Mr. B-G's Blog

Recently, I went for a walk with one of my 9th grade classes. It was an impromptu, unscripted jaunt, and in total took less than five minutes.

It was the last period of the day and it was gorgeous outside. My students were about to work on major essays. What I would be asking of them would require focus, concentration, and attention to detail.

As soon as the bell rang and they were seated, I made an announcement that we would be going outside for a walk.

Their faces beamed. Smiles and grins filled the room. "Really?" "Outside?"

"Yup."

And outside we went. I had charted the route a few minutes earlier during the end of my prep period, leaving one of the side doors to the school ajar with a rock. I told the students I knew they had a lot to do that period, I knew it had already been a long day, and that I thought a little fresh air might help them focus. They all agreed.

"We should do this every day." "How far are we going?" "Can we go all the way around the school?"

We went about one quarter of the way around the building before turning in a side door and returning to the classroom. Once inside, students pulled up their essays on the computers and netbooks and began making revisions. Once done, they copied their work from Google Docs to Blogger, where they posted their essays for classmates to comment on.

Most of them did a nice job focusing on their work and being productive. I was able to circulate through the room, offering feedback and answering questions during mini writing consultations. It was a positive ending to the day, set in motion by a gut judgement about what the students needed most at that time.

Forest path photo by my sister-in-law, mindwhisperings at Flickr

Tomorrow begins week two of the 2011-2012 school year. One of the tasks students will be expected to complete for Tuesday is the creation of a Gmail account. While the majority of my seniors already had Gmail accounts, the same cannot be said for my freshmen. And, for those students who did use Gmail, very few of them had ever used Google Docs, the free office suit that allows you to create text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, surveys, and pictures, in addition to providing users with online storage for their documents.

One of the greatest benefits of Google Docs is, aside from the cost (free), its ease of use. All one needs to create a document is an Internet browser and an Internet connection. Work is saved automatically to the cloud, which is a huge benefit for students who are working on assignments both in school and at home. Google Docs also allows for easy collaboration, as multiple users may access and edit the same document in real time.

For the past three years, my school has placed emphasis on helping students transition from 8th to 9th grade. Aside from teaching content, all freshmen teachers are asked to explicitly teach organizational and study skills, as how students study is almost as important as what they study. Google Docs, I believe, is a crucial tool that will help students stay organized as they further develop their academic personas.

While Google Docs is a tool that students can use for all of their classes, Blogger is a tool that, at least initially, can be best utilized for English class. Because Blogger is run by Google, once students have a Gmail account, they're ready to create their own blogs. In 2007 I began using blogs as a way for students to share writing and provide each other with feedback. When you're writing for an audience beyond just your teacher, there's a little bit more incentive to see that your words accurately convey your ideas.

As a student, I certainly cared about grades, but I think I cared more about what my friends thought of me and my ideas. As a writer, having a real audience to read your work and provide you with feedback is invaluable. My role as a teacher is to model for students how to constructively respond to their classmates' writing. If I am successful, they will begin to look for the kinds of things that I would look for. And eventually, they'll be able to turn that critical eye on their own work.

Depending on students' previous exposure to the writing workshop model, this can either go smoothly or be quite arduous. Either way, we'll eventually get to a place where we feel comfortable sharing constructive feedback aimed at helping each other see how well our intentions for a piece measure up with reality.  

Google Docs image by Lucia Agut

Due to Tropical Storm Irene's touchdown in Massachusetts this morning, my district's opening day for teachers has been pushed back to Tuesday. While this means that technically my summer vacation is one more day, the reality is I have one more of "my own" days to work and prepare for the new year before doing so in official capacity.

My district, like my wife's, only requires teachers to come in one day before the students arrive. As you likely know if you are or have been a teacher, one day is grossly insufficient to prepare for a new academic year. Aside from the literal logistics of unpacking items from storage and setting up the classroom, there's mental setup to do as well.

For me, that means reviewing the various notes I've made to myself from the previous year about what didn't work so well and what needs to change. It's also incorporating ideas from various journal articles, newspapers, and pedagogical texts that I think will engage the students and help me be a more effective teacher. Sometimes I'll scrap something I'm bored with, or try a different approach just because I'm curious about the results.

