Slice of Life: If students can't do the work without us---

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

I thought about skipping the slicing life tonight. Truth be told, I've been writing all day. I've worked on my first three chapters of my novel, I've revised my query letter, I've edited some descriptive paragraphs for summer programs, and I've written a critique of a book proposal. I've also made charts and written some demonstration pieces. All in all, there's been a lot of writing done today, and sometimes it gets in the way of a good slice.

Then, almost simultaneously, one of my favorite (I know I'm not supposed to have favorites, but) teachers texted asking if I'd take a look at some of her students' recent on-demand writing samples, and a tweet came through my feed from #tcrwp.

Of course I'll look at the writing samples, I texted right back. She went on to share how disappointed she was with the quality of the writing. I responded with the standards. They met the state standards--just not her standards. And now in our upcoming unit, we have a new bar set, and that is one where they go above the basics and into the realm of independent demonstration of all of her great instruction.

 We teach well beyond the standards, and sometimes the work we see in process pieces exceeds the work students produce in an on-demand situation. Let me revise that statement. Sometimes the work we see in process pieces exceeds the work we ALL produce in an on-demand situation. That being said, I think it's crucial that we are constantly and continually assessing students' internalization of our instruction because yes, if they can't do the work without us, they can't do it.

So here are some questions to help us build independence and repertoire regardless of unit and regardless of level:

• How long can the student sustain productive work without adult intervention? Is that amount of time increasing?
• How strong is the scaffold, and what is the plan for removing it? 
• What is the student's understanding of the work they are doing?
• Are we valuing the process and growth more than the product? 

When left to their own devices, sometimes students will wow us and sometimes they will disappoint us. Our job is to give them the instruction, power, motivation, and pride in becoming independent writers, regardless of their level.  

And now, I've completed my writing for the day, including a slice!

All good things,

Slice of Life: One big upside-down bag

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

This morning, my car had to go into the shop. It's been making a funny noise. For a while. I've tried to ignore it. I had to stop ignoring it when my daughter was home and drove my car and said, Mom, what's that noise your car is making? 

My husband took my car today, so I had to drive his car. I am happy that I have a husband who takes my car into the shop. He has a nice car with a heated steering wheel, but other than the heated steering wheel, I don't like too much else about his car. It's too big. The radio stations are all sports-oriented. His keyring doesn't have the fob I need to get into schools throughout the day. 

When I got to school, I stayed in the driver's seat for an extra couple of minutes as I wrapped up a conversation with my sister-in-law. She was still on the line when I got out of the car and opened the back door. I might have said a bad word when I opened that door. I could blame the car, but I think probably the cause was user error. When I tell you that my teaching bag fell out upside down, I mean 100% upside down. 

She laughed, and then I laughed. "I don't even have to be there, and I can tell you have a big mess," she said. "I do," I said. 

As I write this post, I wish I had taken a picture, but I'll try to explain with writing. My classroom bag is a Scout bag with 6 outside pockets and a big center compartment. I keep mini-charts in it, as well as pens of every color and size, paper clips, a stapler, demonstration texts, a couple books,  folders, and a set of paper types. At least. And my bag turned upside down in the parking lot. 

My friend Frank was walking across the lot. "I saw that," he said. He knew exactly what I was going to ask. We laughed, and he helped me pick up the mess. 

"It could have been a Monday," he said. 

"True that," I said. 

When I saw him at the end of the day, he wanted to know if my day had gotten better. It had. And my bag is much more organized!

Happy Slicing,

Slice of Life: Creating opportunities for competence and confidence

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

One of the best parts of my job is working with students in their classrooms. It's also one of the hardest parts of the job because usually, I focus my energy on the students who are struggling and striving. By the time students get to third or fourth grade, they have fairly well-established understandings and beliefs about themselves as writers, and this makes me sad. In this morning's slice,  Clare Landrigan wrote about first-graders who questioned why she addressed them as "readers." Likewise, I see many, many students who do not see themselves as writers. 

