationship will suffer. Our school's culture would suffer, too.

TL;DR?: 

        Don't be a jerk! If we want to improve our school cultures, we need to avoid bs excuses, and
collectively step up our game.

Are You There, Creative Writing? It's Me, Ms. B

     "Give me a 'P'!" [Hands go up]
     
     What. the. fu---

      Oh no.

        Near-hyperventilating from my rush inside the school administrative classroom, I realize that I've just silently mouthed those syllables in a room full of my colleagues. Even if I did not, my face is very expressive, and I cannot hide my confusion and disdain.   I've arrived four hours late for day one of my training on the "new writing program" that I am expected to learn and teach to students in the fall, and I haven't the slightest idea what's happening.

          This was me back in May when I attended a mandatory "all-day" professional development on the same day that I had to proctor/facilitate RICAS for my students until noon. The training went until 2:40.

         Reading Michelle Kenney and Chris Kindred's article "The Politics of the Paragraph," I felt like they was echoeing many of the things that I think and want to say about "canned" writing programs. As an English teacher who cherishes her relationship with writing all sorts of material, I recognize the positive impact that my teachers had on me throughout my education. According to my memory, at no point did any such writing programs disguised as cheesy acronyms enter my experience. Instead, I fondly recall my time with my English teachers as when they taught my classmates and I a more organic, less "tight" approach to writing.

           Perhaps I wouldn't have such a strong response to Kenney and Kindred's words, if only I weren't in the throes of implementing a "canned" writing program in my own classroom. This one's been adopted by my district, and I do see its value in helping struggling writers to see a light at the end of the research-based writing tunnel. At the same time, however, I have taken issue with the approach since I was first introduced to it back in the late Spring. My biggest problem? It doesn't allow any room for creativity, nor does it include it as an expectation on its rubrics.

         So when Kenney and Kindred write that,

               "systems like these encourage students to produce shallow, fast-food versions of paragraphs    

               that don’t allow much elbow room for creativity or critical thinking, yet lend themselves to

               speed grading by a standardized test scorer or an overworked instructor only 50 essays into a

               stack of 160 on a Sunday night,"

         I agree with these writers wholeheartedly. I feel their words reverberating in my gut.  In my opinion, the system that I am tasked with learning and teaching to my students is helpful because it's so formulaic, but at the same time, it's centered on one way to write academic papers. Also, it eats up time that students could spend writing more freely and injecting creativity into their work.

        One of the fabulous takeaways I got from my student-teaching cooperative teacher (this was when I was studying for my elementary teaching degree; now I teach middle school) was that great teachers make time for and place emphasis on students' creative writing ,even when their curriculum doesn't. Tara was my cooperating teacher, and I loved how she made a big deal out of teaching her kids "entertaining beginnings" (AKA "hooks," exciting ways to being a piece of writing). Tara required students to include entertaining beginnings in everything that they wrote that year. When I got my own classroom last year (eighth grade), I did the same and saw my students' writing blossom from dry explanatory pieces to intriguing, humorous, and dazzling pieces. I saw how one student, who I'll just call "H" here, took the concept from our English classroom into science when the science teacher and I decided to have our students work on their state-mandated argumentative science essay in English class as well as in science. The topic was terrible. "Is the Earth round or flat?" was the key question. When I ever read H's essay and how she'd chosen to start it off with the sound of a man falling off a cliff (because, she quipped, he thought the Earth was round), I lost it. I was entertained, but I was also thrilled that she'd chosen to take her paper one-step-further by adding her own creative flair. I think that entertaining beginnings (and figurative language) should be welcome coexist with text-based essays. Last year, I required  students to include an entertaining beginning when they did their research papers on historical topics related to Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl, and it was a big success.  It forced the students to do additional research (a Hitler quote here, an onomatopoeia to make the sound of World War II bombs exploding in readers minds there) and push themselves as writers and revise-ers. Thanks to Tara, I even started this blog post with an entertaining beginning. I think it makes for a better read.

         Fast-forward to this year and my personal experience with a dreaded "canned" writing program that Kindred and Kenney refer to. Since I have no say in choosing or refusing to do our writing program, I need to incorporate "entertaining beginnings" and the like into what I teach my students. Fortunately, my autonomy as a classroom teacher (and the support I receive from the two special educators who share the room with me for three of my five English classes) enables me to do what I want with my students, sort of. Narrative writing, according to Teaching for Joy and Justice author Linda Christensen, is also an area that I can exploit (it's part of my school district's curriculum that I'm teaching a bit of now) to help further my students' writing and reading comprehension. "Telling stories from their lives opens opportunities to talk about meaningful, important, sometimes life-changing events with their classmates," she explains on page 61 of her book. While analytical essays written in response to one or more pieces of literature is important, so is narrative writing.