In no particular order, here are some of the things that I've either been doing or need to get done for the start of school:

- Print class rosters
- Create seating charts
- Review my syllabus and make changes to my "teacher expectations"
- Revise the interview activity I typically do on the first or second day
- Make any changes to my grading system I feel are necessary and put them in writing
- Revise my list of staff descriptions for the newspaper students
- Decide how I am going to assign and assess outside reading books this year
- Create a new non-fiction writing assignment that incorporates research
- Decide how I want to integrate the reading of newspapers into my classes
- Figure out what I want to do for the "Do Nows" mandated by administration for all 9th grade teachers
- Rethink how I teach vocabulary, and possibly introduce vocabulary videos.
- Revise the summer reading essay assignment I plan to give students  on the second or third day of school
- Create a survey to administer to my students about their previous experiences reading, writing, and speaking, both in and outside of school
- Decide exactly how I want to blog with students this year. Will we use Blogger? Something else?
- Tweak/create my permission forms for parents to sign (movies, blogging, YouTube)
- Remember to collect parent e-mail addresses
- Install the Smartboard software onto my computer
- Create new class folders
- Decide where on my boards I want to place the agendas for each class
- Think about how (if) I want to use Twitter this year to post assignments
- Finish updating my netbooks and classroom computers
- Write a letter to parents and students explaining my educational philosophy
- Place students' names on Post-It notes on my classroom desks so students know where to sit on the first day
- Put up a couple of labels describing the various parts of my classroom and where things are

And these are just some the things I want to do. My department chair will have other things, and so will my principal. Now, I enjoy my job. It's meaningful, important, and allows me to be creative and work with some great people and students. It also is a job. It's a lot of work. People who think teachers have it easy, or are overpaid, really don't understand what we do. And again, this is an incomplete list of things I need to do, notwithstanding creating engaging lesson plans, executing said lesson plans, designing assessments, delivering assessments, evaluating assessments, communicating with students, communicating with parents, communicating with colleagues and administrators, studying and implementing special ed accommodations and modifications, filling out administrator-mandated rubrics, deciding how I want to run a new mandated advisory group, overseeing production of the school newspaper, taking classes for a second master's degree...

The purpose here is not to devolve this post into a rant, but rather to illustrate some of the things teachers must do and consider before the school year commences.

Having one extra day to work on them is nice.

It's nice to know that educators like Eric Sheninger are getting recognized for their sensible approach to technology and learning. Sheninger, principal of a high school in New Jersey, believes in tapping the power of social media to engage students.

"The Internet as we know it is the 21st century," Sheninger says in a recent article from USA Today. "It is what these students have known their whole lives. They're connected, they're creating, they're discussing, they're collaborating."

I have been very fortunate to have worked for a principal who embraced technology and supported my efforts to use digital tools and social media in the classroom. While he retired last year, his replacement seems equally interested in using Web 2.0 tools, and has plans to start a blog in order to allow him to communicate with students, parents, and faculty. I think it's a wonderful idea.

If you're an educator, and you aren't blogging, you should, according to Wired Educator's Kelly Croy.  Click here to get started and join the conversation!


Social media image by Stephen Traversie

Tomorrow I head to Central Mass for Easter with my wife, folks, and sister. After that it's back home to read some essays, tackle this week's assignments for my Evaluation for Educational Technologists graduate course, write a letter of recommendation for a friend interested in becoming an English teacher, and catch the latest episode of Game of Thrones.

On Monday I'll be busy compiling seniors' midterm grades, and on Tuesday and Wednesday I'll assist with the visits of our two finalists to fill the position of principal when our current leader retires at the end of the year. I'll also be putting in extra time to assist my journalism students as they work to create their next issue of the newspaper.

Spring is a busy time in the world of education. It's also an exciting time, as students become giddy with the warmer weather and the anticipated arrival of summer. Before school lets out, though, there is much to be done. My seniors are currently working on in-depth research essays on the subjects of their choice. The topics run the gamut, and include: the science of the Big Bang theory, methods of treating autism in adolescents, the makings of Ray Allen's jump shot, the dangers of texting and driving, and the prevalence of supplement use among high school and college athletes.

Left to their own devices (and with proper scaffolding), students picked some meaningful topics that they all had some connection to or personal interest in. The essay itself involves research, a personal interview, and effective use of both exposition and narrative. It's a variation of an assignment I taught during my two years at Plymouth State University as a graduate student and adjunct composition instructor.