We need to change that. 

Today, I worked with a group of four fourth-graders who are just beginning a unit on informational writing. We integrate information writing with social studies, so they had some topics about Connecticut history to choose from. Rather than choosing a topic that would require a lot of research, I asked each of them to choose a war they knew something about. We'd write fast and create a shared piece-- each section would be about one war. Three of the four boys knew a lot about wars, so they were able to get started with their writing right away. With the nudge of some transitional words, they each wrote several sentences about a specific war. While they were off and running, one of the boys shook his head and indicated that he didn't know a thing about any of the wars. I asked him a little about the Revolutionary War, and he teared up, unable to provide anything of substance about it. "How about just war?" I said, trying to do some damage control and stop the tears. "What do you know about wars? You can write a section just about what was is in general." He perked up, and he managed to write a fair amount with plenty of also's, another's, for example's, therefore's, and this is important because's. 

I share this because at the end of twenty minutes, they produced an informational text with sections, different types of information, transitional language, and a plan for an introduction and conclusion--in fact, they were excited enough about it that they told me they'd work on the beginning and ends tomorrow before school--and...they were excited about their writing. "I never write this much," one of them said. "I didn't realize I had so much to say." Three of the four boys felt great about what they wrote, and my teary friend admitted he felt better. Sometimes, I have to settle for better. 

Their work wasn't perfect; it was an approximation. However, it's hard to teach kids to write if they don't write. Somehow, we have to make the work seem doable so that we can celebrate and enjoy the energy that feeling confident and competent brings. Sometimes I wonder if those feelings are right up there with audience and purpose.  Thoughts?

Happy Slicing,

Slice of Life: Picture Books and Powerful Essays

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

Yesterday at a PD session our presenter mentioned the beautiful essay that Matt de la Peña wrote in Time Magazine, Why We Shouldn't Shield Children From Darkness, and Kate DiCamillo's equally beautiful response to Matt, Why Books Should Be a Little Sad.  Today, one of my colleagues mentioned these essays in a completely separate conversation, and truth be told, I already had tweeted and shared them with several people. Some essays are so important they just keep coming up.

If you have missed these essays, go read them instead of the rest of my post. Really. At least just one of them. Matt and Kate are much more worth reading than I am.

I had pre-ordered Love, so I'd already read it before Matt wrote about the debate with his publisher about one of the illustrations. In Loren Long's illustration, a little boy is huddled under a piano and an empty cocktail glass. When I first read the book, I didn't notice the glass. My focus was on the words and the language--the poetry within the text.

I'm not sure that I can make this comparison as powerfully as I want to because I recently loaned my copy of Baby by Patricia MacLachlan to someone so I can't quote the exact passage that opens the first chapter, but bear with me. Papa tap dances after his first cocktail that makes him happy. He stops after his second cocktail that makes him sad. I'm not sure how different Papa's mood change in a middle grade novel is from the empty glass in a picture book is, and what I think is more important is that if a child notices either one of those details, then maybe that child needs to notice those details. Maybe that child is the one who needs to talk about something, and it's those details that provide the opening.

Thanks to this community,

Slice of Life: Thinking About Social Justice at Teachers College

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

Sometimes my work takes me in to New York to hear the reflective, provocative, and brilliant thinking of the people who work for the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. While I had other ideas about today's slice of life, I feel far too compelled to share some of the wisdom, ideas, and insight from today's session with Cornelius Minor and Natalie Louis. I've tried to capture my notes in the form of categorized provocative questions and/or statements.

Ideas and questions to begin the thinking:

• We can/must teach children to look at what’s different and find beauty.
• When we don't understand each other, sometimes we assume we do. Before we give advice we should either ask to be asked or wait to be asked. 
• Think about the word diversity as it appears within your district documents? Do we want diversity or do we want inclusion? How do we see the differences? 
• What’s really important for young people to do? look at things that are different and find beauty in things that are different.
• Justice has never been achieved by waiting for a leader to act first. If we want kids to be change agents, then we have to be change agents first. 
• What do you want people to say about you when your career is ending?
• Schedules are a moral document; we are where we invest our time. 
• Engagement isn't a kid problem; it's a system problem. 

