[found in classroom]: The (authentic!) Writing Process

I found this crumpled up at the top of my recycling pile:


And this revision lying beneath a desk nearby!:




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And just because I feel bad about not updating in five days, I have a few more little gems I've picked up here and there to display on this here blog.

Like this reminder given to me by the student who writes me all kinds of really intensely beautiful poetry about what it's like to grow up in "the hood," as he refers to it. His poetry is mostly about wanting to be brilliant, but feeling pressures from lots of directions to be not-so-brilliant. He's making a video with his group, and was asked by his group members to select a soundtrack. He slipped me this note with the artist and title of the song he wanted me to get for them:


This was left on my friend's car in the parking lot behind our apartment. It's a pretty standard don't-park-here note, but something about those particular kinds of notes always makes me giggle. Also, I feel there's something very mid-America about the word car port, and I like that:


And this one's a really doozy, I think. Mission statement , no, grocery list? That's hilariously accurate. Mission statement: I will buy cottage cheese. (I realize, as I'm typing this, that the funniness that I pick up on as I look at this found list is not translating well into this post. I'm going with it anyway.) The second image below is the backside of the mission statement grocery list. I wonder what that list is for.

Organized chaos? A little bit.

So my kids have been writing "letters of resistance" to our governor, our superintendent, our principal, our assistant principal, our English department chair, and our school newspaper saying that classes like ours, required by law to be "writing-intensive," should include in their curriculum "new literacies," like, for example, the iMovie projects they've been working on. (Also, some of them are writing to me saying that this project is bullshit and that it would have been better for them as scholars to have just stuck with a traditional essay.)

It's taking longer in some class than other for them to finish up their send-able drafts. So in one of my classes that's finished, we're making a video version of their letters as a whole class. Oh my gosh, it's so exciting. Today, they journaled for a while about how they could best utilize nonverbal communication and we watched a good example of a powerful nonverbal video. After that, they decided what the most important points were that they wanted to get across to their audience, and came up with the idea that they'll stand in a circle and each say one word at a time of their message as the camera follows along the circle. Then they broke themselves up into committees. There's a music committee that threw around a few ideas for background music that settled on "Robot Rock" by Daft Punk. There's a script committee that's putting together, in the most emotively powerful way they can think of, the sentences that they'll break down into their word-by-word presentation. There's a communications committee that's coming up with twenty different ways that the words can be presented, like spoken, written in refrigerator-magnet letters, typed on the screen of the laptop they'll hold up, texted into their phone screens, written on a dry-erase board, and my favorite, cellphone-videoed lips speaking the word and then held in front of their mouths. Finally, there's a team of directors who spent the class period listening in to the various committees and reporting back to one another in a way that helped them plan out a filming schedule for tomorrow.

How exciting are these teenagers. I mean really.

curtains!

I'm pretty excited about these. Obviously, since they are so awesome. In an Urban Outfitters, yuppie kind of way, admittedly.



By the way, I'm sorry about the lazy blogging lately, all these videos with very little commentary. I'm stressed as hell, y'all!

ok Oh my God.

Blankets are ok...?

Cool!

(Just for the record, I'm not saying this is cool. I'm saying it's funny that this song starts with "Cool!")

a presidential portrait in chalk

Hey Michael, check it:

Question.

Here's something I'm noticing.

I want my students to ask things like, "How can we make the classroom, this school, this community, this world more just for all those who live in it?" This week, I've been asked these questions:

1. "Can I stand up?" (Um, yes.)
2. "Can I turn my phone on silent?" (Um, please do. Duh?)
3. "Can I go over there?" (Uh..?)
4. "Can you tell them to stop filming their shoes?" (Yeah. I'll talk to them about that tomorrow.)

Schools can be lovely, hopeful places. They can also set up weird power structures where teachers find themselves, whether they actually care to or not, policing things like standing up or not standing up. I'm also supposed to take away any hats or non-religious head-coverings I see. I don't care about hats or non-religious head-coverings. That's so nineties; is it not?

Why is this happening to me?

Most nights as I'm falling asleep I listen to NPR podcasts. (I'm such a tool.) And one of my favorite shows to listen to is called Radio Lab, from WNYC, New York City's local NPR. I really like this episode, titled "Pop Music," in which they seek to answer the questions, "Why do some songs mercilessly stick in our heads and repeat themselves over and over? What makes these hooks so hooky?"

Anyway, right now, I've got this little diddy (embedded below) running through my head. And I just want to know, why? This song was song by the members of the junior chorus at my high school for our junior ring ceremony. That's the only time it was in my life. I wasn't even in chorus. So why am I being plagued by this crap?

Although, I will say, it's kind of fun and funny to sing it aloud with an exaggerated lisp. Especially that first line in the chorus: "Friendth are friendth forever if the Lord'th the Lord of them!"

a good Gospel for me today:

38 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.