This essay is one of my favorite assignments, as it requires students to do meaningful, scholarly work on a topic relevant to their lives. Helping students think through their theses and assisting them with their research sources is rewarding. The end result generally yields a product that I both look forward to and enjoy reading.

Now seems as good a time as any to look back over the highlights of 2010...

January 2010 - I enrolled in a Master of Educational Technology degree program through Boise State University.

February - Spent school vacation with my wife, parents, and sister at my late grandmother's condo in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

March - Attended the Massachusetts Poetry Out Loud semi-finals in Western Mass, where I got to see some of the state's top student poets recite the likes of Byron, Dickinson, Plath, Frost, and others. The quality of their recitations was both inspiring and humbling.

April - Our high school's newspaper, which I advise, was recognized for excellence in both regional and national scholastic journalism contests.

May - I completed my first two MET courses, Introduction to Educational Technology and Internet for Educators, earning A's in both.

June - Students at my high school selected me as one of three Teachers of the Year. It's the greatest honor and compliment I've received in my 10 years as an educator.

July - Hit up Vermont's Long Trail with my old buddy Dan from high school. We spent about a week in the woods and got great weather and fantastic vistas, none better than the one from Camel's Hump. When I returned from the hike I proceed to go on a Wire binge, watching all five seasons in less than a week.

August - I spent a week at the beach with my wife and read a number of books, including The Kite Runner (disturbingly enjoyable), A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier (heartbreakingly incredible), and Doing School (which caused me to reflect on the way I grade and assess student work).

September - I returned to the factory. For the first time in seven years, I am not teaching freshmen. This is due in part to my success at growing the journalism program sufficiently to warrant two sections of the class. My other preps involve one low-level senior class and two honors-level 12th grade English classes. While I miss the energy and enthusiasm of 9th grade students, I appreciate the opportunity to see how students I had three years ago have evolved and matured. I also get to meet new members of the class of 2011.

I begin the third course in my Master of Educational Technology program, Instructional Design.

October - I have a great time mingling with fellow English teachers at the New England Association of Teachers of English annual conference. Next year I'm definitely going to spend the night and attend the offerings on both days. It's so rare that teachers actually have an opportunity to talk with one another about instruction and ways to improve our practice. I know I was sad to leave at the end of Friday's session, as there were a number of new people I really enjoyed meeting. In addition to attending both days, I might even present!

November - Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays. There's great food, you're with the ones you love, and there's no pretense to make purchases. It really is a time to be thankful and appreciative for what you have, and I am.

December - My Instructional Design class finally comes to an end. While the course exposed me to a number of relevant strategies designed for planning and assessing instruction, many of the course's requirements seemed grounded in academia, without any realistic application in the real world of public education. For example, the "culminating assessment" worth 40 percent of our grade involved creating a 35-page instructional document on a lesson designed to take 1 to 3 hours. In an average week I'll teach about 22 1-hour lessons. Assuming I created one instructional document for every 2 hours of instruction, that would mean I'd be generating 385 pages of instructional materials each week. As you can see, this has no grounding in reality.

It would have been more beneficial to ask us to implement strategies and theories into existing lessons as opposed to creating one which can only live within the Ivory Tower. I am hoping that my next class, Evaluation for Educational Technologists, is more practical.

I spent Christmas in New England, and dedicated a large portion of the holiday break to reading Justin Cronin's The Passage. It is by far one of the most gripping and enveloping stories I've read in years. I found myself reading late into the night until my eyes glazed over. When I wasn't reading, I was thinking about the characters, and eagerly anticipating the next time I'd be able to pick up the book. At 766 pages, it's certainly a commitment, but reading was 100 percent willful pleasure. I am deeply upset that I have to wait more than a year for the sequel.

Tomorrow my Journalism students and I will venture to a nearby city for a tour of one of the area's daily newspapers. This will be my fourth year taking the students to the paper, and I have no doubt that it will be - as it has been in the past - one of the year's highlights.

The editor-in-chief has graciously agreed to give some of his time to the students and lead them through an editorial exercise where they will be responsible for selecting the stories that would have run on both the main and local front pages. Students will split into teams of four, be given a list of about 20 articles the paper was planning to run, and then decide what gets prominent placement and what doesn't.