         When Christensen writes about using guided visualization to inspire students to write about their own formidable experiences, I remember the one time that I did that as a student, which was during my senior year of high school, in a University of Rhode Island credentialed creative writing class . I remember how our teacher took us on a quest to "find our inner writer," and I distinctly recall how I pictured green jell-o as a treasure I unearthed during this visualization, as well as how my black cat experienced the journey with me. Christensen's connection reminds me that narrative writing is creative writing.

         In the narrative writing chapter of her book, she details one way that teachers should share narrative writing pieces with their students and engage learners with a free-flowing (not cookie-cutter) writing process that varies based on who is experiencing it. For instance, she says, "Struggling writers need lots of time working one-on-one with a teacher in class" (64). This is obvious, but in a school where I teach 129 students, the time flies by, and often, I find myself delaying lessons to make sure that all students have gotten the hand of their most recent writing assignment. This doesn't go hand-in-hand with the lightning-fast training and instructions-for-lesson-roll-out that I received to complete at my last writing program PDs, but it's what's right.

         I agree with Kenney and Kindred that instructors do a "disservice" to students by using a formulaic writing program as a crutch upon which to teach. For me, the challenge lies in simultaneously teaching this program and teaching writers to get creative, personal, and think "outside the box."

Using Technology with Intention

Here's a word of advice to myself and other educators on effectively integrating digital tools in the classroom: 

Teachers need to be familiar with ways that they can harness functions of individual technologies to communicate publicly and creatively.

I think that Krista Tippett and Danah Boyd have shared solid examples of how digitization can be beneficial for readers and writers. As part of a 2017 On Being with Kristen Tippet podcast episode titled, "The Internet of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly," Boyd, a technology and social media scholar, says that for younger and younger people, the Internet is, "just there," and Tippett (a journalist) concurs. "For this generation, the Internet is so much in the fabric of things," she notes.

The good news, Boyd reminds us, is that the Internet isn't all bad.

For instance, she notes, for children who have access to social media, it provides an unstructured outlet that they probably crave in the face of their "over-scheduled" lives. Also, while memes and emojis may seemingly undermine the writing and reading techniques that educators push on students, they can actually be rather deep, expressing more than plain text. 

During Tippett and Boyd's conversation, they reference "Ferguson," the 2014 incident in Ferguson, Missouri when a police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.

She mentions #ifIwasshot, a Twitter hashtag that someone created after Ferguson. #ifIwasshot plays on how the media tends to show certain pictures of black people then they're victims of gun violence. Basically, it exposes the fact that some media outlets identify black victims of gun violence with less polished/dignified photos than others, even though these outlets have the better photos at their disposal, too.

Here is one example of the hashtag in use (Would the media show the left photo or the right one?):

“There’s a lot of beauty in memes. There’s a lot of beauty in watching people try to amplify things that are messy via social media," says Boyd. Looking at #IfIwasshot, it's clear that she's using the word meme loosely here.

In the interview, Boyd says that (just like with memes) there is value in digital languages, including text messages. This reminds me of a book that I'm reading called Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List. which was written by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan. This 2007 Y.A. novel frequently includes symbols that can best be likened to emojis. As a reader, I think that these symbols help me to engage with the story because I have to make more connections in my head in order to decode them. Sometimes, they are cut-and-dry, but other times, you have to look closely and actually think about it.

Here is an example of a page from that book. Here, the world symbol in the top paragraph is obvious, while I actually had to squint to see the tornado icon that Cohn and Levithan put into the same sentence.

If readers have trouble making out the symbols-- like I did with the tornado icon--, then they must use context clues to figure out their meanings. Either way you spin it (tornado pun intended!?), when they're use appropriately, digital symbols and creations are beneficial for readers. As #IfIwasshot demonstrates, they can also promote important discussions about touchy political topics.

Welcoming More Stories and Emotions in English Class

As a new English teacher, I'm grateful for all sources of good advice and support for my job. I am emergency-certified for my role, and teaching outside of my domain of elementary education is no piece of cake. Aside from my professors at Rhode Island College (R.I.C.) and colleagues. Interestingly enough, some of the best resources I've encountered in my middle school English education career are my R.I.C. course reading assignments. This week's readings for one course that  give me some more specific, actionable guidance on becoming a better teacher.

One of the things I've learned from three of those readings is that, although argument writing can be dry as hell, it doesn't have to be.

In Chapter 3 of Linda Christensen's Teaching for Joy and Justice book, she describes how she has her high school English students "story" their essays (Christensen 130). The example that she gives is related to the our country's massacre of Native Americans. To "story," she explains, writers back up their written assertions and arguments with information from memoirs and stories, instead of embedding scholarly quotes only. In her example, she writes that students should, "use the stories from the Native American memoirs and biographies we studied in class."

I think that it helps to gives voice to people whose words are muffled, and it gives power to people who may otherwise be powerless. Judging what her student ended up writing in that paragraph, this practice can also makes essays much more interesting to read. This student went directly to the source (someone who'd suffered for speaking her Native American language at a boarding school) for her paper, rather than rely on secondary reporting of it.