Thinking about social justice:

• Who has power? 
• Who is choosing to stay silent?
• How do we take responsibility to hear everyone?
• How can we make an impact?
• How do you differentiate social justice? What is the level of injustice that that kid is ready to embrace? 
• What would you outlaw if you could outlaw something to decrease the chaos in life?

Teaching empathy-Questions to ask students, especially within the context of read-alouds:

Questions for teachers:

• How do we actively teach kids to build relationships?
• Where in our day to we teach empathy?
• How do you think about your curriculum for read aloud? 
• What do the books we read say about class, gender, race, socio-economic status...?

Questions for Students:

• Who will you be in a moment of conflict?
• Who would you be in this read aloud?
• Why does the book end on an earlier page? 

Thinking about what we ask students to do:

• Be comfortable with discomfort. 
• Persistence is a skill that can be taught. The ability to persist through a no is a skill we can teach kids.
• Complexity of the task and complexity of the text changes, but not the skill, not the goal.
• How do we find issues that matter to kids? Justice projects can take a lot of different forms. Engage them in things that matter to them. 

So much to think about in these statements and questions, and this is my distillation of about eight pages of notes. If you are reading this, you are probably someone who has already given thought to many of these issues. Thank you. How do we get others on board with the responsibility and power that we have as educators in a chaotic, unpredictable, and unjust world?

Peace,

Slice of Life: You don't know the words?

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

I had a moment last week when I worried about the (okay, my--) parenting of my youngest daughter. She loves babysitting, and she went off with a skip in her step to watch over our friends' boys. The three year old was still up, so she had the task of putting him to bed. When I picked her up, she told me all about it. 

"We played blocks," she said. (That's good, I thought. Nice divergent, creative play.)

"We watched a show." (I'd rather you'd have read more books, but okay.)

"I read him a few books." (Now we're talking! What books did you read?)

"The only problem I had was that he wanted me to sing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." (What?!?!? Why?!?! You have a beautiful voice--)

And then, she told me she had to google the words to Twinkle, Twinkle.

I'll let you go back and read that again. Yes. Go back and read that last line again.

Nope, not the second verse. The main verse. 

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Had I really not taught my little girl the words to Twinkle, Twinkle? 

I laughed. So did she. 

"I couldn't remember if there was another line after the diamond in the sky part," she explained. "I know the tune from playing violin, but not the words."

Fortunately, she's a child who sees the humor in these sort of occurrences, and she can acknowledge that learning words is sometimes hard for her. And I can acknowledge that since she is the youngest of four, she might not have heard traditional lullabies with the same enthusiasm as her older sisters might have.

But I'm left to wonder what else I have forgotten to teach her. What else is she missing? And will those other missing parts be able to be filled in by a quick google search?

Here's hoping--

Happy writing,

Slice of Life: Conversations about important issues

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

Last night, I had a twenty minute car ride with my nephew, Jack, who is an attentive, bright 13 year-old.

"So Mel," he said. "What do you think about this whole NFL thing? Have you been paying attention to it? Do you know what's going on?"

We talked for a while about how he views the actions of some of his favorite football players. He had strong opinions that Colin Kaepernick shouldn't lose his job because he exercised his right to free speech. I pointed out that maybe he didn't lose his job, and I decided to play the devil's advocate a little bit (although I probably feel even more strongly about it than Jack), questioning Jack about where we should draw the lines on how people use their power, fame, or privilege.

Earlier in the day, I had tweeted about my concern that we were now paying more attention to the issues around free speech than the ones around racism and police brutality--which were the issues that started this whole conversation. I asked Jack what he thought about this--whether he thought we were creating different conversations in order to avoid possibly more difficult conversations around how people of color are treated differently.

