PhilWP Journal | Spring 2011 by Philadelphia Writing Project

JOURNAL 2

SPRING 2011

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Philadelphia Writing Project (PhilWP), located at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, is a site of the National Writing Project. PhilWP is a growing teacher network of nearly 600 teacher consultants who work with educators to explore literacy, writing, teaching, and learning in their classrooms, and schools regardless of grade or discipline. Our mission is to improve literacy and learning in all content areas in classrooms and schools across the Greater Philadelphia region.

The Stories They Tell

Reflective Writers at Six Years Old?

A Gift

by Marsha Rosenzweig Pincus by Natalia Mykytiuch by Kathleen Murphey

A Story Among Many, from Digital Is

#engchat: community, conversation and collaboration for English teachers

by Christina Cantrill

by Meenoo Rami

Closet Dyslexic

Write On

Bears and Brians

Coaching Collaborative Teaching

by Kathleen Murphey by Rita Sorrentino by Edward Levenson by Cozette Ferron PhilWP Journal

voices 26

A Collaborative Review: The New Teacher Book by Sam Reed, John Pickersgill, and Lauren Goldberg

Miedo a Escribir

Finding My Voice

por José-Manuel Navarro

by Molly Thacker

(re)introducing the Philadelphia Writing Project JOURNAL For 25 years, the Philadelphia Writing Project has served as a space for educators to celebrate and examine the teaching of writing as a critical tool for learning. Over the years, PhilWP teacher consultants have written about issues both personal and professional to make sense of the world around them. Teacher consultants have shared their writing in publications like the PhilWP Voice and the PhilWP Update. In 2011 (and beyond?) PhilWP has a new place to collect our writing: the PhilWP Journal. The Journal, like the publications before it, demonstrates the power of multiple voices A be evident is the collective strength in B through writing. What should collaboration that wraps around all of us in times of joy, struggle, realization, and transformation. Imagine a lone spirit struggling to find her own personal solution in dealing with dyslexia and exhibiting the fortitude to read and write as if every living breath depended on it. Consider social networks constituting a space for teachers to communicate and collaborate. Contemplate the practice of teaching emerging writers to find their voices in kindergarten or the power of students and the stories they tell. As teachers, we may not always find time to sit with peers and share promising practices or delve into the kind of teacher inquiry that can address the questions we confront in isolation. The Journal— we hope—may strengthen our community of writers. Putting pen to paper is an act of vulnerability. Sharing one’s writing is also a sign of strength. We hope you are strengthened in your own practice as you read these pages.

C Tamara Anderson

Speak Up by George McDermott

Reflections of Society

COVER IMAGE

In the cover image, gleaming glass races toward the heavens, unable to escape the shadow of a nearby time-tested stone structure. The multi-story mirror reflects the bright light of day. In our schools, old and new (or just simply re-Imagined) ideas and influences are juxtaposed in a similar manner. Instead of racing to the heavens, schools and districts “race to the top,” unable to escape the shadow of educational inequality. Schools struggle to reflect the interests of society.

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Also, it is worth noting that the cover of this publication might well be the cover of any business magazine. The cover illustrates the influence of business and corporate structures on educational discourse, policy, and reform. –Trey Smith

INNER CITY CLASSROOM

!"# $

&!'()#&$ $

!"#%$ !#**$ by Marsha Rosenzweig Pincus

I remember my students by the stories they tell

For the past 33 years, I have been challenged, moved, and most of all transformed by the young people I have encountered in my inner city classroom. There was Steve Woods whose angry outburst of “That’s whiteman’s bullshit!” during my introductory lesson on Cry the Beloved Country that sent me on a decades-long journey to re-educate myself. Or Carlissa Russell who during a discussion of feminism and African American literature, screamed at me –“Mrs. Pincus – to you this is just political. To me it’s my life!” Or Terrance Jenkins whose nearly twenty revisions of his play Taking Control taught me that it is often their very lives my students are trying to control and revise. Then there was Duane. It is April 1998. Duane is not doing the senior project that he needs to complete in order to graduate. Duane has been struggling. He has taken to avoiding me, the mentor he has chosen to marshal him through this complicated research process. And even though I know it won’t be easy, I find the strength to confront him. At first, he will not look at me. His head is bowed and his chin is dug deep inside his chest. I talk in what I hope are soothing tones, trying to encourage and convince him to do the work. Suddenly he jumps up from his seat. What’s

PhilWP Journal

the fucking use anyway? Bull’s out there crazy! They gonna kill you. I have no future. What’s the fucking use? What’s the point in doing this? What’s the point of graduating? I’m gonna fucking die!!!!!

and guilt – how I had spoken to him the night he died and he said he was just going to stay home and watch tv and how he must have changed his mind and how I should have known and been there for him.