Something else that Christensen teaches her students to write are strong introductions and conclusions. I like how she encourages writers to to add some creativity and excitement to her their essays by injecting some entertainment into these paragraphs. I especially love the anecdotal introductions that she allows her students to write, as well as how she wants to make her students' papers end on a high[-energy] note. For the anecdotal intro (page 141 of the book), one of her students connects how African American men are portrayed as hardcore sexual cheaters in Their Eyes Were Watching God to her own experiences hearing friends talk about how "men are dogs."

I think that both of Christensen's approaches for ramping up student engagement in their writing. I think that they connect to something else that I read this week that I found useful for my job. In her article titled, "Emotion and Intellect: An Unconventional Pair," Cait O’Connor challenges the notion that the best writers "divorce" their individual experiences, opinions, and feelings from their writing. I agree with her that impersonal academic writing and quashing students' emotionally-charged behavior in class do a disservice to our young people in schools. It's common knowledge that when you suppress your feelings and ideas, they build up and eventually boil over. Instead of suppressing our learners, we should be welcoming them.

O'Connor writes:

"Allow students to be angry, upset, sad, and emotional in their authentic writing. Because if they’re one or a few of these things when they write about an issue they care about, it’s probably because it affects them personally. And who are we to taper down their experiences, especially if those experiences have to do with racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, and ageism?"

Here, she brings up another reason why teachers shouldn't welcome and promote voice and thought in in all of their students' writing: Doing so is basically the same as telling students that their suffering was warranted and shouldn't be addressed. I agree with Christensen here 100%.

   

   
   

We Get It: "Standardized" Tests Are Racist. Now What?

     Back in May, I proctored the RICAS math and English exams for my advisory of eighth-grade students. This experience opened my eyes as to how differently many of my students viewed such tests from how myself, my classmates, and other students did when I attended and student-taught at predominately white schools in Cranston and Coventry, R.I. In advance of the "high-stakes" tests, many of my students in Pawtucket complained about having to take them. A dozen or more asked myself, my co-teacher, and one of our assistant principals "why" they had to do this. I was slightly shocked at how openly they shared their unsolicited, unproductive opinions with us.

      On the RICAS test days, I was surprised to see two of my students drift off to sleep at their desks while everyone else got right to work. They didn't mention that in the testing manual, I thought. Although I spoke to those sleepy students and tried to get them on-track, I knew that my attempts to motivate them to take the tests seriously were futile. Still, I wondered why the majority of my students struggled to feel remotely enthusiastic about-- or even just power through-- the testing process. I thought, I did it when I was their age, so why don't they all do the same?

      Wayne Au's article "Racial Justice Is Not a Choice" provided me with several answers to that question. One of the reasons, he explains, was that "the pressures and endurance required are developmentally inappropriate and especially damaging for young learners." While reading and after teaching standards, I realized something: The idea of "standards" in education is bogus. That's because all learners are unique, and the strategies and knowledge that students gain in school varies based on their lot in life.

      It's not fair for school systems and states to hold students and teachers accountable for failing to meet standards and achieve uniform degrees of improvement for standardized tests. As scholarly studies have repeatedly shown, one effect of racism and social inequities is that students from poor and non-white backgrounds achieve less "growth," or numeric gains, in these tests and toward these standards, when compared to their better-off, white peers.

      In is writing, Au sums it up nicely. "High-stakes standardized tests," he writes, "do not serve students of color. They support white supremacy." He went on to explain that"Test scores correlate most strongly with family income, neighborhood, educational levels of parents, and access to resources - all factors that are measures of wealth exist outside of schools."

      That was kind of review for me, but something new that this article taught me what about the origination of standardized tests. Au writes that when they rolled out over 100 years ago, the results of standardized tests, "were used to prove that whites, the rich, and the US-born were biologically more intelligent than non-whites, the poor, and immigrants." That being said, remind me why we still administer these!? Seriously, does ETS (the company that makes the tests) lobby that hard to keep schools' business?

      It's sad to me that modern-day teachers are expected to prioritize the test and, therefore, "teach to the test." One casualty of this attitude, which Au connects to well-meaning, misguided federal education programs like "No Child Left Behind," is that some English language arts curriculums don't acknowledge or address and critical problems that face students from different socio-economic classes or racial backgrounds. Instead, they focus on responding to texts.

     I think that teaching standards are important because they provide teachers with some guidance on what they should be teaching students, but I think that the United States should replace standardized tests with acts of transformative justice, a concept that Au describes in his article. Restorative and transformative assessment, he writes, are alternatives to standardized tests. He says that they've both been proven more effective at lowering high school dropout rates and demonstrating students' true skills and learning than standardized tests. Best of all, both of these alternatives address the systemic and racist problems that exist among ethnic and socioeconomic groups in America.

      I wish that teachers and students were given more time to address on their needs and fix the systemic racism that plagues our public education system. In the meantime, I suppose, well-intentioned educators have to be subversive and teach what their students need and what is right, even if it's not going to be on a standardized test. 

