DECEMBER! AGGHHH!

Well, I can't quite believe it, but my last post here was in August.  AUGUST! That was winter.  That was the cold, dark depths of what makes Dunedin Dunedin. That was before the crazy exam season for seniors, including preliminary and actual NCEA exams. And, of course, marking, marking, marking.  Welcome, December.  You are a gift to teachers!

What I also love about December is that finally I can read.  By this I mean, I have the time to read.  I can read for pleasure and I can read to inform my teaching practice. 

At the moment, I'm getting into audiobooks.  This was triggered by need and curiosity - a long road trip driving between Dunedin and Christchurch and back again in a weekend.  There is an extra dimension to audiobooks; a scary variability - the narrator.  If the narrator grates, it's unlikely that I'll keep listening.  That voice! Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North was my choice for the drive, and I was reassured by the fact that the book was read by Flanagan, too.  So, I reasoned, even if I didn't like his voice, it was being read the way intended when written. 

It was so enjoyable listening to this year's Booker winner in this way.  It opened up a new (but, of course, old) way of enjoying stories for me.  In the past, when it's come to storytelling, I've always favoured reading over listening (unless you count my writer husband spinning another good yarn at the dinner table.  'Tell us another story about when you were in India!' says Esme (aged 5), yet again.  Solomon (aged 15) groans and rolls his eyes, yet again.  But he is always secretly interested). 

In the Secondary Teaching and Learning Guide for my subject area, English, the key concept areas are Identity, Communication, Story and Meaning.  This guide is well worth devoting some holiday time to this December.  The guide says this:

Story

People use oral, written, and visual English to tell stories, and to read, hear, and view the stories of others.  Our stories define us. When our stories connect with the stories of others, our lives change.

I agree.  Stories define us.  Stories help us empathise.  Stories are yet another form of creativity - vital in life and for living (and certainly in the classroom and in education.  Have a look at the video in this post.  Ken Robinson explaining this again - it's an old favourite).

I thought a lot about this as I listened to a story in a different way - via audiobook rather than reading.  When we read we decode via a range of semiotics; we make meaning using signs and symbols on a page - words.  When we listen we are still decoding and still engaging with semiotics - but it a different way.  This got me thinking about signs and symbols a little more, too.

The New Zealand Curriculum has some fabulous aspirational guidelines in the 'Values' and 'Key Competencies'.  It says this about signs and symbols:

Using language, symbols, and texts

Using language, symbols, and texts is about working with and making meaning of the codes in which knowledge is expressed. Languages and symbols are systems for representing and communicating information, experiences, and ideas. People use languages and symbols to produce texts of all kinds: written, oral/aural, and visual; informative and imaginative; informal and formal; mathematical, scientific, and technological.
Students who are competent users of language, symbols, and texts can interpret and use words, number, images, movement, metaphor, and technologies in a range of contexts. They recognise how choices of language, symbol, or text affect people’s understanding and the ways in which they respond to communications. They confidently use ICT (including, where appropriate, assistive technologies) to access and provide information and to communicate with others.

So, of course, listening to language is as vital as reading language.  That is why 'listening' is as valued as 'reading' in the New Zealand English Curriculum Area.  'Understanding, using, and creating oral, written, and visual texts of increasing complexity is at the heart of English teaching and learning. By engaging with text-based activities, students become increasingly skilled and sophisticated speakers and listeners, writers and readers, presenters and viewers.'  

I guess that listening to Richard Flanagan's charming Australian drawl is another text, another life experience, that has led me again to the New Zealand Curriculum, and once again I find myself reflecting on and thinking about my teaching practice in response to this.

Conclusion?  Perhaps more oral texts in class.  And maybe I'll start with The Narrow Road to the Deep North.




'Civilisation is a race between education and catastrophe.' H.G. Wells

Year 10 Speeches

 

I've just this minute finished teaching my Year 10's, who are in the middle of presenting their oral texts to the class.  This has been an interesting experience; one that has been quite different from similar tasks with my Year 9's.  