After the students reveal their choices, the EIC will display that day's paper and explain why they ran what they did. It's a fast-paced, authentic activity that simulates the decisions editors must make as they work to create each issue.

This will be followed by a tour of the newsroom and the paper's printing press. Finally, the students and I will adjourn for lunch before heading back to school. Not a bad way to spend a Thursday.

Today concludes my second day back at school. It also marks my 200th blog post! So far the year is off to a good start. I'm enjoying getting to know my new students, and it's nice to see them engaging with the work. My only complaint would be with the heat. It's been in the mid 90s these first two days, and looks to continue through at least tomorrow.

I've started tweeting my homework assignments on bgassignments. Some students seemed to think this was cool, while others didn't know what to make of it. In time I think they will grow to appreciate having an easily accessible list of assignments that also includes key handouts in digital form. I imagine parents will also be interested in this, as it provides a lot of information about what students have been - and will be - doing.

I'll have to celebrate reaching 200 posts this weekend. There's still two days left in this week, and a lot to do before Friday 2 p.m.!

Well, I'm back at it. The first day with students is tomorrow. Today was spent in meetings, with about two hours to work in our classrooms. Fortunately I went in three days last week, or I would still be at school. I'm ready for tomorrow, and I know where I'm going and what I want to do, but I need to tweak some old handouts and generate some new ones before we can get there.

I'm planning to do a number of things differently this year. I'd like to use social media tools like Twitter and Ning. I want all my students to have Gmail accounts so they can submit writing via Google Docs. I'd like to do less evaluation of writing in exchange for more writing, more feedback, and greater emphasis on process.

I want to do more non-fiction reading, with students reading periodicals and magazines and newspapers and other credible sources as they become knowledgeable on things that personally interest them.

I plant to tweak the way I do outside reading books, and launch something called the occasional paper.

Plenty of ideas, and plenty to blog about. Stay tuned for updates.

Have a great year.

Ah summer, thank you for this time to read. In the spirit being an active and contributing member of the blogging community to which I belong, I am going to read and post comments on some of the blogs on my blogroll. Once I do that, then I shall write something new here.

Thank you to everyone on my list for your engaging and fun-to-read postings!

I recently picked up Peter Elbow's "Writing Without Teachers" because I'm looking to re-ground myself in authentic ideas about the writing process and what actually leads to good writing.

If you stay in K-12 education long enough, there's the chance that your foundational, intrinsic understanding about how meaningful learning occurs will be eroded by bureaucrats who prescribe to have all the right solutions despite lacking the necessary background and/or classroom experience to make such claims.

One of the current popular methods of writing instruction involves showing students models and "exemplars" of writing that meets the highest criteria (usually a set of numbers from a standardized rubric), with the expectation that students - like mimeograph machines - can simply duplicate that product when they're asked to respond to a similar writing prompt.

The problem is that the template for good writing can't be mimicked and reproduced from assignment to assignment,  because no such template exists. When students DO try to copy formulae for "good" writing, their writing ends up sounding vapid. That's because quality, authentic writing is generated, not parroted from nameless "model" papers.

How do we teach students to write? We teach them to think. We teach them to develop content. We help them understand ideas like elaboration and explication. We provide them with opportunities to stretch their minds and flex their intellectual muscles. We give them opportunities to pump out words and ideas without fear of judgement. We teach them how to think critically and make sense of their musings and meanderings. We show them how to tailor and edit and rethink and resee and rearrange. We empower them to be creators.

This type of work is not easy. Years and years of practice are required for most of us to learn how to string words and sentences and paragraphs together in engaging fashion. Before one can write well, one needs to have something to say. Yet sometimes we don't know what we really have to say until we begin writing. When I started this posting, had I already preselected the words and points and contentions I wanted to bring up? No. I knew I wanted to write about how I felt writing instruction in many K-12 schools has become weakened by the advent of formulaic writing and the five paragraph essay. I knew I wanted to get down a few of the techniques that have helped me become a better writer. But I did not use a graphic organizer. I did not make an outline of three main ideas, topic sentences, or supporting details. I simply sat on my couch, kicked my feet up on the coffee table, grabbed my netbook, and attacked the keyboard.