That's the Power of Language (and Love)

L'Chaim! To life!

Even if you've never been to a Jewish wedding, or seen Fiddler on the Roof, I think that we should all shout this celebratory Hebrew exclamation a few times in our lives. That's because violently repressed cultures and oppressed people need everyone's support in order to be revived.

While I was reading Chapter 5 of Linda Christensen's book Teaching for Joy and Justice, I was struck by several of her ideas, including this one: “If you kill the Indian culture, you might as well kill the Indian because nothing about him is really him” (Christensen 212). My interpretation of this statement is that when people eliminate the language, art, or traditions of any group, they are basically cutting off the head of the group and waiting for the rest to drop dead.

To better illustrate the true meaning of that quote, I will share how it reminds me of another cultural group that was massacred not too long ago: Jews. I am obviously referring to the Holocaust, the horrific time when six million European Jewish men, women, and children were systemically murdered by the Nazis and their corroborators. This unthinkable atrocity is fresh on my mind for a few reasons. First, I am currently reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (2005). It's a fictional novel set in Germany during the Holocaust. Also, I had the pleasure of reading Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl with my eighth grade students last year. Finally, during my undergraduate years in college, I dated an Orthodox Jew-- to the point where I looked into converting to Judaism, a la Charlotte from Sex and the City. I learned a lot about Jewish traditions and religion from my ex-boyfriend and several Jewish friends. I was so fascinated by Jewish heritage that I took a Jewish religion and culture course at my alma mater. My professor was a practicing rabbi, and I learned a lot. This time in my life opened my eyes to the permanent damage that some hateful actions can have.

Something else that those experiences taught me about Hebrew is that it is a written language-- not spoken--, and the only time you might hear it spoken is when people are reading from the Torah (or maybe at a Jewish wedding). As far at the Holocaust is concerned, it was precede by a barrage of antisemitic propaganda, which was coupled with a series of laws against Jews. These laws eliminated many Jews' freedoms and thus, their humanity. For instance, Jews were forbidden to run businesses, which is why Anne's father Otto had to put his establishment under the name of one of his employees. Unfortunately, as we all know, things got much worse from there. Otto was the only one of his family to survive, and if he hadn't, then he wouldn't have published his daughter's diary entires, and we wouldn't have been able to glean such insight into the terrible times that the Franks and many others faced at that time. It would basically invalidate it. In The Book Thief, Nazis round up all the Jew-written literature that they can find, and they burn it. That book is a strong piece of historical fiction, so it's no coincidence that its plot mirrors the anti-Jewish laws I've mentioned.

I am not Jewish, so I can't claim to understand the continuing pain that Jewish culture and people have faced since the Holocaust ended, but getting to know my ex and his family, I learned just how traumatized some European-descending American Jews still are because of it. For my ex's mother and grandmother, that pain translated into a palpable, open distrust of all non-Jews, especially those with European lineage.

Why does this matter to English teachers? To bring it back to Christensen, she says that “I need to teach students how and why some languages have power and others don’t.” Clearly, she writes this in her book to suggest that readers and teachers follow her suit. She's absolutely correct in her assertions, because all students should know that there's a reason why English is our primary language, just like there's a reason why white people make most of our laws and rise in political rankings. It's not because of merit. Whether it's Native American, Mexican, Indian, Jewish, or another oft-repressed culture, the story's the same. Throughout history, people have played dirty to gain power. Powerful people get to make the rules, and thus, a vicious cycle plays out repeatedly. It's our job as educators to draw attention to it and shine light on repressed cultures as a means of breaking it.

The Call of the Words: My Journey Toward Becoming a Better Writer and Teacher of Writing

       I. Bitten by the Byline Bug

Believe it or not, when I was an elementary school-aged child, I was a prolific author. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Hudson, gave me the writing bug. She had all of her students maintain writer’s notebooks, which were full of our scary stories, poems, and other original literature. We also wrote, constructed, and illustrated our own original books for her class. Outside of school, I often wrote into the Providence Journal to enter their kids’ contests. One time, I won $25 and had my writing featured in the paper. “Just Call Her Flipper” was the title of the blurb that announced my winning paragraph on why I would be a dolphin if I got to choose to be any animal. My aunt and father talk about it to this day, and my aunt still has the saved clipping!. These were formative experiences for me which combined to boost my confidence as a writer and scholar. This intensified when I got into middle school and heeded one teacher’s advice. She put it this way: “Want to know the scoop? Join the student newspaper.” In actuality, what the paper’s staff produced was a one-sheet news bulletin. Still, I felt intrigued, so I signed up and became part of the staff. The rest is herstory…

       It was then, when I was a sixth grader at Western Hills, that I became interested in being a reporter. My first story detailed how our school’s enrichment program had recently been “swept under the rug.” My sense of accomplishment with coming up with the article’s concept and seeing it through to fruition, paired with the positive feedback that I received from one or more classmates’ parents who’d read the article, further boosted my ego and newfound identification as a writer. In high school, I worked my way up from entertainment editor to managing editor of our school’s newspaper. The editor-in-chief and I gladly accepted a New England Newspaper and Press Association award in Boston for our work on the West Wind as well as the broadcast counterpart, The West Watch. We received an honorary mention and certificate for the paper as a whole, and I took home a certificate for writing and anchoring a West Watch news package for my review of our school’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

This is a fellow staff writer and myself in front of

    Fenway Park on the day we accepted the NESPA award.