At our school, we stream in the Junior School.  My Year 9 is a top class, whilst Year 10 is middle.  I have mixed views on streaming - of course, there are positives and negatives for both.  But I would mostly argue and believe that while streaming is generally great for the top kids, it's not so much fun for the others.  I've been with classes who have said 'we're the cabbage class, miss', and others who know they are top and have an arrogance to boot. If you think of yourself as the 'cabbage class', how do you fly?  Do you even bother? It reminds me of a great TED talk I watched recently, in which a teacher described convincing a class that they were the best class (even though most believed they were not).  You can find Rita F. Pierson's talk 'Every kid needs a champion' here.

Whilst my Year 10's are not the so-called 'bottom' class, they know they're not the top.

For oral texts this year, I wanted to try what I had tried with my Year 9's - that is, opening up the floor to them to choose how to show me what they know.  After extensive teaching and discussion around presentations/speeches/oral texts, I asked them to put forward some suggestions.  I must say, they weren't that keen. Where Year 9 lapped up choice and offered several creative ways to present work, Year 10 almost shut down.  Not to be deterred, I reflected that perhaps that needed slightly narrower parameters to start to feel safe enough to offer up their suggestions.  So I limited it to: a TED talk scenario in class, a motivational talk by a coach or captain at half time, a pecha kucha presentation, or a good old fashioned speech on something they were interested in. We looked at lots of examples of each of these, and they all seemed quite interested.  I was looking forward to seeing what they would come up with.

All chose speeches. I guess it was safe.  But I wonder if, by streaming our classes, we don't allow all students to feel safe enough to creatively experiment. In the end, I want them to choose a format that they like (or, at the very least, have chosen!) but it's been a very interesting experience for me observing both my junior classes and their enthusiasm and reticence balanced equally on between both classes.  The only difference I can see is the streaming.

Senior Exam Week

And so we send our seniors off the week before preliminary examinations with the best wishes and the highest hopes that they will put in the work necessary to do well.  I always try to refer to these mid-term school exams as preliminary - we usually have 20 students or so who need to access these results as derived grades for NCEA.  It's a fine line between encouraging students to take these as seriously as NCEA for that reason, and not freaking them out about a three hour assessment held two months before their learning journey ends! This year I've pushed for all students at Year 11 and 12 to try everything, see how they go and assess it from there.  

In addition, our school prizes are decided on the back of these examinations.  If students only sit two of three papers, they pretty much eliminate themselves from the running at Prizegiving.  Such pressure.

I really encouraged my students to write practice essays and email them to me over the weekend.  As is the same most years, I received four essays from classes that total 70 students.  I guess you can only offer your services at this time - they have to take you up on your offer. I live in hope that I will receive more closer to NCEA. In the weeks leading up to these exams, we do lots of practice 'testing' - forced time constraints in class - to make sure that they are at least writing some essays in the lead up.

I have become more and more enthused about Unfamiliar Texts as the years progress.  I've done some concentrated teaching around this standard this year, and my Masters student teacher also did some great work with my Year 11 class.  I'm marking 127 (all Year 11!) Unfamiliar Text papers after the exam on Wednesday morning - wish me luck!  As you English teachers out there know, that's actually 388 answers, with three unfamiliar texts in each student's paper. Woohoo! I'll be a marking expert by the end of the week. I'm looking forward to seeing if some of my teaching adjustments pay off for my students.  The inquiry cycle in action!

Last year I marked most Year 11 Unfamiliar Text papers, and found it to be amazing professional development as far as my teaching was concerned.  By the 80th paper, I sure knew what I was looking for, and plans were swirling around in my head around the teaching I could do around what I'd learned.  I'm really looking forward to similar enlightenments this year.

Good luck, all students out there!  Show us what you know!

Book Review #2

And here is a second review in my quest to 'walk the walk'.

http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com/2014/07/28/book-review-a-song-for-issy-bradley-by-carys-bray/

A Song for Issy Bradley

By Carys Bray 

 

There are no words. That is what is written in Claire’s journal after her young daughter Issy dies from meningitis. And there really are no words to describe reading her death, and the excruciating nature of this experience for characters Claire, her husband Ian – a Mormon bishop – and their children Zippy, Alma and Jacob.

