Letter of Myself by Wal...Gage Gruning

May 1^st, 2013

Sitting at my desk by a great bay window

Dear Myself,

                You’re 18 and you just graduated high school. You may not believe this but in just four short years the U.S.’s greatest scientists have already mastered a form of time travel…but unfortunately it only works on pieces of paper. Weirdly specific, right? You may be shaking your head thinking, “what crazy person sent me this letter?” but I promise it really is future you! You’re planning to attend WSU but you had a scholarship offer to Southwestern for tennis. You believe me now?

                Anyway, I’m writing this letter to the past me to let me know what my past-future has in store for me. Wow, this letter writing to the past is slightly confusing. Okay, you will struggle a little bit during your first two years in college, first you think engineering, next comes creative writing, then literature and finally you will realize that teaching is where it’s at. My advice, experience all of these different careers, it just makes you realize how much you really want to be a teacher.

                As you make your way through college your general counselors won’t do you much good. Honestly, do it yourself. Don’t forget English 680!!! They won’t tell you about it but you need it. In this future-past you have to cram all of that extra work around student teaching. I would NOT advise you to continue that.

                Pre-student teaching is rough but is nothing compared to student teaching. Get your tasks done on time so you won’t be rushing to finish them at the last minute. Trust me, yourself, future-me. When it comes to student teaching you will be mostly okay. I’ll give you some inside information. February 21, 22, 25 AND 26 are all snow days. I would recommend starting your lesson the week before so you can have most, if not all, taught before freaky nature can ruin your spring break. But don’t worry, you do most of your typing and writing in a week and still pass. You got this.  

                In 2013 the world is so much different. Time traveling papers, flying shoes, resurrected Michael Jackson (don’t ask) and through all of these changes your life will get better. The best advice I can offer is to keep your head up and persevere. Listen to resurrected Michael Jackson:

“You have to show them that you're really not scared
You're playin' with your life, this ain't no truth or dare”

Cut-and-Paste Revising

Hello all!

Just recently got done with my book review for 680 and learned a lot of cool things about the writing process from my dear old friend, Peter Elbow. Aside from having an excellent name, Mr. Elbow talked about a cool revising process called the Cut-and-Paste revising. In this process the students, after writing a rough draft, cut apart their paper and piece together a revised edition using only the best parts. After they have used all their pieces they connect the parts they need to using transition sentences and, voila, a finished draft! I really enjoyed reading about his process and hope to implement it in my classroom when I become a full-time teacher. It is a great was for students to participate in a hand on activity and still be able to see that they are good writers.

His book offered a great many insights about the writing process. Another one is the ways he encourages students to develop voice in their writing. One process that he discusses is the having students write poetry that doesn’t focus on punctuation or grammar. The point is to write a poem that gets the stuck ideas out of their head and onto the paper. This idea is one that I wouldn’t use for all of my students but it would be great thing to use if you were teaching a creative writing class or as an option for prewriting. The other option that he discusses is often an obvious but a method I think many teachers and writers forget. Reading a paper out loud often alerts students to grammatical errors they make in their paper but it can also alert the students to when their paper becomes boring or sounds too scripted, for lack of a better word.

I would definitely recommend this book to any writer or teacher. It offers great strategies and activities for every step of the writing process. The first step you need to take to be a good teacher of writing is to become more familiar with the way that you write.

Three shorts weeks and the final semester of college will be over (for many of us). Right now all I can think about is what will I do next, I’m almost done with school but some of the most stressful years of my life await me in the next few months. Will I get that job? Is everything turned in? When I feel that I am becoming overwhelmed with the stress I put on a Beatles’ album think of one of my favorite quotes from an exceptionally brilliant man, John Lennon.

 Hello all!

Just recently got done with my book review for 680 and learned a lot of cool things about the writing process from my dear old friend, Peter Elbow. Aside from having an excellent name, Mr. Elbow talked about a cool revising process called the Cut-and-Paste revising. In this process the students, after writing a rough draft, cut apart their paper and piece together a revised edition using only the best parts. After they have used all their pieces they connect the parts they need to using transition sentences and, voila, a finished draft! I really enjoyed reading about his process and hope to implement it in my classroom when I become a full-time teacher. It is a great was for students to participate in a hand on activity and still be able to see that they are good writers.