This is a photo of myself (center), the editor-in-chief (right), and

a staff writer for The West Watch that we took in high school. We

had a blast working on the student publication and developed

strong friendships.

Other than the school paper, in high school, I took a creative writing class and was in AP English. One time, outside of school, I attended an open mic night at the Arcadia YMCA and shared a poem I’d written. It was about a substitute teacher who I had a crush on. Besides my friend and classmate, who’d attended with me, no one in the who heard me knew who the poem was about, but I still felt weird for sharing it. I haven’t mustered the courage to read any of my work aloud in public since then. That night reminds me why some of my students may not like sharing their work, especially if it is personal. As an educator, it’s my job to know that it’s ok for them to hold back. I shouldn’t push them.

        The Best Thing I Ever Wrote

The biggest milestone of my adolescence happened during my sophomore year, when I wrote an op-ed piece for The West Wind entitled “Excuse Me While I Drop the ’ette Bomb.” Basically, in my piece, I said that it was a shame that the many decorated academic clubs and teams at Cranston West weren’t celebrated as much as our dance and cheerleader squads. The dance squads were called the Falconettes and Westernettes, hence my story’s title. Some girls on the dance squads misinterpreted what I’d written as me saying that the dancers were sluts, which was a huge reach; however, I did mention that they were somewhat of sex symbols in school in the story, so I understand where that came from. Students’ reactions were strong. One girl, a Falconette captain, even cried in the hallway because she felt like I’d tried to tarnish the squad’s reputation.

Pretty much everyone at school read the article on the day that the newspaper was distributed, and people either loved me or hated me for what I’d written. We ran out of copies of the issue that day, which hadn’t happened in years. Even my creative writing teacher got into the spirit, instructing us to read and discuss what I’d written as a class. The hallways were like that scene in Mean Girls when Lindsay Lohan’s character imagines all hell breaking loose, except instead of me attacking the popular girl, all types of student,-- some I knew, and some I did not-- approached me to tell me what they thought of what I’d written. 

Later that year, at a talent show, the ’ettes used my words-- I’d referred to them as “the almighty ’ettes once in my op-ed-- and repurposed them as “mighty ’ettes, which they displayed collectively at the end of their performance. Each dancer wore a letter on her back. As an audience member, I found that clever, but I still thought that the squad’s negative response was over-dramatic. As an adult, now I can understand how a young person may feel upon reading her peers’ seemingly hateful comments about the team. Although I am still proud of what I wrote and its impact, this experience gave me a crash-course in the so-called “power of the pen.” I realized how important it is to say exactly what I mean in everything that I write, and to be respectful and kind. I still make mistakes, but I have improved.

           Making Sense of It All

     I think that the biggest reason why the experiences I’ve mentioned were positively impactful on me was that they always included supportive teachers. Looking back, my teachers not only helped me to develop and maintain a love of writing; they shielded me from a lack of a strong student-teacher relationship and from non-constructive criticism and from others. Yes, my third-grade teacher (Mrs. Hudson) bolstered my writerly ego with praise and encouraging words, prompts, and projects. She also served as a buffer among my classmates and I, though. For instance, when we had our weekly meetings where we could share our writing and opinions freely, our teacher guided us toward staying on-topic and offering only positive feedback to one another. In college, I learned the meaning of the expression, “You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone” when I had one journalism professor who didn’t “get” my ideas (so my final writing projects were muddied by our divided vision of where the stories should go, which made them-- wait for it-- confusing!), and at least one teammate on our student music media organization belittled the writing that I did during an internship. When he playfully called me out for using the verb “croon” too frequently in my Billboard song reviews, his words damaged my writerly spirit a little-- so much so that I vividly remember them and-- the feeling I had up upon hearing them today--, almost ten years later. Because of that particular conversation with my classmate, I realize how strong words can be, especially if they’re directed toward someone’s work. When I teach writing, I am careful not to belittle anyone’s work, instead opting to offer constructive feedback that’s couched in kindness. Once I get to know a writer or learner, then I know how blunt I can be when delivering my thoughts and ideas for improving his/her/their work.

How My Background and Resources Influence My Teaching

Thinking about my upbringing, I know now that I was relatively privileged. I did not  I realize that subconsciously, I’ve embraced parts of my given identity more than others. These are the white, middle-class, and educated pieces of who I am. This shows up in my work as an English teacher because, although I am struggling to work my way up in life, I feel like I owe it to my students to “pay it forward” whenever I can and whenever it is necessary. I also feel strongly that most of my students need the physical books to do their best reading and writing, and to help develop their love of reading that is, for the most part, currently nonexistent. 