(Once I finished my draft of this post, I went back and read what I wrote, deleted lines, changed words, added phrases, and asked myself, Is this really what I mean to say? I needed to tweak a number of paragraphs before the final product reflected my intentions. Before I could use the chisel, I needed to have the block.)

Among Peter Elbow's many contributions to writing pedagogy is the spreading of the concept of freewriting. In essence, freewriting encourages writers to lay down ideas without stopping, reflecting, or editing. It proposes to help us "get the junk out" so we can later go back and mine the gems worthy of extraction. Freewriting helps us explore ideas and permits us to open the valve connecting thought and expression. When we no longer feel constricted and restrained, we are more likely to explore greater depths and take risks. Rather than saying what we think we're supposed to say in the manner in which we think we're supposed to say it, we can express genuine ideas in the way those ideas are best meant to be expressed.

Does this mean models and exemplars are bad? Of course not. What it means is that they're a limited resource. They show you what the container looks like, but they don't show you how it was filled. Only through the labor of idea exploration can we learn how to fill those containers. And each container - once filled - will be unique, its appearance and contents determined by the reason for its creation.

Elbow describes this organic process:

"The turning point of the whole cycle of growing is the emergence of a focus or a theme. It is also the most mysterious and difficult kind of cognitive event to analyze. It is the moment when what was chaos is now seen as having a center of gravity. There is shape where a moment ago there was none" (35).

I hope that after finishing Elbow's book (which I am finding to be very affirming and validating about some of my core beliefs about writing), I will have a renewed sense of confidence about how good writing is created, and I will have ideas I can implement in my classroom that will help my students experience what it feels like to create writing that's truly worth reading.

While reading the latest version of NCTE's English Journal, I came across a reference to a teaching idea that first graced EJ's pages back in 2003. It was an assignment called the Occasional Paper by Bill Martin.

The premise is simple. Once or twice each quarter, students write a brief essay on a topic of their choice and read it out loud to their classmates. The idea for these papers is that they are miniature reflections and meditations on life. Martin asks his students to be observant of the moment, and to "explore occurrences that would usually be dismissed as unimportant." The assignment isn't graded, and the teacher refrains from making negative comments. Martin explains:



The benefits of providing students an opportunity to write an "occasional paper" certainly seem to outweigh the drawbacks. In fact, it's hard for me to find the drawbacks, as the OP encourages students to be reflective and develop meaningful, personal compositions that show a measure of thought, creativity, and insight. It gets them up in front of the class reading to an authentic audience, and it guarantees them immediate response from their peers. And, because the only instructor feedback students receive is positive (as if the piece bombs the teacher refrains from comment), students will be more willing to go beyond the safe and predictable to the bold realm of imagination, creativity, and risk-taking - the realm where good writing lives.

Three of the greatest minds in the history of writing instruction come together to discuss the craft. If you're willing to be a patient viewer, they unearth a lot of valuable gems about writing pedagogy.

It seems like this could be a fun activity to do with students.

A sampling of musings from the mind of a suburban high school English teacher:

School administrators are using adjectives like "bloody," "gloomy," and "bleak" to describe the current financial state of affairs for the rest of this year and next. I am hopeful that Barack Obama will authorize federal legislation to help cities and towns deal with declines in state aid revenue. I find it a bit disconcerting that we can easily lend billions of taxpayer dollars to automakers and finance companies, yet are forced to pause and deliberate when it comes to ensuring all our country's students receive a solid education. Anyone who has ever worked inside a school can tell you, every dollar does make a difference.

Are there any teachers out there with writing centers at their schools? When I was a M.Ed. graduate student at Plymouth State University, I worked in the college's writing center. It was one of the most enjoyable jobs I've ever had. In order to get the hang of it, I underwent training in the non-directive approach to writing consultation. One of the most valuable things I learned was "silent and wait time." For the non-directive approach to be effective, the writing consultant must be patient and give the student time to ruminate on an idea or improvement. This was quite different than my days as a newspaper reporter, when editors would explain everything I did wrong and then fix it for me. I hope to eventually create a student-staffed writing center at my high school, as I've seen how they can be effective. I believe that if implemented with care, they can work at the secondary level. Please contact me if you have experience with high school writing centers.

