Cheyenne's Writing Journey

This week was our first week in our middle school placement! It was very exciting and definitely very different than our high school experience. For instance, the school my coteacher and I are placed at is a one-to-one school, meaning that every student is provided with a laptop. From what I observed, it appears that the students take laptops from their advisory rooms and then use them throughout the day.     I thought this was interesting because when I imagined one-to-one schools, I thought that meant every classroom had technology that students were able to use, not that they were given a specific laptop to use throughout the year. I didn't even notice this the first day I was at the school; the second day though, I realized that the advisory class used the laptops hanging on the walls and the reason why I didn't realize it the first day was because the advisory class had my cooperating teacher first period.     These laptops can support student learning by ...

The UDL approach requires teachers to use "flexible instruction with multiple options and choices" (Meyer, Rose, and Gordon, 2014; Ralabate and Nelson, 2017). The CCSS ELA speaking and listening standards for 9-10 2 and 5 best support the UDL approach. Standard 2 states, "Integrate multiple sources of information presented in diverse media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively, orally) evaluating the credibility and accuracy of each source, " (RIDE). Standard 5 states, " Make strategic use of digital media (e.g., textual, graphical, audio, visual, and interactive elements) in presentations to enhance understanding of findings, reasoning, and evidence and to add interest," (RIDE). These standards cater to the UDL approach as they both call for educators to use multiple formats to deliver lessons to provide for the different ways in which students learn and take in information.       The NCTE/IRA Standards for the English Language Arts caters to...

   During this first week of observations, I tried to look more closely at how the class was functioning beyond getting to know each other. At the start of every class, my cooperating teacher took attendance and then introduced the day's lesson. Depending on the lesson, the cooperating teacher would either have the prompt or directions on the board, pass out a physical copy of the prompt or directions, or both. He always had paper for writing assignments and the students seemed to always supply themselves with pens, pencils, and highlighters. When computers were needed for the lesson, students would either take a laptop from a mobile charging station or the cooperating teacher would have scheduled time in the computer lab.    I noticed that my cooperating teacher was always organized, even when he felt like he wasn't. He always had the assignments and lessons ready to go and was very good about making sure his classes had time in the computer lab when needed, even...

   In today's observations, I took notice of the classroom. The classroom that the freshman were in was very welcoming, fun, and silly. There was a row of ducks on the top of the cabinets, llama and frog cutouts randomly posted all over the room, a calendar with student birthdays and school events, and photographs of the teachers outside of school. There was also an LGBT+ flag hanging in this room. This gave the classroom a more comfortable feeling and allowed the students to see their teachers as people with lives outside of the classroom. It also showed the students that this was a safe space that accepted them.     I noticed that my cooperating teacher interacted with the freshman differently than with the juniors. With the freshman he worked more humor and exaggerated reactions. I took this to be him trying to build relationships with the students by showing them that he has feelings and thoughts and is just like anyone else. I have found in my own experien...

I am from A home of pictures, blankets, trinkets And Cobwebs. Where there’s no time to dust because We’re busy busy busy. I am from Crab grass, firewood, a vine-covered windmill, And a fallen tree Who refuses death  Because who has time to die? I am from Little Neck cemetery, Dairy-Bee,  And the bay Where we’re not allowed to swim But the water’s warm anyway. I am from Pops who’s from Poppy who’s from Pa who’s from The Crow Who got that name for being strict and Native. I am from  Loud laughter and The blood of the covenant But I have learned to respect The water of the womb.  I am from A golden Frost and a mourning Thomas , Where you Stand and Deliver , Where a lot can happen in 19 Minutes , Where the most important medicine is Love . Where I’m from We know how to escape the labyrinth But we walk through it Because it’s the only way We get our most valued treasure.