When he finishes, he sits back down, assumes the same tucked position while his words echo in the silence.

Mrs. Laskin gave me a B-minus on that essay – a grade I now know teachers give when they don’t know what to say about a paper. It’s a safe grade. It will raise no eyebrows and cause no complaints.

Slowly, he begins to tell his story. He has already been shot once, on his way home from a desegregated school in a white neighborhood, where he went before he was transferred here, his neighborhood school. He lifts his shirt to show me his scar I take a deep breath and try to gather the pieces of myself that have been shattered by his story. What can I, a white woman, a mother whose son is the same exact age as Duane say to him. In telling his story to me, his teacher, in school, Duane has transgressed a boundary and ripped through the silence that separates students from their teachers. He has made the call. I must make the response. Duane, I say, touching his arm. Are you positive you’re gonna die? Are you so sure that you’re willing to bet your future on it? At least consider the possibility that you could be wrong here. You’re not always right, you know. There is a long silence because I have run out of things to say. I am overcome by a desire to get up and run away and never see Duane again. Then through the silence, his response. Thrusting his notebook towards me, he says, Show me how to do this. Step by step. I’m confused. As I reach across to Duane, I suddenly remember another story – one from nearly thirty years ago. It was the first day of school of my senior year in AP English and Mrs. Laskin asked us to write an essay – something like how I spent my summer vacation. My friend Steve had died from a heroin overdose one month to the day after his 18th birthday on August 9, 1969 – one week before Woodstock, one month after men had landed on the moon as I watched the small black and white tv with a group of scagged out boys. I began the essay with the silent ride home from the cemetery, with his best friend Dock ripping the funeral sticker off the windshield. I wrote about my confusion Spring 2011

Looking back, I wonder. What did Mrs. Laskin think of the young woman sitting before her who was in so much pain? How might my life have been different if she or anyone in that school had responded to what I was saying – the story of my life I was trying so desperately to tell her? Right after the Columbine massacre, there was a flurry of public dialogue about making schools and classrooms more humane --- about making room for difference and listening to the voices of our often troubled teens. But the winds have shifted once again - a cold wind blows over our schools, particularly our urban ones. The new rhetoric of school reform is the cold calculating language of capitalism – bottom lines, per-pupil spending – accountability -- and -- yes – frighteningly -- profits. The call for new tests have replaced the call for humane environments. Stripped of their stories, like forests stripped of their trees, schools have become cold and barren places where nothing can take root and grow. It is teachers who must make sure that our students’ stories get told- to policy makers, numbers crunchers, test writers and the pubic. Their stories of struggle, courage, hope and possibility must interrupt and challenge the dominant narratives that exist in our popular media about the failure of urban students and urban schools. The stories are all we have and they are what will save us. ! Marsha Rosenzweig Pincus taught English and Drama for 34 years before retiring in 2008. She was one of 34 teacher consultants in the very first PhilWP Summer Institute in 1986. Marsha originally wrote this piece for Project SOULL (Study of Urban Learning and Leading). This and other pieces can be found on Her Own Terms at www.marshapincus.com.

