March 11, 2017

Self-Reflection, Identity as a Path to Critical Inquiry

My students have been studying argument for the last few weeks. We’ve covered most of the basics and a bit more: the rhetorical triangle, ethos, pathos, logos, classical v. Rogerian structures, induction v. deduction. syllogisms, and claims, evidence, and warrants a la the Toulmin model.

Still, I felt like something was missing. Last week, after our initial discussions of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” I had students respond in their notebooks to the following prompt:

“What demographic categories might apply to you and how? List at least ten categories and how you might identify within that category.”

As examples, I gave them categories like race, gender, and generation. Read More

March 8, 2017

Slice of Life 8: Fifteen suggestions

On this International Women’s Day, I finished reading Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new book Dear Ijeawele, Or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions. The book is structured as a letter to Adichie’s friend who asked her how she could raise her young daughter to be a feminist. I wrote a bit about my thoughts on just the opening yesterday and while I’m going to have to go back and reread it—I inhaled it between periods and after school—for my “slice of life” today, I thought I’d just briefly share her fifteen suggestions: Read More

February 22, 2017

Teaching Argument in a World of Alternative Facts

Given the state of today’s political discourse and the complex challenges presented by social media sharing (and over sharing), it’s more important now than ever for teachers to take an active role in helping students navigating the information and misinformation they encounter every day. At this point, many of us might be already familiar with the Stanford study published a few months ago that found that many students cannot discern the difference between stories that are real and those that are not. As the Washington Post reported, “Some 82% of middle-schoolers couldn’t distinguish between an ad labeled “sponsored content” and a real news story on a website.”

And it isn’t just students either. Even well-educated adults fall for fake news stories. Just this morning, on my Facebook feed, a friend posted a news story that turned out to be false (someone in the comments had done a fact check). Unfortunately, too often fake news sites have become adept at posing as legitimate sources. Now, when I see a news story from an unfamiliar source, the first thing I do is try to determine where it’s coming from. As literacy teachers, we can no longer just teach our students the traditional Rs of reading and writing. We need to also teach our students about third R—Rhetoric.

Rhetoric is the study of persuasion, and today, there are plenty of individuals, friends, family, interest groups, politicians, corporations, and any number of organizations trying to persuade our students—to buy this, believe that, do this, don’t do that. Information that seems purely objective can be interpreted (or manipulated) in the service of persuasion. Even the youngest students can (and should) be taught to analyze text to look for biases. Just a few weeks ago, my six-year-old came home and told me about how his class was learning the difference between fact and opinion. Of course, teachers have always done this work, but the times seem to call for more. So how? How can we teach our students be critical thinkers, especially of information that might feed into our own biases? 

CONTINUE READING AT PAWLPBLOG.ORG.

February 21, 2017

To Blog or Not to Blog: Blog!

As Moving Writers readers know, one of the central ideas behind this site is authentic writing—what does writing in the real and wild world look like (versus the sometimes too-tightly controlled world of our classrooms)? Over the years, I’ve come to believe that the more the writing I ask students to do in the classroom can mirror the world outside our classroom walls, the better served my students will be.

I started my first blog in 2006, a few months after my oldest was born. Blogging was relatively new back then, but for me, it was a way for me to document our family life. I titled my blog “Familyhood: Adventures managing toddlers, marriage, family, friends, work, school, and everything in between.” In my very first post—dated January 20, 2006 (more than 11 years ago!)—I wrote about how I wanted to capture, to keep forever, all the details of my little one.

It was a few short years later that I decided to bring blogging into my classroom. I’ve used blogs with my 9th graders and my 11th graders; blog assignments have been structured and open-ended; posts are serious and funny and everything in between.

With a rapidly changing technology environment, with new tools and gadgets announced almost daily, blogging almost seems passe or “old-school.” After all, blogs have been around for more than 20 years at this point (so in 2006, I guess I was actually late to the game!).

Yet if I had to choose just one technology tool I could not live without, it would be blogging, hands-down. It’s not even close. During an online webinar a few years ago, I heard Troy Hicks, co-author of the recently published Argument in the Real World, say the same thing. As one very skeptical student once said to me, “I thought I would hate blogging, but it turned out to be a really valuable experience. Probably the most valuable.” Then after a pause, he added, “You should definitely keep doing this with students.” That was more than eight years ago, and happily, I’ve followed his advice.

CONTINUE READING AT MOVINGWRITERS.ORG

January 24, 2017

March Madness: Determining Significance

March Madness March is still two months away, but that didn’t stop my students from facing off March Madness style as we reviewed Lord of the Flies last week.