On the bright side, I have the knowledge, experience, and means to purchase and acquire books for my students to read during English class and while doing silent sustained reading for enrichment.  If I am ever in a pinch, though, I am tech-savvy enough to figure out how to incorporate ebooks and audiobooks into my classes’ lessons. This is thanks to the fact that I have a storied relationship with digital media, one that dates back to my middle school days. At the time, I had a private blog that was housed in a Livejournal account. I recorded almost everything in there, and it was mostly trivial, pre-teen stuff, like recollections of going ice skating with friends. Today I have a Penzu blog. It’s another free, web-based writing program that can be private or public. I use a Macbook and also a Chromebook regularly, and have been obsessed with Google Drive since it was only Google docs. I have been using social media platforms since I was a teen, starting with Facebook in 2006 and then signing up with Twitter in 2010. I also use Snapchat and Instagram-- though not in my work as a teacher-- and this helps me to relate with my students who utilize those as well as blogging platforms. Sometimes, we discuss what we’ve seen on one or more outlets, and other times, I am able to refer to them when discussing different types of writing and reading in our English class.

  When I worked at a public relations and marketing agency a few years back, I learned how to use content management systems like Wordpress to manage websites and was also trained to send professional, friendly emails. The latter skill has helped me to “cold call” many, many people via email since. Usually, I do this to gather information for articles that I write for Motif. Sending lovely-sounding emails is part of my current digital identity, as is my proficiency with Google, word-processing programs, Google Classroom, and other digital tools. Being a journalist, occasionally, I like to record my interviews. I have a digital recorder, but if it’s broken, I can use my cell phone or a Garage Band-type application (in college, I recorded numerous interviews that way). When I teach, I try to vary the technology that my students and I use. I know that some students enjoy and are more comfortable using certain software than others. Since no two learners are identical, it’s important that I constantly switch things up and am open to suggestions and feedback.

         The Next Twenty Years

I feel like I’ve been a real writer since I was in the third grade, back when I sat on the classroom rug in Mrs. Hudson’s class with my writer’s notebook in my lap. It’s crazy to think that I’ve identified as a writer for more than twenty years! If I felt jaded about writing, or didn’t want to do it anymore, I could’ve stopped at any time, but I still feel excited to discuss my passion for expressing myself with written words. By helping others learn to write and discover an appreciation for writing, I’m fulfilling one of the biggest dreams I had when I was a kid. My dream was to have a positive effect on the world. At the very least, I know I’ll pass along the joys, memories, and insights that I’ve gathered onto my students. 

Poetry Appreciation Post! Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X

Image courtesy of Harper Collins

     I have always loved poetry. I enjoy hearing it, reading it, deciphering it, and creating it. It makes me feel free of literary and life constraints. That is why, when I realized that the one non-textbook book that I was required to consume for the “teaching writing in secondary schools” class I’m currently enrolled in was comprised entirely of poems, I got  excited. The book is called The Poet X. Written by Elizabeth Acevedo and published in 2018, it earned a National Book Award, Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in young adult literature, and Pura Belpré Award. So far (about 50 pages in), I feel strongly connected with this work.

     Poetry aside, one of the reasons why I appreciate this young adult novel is that Acevedo’s writing allows me to hear the voices of my seventh-grade students in main character/narrator/poet/writer Xiomara (AKA “X”) Batista. I say this not because Xiomara is Latinx (that’s the non-gender-binary way of saying Latino/a), but instead, because the stories and introspective wonderings that she includes are highly believable. I relate to X’s musings on female adolescence on a personal level as well. When X got her period, for instance, and her mom didn’t think she should learn how to use tampons at that age (fifth grade), I was reminded of a similar experience I had. Like X, my mother was devoutly religious as a school-aged child, and her views on sex and anything remotely sexual reflect that. Also, regarding X, although I didn’t go to school in an inner-city, I work in one now. Finally, I lived in New York City for a year during college, and Harlem has a very special place in my heart. That being said, some of the language Acevedo has X use and the issues that she deals with at school remind me of what I see and hear at my job. I feel just as happy, however, to hear a strong young female sharing her story in a candid and original way-- wherever she might live and attend school.

  The structure of The Poet X is unique because it’s not just a collection of interrelated poems. Rather, its separate parts form a linear, cohesive narrative that has already taught me, one of its readers, about two things. The first is the young female experience. The next is exactly what it was like for X character to be a first-generation American-born Dominican whose mother did not come here of her own volition. Interestingly, volition is the operative word that X meditates on when she sits at her church’s confirmation class one day.

  Moving forward with my reading of this exciting new book, I wonder how much of a connection Acevedo has with her speaker/poet. I am also curious as to what events may unfold as X gets older, especially relating to her high school career and involvement in Church, plus her relationship with her twin brother and former bestie.