DEVELOPING YOUNG WRITERS

Teaching

kindergarten for my third year, I needed to transform the way I taught writing in my classroom. Every year we had daily journal

writing and Writer’s Workshop four times a week. However, I found that my students’ stories were not as meaningful as I had hoped. Their stories and journal entries seemed tedious and mechanical. Their writings were mere descriptions of the pictures they drew and lacked emotion and thought. I was fortunate to attend PhilWP’s Summer Invitation Institute I this past summer. Through various readings and colleague discussions, it seemed that reflective writing was a great vehicle for more meaningful writing from my students. The problem was how to achieve this on the kindergarten level. This became a process that now I am very pleased I went through. As a way to better mange behavior, I began reflection sheets in September. The students drew pictures of what they did and below the picture they wrote about it and what they would do next time. This was a starting point in having the students reflect about what happened. My goal was to have the students eventually transfer that reflective knowledge into Writer’s Workshop in December/January. The class was using the reflection sheets as a behavior tool, and that presented the problem that not every student will have enough practice with this form of writing. In October, I began reflective writing in our daily journal entries. I introduced it to the students by telling them that good writers do not just write how they think by Natalia Mykytiuch about things, but also how they feel about things. We use a big emotions poster which expands simple feelings like happy and sad to more complex emotions such as excited, surprised, anxious, upset, jealous, etc. We refer to this poster daily. We start journals with a little cheer with me asking, “What kind of writers are we?” and the students respond, “Reflective writers!” “Why?” I ask. “Because we write how we think about it and how we feel about it.” I explained this by telling them we think with our brains and feel with our hearts. Good writers use their brain and their hearts to write.

reflective writers at

6 years old?

PhilWP Journal

Since October, my students have written two to three sentences in their journals. At first the writing was still mechanical, such as “I am playing with my sister. I like to play with my sister” or “I am cooking with my mom. I love my mom.” After a month or so their writing evolved into, “This girl I know appreciated me because she hugged me. It made my heart happy.” and “I am so excited I am going to the park after school. I will play on the swings with my sister.” Not only are the students intertwining their emotions into their writing, they are also adding more details and descriptors. Because this is kindergarten, they draw a picture first with a lot of detail and color, which they then use as springboard to their written words. After a few months of reflective journal writing, modeling and conferencing with the students, we were ready to transform this information from a one-page journal entry to a three-part story with a beginning, middle, and an

Spring 2011

end. I had “books” pre-made for their stories. We used “drwriting paper”—papers where the top is blank for drawing and dotted lines were printed on the bottom for writing. I stapled three pages together; the first page became the title page and the next four pages were for the story. The students continued to write two to three sentences per page. This is when the magic happened. We began Writer’s Workshop in January by going over rules such as using quiet voices, quiet feet, working really hard, and putting everything away properly when it’s time to clean up. I also slowly introduced the students to the steps of the writing process and how important it is to remember that writing is a process. A poster displayed prewriting, I can think about it, and then progressed to drafting, I can write about it. Slowly we began the third step of revising, I can make it better. The last stages of editing and publishing we did together through individual conferences. They read their stories to each other

and discussed their work with one another just like real writers do. The writing process poster also hangs in the room along with the rules, which are reviewed before each session. All students have their own Writer’s Workshop folder where they keep their writing. Finished pieces are placed on the left side and pieces in progress are placed on the right. Each folder has a copy of the writing process on the front—identical to the poster hanging in the room. The students are really receptive to Writer’s Workshop. They enjoy writing and sharing their stories and they are adopting the idea that writing is a process. When we have to stop and clean up for the day and some students become upset because they want to finish, the others simply tell them, “It’s ok, we’ll have time tomorrow, it’s a process.” One student came up to me during Writer’s Workshop and said, “I just wanted to tell you that I’m done my story but I’m not really done. I need to go back and revise it and make it better.” I also utilize mini-lessons as much as I can. We are currently working on making our stories “juicy” and not boring. This involves using details, details, details – this word is used frequently in my classroom. They implement the use of color words, size words, and many other descriptors to make a juicy story that gives the reader the capability to better visualize the story written. I found that through the consistent daily writing in journals and embedding the reflective writing process in Writer’s Workshop, my students are producing more meaningful, imaginative, and descriptive stories than in the past. Their characters are more developed and thoughts and feelings are portrayed not only in the illustrations, but the writing as well. The students also develop more coherent stories with a plot containing a problem and a solution. In the past stories were simple, such as:

This year’s stories are more developed and thoughtful:

The Scared Lion The lion was very scared. She could not find her babies. She looked everywhere. She even asked the giraffe if he saw them. He said no. The lion kept looking. She went home because she was sad. When she went back outside she found her babies. They were playing in the yard. She was so so so happy and excited! The End. Watching my students becoming authors and illustrators is magical. They have become motivated and dedicated to the writing process. They also take the process very seriously. During Writer’s Workshop my students focus and there is a productive buzz in the room that is very exciting to watch. Our students are only as capable as we believe they are. I believed that I could have my students produce quality writing using this reflective writing process. I am very pleased to say that they have surpassed my vision and are always surprising me with their insights and enthusiasm. !