39 And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.

40 But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.

41 And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:

42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

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In less sacred news, I really hate word verfication thingies. That thing you have to do to comment on a lot of people's blogs. So annoying. Except when I was commenting on Cassie's blog today, this was the one I got:
And it kinda looks like it says "fuck off." ha

I can't believe how much I really love it that Jill Biden is a teacher.

The title of her dissertation is Student Retention at the Community College: Meeting Students' Needs. Pretty cool.



Gets good at around 14 minutes. Like really, seriously good.

But, I should add, Senator Obama, that it really annoys me when you talk too much about the need to reform our education system in terms of our ability to compete in the global economy. What about my students' personal need and right to experience self-actualization? To develop empathy? To ask critical questions of those in power?

But whoa, whoa, whoa. McCain's proposing the closure of the Department of Education? As in, not necessary anymore? Um, what.

hilarious! (but also smart and thorough?)

So Sydney, my friend and colleague, had her students annotating a poem in class. One student forgot to turn it in, and so sent it to Syd, but couldn't remember her first name. Sydney's last name is Azzi. Check out the recipients of this email:

Hilton/Damon '08!

and in spite of feeling so sick I wanted to die...

...when I overheard the following conversation among students yesterday, I got goosebumps.

"Who do you want to be president?"
"Obama, duh."
"God! People who are eighteen are so lucky!"
"I know! I want to vote!"

I mean, I know, Obama's trendy. But, so what if he's trendy? These kids think voting is cool! Shouldn't it be a goal of society's to make things that are good for us cool? As in, lots of people will voluntarily contribute positively to their communities? Yes, please.

You know what's the best?

Laughing so hard you cry. And I do that a lot.

Like when Daniele took this photo of Jess and Jordan with our crappy waiter. Jordan rested his hand on the guy's stomach for at least 45 seconds while Daniele figured out the camera.


And like last night when Amy altered her "The Beef Stroganoff Song" from, "It's a stroganoff party and EVERYONE'S invited. It's a stroganoff party and EVERYONE'S invited," to better fit the hypothetical situation of Aaron and Kevin's stepdad comparing their willies to see if they were in fact related. Kevin's stepdad's idea, oddly enough. Anyway, Amy changed the song to, "It's a genital showdown and EVERYONE'S invited. It's a genital showdown and EVERYONE'S invited."

And just now, I said "hi" to Jess via gchat. I'm sitting at the dining room table, she on the couch. She typed "uuhhh," "you're dumb," and "turn around," and when I did, she was giving me the finger.

holy shmoly

The first time we went grocery shopping after we moved in, Jess said to me as I picked out a few potatoes -- I love baked potatoes -- "Hey, pick me up a sweet potato." So I did. But she never ate it; it just sat on our counter top, next to my quickly consumed regular potatoes. And now, it looks like this:

Oh hey, Kasey.

[found in classroom]: URGENT!

I love this. You can almost hear the desperation in his voice.

I'd argue that one of the coolest things about teenagers is their style(s).

Like, for instance, in class today, they were reading their adapted "Where I'm From" poems. One of my favorite lines was, "I'm from a lot of people who don't talk but think / It's a celebration on the 1st when we get that Link," which was perfectly delivered and followed by an "AYOOOoooo" from his classmates.

And then tonight at the young women's volleyball game, I couldn't help but chuckle at the warm-up thing they've made up. It's so fancy! And they've got all of these other things that they do as a team after each point. And the hair ribbons. I mean, that shit is well thought-out!

62%

That's the percentage of support for special education programming in Alaska that Sarah Palin cut, or, admittedly, so I hear.

Here's Alaska's 2006-2007 NCLB report card for 10th grade reading and writing. Take a looksee:56.9%. That's how many tenth-grade students with disabilities are not proficient in writing.

50.9% aren't proficient readers.

13.6% is the percentage of "Child[ren] Left Left Behind" by a 62% cut in funding to special education. (Also, just visually, I'm finding the representation of students with special needs, migrant students, and students with limited English proficiency pretty odd. Every other graphic shows how much of the "whole" each "part" is. These kiddies are just, you know, hangin.)

And it's not just about the money. Thowing money at students with disabilities doesn't help them learn. But good, smart, dynamic teachers do. Which means that good, dynamic people need to be recruited into the field of teaching. But a low-paying, low-prestige career like teaching isn't exactly as illustrious as six-figures on Wall Street for enough good, smart, dynamic people. And calling students and teachers failures, and then taking their money away from them, is doing nothing for the allure factor.

hoping/betting it's a prank

This just in (my inbox):


UPDATE (10:00 PM):


... I knew it. I can't decide if a prank's funnier than the thought of Herman actually sending it.

too much blog-worthy stuff, hence the lack of blogging

The first two days of school went really well. I. am. excited.

Suffice it to say it does not look like this:


(but it would be funnier if it did)


In other news, the Nas and Talib Kweli show was pretty cool. A whole shitload of people singing along, "Yes we can change the world!" I'm sappy. I know that.