Without missing a beat, Jack pulled up a screenshot of a letter Michael Bennett wrote following an incident he had with the Las Vegas police department.

We ended up in a lengthy conversation about the racism that exists in our country and how hard it is to talk about it.

I shared with him how I am evaluating and trying to be more aware of my own racial biases that showed up when I took the on-line Project Implicit tests. (If you haven't tried these, I recommend taking the time to see how you do!) Maybe what worries me most is that we do have racism in our country, even within groups of people who we wouldn't expect it from. Maybe it's so hard for us to talk about it, to really look at it and dig in to inherent and unwanted biases that it's more comfortable to talk about the First Amendment and what it means to show respect for our country. Personally, I'd like to hit pause on the conversations about who took a knee, what other teams did, and whether our president has the right to tell their bosses to fire them, and instead talk about why anyone felt compelled to protest in the first place.

I'm guessing I'll be thinking about all of this for a while--

Write on,

Slice of Life: The frustration of writing

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

A few of my colleagues from my MFA program started an on-line writing group, and we met last night. Some of these people are published authors, and all of them except me have completed their MFA program in creative writing. They've all written many critical essays, including one at least 35 pages long. They've also written over a hundred pages of a creative draft with the input of an experienced mentor.

We've all written a lot. 

And yet, many of the questions and the input and the struggles boiled down to the same questions I ask my elementary aged writers: 

• What's your story really about? 
• What does your character really, really want?
• How do you weave action, description, dialogue, and inner thinking together in order to communicate the wishes and struggles of the characters?
• How do you stay in the head of your character?

During our critique sessions, the writer whose work we are workshopping is supposed to stay quiet; that person gets to speak and ask questions at the end. Last night, when our author had her chance to speak, she talked about how frustrated she was with this story that she's been working on for five years, and how she still can't seem to focus in on the heart of it. She's thinking about switching the entire draft from third person to first person--which is no small task-- and she's also thinking of abandoning it. 

"I feel completely overwhelmed," she said, her voice raw with honesty. 

Sometimes, I lose sight of how hard it is to write a clear and compelling story, and our curriculum (which is based on the CCSS) asks our students to do it at very young ages. When was the last time you wrote a story? Not a post, not an essay, not a blurb, not a lead, not a conversation, not a poem-- a full story, start to finish. I'm guessing many of us, by virtue of the fact that we are part of the slicing community, have written a story in the not-too-distant past, although maybe we haven't gone back and reworked and revised one. I'm guessing some--maybe many--of our colleagues who don't spend as much time on blogs and in notebooks haven't written a true story in a long time. 

I give our children so much credit. Writing stories is hard. I need to remember that when I am working with my writers, young and old. 

Happy Writing,

Slice of Life: Looking forward to a writing group

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

I'm looking forward to tomorrow night when I will have my first official writing group with a special group of students. We met a month ago to talk about the idea of a young people's writing group, and they were all so enthusiastic and excited about it. On the eve of our first real workshop, the seven of them--ages ten to thirteen--have shared their work on google drive and are reading each other's work with the intent of participating in our critique group tomorrow night at the town library. 

I have been thinking about the agreements we made a month ago at our introductory meeting, and I have written those agreements to hand out to my young writers tomorrow night. I have also just written up some important reminders as they plunge into the world of critique groups. If anyone out there has some additional ideas or suggestions to offer before these are official for my Young People's Writing Group, please share! Also, if anyone has any experience with running writing groups for this age group and can offer some tips, please do!

Here's what I have at this point:

Writing Group Agreements

Protocols

1. We will meet at 6:00 on Monday evenings once a month. We will plan to meet for an hour and fifteen minutes.
2. We will divide into two groups, and the groups will be determined by Melanie a few days before we meet, based on the content of the writing.
3. Please share your piece with your group members 48 hours before we meet so that they have time to read your work.
4. We will have a 10-15 minute craft lesson before beginning workshopping each other. Topics will vary and suggestions are welcome.
5. Read the work of others in your group and come prepared to talk about it.
6. Each person will have their piece workshopped for 10-15 minutes, depending on how many people are in attendance.
7. When your work is being discussed, you remain quiet--just listen! You will have an opportunity to speak during the final 2-3 minutes of your turn.