His book offered a great many insights about the writing process. Another one is the ways he encourages students to develop voice in their writing. One process that he discusses is the having students write poetry that doesn’t focus on punctuation or grammar. The point is to write a poem that gets the stuck ideas out of their head and onto the paper. This idea is one that I wouldn’t use for all of my students but it would be great thing to use if you were teaching a creative writing class or as an option for prewriting. The other option that he discusses is often an obvious but a method I think many teachers and writers forget. Reading a paper out loud often alerts students to grammatical errors they make in their paper but it can also alert the students to when their paper becomes boring or sounds too scripted, for lack of a better word.

I would definitely recommend this book to any writer or teacher. It offers great strategies and activities for every step of the writing process. The first step you need to take to be a good teacher of writing is to become more familiar with the way that you write.

Three shorts weeks and the final semester of college will be over (for many of us). Right now all I can think about is what will I do next, I’m almost done with school but some of the most stressful years of my life await me in the next few months. Will I get that job? Is everything turned in? When I feel that I am becoming overwhelmed with the stress I put on a Beatles’ album think of one of my favorite quotes from an exceptionally brilliant man, John Lennon. 

  

Writing with Power by Peter Elbow  ISBN: 978195120189

Thinking Ahead

The school year is coming to a close and as I apply for licensure and submit my application for employment I also look ahead and think about my future classroom. Watching the students come in on the first day, tentatively take a seat at their desks, most calmly regarding this new teacher they may have only seen in passing. I think about my dry erase board, the announcement board on the left wall, the artwork hanging from the walls, the packed bookshelf at the back of the classroom and the expectation printed above the whiteboard at the front of the classroom.

The first thing I hope the students will see when they come in is a welcoming place where they feel comfortable expressing who they are in a courteous manner. And I know the only way they will know what to expect is by having a clear list of expectation where the students can see them as soon as they walk in. In the book What Great Teachers Do Differently, the author, Todd Whitaker, takes a whole chapter to explain the importance of setting clear expectations. “[Great teachers] establish clear expectations at the start of the year and follow them consistently as the year progresses.” (pg. 17) Whitaker goes on to talk about daily routines and how they help to guard against unforeseen interruptions. He tells a story about an announcement that pulls the students away from their classroom work and redirects them to the activity the students were warned not to do in the first place. Again, Whitaker harps on the importance of establishing routines and setting classroom expectations from the beginning of the year.

While reading the chapter I think about the tentative students entering my classroom for the first time and what they will see when they look at the expectations posted above the whiteboard. I would like my classroom expectations to include being respectful to ourselves and others, being on time, and being prepared but I think that these may have become a little outdated in today’s society. Maybe it is just me but something seems missing from these rules. Can you think of any new expectations that these don’t encompass?

Can you think of a different way to introduce your future students to your classroom expectations? Do you think that routines are as important as Whitaker makes them out to be? Do you know of any ways to redirect students’ attention when they become distracted?

What Great Teachers Do Differently by Todd Whitaker, ISBN 9781930556690  

Teaching Creative Writing in the English Classroom

“When learning characterization, students practice empathy. When learning plot, they practice strategic thought. When learning sensory writing, they practice close observation. When learning grammar, they practice exact language. When learning how to invent worlds, they practice imagination. These skills will be needed for every worthwhile endeavor they undertake in their lives whether they go into teaching or science, the arts, or the art of politics.”

Julianna Baggott

            Christine Esposito writes for njfamily.com and in her article entitled, “The Lifelong Benefits of Creative Writing”, she states that creative writing can be a beneficial to the way that students think. When students learn the process of writing a story they learn many things that will not only benefit their writing but also the daily interaction with other students and teachers. The article goes on to mention the Kean University Writing Project, KURP, where a group of educators have dedicated their lives to improving how students write and the influence writing has on the students’ lives. The KURP offers summer institutes for students and educators who would like to learn or improve their writing skills. After Esposito talks a little about KURP she goes on to give some guidelines on how to implement creative writing into the classroom and how to make it important to the students.