The most important task we need to accomplish as educators is making sure our classroom is a comfortable and accepting environment. Multilingual students need to feel just as comfortable crafting their literacy in their native tongue as well as English. In fact, it is a law in Rhode Island to include our multilingual students’ native language in their lessons. Many people try to overlook this law and say that ELL classrooms have to be English only, when in reality that is not how they learn best or what the law mandates. A great idea that I learned in a professional development conference was to provide side-by-side translations for assignment notes or instructions. This way, students can compare their language to English and also know exactly what they have to do for the assignment. We can and should let them write their first drafts in their native language so they can think more clearly. This helps them work on their literacy in both their native language and English and helps...

The very first day I went to my observations this semester, my cooperating teacher was very excited for her English II class to come in. She had recently found out that a couple of her EL students had given her English names instead of their actual names, so she spent all weekend practicing their pronunciations and even had them taped to her fridge. When they came into class, she called them by their names and told them that she would be calling them by their names for the rest of the year. The students were shocked and happy that she was doing this. They tried to tell the teacher that she did not have to use them because they were hard, but she told them that they deserve to be called by their given names. Stewart states in chapter one, “we should consider very practical ways of affirming our students, such as pronouncing their names correctly, even if doing so requires a lot of practice.” I had thought about this very little before my cooperating teacher had brought this to my ...

Digital natives. We’ve heard that term used to describe today’s youth because of their upbringing around technology. We see kids navigate technology and pick things up faster than we can. We assume that since children are growing up around this that they just know how to use it. In the On Being podcast “The Internet of the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” Danah Boyd explains how these children didn’t gain this knowledge by being born in their generation. She states, “Young people spend a tremendous amount of time learning how to navigate these tools, these technologies.” These kids know how to work technology because they have played around with it and spent time exploring it. They were not born with the knowledge. Boyd also gets into how when we hear “digital natives” it gives off the connotation that these younger generations have nothing to learn from us. The truth is, they still need our help learning all of the ins and outs of this digital world. They still need us to h...

Schools often put formula above voice when teaching writing, but Linda Christensen makes it a point in her book Teaching for Joy and Justice that voice should be what comes first. “Too often, schools ask students to drop their identities at the door” (152). If there’s anything that’s clear with Christensen and that I have learned this semester, its that students have to be able to make connections with the classroom and their lives. Students need to be able to not only make these connections but include who they are in their writing. Whether they are writing a profile essay or an argumentative essay, they should not have points taken off for their voice. In fact, I believe that voice is the most important development in writing. Reading about Christensen’s lesson around profile essays got me thinking about developing students’ voices in their writing. In that particular essay, students wove in scenes and created an essay that worked like a narrative. Here, even though the essay ...

Rick Wormeli ends his video “Defining Mastery” talking about what grades are supposed to report: what a student has specifically learned. He discusses how grades are far too transactional; if a student does X the teacher will give him Y. If we follow standards-based grading and get specific with the verbs that we want from our students (Ex. Students will be able to create a 3-dimensional paper airplane. Students will be able to define dictatorship and describe an example in their own words.) then we have more evidence-based and standards-based grading. This is asking us to get detailed with what we are looking for from the students and reminded me of the lessons I have had on student objectives. We have to be asking them something that is measurable. We can’t just say that the student will learn this or understand that, how will we know if that is even true? But if we have them define, describe, analyze, something along those lines, then we can measure whether or not they have learne...

The Rhode Island Writing Project Spring Conference 2019 was an amazing event. There were two workshop sessions before the keynote speaker, Tina Cane, spoke. I wish I could have attended all of the workshops; they ranged from involving more imagery in personal writing, to talking about race, to involving mindfulness, to guided meditation and reiki! Unfortunately, I could only choose two workshops, so for the first session I chose “What’s Love Got to Do With It?”: Revolutionize Your Relationships and Practice. This workshop was led by three English teachers: Ryan Burns, Janine Boiselle, and Ashlee Burns. This workshop began with a prompt asking us why we were here, if there was anything we needed to put away to be here more fully, and if there was anything we wanted to hold onto while we were here. Some people chose to read aloud what they wrote and then we split into three groups. In groups, when working with Boiselle, we had another writing prompt asking us what was somethin...