Natalia Mykytiuch teaches kindergarten at Henry C. Lea Elementary. Natalia became a PhilWP teacher consultant in 2010.

The Bunny One day the bunny was outside. He saw a dog. He ran away. He found his mom. He was not scared anymore. The End. 8

PhilWP Journal

The worldviews of people can be so strikingly different that it seems amazing they can share common ground on anything. This fact was brought sharply to my attention one day when I was in church, sitting next to a man I knew by face but not by name. We had in common our faith, our church, and a preference for the back of the church. He also had a sense of humor and a fondness for children, for he took delight in watching a young mother struggling to keep her three children quiet until the end of the service. She had her hands full, especially with the three- year old boy who seemed determined to climb up her body and squirm his way to freedom.

a gift

by Kathleen Murphey

What I carried away from church that day was not the messages from the Old Testament readings or from the reading from the Gospel or even from the minister’s sermon. It was the two very different experiences that the man next to me and I had with a lady bug. I had noticed something flying around the church and was not particularly keen to find out what it was. It was early March, and the birds had started chirping as they do in the early spring and some insects were poking themselves out of hibernation or hatching out of winter dormant eggs and flying around tentatively.

So this bug flying around church landed on my right hand on the space between my thumb and index finger, and I was delighted to see it was a ladybug—that lovely little creature so useful in gardens and so beloved from the children’s rhyme. I think I murmured the words, “a gift.” I thought briefly about trying to get the tiny creature outside, but I thought that my exiting the church abruptly would disturb people. The man next to me regarded my “friend,” but I was so enchanted that I really wasn’t paying much attention to his expression. Then the lady bug flew away from my hand and landed on the man’s tie. I assumed he would be amused, but he was not. He swatted forcefully at the ladybug and knocked it down, dead, to the church’s stone floor. I am sure I looked surprised, but I was more than that. I was shocked, and all I could think was that I had witnessed “a little death”—but it didn’t seem like a little death. It seemed cold and calculated and intolerant. In the countdown to Easter and the symbolic rebirth to everlasting life, the death of spring life in the house of the Lord seemed a bad omen to me—a lost opportunity to make connections between species and to appreciate the majesty and diversity of life—a failure to embrace Christ’s promise of regeneration and renewal. Perhaps I was just foolish and overly sensitive, but my eyes kept drifting back to the little corpse on the stone floor that possibly, no one other than myself would ever notice. Though the incident pained me and motivated me to record that pain, I am sure that the man next to me in church will remember the struggling toddler rather than the ladybug. And yet it seems to me that we all have to care more about “little lives” and the world around us if we are to survive into this new century. So here’s a wish for longer lady bug lives, changing world views, and a shared future where human stewardship over the earth’s resources and all her creatures is our calling and our gift to those who come after us. ! Kathleen Murphey is an English professor at the Community College of Philadelphia. Kathleen joined PhilWP as a teacher consultant the summer of 2008. PhilWP Journal

by Christina Cantrill

Renee Webster, a teacher consultant at the Red Cedar Writing Project, has an ongoing inquiry as a teacher of young students. How can she best support her students in hearing their own “smart thinking” as well as that of their classmates and friends? Over the years she has supported the sharing of “smart thinking” among students through having students work together and contribute to group conversations about a range of subjects, including literature and their own storytelling. At one point she introduced digital recorders to further support students in their work. The recorders turned out to have a profound effect on the literacy practices of the students. This success was because of the ease of use for both recording and repeated listening, as well as the expanded audiences to which they could now share. Flip cameras soon followed, allowing students to further record and share