The first half of this book is exact in exploring the profound trauma of grief. That this grief comes from the death of a small person really takes your breath away. It is every parent’s worst nightmare that their child – not yet fully grown and full of potential – could not just be sick, but dying, before ever reaching his or her human potential. Bray captures this exquisite pain and explores it from all angles with grace and, believe it or not, humour. The point of difference here is that this family is a conservative Mormon one, and Ian, the father, is a bishop in the Mormon Church.

Claire is Issy’s mother. She is a latecomer to the Mormon Church, after meeting and falling in love with Ian whilst at University. This ‘outsider’ status was a relief for me, as a non-religious reader. All other characters in the book grow up in the Mormon Church, and I would have found it harder to understand the absolute pervasiveness of religion in the story without Claire and her life before becoming ‘Sister Bradley’. After Issy dies, Claire emotionally checks out and takes to Issy’s bunk bed for the foreseeable future. Claire’s physical protest at the death of her youngest daughter feels real – like a challenge to a god that seems to have very little discretion when it comes to pain, suffering and death. Whilst the other family members struggle in different ways, none of them question God as Claire does, with a refusal to continue with life post-Issy.

Of course all family members struggle, and it is the surviving three children and Ian who try to get on with life as they experience this profound grief. Alma just wants to play football, but is haunted by images of his youngest sister fetching the ball. Jacob believes so hard in God that he is determined to resurrect Issy and make everything all right again. Zippy is the responsible, teenage sister who is expected to cook all the meals when Claire emotionally falls apart and takes to Issy’s bed permanently. Some of the humour comes from the depictions of expectations of teenage girls in the Mormon church, although these are somewhat tragicomic: Zippy in her mother’s wedding dress at a Mormon fashion show, where all teenage girls are wearing relations wedding dresses, and promising chastity at a time when hormones are obviously all over the show. And then there is Ian, the most fundamental believer of them all. Every action and decision taken by Ian comes from a place of God – a Mormon God – as he too struggles with Issy’s death.

Ian would be an easy character to dislike. Early in the book he provides religious reasoning for everything that is happening and seems very sure that Issy’s death is as it is meant to be. His life’s soundtrack is provided by the Tabernacle Choir, a touchstone of peace and reassurance in his Mormon life. However, Bray counters his religious beliefs with enough perplexed humanity for the reader to understand that he is as lost as Claire, but is trying to manage it as best he can through the filter of his belief in God.

It is obvious that Carys Bray has a personal understanding of growing up in a fundamentalist Mormon family. Bray’s experiences both shape and care for this work as she poses questions about the Church and the place of organised religion in children’s lives. These are explored in a sympathetic way, especially through her characters and their personal struggles in the face of indescribable grief and pain.

For a situation in which there could be no words, Bray seems to have found the right ones.

Something a little different: a book review

I think it's important as an English teacher to be practising what I am preaching.  I do this mainly by writing book reviews for the Booksellers blog.  I thought I'd post a few here for you.  I'll include the link to the original publication, too.


http://booksellersnz.wordpress.com/tag/purgatory/

Purgatory by Rosetta Allan

According to Catholic doctrine, when you are in purgatory, you are destined for heaven. But purification is necessary, so as to achieve the requisite holiness before paradise is reached. Unfortunately for John Finnigan, the 10 year-old murdered youth of this book, purgatory is also a place of suffering or torment. He can’t touch anything, and he finds himself alone once the bodies of his mother and two brothers, who initially share purgatory with him, are discovered. Perhaps purgatory is being left alone, abandoned by those closest to your heart. Or maybe it’s eternal boredom, the ultimate lesson in find-something-to-do that mothers have mouthed from time immemorial. ‘It’s so boring out here, we’re all getting ratty … nothing to do but fight,’ declares John on the second page. His journey, whilst in this state, from utter boredom to appreciation of the smallest things - owls, cats, pohutakawa trees - is an interesting one.


Rosetta Allan uses first person, present tense ‘ghost narration’ to place us dead in the centre (pardon the pun) of John’s world. ‘No one knows we’re dead, except him,’ states John in the first 50 words of the novel, ‘We’re the dead Finnigans’. So of course, the next question is, who killed John and his family in 1865?