Launching a high school newspaper advertising initiative in the middle of the year is difficult. For years my high school's newspaper was published in-house on an archaic printing press that only one teacher knew how to use. When he retired last year, so did the press and all that it produced. Left without a means to publish our newspaper, I was relegated to performing evening prayer rituals to Joseph Pulitzer in hopes of securing funding. My calls were eventually answered by my principal, who offered to give us enough money to publish five papers this year. My goal for next year (or perhaps even later this year) is to create an advertising department with a business manager responsible for generating enough ad sales to allow each issue to pay for itself.

We finally got around to hosting our Poetry Out Loud Recitation Contest. The original date was a wash due to a snow day. As a result, interest waned, and only two students ended up reciting a poem. We do have a winner though, and she'll represent our school at the Massachusetts semi-final recitation contest this March.

Second quarter grades close this Friday. I should be in decent shape grading wise, as unlike years past, I made sure to not have a major essay due right before the close of the quarter. It took me five years to figure this out, but I am learning, albeit slowly.

I plan to add a new section to my blog called "student work." Recently two students did stellar jobs on their Outside Reading Book presentations. One created a movie trailer for Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," which he published to YouTube. I highly recommend checking it out, as it's professional quality. Another did answering machine messages for five characters from Stephanie Meyer's "Breaking Dawn." She captured the characters' essences to the T.

Mr. B-G's English Blog is officially two years old. Two years isn't a lot of time - it feels like I've been blogging for about five. It's hard to imagine how I taught before this blog, as it's become so entwined in all I do as an educator.

This blog - and the subsequent network it spawned - serves a variety of purposes. This page is a space for me to reflect on my teaching, share the highs and lows of the profession, and network with other tech-savvy educators.

Since its genesis in December of 2006, Mr. B-G's English Blog has been seen by more than 32,500 people from across Massachusetts, the U.S., and the world. A quick look at my sitemeter profile shows recent visits from Osaka, Japan; Gostar, Iran; Rome, Italy; and Schniach, Germany. Closer to home, this site has been viewed by people in Arlington, MA; Princeton, NJ; Jackson, TN; and Los Angeles, CA.

There's been a measurable progression in terms of content and organization over the last two years. Within a few months of this blog's inception, I created a separate page for class handouts and teaching resources, and another dedicated to my journalism class and the newspaper I advise. I then created individual class blog pages where I posted student work.

New for this year was Mr. B-G's Blog Exemplar, a paged designed to help teachers and students create their own blogs. Rather than limiting my students' blogging experiences to individual class blogs that I control, I've taught my kids how to create their own. So far we've used them to post compare/contrast essays and book reviews. In a few weeks, students will publish their own short stories, followed later by an analytical essay on The Old Man and the Sea, original poetry, and Romeo & Juliet editorial columns.

I'll need to take stock at the end of the year to see if my students' writing is, overall, better than that of last year's students. My theory is that publication and greater control over the act of publishing leads to better-written pieces. Certainly the quality of my instruction and the opportunities I provide for peer sharing, editing, and revision have the greatest effect on the caliber of my students' writing, but all things being constant, my hunch is that their writing will be better because they have more ownership and control of its distribution to the masses. The fact that it's really easy to edit and revise the text of a blog post helps too.

It's hard to know what lies in store for Mr. B-G's English Blog in Year 3. While I don't post quite as often as I would like (usually 3 times per month), I do constantly add to my link lists. In addition to a place for writing, these blogs are also online bookmarks accessible to all. While I do use Foxmarks to sync my Firefox bookmarks on any computer I use, it's nice to have many of them saved in a public location for others to check out.

Over time I'd like to provide more opportunities for my students to post writing online. There's no substitute for an authentic audience that's ready and willing to give you feedback on your musings. To me, Web 2.0 tools make the writing process more "real," and give students a unique and powerful forum in which to communicate and learn.

A video on the writing process, produced by students at McKay High School in Portland, Oregon:

Props to Bruce Schauble for this post on elegance. I also appreciated the Universal Intellectual Standards he referenced.

This year my school is focusing on (among other things) higher order thinking skills, so the above materials are timely and appropriate.

Thanks, too, for these Reading Response Moves. For those of you who haven't checked it out, Bruce's blog, Throughlines, is a must read.

I snapped the above photo in a state forest in Western Massachusetts with a Canon PowerShot SD750 this October.