PhilWP Journal

and eventually inspire one group of first graders to conceive and create a documentary about first grade for the incoming class from kindergarten. They knew that their voices mattered. Renee knew this too. And so when she was asked to share some of the work she had been doing in her classroom she decided to use these same media tools and approaches and make a short video called “Hearing Student Voices” (http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/ 261), which includes her own inquiry questions and a view into her classroom through images and the recorded narratives of her students. Robert Rivera-Amezola, a third and fourth grade teacher at Willard Elementary in Philadelphia, was inspired by “Hearing Student Voices” in making his own short film, “Service Learning, Technology and English Language Learners” (http://digitalis.nwp.org/ resource/366) which highlights the significance of supporting student learning through project-based and service oriented work. Like Renee’s students, Robert’s used and created digital media that amplified their messages while requiring collaborative composition to complete. Robert talks about how “they discovered more about themselves and built a strong community of learners” and that this proved to be invaluable, especially for the English language learners who comprised the majority of his classroom. Both of these videos are now part of an emerging collection of ideas, reflections and questions about what it means to teach writing in our increasingly digital world on the Digital Is website, launched by the National Writing Project in November 2010.

Digital Is is an open website supporting the exploration of work and inquiries by educators across the grade levels, both inside and outside of schooling, who are exploring digital literacies and related practice with their students. “Writing today,” say the authors of Because Digital Writing Matters, “is pervasively and generally digital; composed with digital tools; created out of word, image, sound and motion; circulated in digital environments; and consumed across and wide range of digital platforms.” Therefore the website was created explicitly to support the sharing of work among educators in the emerging field of literacy and digital media, to encourage discussions about this work among an

Spring 2011

expanded community, as well as to provide important evidence of the visionary, innovative and dedicated work and approaches that educators bring to their professional practice inside and outside of school.

Digital Is is curated by writing project colleagues. Curators pull together resources made by educators into collections that can support conversations across examples of work and practice. Resources within Digital Is are not all video – many are text-based with hyperlinks and images, some are podcasts and several integrate tools like Voicethreads to show and invite comments. However, what all the resources and collections within this website have in common is the belief in the power of voice in teaching and learning. The website is a work in progress and a growing collection. We therefore invite you to participate in Digital Is as an individual and/or within a community at your writing project site. You can participate by browsing the website, joining, and adding to the discussion there or start your own. You can also use the resources in various ways. For example, resources and collections from Digital Is are being used to prompt discussions in face-to-face learning communities that then to connect to discussions shared online too.

You can also become a resource creator within Digital Is. Individuals have been doing this and also site teams have formed that are supporting group inquiry into digital media and learning with the goal to publish emerging work and practice here. Resource creators gain access to drafting and feedback tools that allow you to work on a resource privately and in draft form, and then request or give feedback to others working on resources too. We would love to learn from you how you could imagine this website and its resources and collections being useful to you and your local writing project practices.! Christina Cantrill is a senior program associate in national programs and site development with the National Writing Project. Christina was the PhilWP administrative assistant from 1993-1996. This piece was also posted online at Christina’s new blog, In Community, at seecantrill.tumblr.com.

Learn more about Digital Is at http://digitalis.nwp.org. Contributions to Digital Is by PhilWP Teacher Consultants (so far…) “#engchat: community, conversation and collaboration for English teachers” by Meenoo Rami http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/1802 “A Fourth Grade Service Learning Project” by Robert Rivera-Amezola http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/366 “Reading in a Cloud” by Rita Sorrentino http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/749 “Google Docs Support Access and Collaboration” by Trey Smith http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/713 Additional Highlights from the Digital Is Collection “Lights, Camera, Social Action!” by Katie McKay, Heart of Texas Writing Project http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/781 A discussion titled “Student Leaders” http://digitalis.nwp.org/discussion/1886 “Where do I start? Beginning the Digital Journey in the Classroom” collected by Kim Jaxon, Northern California Writing Project http://digitalis.nwp.org./collection/“where-do-i-start”-beginning-digital-jou “Redefining Text” by Belinda Foster, Area 3 Writing Project http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/493 A discussion titled “Creativity” http://digitalis.nwp.org/discussion/1950 “Using Video to Inspire Critical Analysis” by Tracy Lee, Digital Youth Network http://digitalis.nwp.org/resource/1882 “Digital Is ... what exactly?” collected by Elyse Eidman-Aadahl, National Writing Project http://digitalis.nwp.org/collection/digital-iswhat-exactly More Resources on Digital Media and Learning Because Digital Writing Matters http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/books/digitalwritingmatters “Teachers Are the Center of Education: Writing, Learning and Leading in the Digital Age” http://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/3154 “Copyright Clarity: How Fair Use Supports Digital Learning” http://mediaeducationlab.com/copyright “Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum” http://www.commonsensemedia.org/educators PhilWP Journal