And so John’s story is alternated with James’. James Stack, whose life seems tough from the start. But not as tough as John’s - John is dead, after all, and James has the gift of life. James’ story is told in third person, past tense. This creates distance and gifts a traditional voice to the events of his life. Nothing really seems to go well for James, who follows his sister across the world, with her woollen, lace collar in his pocket. As the collar disintegrates, so do aspects of James’ life. But all the while we are reminded: he is alive, at least. It speaks to Allan’s skill that important moments, such as how John and James’ lives intersect, are subtlely rendered and not easily guessed. Well, I was pleased by this, anyway.


My over-arching fascination with this book came from the knowledge that these events actually occurred. Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries was the most recent book to remind me of the richness of our history and how untouched it has remained, in literature, until recently. Or, sorry, maybe it is only just starting to be explored in fiction well. Living in Dunedin means hours can be spent perusing the settler exhibitions at Toitu (Otago Early Settlers’ Museum), Allan’s book is another reminder of the life of old characters in old photos that otherwise could remain historic artifacts of a time long-gone. Allan has explored her family history in a fictional way that reminds those of us from ‘other’ places (be it two or five generations back) that we were once settlers, that life was hard, and the world was a very different place.

The brilliant imaginings of students who are free to create

 

This is just a short entry to showcase the work of a Year 9 student.  We have been looking at the film Invictus during the past few weeks, and I asked my students to fill in the gaps for us - teach us about things we may not know about.  I provided a list of topics, but told them this was a starting point only and if there was any other topic they wished to teach us about, that would most likely be fine.

I told the students they could present this in any way they saw fit - they were restricted only by their imaginations.

One student made this: an apartheid fence.  He asked the class to write their opinions on what they thought it would feel like to be black during apartheid, and also, white.

He then asked the class to tie their thoughts to the 'apartheid fence'- black on one side, and white on the other.

This was an amazingly thought-provoking and cleverly thought-out idea.  Gone are the days of speeches being the only form of presenting work.

 

Free range learning and self-direction

 

Today I had a great discussion with my Year 12 class about the restrictions of the timetable on their learning.  Interestingly, this was instigated by them.  I looked shiftily from side to side and then casually behind me to see if there was a big fat poster somewhere declaring that 'this rush is madness! These bells aren't respecting our work!' But no such headline existed in Room 1, and so we sat and talked a little.

'Oh how I wish we could start at 10 am,' said one.  'Yes,' agreed another, 'and finish at 4 pm,' he added.  Another student, who attended Wellington High School in the past, shared that this was already done at his old school, and that it was great.  'Hard for some parents dropping kids at school, though,' he admitted with a fine sense of pragmatism.  'A lot of parents need to work.'

'You know, at some schools, the timetable is a lot different, and classes aren't just run subject-to-subject, hour-to-hour,' said I.  I could almost hear their thinking, figuring out how that would work.  'So you get blocks of time to devote to projects.  Imagine how much writing you could get done on this portfolio if you had two hours to spend on it.'  There was a lot of nodding.  I left it there.

I'm always delighted by how much wisdom can come from teenagers.  They know that there are different things that work for them, and feel sometimes that they are the square pegs being shoved into round holes.  It's so important to instigate conversations with them to get them thinking about other ways of being; conversations that encourage them to think critically about the status quo - especially if it isn't working as well as it could be.

So while this post isn't so much about the practical ways in which my classes and I are considering free range learning and self-direction, it certainly is about both topics.  It's about students who mostly know what works for them, but don't have the chance to challenge the status quo in their education, because it is so entrenched.  One hour.  A bell.  Some days, it's 50 minutes.  Six or seven bells a day.  And we start at 8.55 and you must be here or else.  Not to mention that your hair must be a certain length and within a certain range of colours ...

I want my students to challenge absurd systems and rules, but mostly, I would like them to offer new solutions that work for them.  I wish students could be included in discussions around their day to day realities - it is their reality, after all!  Free range learning, for me, means exiting the cage.  Self-direction and student agency will come when we start to trust that teenagers, on the whole, have some great ideas about how their days should be structured. 

When those six or seven bells ring throughout a school day, we are telling students that what they are working on isn't important.  That what IS important is regulation and compliance.  There is no way you can be a free range learner if what you're learning is how to enter and exit the cage, and not to complain.  If we expect more from them, then we have to give more to them.