When I was learning how to write essays for the first time, my teacher used formulas and graphic organizers to teach us. My ideas on this have fluctuated over time, going from initially hating it, to loving it, to now feeling wary of it. At first, I did not like having to organize my writing in the formulas and graphic organizers that were given to us. I felt trapped and like breaking away from this would result in a bad grade even though up to this point I had been doing fine writing and grade-wise. I had liked thinking as I wrote and then going back and revising that draft to make sure it made sense and flowed smoothly. Starting the formulas made my writing seem emotionless, dry, and unreadable. After working with these formulas for a couple years, I grew comfortable with them. While I still felt like my writing was not as good as it could be, it made banging out an essay easy. All I had to do was follow the formula and I would get a good grade. It didn’t matter how much ti...

Poetry is something I have always loved. My father loves poetry and even named my brother Dylan Thomas after his favorite poet. He bought me a collection of Dylan Thomas’ work as well as a Robert Frost collection. My copies quickly became worn down with underlining and comments in the margins. My uncle, another man in my world who loves poetry, gifted me with Emily Dickinson’s complete works when I mentioned an interest in her. In school, the poetry lessons were always my favorite. I would eat up everything I read and always feel so wonderful and full of life afterwards. I would (and still do) imagine teaching poetry lessons in my own classroom. I have always thought it more than just the pretentious vocabulary that many educators focus on. Yes, these pieces of the poetry do deserve names and recognition, and perhaps knowing what they are can help students when writing their own. But like Christensen in Teaching for Joy and Justice , I believe that there is more to poetry than th...

What stuck out to me the most from Winn and Johnson was when they discussed adding hip hop to the lessons. Winn and Johnson discuss how Ernest Morrell connects classic poems to modern hip hop that his students would already be familiar with. I was already thinking about novels and poetry by people of color but this opens up the possibilities even more. Students love music and involving their music genres in the classroom is a great way to not only get them involved in the lessons but to help them with their connections to the classics. Jesse Hagopian reminds us how seriously our students take current events in his article “Student Athletes Kneel to Level the Playing Field.” We need to involve current events and controversial topics in our classroom, as well.   Connecting our lessons to what the students experience outside of the classroom keeps them involved inside the classroom. It will also help them develop into conscientious adults. So, what do we do if connecting our...

I had never really thought much about giving feedback to other’s writing. When we had to switch papers in school or if a friend asked me to look over their paper before handing it in, I always looked for grammatical errors and stated which areas I enjoyed, which areas I found vague, and which areas were generally weak. I never really thought about responding to people’s writing differently than this, as this was how teachers had always responded to my work. Elbow and Belanoff call attention to this in “Sharing and Responding” when they state, “For if you simply ask someone to give you feedback or response to what you’ve written and don’t give any help or direction, they will probably just imitate the responses they remember getting from teachers,” (46). After reading this text I realize that I have not been giving good feedback and that it is my responsibility as a reader and writer myself to acknowledge this and do better. While I was not fully aware of all the different way...

As an English teacher, I believe one of the most important things that we teach our students is how to hone their imagination. Ursula K. Le Guin states, “Imagination is not a means of making money. It has no place in the vocabulary of profit-making. It is not a weapon, though all weapons originate from it, and their use, or non-use, depends on it, as with all tools and their uses.” We constantly tell our students that we are looking for creativity, but the market has taken that word and mutilated it, only using it to say “we need new ways to make money.” That is not what we are looking for from our students. What we want from our students is an insight into their minds. What do they imagine? What do they want? What do they hope for? By helping guide them and rebuild the imagination that they may have lost in this profit and grade driven world, we help them relearn themselves, and in doing so, build a stronger and more open community and society. Thinking back to my education an...