Om Hreem Namaha

Seth was pushing it. He’d taken “fake it til you make it” to the max. Crashing, an arid jolt of pure Sedona air filled his being. He was zapped, but grateful. With the Mustang’s back-road grip reminding him of home, Seth’s tired ankle wrestled with the accelerator until he reached his apartment. That night, he dreamed of ways to break through. For too long, he’d played victim to circumstances-- both at his job at the office, and in his relationship with Mark. To say that the breakup took him by surprise would be an understatement. As a result of their uncoupling, Seth had a complete breakdown. He’d found it hard to even just be. Resolving to be an edgy, heartless vessel, he happily picked up his drinking habit right where he’d left it. Three months later, Seth couldn’t brag about getting clean, because he hadn’t given it any effort. One day, he'd simply stopped, and today, he was determined to start a new life in a new place. His first stop had been Seattle. He’d liked it at first, but the city’s dreary climate was enough to make him move on to the heat of the desert. He laid down, listened to a guided meditation, and took a nap. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Although he was jaded by love’s afterglow and shock, Seth craved companionship and affection. He’d gone months now without either. Feeling concurrently desperate for attention and worthy of a “real” partnership, he took a chance. True, Grindr is really for hookups, but if he was on the app-- he, someone who was open to receiving something more--, didn’t that mean other guys were, too? The first date was a success. Seth ended up going out with Mark several times after that night. Soon after, though, things fizzled. It happened again with a few other men, but at least Seth was trying. He wanted to fill the void he thought he’d developed once Jordan admitted “he’d fallen out of love” with him. This didn’t work. Still, even in the face of mounting bills and past-due rent (a consequence of a broken heart, Seth assured himself), the Casablanca inside him took over, and over, and over. Over. Three forgettable dates later, Seth realized that he needed more than a fresh romantic relationship. So he got help. His shy nature prevented him from being relatively transparent with the counselor for the first two months. Eventually, thought, he shifted and was open to receiving an abundance of wisdom and support. Therapy helped him realize that his “issue” wasn’t about having a boyfriend or not. It was deeper. Things weren’t perfect, but the Earth’s free-fall was beginning to slow down. For the first time in his thirty years of life, Seth tried an antidepressant. He was nervous that it would change his personality, but he promised to ride it out for a few months before deciding to wean off it or continue. That summer, Seth took up flow yoga. He’d abhorred unnecessary physical activity in the past, but this new practice quickly became like desert air to him. Yoga provided him with more than just a temporary high. The sense of clarity it gave him invigorated his spirit. He always looked forward to the conclusion of class, when he’d get to close his eyes and silently repeat his favorite mantra” Om hareem namaha. Laying on his mat in savasana, he pondered, Does it get any better than this?

November 19, 2016

“I’m so hungry! I just want something to eat … I’m thirsty. I need something to drink. Why can’t I have anything to eat or drink?” My dehydration prevented my tear ducts from generating moisture, so I dryly whined as I laid in the hospital bed. After a week, a surgeon mended my broken wrist and ankle (the seven ribs and liver laceration, they couldn’t do anything about; oh well), and I could finally eat and drink.

I wondered, When will I be better and my life return to normal?  What will my new job think? The EMTs had cut off my jeans and Pizzeria Uno shirt in the ambulance. I failed to realize the gravity of the situation: Not only wouldn’t I be working for a good six months; I wouldn’t be walking, nor hopping, either!

Nobody plans to get hit by a car-- never-mind a Ford F-150. Evidently, it happens more often than you’d think.

Shame clouded my brain. I felt terrible about what happened, mostly because it was my fault. If only I hadn’t argued with my mom as she drove me home from work at 10:00 that night. If only I hadn’t stormed out of her car to walk the rest of the way, especially feeling so hungry and thirsty that I couldn’t think straight. One moral of the story? Don’t jay-walk, people!

Sitting on the pavement, screaming for my mom, I felt the pain, but it wasn’t so bad. When my mom arrived at the scene and first respondents announced that I would be going to Rhode Island Hospital, I noticed that it hurt to breathe. Have I punctured a lung? I later learned about my ribs, which relieved me.

My family and friends supported me the entire way, from that first week in the hospital (they brought me Thanksgiving dinner, for Pete’s sake!) through rehab at another. I cried because I missed my cat, so one of my aunts brought me a black cat stuffed-animal to comfort me in his stead. Yes, I got tired of re-telling my story and explaining myself, but it felt good to be cared for, regardless.

The next five-and-a-half months were challenging because I’d lost my independence. Forced to stay at home most of the time, I relied on others for transportation and assistance with everyday tasks. Using a wheelchair at 26 didn’t make matters better. Eventually, I got used to it, and one snowy January night, I proudly sat in the wheelchair as my mom pushed and accompanied me to my birthday dinner.

My recovery was not all good, however. How crazy is it that writing about this experience makes me upset, even now? The memories are back and I feel precisely how I felt at that time. I feel stupid, shameful, and worthless. I know now that I am none of those things, but it’s hard to shake the emotions when they were so real. I went from being car-less for a short while (which I’d already developed quite a shitty feeling about) to being crippled for a half-year.