            First, she states that you have to start the students out young. This is one of the most vital parts to implementing creative writing. I know that as high school teachers we don’t get to start with the students but making your individual classrooms a place where creative writing is acceptable is one of the first steps you have to take. By starting your school year with a creative writing project, you can make the classroom a place where creative writing is a focus and a routine. The second thing the Esposito states is that the teacher should be a muse. Make it so the students want to write for you. Encourage your students! The third: DON’T be an editor or a critic. When you decide to take the time out of class and let your students write creatively, give them a chance to do so without the constraints of a grade of criticism. Let them be creative. Finally, Esposito says that in order to make the writing more important get it published. This shows that the student’s writing is good and is deserving of praise.

            Recently in my class I have tried to implement some of the things that Esposito introduces in her article. For one of my bell work assignments I had the students write a letter home to their parents as if they were in Vietnam fighting the Vietcong. I gave the students some background information that would guide them through their letter. In my classes the assignment got a mixed reaction. When I reviewed the students’ writing I saw a mixture of seriousness and sarcasm. The students that embraced the writing all did a good job, their letters were well written showed a great bit of imagination. The students that treated the writing assignment a little more loosely were a mixture of not trying and sarcasm that led to inappropriate humor and unacceptable length.

            Do you think creative writing has a place in the English classroom? Would you structure a whole lesson around creative writing?

Creative Writing Creates Community

In my Theory of Composition class we have been assigned an article review. This article review has been a great chance for me to dive into some readings about the community that is created from creative writing. I have been interested in this subject since I have wanted to be a teacher and one specific interest has been how to get non-creative students to become creative. While I didn’t use this article for my review, I felt that it was a valuable resource and offered a multitude of great ideas about this topic.

 

 Deborah Dean and Adrienne Warren have worked together to write a great article, entitled “Informal and Shared: Writing to Create Community”, about the benefits of informal writing and how these activities have affected the community within their classrooms. One exercise that I found fascinating is what Warren and Dean call ‘Scribblers’. This activity involves scribbling on a sheet of paper, passing it to a neighbor who then turns it into a drawing. The paper is then returned to the original student who has to write a story about the scribble. I thought this was a great way for students to be creative both visually and in their writing.

 

 Dean and Warren also talk about how students can create a sense of community when they are able to share their feelings about writing and how they write, even bad experiences can create a strong sense of community in a classroom. I thought that this might be a great way to address students who, when asked if they liked to write creatively, say they do not enjoy writing. By sharing their opinion and hesitations on this subject it can bring to light suggestions from other students about how to solve this problem. Sometimes this kind of feedback can be WAY more powerful than any advice a teacher would be able to offer, or maybe it’s just the fact that it’s coming from a peer rather than from an out of touch teacher.

 

This problem has already arisen in my short time as a teacher. I was working with an AP student who wanted to submit her writing to a writing competition. The student wanted my feedback about what she could do to improve her writing. When my suggestion included adding a bit of creative to writing to her more formal writing project, I seemed to have hit a nerve. She immediately informed that she despised creative writing and when I asked her why I learned that she felt she wasn’t any good at it. Because she was able to confess her hatred of creative writing, I was able to offer advice to help remedy this situation. I offered an alternative improvement that wouldn’t focus as strongly on creative writing.

 

I think that informal creative writing, writing that will never be seen by anyone else, is the key to get students back into creative writing. Has there been a time where you were asked to write creatively even though you HATE doing it? How have you been able to overcome this same kind of situation in your classroom?

 The link to the article is below!!

http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/download/nwp_file/16994/Informal_and_Shared.pdf?x-r=pcfile_d

District Inservice Day

A day at school with no students? How weird!

I woke up a little more casually, welcoming the chance to dress a little sloppier.  I made it to school around the same time I usually do and took my time wondering the deserted hallways, getting an insider's look at a quiet, clean hallway. A few teachers straggled past, mugs of coffee in hand. When I finally made it to class I sat my stuff down at my desk at the back of the classroom and asked about today's agenda.