Important reminders

1. When deciding between a smart comment and a kind comment, choose the kind one.
2. Be sure to balance feedback with compliments.
3. Monitor how much you are talking and how much you are listening. Speak enough so that people listen and listen enough so that people speak.

And now I'm off to read what's been shared so that I am in compliance with #4!

Happy Writing!

Slice of Life: In appreciation of writing communities

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

Many of us participate in the Slice of Life Challenge in March when we write every day. It's hard. We all know that. And at the end of the month, we're proud. We all feel that. And so grateful to Stacey for the vision she had to start this ritual over ten years ago. 

I completed my fourth of five 10-day residencies for my MFA in creative writing, and I have that same April 1st feeling but in an exponentially more intense way. For ten days, I shared a space and place with about forty other people who wanted to write, analyze, and critique books, stories, essays, poems, sentences, and words. Days began early, ended late--readings finished around 9 each night. Daily workshops went on for three hours in the morning, and if I took a break from afternoon seminars, I wrote. 

The Solstice MFA Program reflects its name. It changes lives. Meg Kearney is the director, and at the beginning of each residency, she impresses on all of us the importance of shedding any envy we have for other people's writing. "Fall in love with someone else's writing," she tells us in her opening remarks. She reminds us that when given the choice between being smart and compassionate, choose compassionate. "You're all helplessly intelligent, or you wouldn't be here," she says. Intelligence shows up when you're being kind. Our Solstice writing community is a well of energy, a source of intensity and creativity. 

I share this for two reasons. Maybe someone in this SOL community would be interested in the Solstice program--it works well for a teacher's schedule-- and also because I'm winding up for a thank you to this SOL community. Writers need energy--the magnetic spin of people in their world who share passions and understand why (or how) we sit down, sometimes more than once a week, and spin stories. Today as I write, I'm alone in my bedroom, but I'm not really alone since I know that when I hit publish, you'll be there. 

Happy Writing,

Slice of Life: A Super Bowl To Remember

On Tuesdays, the community of Two Writing Teachers hosts the Slice of Life. Join the incredible community by writing a snippet of life, or even join with just a comment or two. Everyone is welcome!

There's been a lot to write about this week, and I've envisioned posts about several different topics for this morning. March is a long month, and I will be taking the annual Slice of Life Challenge. I'm sure all of my ideas will have their moments in the writing spotlight. This morning's post goes to the Patriots.

We are Patriots fans, so there was a lot to love about the 51st Super Bowl. 

We began the night excited and looking forward to great food and a great game. Like many fans, we are superstitious about our game day behavior, and we always watch with the same friends. We had our traditional food spread, our garb, and our cocktails. We were ready.

We weren't ready for the first half, though. Given our tradition of sipping Limoncello whenever the Patriots score a touchdown, our bottle remained unopened. By halftime, the fun factor was way down, the commercials were disappointing, and our daughter in Italy texted that it was 4 am and she was going to bed. "She can't give up," Bill said. "There's plenty of time left."

Larkin stayed up, and even though there wasn't plenty of time left, there was enough. I know there's a lot to say and a lot to learn about resilience, teamwork, and effort as it relates to the Patriots, not just during the game, but also throughout the season and the seasons before that. Bill Belichick, the head coach, shared some of his thoughts about the team and the season after the win:

"It certainly wasn't always perfect, but it was always a lot of effort, a lot of toughness, and a great will to improve and get better, correct mistakes, and just become a better player and a better team."    Bill Belichick after being presented with the trophy for winning the Super Bowl LI

I know his words would resonate in any classroom I work in.  (You can see more of his comments here.)