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TEACHERS AND TECHNOLOGY

and

collaboration for English teachers

community, conversation,

#engchat

by Meenoo Rami

A conversation took place around dinnertime on January 10. @AndersonGL was in Chicago, @feministteacher was in New York, and @mrchase was in Philadelphia. All participants were educators engaged in a reflective dialogue about practice. A weekly Twitter chat, #engchat, served as the virtual space for a evening conversation about using feminist and LGBT texts in high school English classes. English teachers from K-16 to come together Mondays nights (7pm EST) via Twitter using the #engchat hashtag to discuss a pre-announced topic. A guest moderator who brings passion and curiosity to a topic usually hosts the fast-paced conversation. Participants from around the country can ask questions, share experiences, and trade resources through the chat. It is difficult to say whether #engchat is providing valuable professional development to self-motivated educators who choose to participate in the weekly conversations, but there is a palpable (if even possible online?) sense of community, collegiality, and collaboration. This sense of community extends beyond Monday nights. Regular users of the #engchat hashtag post links, share resources, ask questions, and receive feedback throughout the week from other English teachers. PhilWP Journal

The evolution of #engchat has been incredible. More than 3500 users have sent out more than 10,000 Tweets and shared more than 5000 links. When I started #engchat in August 2010, however, I had no idea if it would even work. As a high school English teacher, who had recently discovered the power of connectivity through social media, I was looking for a community of English teachers on Twitter much like the English Companion Ning created by Jim Burke (http://englishcompanion.ning.com). While English Companion Ning provides the space to post questions and seek resources, I knew that the instantaneous feedback one might receive from colleagues on Twitter would reveal a more powerful conversation and provide support to both new and experienced teachers. Through the New Teacher Camp in Philadelphia, I participated in #edchat on Twitter and started to notice subject area chats starting up. The thought of creating a weekly Twitter chat for English teachers excited me, but I soon began to doubt myself. How would this work? Can I take on more than one initiative in my life right now? How can one even limit English teachers to just 140 characters? Would this even be a meaningful experience for English teachers? My reluctance began to fade when I was in middle of the Summer Invitational Institute with the Philadelphia Writing Project. All of the discourse of taking risks in our teaching practices and seeing ourselves as teacher-leaders gave me confidence. I finally decided to start a Twitter chat—#engchat—for English teachers around the country. I settled on Monday nights at 7:00 EST as the designated weekly time to “meet” with other outstanding English teachers on Twitter. I quickly realized that leading an engaging discussion every week would be a challenge. I started reaching out to other English educators on Twitter to see if they would agree to guest moderate the discussion, and I would fill in the weeks when I could not secure a moderator. This distribution of leadership for #engchat made it a richer discussion for all involved. The first individual who really embraced the idea of #engchat and aided its growth was Jim Burke. He immediately agreed to host #engchat even though he had never participated in such a discussion via Twitter before, and he was willing to learn alongside other participants. Soon, others came on board, and a number of guest moderators from all regions of the country have guided the discussion: @SarahWessling from Iowa, @Writer (Penny Kittle) from New Hampshire, @hickstro (Troy Hicks) from Michigan, Spring 2011