I learned that we would sit through two group sessions and get together with the English department to grade the state assessments. Sparing you the nitty gritty of the day I can confidently say that it was an interesting experience and one that I can't say will be all that bad when I become a full time teacher.

Among other things, I learned that teachers are definitely still kids at heart and even though they may complain about how hair brained their students are, they can still be the same. I was glad for the opportunity to get to see all of the teachers that taught me while I attended school there and it was an even greater experience to see how those teachers really act when students are missing from the hallways.

Getting ready...

So after the short week next week I will get to start my KPTP lesson. At the last minute I decided that I would like to align my KPTP content with the history classes and do a unit over the Vietnam War/Literature. I have about half of the unit planned out and I am really excited about getting to start the unit. First we will be starting with centers that will introduce the students to different medias, such as YouTube news casts, newspaper clippings, some poems, etc. Then we will move onto one of my favorite writers, Tim O'Brien!! We are doing a whole day of O'Brien vignettes where the students will do a one pager over whatever vignette they choose to read.

Finally, I get to visit with a Vietnam vet and he is going to contribute to a stellar unit. Can't wait to see how this all turns out!!

KPTP

I started work on my KPTP this past week.

When I first started I was a little overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that I had to complete. The demographics, 2 lesson plans, 2 assessments, etc. But when I finally got started on it I realized that just being at school helps me with a great deal of the planning and preparation.

I am doing a lit circle for my KPTP. My lessons will be the intro activity and another smaller lesson within a lesson that I haven't picked yet. I started getting planned for first part of it. I am collaborating with a group of teachers and as a group we have decided that choice is what we wanted to focus on with these teen books, they all also seem to stay within that vein. So now for the during class activities, which is the part that I will have the most control over, we are giving the students a choice of activities with a 'menu' that lists them. Every time that they read they must complete each of the activities. This gives the students who like to draw a choice to concentrate on that or if they like to write then there are a few choices where they don't have to draw.

I think that this will be a good activity that will make the reading of these books a little more interactive for the students. I'll post my plan and the final draft of my menu on here when they are complete.

The Counting Continues

He slides the graded paper across the oak desk. Scratches and gouges imitate rolling, rocky waves as it slides the across the aged surface. His hand mechanically sets the paper in the 'done' tray, swings back across the desk and fumbles to separate the last two papers from each other. The sheets of paper give up their embrace and fall apart, one staying in his hand, the other falling like a orange leaf from a bare tree. The paper barely rustles as it is laid into place. He reaches up and removes the glasses from his face, the index finger and thumb on his opposite hand rub in the corner of his eyes to relieve some of exhaustion he fells creeping into his head. A new resolve pulses through his brain, he returns his glasses to his face, grabs the red, felt tipped marker and starts to read the essay that hulks on the table in front of him.*

* Thinking of doing something like this for my second genre reflection. An semi-extended metaphor for grading papers and finishing the end of the semester. Could use some suggestions. 

Thanks, 

Gage Gruning 

KATE Conference Response

 What breakout sessions were most helpful to you as a future teacher?  What ideas are you going to incorporate into your teaching and/or planning?

The last session that I attended was about learning studios. It is a kind of classroom arrangement that focuses on movement and student involvement. The classroom layout makes use of chairs and tables on casters (for the sake of mobility), dual projectors and dual whiteboards. I liked this breakout session the most because the classroom arrangement sounds like it would be very useful and would go well with the teaching style that I hope to emulate. Even though it would be close to impossible to incorporate every idea the presenters talked about I think that some would be useful and easy to incorporate. 

The easiest would be attaching casters to the furniture so that they are easier to move, this would be good for group activities. I also think that I would like to include dual projectors in my classroom design. The presenters talked a little about the use of these, including showing side by side texts and pictures so that the students can see the differences between the two texts/images. They talked about paint that is used especially for projecting screens and I figured that this would be easy to get permission for, it could be easy to do and easily to undo if I changed classrooms.

Overall, I enjoyed the conference and learned a lot of new things during the breakout sessions. I would definitely attend next year's conference. 