I coped with the shame and boredom in part by self-medicating with pot and Percocet, but I quickly weaned off the pain meds that I’d been prescribed. Then, at my friends’ big Superbowl party in February, I drank so much wine that when I got home, I laid on the floor, slurring my speech, unable to get up. My mom was convinced that I’d imbibed something more sinister.  Naturally, I felt like a humiliatingly useless mess who everyone talked about...

Nearly three years have gone by, and I still haven’t completely processed this experience. I’m grateful to be alive and back to “normal.” With the daily support of my loved ones, many medical pros, and the smiles of the Today show anchors, I escaped the negative place I’d been in before and throughout my recovery. I passed a college algebra class and exam during that time, and I was able to prepare for my new venture- obtaining an elementary teaching degree.

It’s corny, but I believe that “everything happens for a reason,” and that chapter of my life is no exception. The memories and impacts will never leave me. I’ve become much more responsible and caring with myself and others since that fateful night. I hope that my family and friends no longer think of me as their “crazy” friend/daughter/sister/niece/granddaughter/cousin.

But I completely understand if they do. ;)

YeahWrite Challenge (9/10/19)

Imagine a world like that.

A place with no student loans,

where extracurriculars

run rampant. A place where, in-

stead of stress, you can focus

on loving the one(s) you love.

Love is a four-letter-place

that it seems, oh--, more and more,

I'll never see on my way

toward becoming an "adult"

(I'm an emotional wreck).

Accepting this truth, I'm still

dying to reach my Mecca.

How much interest would it cost?

Without “Developing Self-Compassion First,” Students Cannot Flourish in a Writing Classroom

Duh! I mean, this is something that most, if not all, educators have been taught by their experienced 
and knowledgeable teaching professors-- but in my personal experience teaching “for real” (that is, as a fully certified professional), it is a statement that’s typically only glossed over by school administrators and districts. This is not right! Teachers are responsible for their own self-compassion, but their educational communities should guide them toward developing it.

As I learned in a course titled “Psychological Perspectives on Language and Teaching,” which I took in the summer of 2017 with Professor Holtzman at Rhode Island College, people cannot learn and work their best if their most basic needs are not met. One of the specific learning theories that we looked at in that class was Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs,” which is illustrated by a pyramid-shaped flow chart detailing what needs must be met in order for others to be met as well. At the top sits what he called “self- fulfillment needs,” which include “achieving one’s full potential, including creative activities.” The second most-basic level of the Maslow structure contains “safety needs,” which are defined as safety and security. The level after that is called “belongingness and love needs,” and it consists of intimate relationships and friends.

Suffice to say, according to Maslow, in order for students to thrive in school, they must feel an authentic sense of safety, love, and belongingness in the classroom. Of course, as teachers, we know that we are the ones responsible to actively foster an environment of all three elements. That concept connects to this week’s course readings because some of the authors explains that the way that teachers can develop a positive classroom culture (that’s what I am calling it in my seventh-grade English classroom this year) or “climate,” as Matthew R. Kay sometimes calls it in his Not Light, But Fire book, is by first starting with themselves. 

This point is clarified in “Grow Your Own: Developing Self-Compassion First,” which is a chapter in Angela Stockman and Ellen Feig Gray’s book titled Hacking School Culture: Designing Compassionate Classrooms. The authors state that even if administrators and districts adopt social-emotional learning policies and plans for their schools, their efficacy depends upon all teachers executing them with their respective cohorts. According to Stockman and Gray, the first thing that teachers must do to ensure that all students are comfortable and empowered enough to do their best work and learn the best is to practice self-care and self-compassion. “It’s impossible to create compassionate classrooms for our students if we aren’t cultivating compassion for ourselves,” they say (Gray and Stockman 16). Among the action items that they recommend educators complete are practicing gratitude, setting intentions, and having a playful spirit (Gray and Stockman 18-24). 

I agree with the aforementioned authors because a) their ideas make sense and b) another writer from this week’s readings, Linda Christensen, supports their theory. In the introduction to her book Teaching for Joy and Justice, she writes that, “Students will rise to the ‘challenge’ of a rigorous curriculum about important issues if that rigor reflects the real challenges in their lives” (Christensen 3). This is sort of common sense when you think about it, but to take it one step further, I think that we teachers should ask ourselves just how easily students could connect these “real challenges” to their curriculum if they were learning in a classroom where their personal lives were not prioritized (which Kay wrote about in his book) and mistakes were unacceptable. Basically, teachers and students simply cannot get to the place that Christensen describes without having self-compassionate teachers who foster a compassionate classroom culture for all learners.

The biggest questions that I have after reading and reflecting on these passages are about how we can support other teachers and ourselves to become more compassionate and take better care of ourselves. This month, the district that I work in is kicking off  a “mindfulness” professional development series, which I am signed up for, but are/can others? What else can we do to support each other working toward these goals?