@AndreaZellner from Michigan, @poh (Paul Oh) from California, @cakeypal (Kathee Godfrey) from California, and@feministteacher (Ileana Jimenez) from New York. A cadre of successful moderators have elevated our collective thinking about our practice in the classroom, about the tools and strategies we choose to use with our students, about the larger societal forces that shape our work with students. Those who cannot always find time on Mondays to join #engchat, can find our archives at http://engchat.pbworks.com. Cindy Minnich, Capital Area Writing Project teacher consultant, has been an invaluable partner in supporting my work with #engchat. She has archived weekly discussions and maintained a wiki as well. Starting #engchat in the current context of a school district where Twitter is blocked in schools has not come without challenges. I have worked and lived in the dichotomy of benefiting from social media tools on the web but being limited in my use of these tools with my students. By creating a community of English teachers on Twitter, I have done my small part to help teachers who are just now discovering the power of this powerful medium. I continue to grapple several questions regarding the use of #engchat: How do I share the value of #engchat with others who are not regular users of social media tools on the web? While is easy to say that educators make connections through #engchat, what is important about those connections? Lastly, is #engchat encouraging deeper discussion and reflection outside of the one hour discussion amongst the users? Before and after posts by guest moderators and participants show personal connection and reflection on the part of the participants. Join in on the connection and reflection and share your thoughts about role of Twitter chats in lives of teachers and practitioners. ! Meenoo Rami is a high school English teacher at Franklin Learning Center in Philadelphia PA. Meenoo joined PhilWP as a teacher consultant in 2010. Meenoo originally submitted this piece as part of National Writing Project's Digital Is… collection. The original piece can be found at digitalis.nwp.org/resource/1802. Connect with Meeno on Twitter at www.twitter.com/ mrami2. Follow and participate in #engchat via Twitter each Monday evening starting at 7:00 EST.

The teacher said, “We are going to

read this story out loud. We will go around the room. Sam, you begin, please.” My stomach flipped over. I hated reading aloud. I couldn’t do it. It made me nervous. Everyone was listening and then looking. I knew I would mess up when it was my turn, and I did. I was so nervous. I tried to read the words on the page, but what I read obviously wasn’t what was on the page. I finished reading and looked up. The room was silent, and everyone was staring at me. I am not sure what I read, but I had obviously changed around the word order in my head and probably added in a couple of words that weren’t there for good measure. These were the kinds of mistakes people didn’t associate with sixth graders—but I was different from most sixth graders. I looked normal: average build, long brown hair, fair skin, a twelve-year-old girl. But reading and writing were tricky for me. You could tell, if you knew what to look for, even when I was little. I turned letters and numbers and even entire words around: a five for an “s”; a three for an “e”; 89 for 98 and vice versa; “was” for “saw” and the same backwards. If it is true that children learn to spell phonetically, my own phonetic understanding didn’t correspond to anything that made sense to most people, especially adults. And get this, I couldn’t tell my left from my right—something most kids learned in kindergarten or first grade. I didn’t tell anyone. I hoped people wouldn’t notice. But then there were incidents like reading aloud, and everyone could see—I was deficient, I was stupid. I was a slow reader. When I got to words I didn’t know or couldn’t pronounce, I skipped right over them—and there were a lot of those. My father was sympathetic. He was patient with me. I would ask him what words meant and how to spell them, and he would tell me. It turns out, he was a slow reader. My mother had no patience; she was a fast reader and couldn’t relate to my difficulties. She would tell me to look a word up in the dictionary, but she didn’t understand. To top it off, I couldn’t process letters when they were fired off at me. I heard the first one or two, and then the letters fused together, and I wouldn’t grasp any of them. Dad learned to slow down for me. He would slowly spell the word out for me, so I could understand.

My special phonetics made using the dictionary a crapshoot. Letters and sounds that I heard in my head didn’t correspond to the words the dictionary authors understood. Was it “sighcology” or maybe “cyclology”? The dictionary was not my friend. An essential tool for most readers and writers—was indecipherable for me. Occasionally, I could guess right and find a word in the dictionary, but too often even glancing at a page was an exercise in frustration. Most of the time, my struggles didn’t show. I was a slow reader, my spelling was horrible or “inventive” (a description that changed according to the temperaments of my teachers), and I skillfully avoided reading aloud. I was okay with math. I got by in school. Sometimes I even did well, but it was slow, plodding, and laborious work. Packed on bookshelves in bedrooms, hallways, and my dad’s office, books were integral parts of my home. Dad, always supportive and patient, was a reader. I watched him read every day, doggedly reading through the books to stay current in his field, and he wrote too, but I didn’t understand that part very well. As much as I may have resisted reading, my constant exposure to books at home and in school made me realize, unconsciously at first, that I would need to make my peace with books and words. And I did. Slowly, gradually, I read and read and read, and I wrote and wrote and wrote. Reading and writing were often struggles, but I improved.