I also really admired the reflections of Lance Salyers who wrote about the Patriots in Forbes Magazine on Monday morning, and you can find his reflections here.  I'm sharing a screenshot of the Forbes Magazine's quote of the day from Receiver Julian Edelman. Edelman caught a pass in the fourth quarter that defied all odds and started the rally that led to one of the most amazing comebacks we'll ever see.

No question that the lessons from the result of the Super Bowl span well beyond the football field.

Happy Writing!

Slice of Life: Finding parallels between knitting and writing

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

As we wend our way to the inauguration of 2017 (purposely not put in capital letters), I know many people are struggling to make sense of how we have the situation we currently have. Our blog is not a place for political bantering, and I have worked hard to maintain the educational focus. However, on the night when a billionaire who has never---I digress...

For the last few days I have been knitting pink hats. Some of my friends are heading to Washington this weekend, and one of them sent me a link to the Pussyhat Project.  Since I can't go to Washington, I have busied myself making pink hats as quickly as I can--they need four! Until the hats leave the house, there are a lot of people who are willing to try them on for me. Here are two of my daughters proudly donning pussyhats!

What has occurred to me as I knit is how many similarities exist between the processes of knitting and writing. I haven't knit in a long time--years, actually. My first hat was a little rough. My fingers hurt, and the rows weren't as straight as I wanted them to be. By the second hat, I was back in the flow and able to knit without looking, hardly missing a stitch and having to go back and redo it. Writing is also easier the more I do it. When I am in a writing state of mind, my words flow, and I can get words down on paper or on the computer quickly, saying what I mean to without a whole lot of revision. 

When you knit, every stitch matters, just as when you write, every word matters. This concept is more apparent in a knitting project; anyone who has ever knit anything knows that if you drop a stitch and ignore it, your piece ends up with a growing hole. Every single stitch relies on others to maintain the wholeness of the piece. I love thinking about writing this way--every chapter, every scene, every word matters in a really good writing piece. 

In a couple of days, my hats will be on their way to keep some of my favorite marchers warm, and I don't know that I will make any more pussyhats. I will, however, return to knitting, as I found a lot of peace and satisfaction having something to do during car rides, football games, and movies I can't bear to miss. I'm searching for good that can come out of the election. There's not much I've found, but maybe I'll make a sweater I love. 

Happy writing,

Slice of Life: Sharing our writing

Every Tuesday, the writing community of Two Writing Teachers hosts Slice of Life. All are welcome to participate by linking up posts or commenting on other participants. 

Because I love to write, I have always invented ways and reasons for my family to write together. Now that my four daughters are between 14 and 20, I can't tell them what to do as much as I can model what I do and why I do it. Over the last 24 hours, both of my college-aged daughters have shared their work. Julia, a freshman, has been working on an essay about the intersections of songs and poetry (love this!) while Larkin, a junior, has been working on a wordless picture book. 

Many of you know my daughter Larkin either through her participation in the Slice of Life Challenge or because she has drawn several of the pictures that go with my blog posts. About a year ago, she told me that she was not only going to major in art, but she was also going to minor in writing. I can't tell you how fun it has been to share writing projects together!

For several years, I have worked on a middle grade fiction book, and some of the characters in it are fairies and squirrels. Larkin has contributed events, conversations, and descriptions--sometimes I get emails or pictures of her notebook pages where she has envisioned or created a scene from my story. Her divergent thinking always pushes my imagination, and I know she has both made me a better writer and my book a better  story. 

This fall, Larkin asked if she could use my basic plot line to create a wordless picture book for a class she is taking. Ummmm. Yes! Absolutely!!! She has shared some of the pages as she's painted them, but she finally sent the entire work to me yesterday. I'm sharing just a few screenshots of her paintings--there are actually 24 of them!

I'm also sharing this story because it's such a testament to the power of writing to bring people together. I sometimes wonder about the impact of my writing on my daughters, and Larkin's beautiful picture book is incredibly affirming to the importance of sharing our work with people we love.

Happy Writing!