Genre Reflection #1 - Regaining Control

The rest of the class sat silently, looking back and forth between the rogue student and the teacher.

            

“How do you know if we can’t do the assignment in two sentences?”

The teacher leaned back against the table at the front of the class, the podium with the assignment in question on it, stood at her right. The rest of the class sat at light grey desks grouped together in quartets around the room. Hands and papers masked their amusement at the interruption to their usually uneventful day.

           

“I’m not saying you can’t do the assignment in two sentences but I am just going to let you know that you are going to get a bad grade if you only write two sentences”, the teacher’s flat voice conveyed her exhaustion expertly.

The student stood among the desks, chest out and shoulders pushed back in a mock sense of confidence. He fed off of the hidden smiles and quiet snickers. The louder they became the taller he stood and the more the false sense of confidence moved towards justified confidence. Seeing this the teacher stood at her full height, moving towards the student causing the interruption. Speaking in her teacher voice the teacher announced, “This is not a discussion. The assignment is that you write a narrative story about a time when you learned a lesson. It has to be at least two pages in length, double spaced and typed. That’s it.”

           

“But why does it--”

            

“No. That’s it”, countered the teacher.

Smiles and snickers were immediately stifled by the tone of the teacher’s new found voice. With the silence the rogue student’s shoulders sagged, his chest caved, his legs buckled and he sank into the navy blue chair. The teacher finished passing out the rest of the assignment sheets and walked the perimeter of the classroom, squashing the lingerings of an uprising still brewing in the student’s minds. The teacher returned to the front of the classroom with her shoulders pushed back, her chest pushed triumphantly forward and her head held high.

Make It Interesting!

For my last lesson I decided to incorporate a lesson about urban legends with my larger lesson about To Kill A Mockingbird. I made a PowerPoint, that I'm going to attempt to link to this, that described what an urban legend is and relating it to the novel. The very last slide of the PowerPoint is the activity that the students did at their tables.


I teach in a morning class so the main struggle with the students is keeping them awake. When I started teaching my urban legend lesson every student perked up and listened and responded to what I was saying and what the lesson was about. They also seemed to enjoy the writing assignment that went along with the PowerPoint, an urban legend explaining the origin of Boo Radley. The lesson was so impacting that in today's class I had a student come to me before class started wanting to share an urban legend with the class. This didn't have to do with the novel but it showed an interest in the class that I thought was important to perpetuate.


That is what I took from this experience in my student teaching class. That it is most important to engage the students with a lesson that meets their interest and also conveys a valid and measurable point. With this lesson the students had to realize the effect of an urban legend and what it means to the community of Maycomb, AL (the setting of the book). They also participated in a creative writing assignment that allowed me to assess their group skills along with their writing skills.

Whole Class vs. Individual Activities

My classroom is in the midst of working out beginning of school jitters and my role is determining how students work together, separately and as a class. One of my classrooms first assignments was a class reading of “Rules of the Game”, by Amy Tan, and “Almos’ a Man” by Richard Wright. From this assignment I got a good look of what students are self-motivated and what students are more likely to talk than work. Randy Bomer, in his book; Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms,  talks about the characteristics and provides an insight to the importance of whole class teaching strategies and their relationship with other styles;

“So it’s important, but it must always be at the service of the other structures, particularly 

independent work, in order to make a difference in people’s literate life.”

I couldn’t agree with him more. There were several instances when the class reading of the stories took a turn from engrossing to boring and the students were not being held accountable for their work (which can be a problem with whole class teaching methods). At that point it was obvious that individual work time was required so that the students felt some sort of accountability. 

Bomer, R. Building Adolescent Literacy in Today’s English Classrooms. 2011. Portsmouth, NH. ISBN: 9780325013947

Welcome to my Pre-Student/Student Teaching Blog!

All of the names used in the blog are pseudonyms, used to protect the identity and maintain privacy with students and teachers that are mentioned.

Thanks for reading. Hopefully, I will have accrued a nice selection of teaching materials and ideas that will inspire and provide you with ideas you can steal and use to teach your students or children. 

- Mr. Gruning