One of the challenges students often face when writing literary analysis is that writing literary analysis asks students to demonstrate two important but distinctly different things: first, their understanding of the text (comprehension, analysis, synthesis) and second, their ability to communicate that understanding (writing). We all know students who can know a text inside and out yet struggle to get those ideas on paper. Conversely, we also know students who are proficient writers but whose analysis and evidence don’t quite measure up.

To help, one thing I’ve tried to do is to help students sharpen their analytical skills on the front end of the writing process. The longer I teach, the more I realize that the most valuable part of the writing process is the thinking that happens before any formal writing begins and fingers touch a keyboard.

CONTINUE READING AT MOVINGWRITERS.ORG.

December 20, 2016

What Are You Working On?

I’ve always believed in the writing process. My teaching didn’t always reflect that belief, as I spent too many years earlier in my career creating worksheets and essay prompts and outlines and templates. I soon realized that just because my writing instruction included steps didn’t mean it was a process.

That said, in more recent years, I’ve tried to integrate more elements of writing workshop: writer’s notebooks, quickwrites, peer response groups, conferring. Just about every day, for example, we begin my AP Lang class with writing—writing to reflect, explore, find topics, generate ideas, develop fluency, play with language. Students work through the process of finding ideas worth writing about, organizing those ideas, and developing their voices.

As much as I’ve tried to turn the writing process over the students, the truth is, no matter how well-intentioned I may have been in my efforts to empower students, I realized that nothing empowers students more than actually giving them power. So that’s what I did.

What follows is how I’ve taken another step in shifting my classroom towards a more authentic writing workshop.

CONTINUE READING AT MOVINGWRITERS.ORG.

December 6, 2016

Slice of Life: Color Matters

Race has been on my mind lately. Race, ethnicity, culture, color. I’m sure my heightened awareness has something to do with politics and the news. Every day, a story is published, a post shared, a tweet tweeted about another incident that has something to do with race. It seems clear to me that a person would need to willfully look away in order to not see the conversations about race—and racism—happening today.

We aren’t supposed to talk about race. It’s one of the taboo subjects, along with politics and religion, we’re supposed to avoid in order to have polite dinner conversation. We tell kids that skin color doesn’t matter. We teach our kids to be color blind.

But I think color does matter. It matters a lot.  Read More

November 30, 2016

Credo

It’s hard to describe the experience of the NWP/NCTE Conferences. A gathering of thousands of educators might seem overwhelming to some—and it definitely can be—but this year, more than any other, being with my teacher tribe was rejuvenating, especially after the last few weeks. After just one hour at the NWP plenary, for example, I texted a colleague at school: “My soul needed this.”

I heard more than one person over the weekend lovingly refer to conferences like this as going to “teacher church.” Whatever your religious affiliations may or may not be, I think there is something to this observation. We go to conferences like this as a community, a congregation—not to worship but to gather. To be in a place where our beliefs—and more importantly, our practices—can be explored, deepened, challenged, and forged: all in service of the students we return to.  Read More

November 23, 2016

“Teachable Alternatives” to the 5-Paragraph Essay

On Friday morning at the NCTE Annual Convention, I sat in a session that featured Tom Romano, Mariana Romano, and Linda Rief. My hands failed me that session. I simply could not get all the ideas down in my notebook fast enough. One after another, each teacher spoke to the importance of giving kids the space, time, and agency to write what matters to them.

Write What Matters. Too much of the writing students do in school doesn’t matter to them, at least not in any personally meaningful way. And by that, I mean that the writing doesn’t mean anything to students beyond the immediate, beyond the class they’re taking, beyond the teacher who is evaluating them, beyond the points they’re collecting. It’s because the writing doesn’t matter to them that I’ve seen and heard of students who simply drop their essays into the recycle bin as they walk out of class the moment they’ve gotten their grades.

CONTINUE READING AT MOVINGWRITERS.ORG

November 19, 2016

Finding a Way Forward: Deliberate Acts of Kindness

It’s been a tough week.

Like many teachers, I’ve found myself feeling lost—and feeling loss. After staying up much of the night on Tuesday, I woke up on Wednesday, November 9, unsure of how I would teach that day, unsure of what to say to my students, unsure how to be around them in a way that was authentic and meaningful and important. In many ways, the campaign and election results challenged and upended so much of what I believed was the work I do as a teacher and what I try to teach students: how to be kind, compassionate, and respectful, yes, but also how to use reason and logic to test claims and evidence, to know the difference between fact and falsehood. The ground shifted after Tuesday, and I didn’t know where—or how—to stand and keep walking.

But I kept walking. It’s what teachers have always done—walk into their classrooms every morning with purpose, conviction, and most of all, hope.  Read More