When I was struggling with reading and writing as a child, I never realized that I was displaying symptoms of a known condition: dyslexia. There were other students who struggled with some combination of my symptoms to lesser or greater degrees, and teachers employed strategies to help kids like me. My dyslexia became apparent when my baby sister hit an academic wall in fifth grade. She had listened carefully and collected information so well that she hid her reading and writing problems—until PhilWP Journal

by Kathleen Murphey

fifth grade. In fifth grade, she couldn’t fake it any more. She was having trouble, and the extent of her reading and writing problems became apparent. It was devastating for her. My parents pulled her out of our school and sent her to a special school. The special school helped—but the emotional and psychological impact of needing an “intervention” to get her on track left invisible scars on her that took decades to heal. My sister’s designation as a child who was dyslexic and learning disabled forced family members to consider patterns of reading and writing problems amongst our kin. It turns out that my grandfather had some struggles with reading and writing, and so did my father. Unusually, in our nuclear family, my sister and I had reading and writing difficulties; most of these patterns are associated with males. However, my brother seemed fine; my sister and I exhibited the symptoms. My family has theory about our cases of dyslexia. The theory is that we were all born left-hand dominant but switched and are right-handed. My grandfather, born just before the turn of the 20th century, was beaten until he used his right hand. As horrible as that might seem to us today, in the 1890s, your left hand was associated with the devil. It was common to force children to stop using their left hands for writing. Although my father, sister, and I were never beaten into adopting right-handedness, we believe that we were born as lefties but were taught to do things and write by right-handed people. We then, consciously or unconsciously, suppressed our left-handed tendencies and became righties. One consequence of making this switch is the tendency toward dyslexia. I don’t know whether this is a formal test or not—but you can test your predominant hand tendency in a simple way. Put your hands together and intertwine your fingers. One thumb will be on top. The thumb on top is your natural hand dominance tendency. My father, sister, and I put our left thumbs on top. Yet we all use our rights hands. In addition, if I try to intertwine my fingers the other way so that my right thumb is on top, it feels unnatural. Most people I know put a specific thumb on top and feel weird if they try to switch thumbs and positions. For most people, the thumb they put on top is the hand they write with. Not Spring 2011

for all, though, and not for my sister, my dad, or me. In the 1970s, girls were not expected to exhibit symptoms of dyslexia. Perhaps that’s why my sister and I weren’t diagnosed. I don’t know. However, I do know that the identification of dyslexia in my sister gave me a way to think about my own problems with reading and writing. It made me see myself as part of a group of people who struggled. I was not personally deficient. I was not as isolated and alone. It was also powerful to know my father had struggled and overcome reading and writing difficulties. If he could, perhaps I could. If I worked at it. A transition happened in high school. I began to excel in English class, which meant literature, reading, and writing didn’t seem so enigmatic. Practice made the dictionary a little easier to use, although not always. My erratic spelling became less pronounced. I learned tricks for reading aloud in class. I would move my finger or pen under each word in the sentence so that I would focus on each word and read it in the order it was written on the page instead of allowing the sheer panic of the experience to scramble the words in front of my eyes. I still couldn’t tell my right from my left, but I started wearing a pearl ring on my left hand (the “l” in pearl for left) and a garnet ring on my right hand (the “r” in garnet for right). (I am a January baby, so I had a garnet ring, and I also liked pearls and had a pretty pearl ring.) So when people said left or right, I could glance at my hands and understand which way they meant; most of the time, I did this causally, and most didn’t notice. I went to college and realized a whole range of things had shifted for me. I took college much more seriously than high school. The work was very challenging; so, I joined a study group—one of the best choices I ever made. We challenged each other and worked together. We pushed each other further than we would have traveled individually. I wish I had taken high school as seriously or at least thought of a study group back then. When I was a child, the last thing I imagined I would do as an adult would be to spend more time in school. As the years passed, my childhood plans changed. I

learned strategies to help me through school, strategies that worked for me and my special difficulties. I took lots of notes in class and reviewed my notes often. I heavily annotated my books so I knew where to find information later and which information was more important than other information. Perhaps if I had been identified as a “special needs” child, teachers might have given me special attention—instead of leaving me to sorting out what worked for me on my own. However, the children that I did know did not always receive positive special attention, including my sister. Some teachers who work with special education kids really have high expectations for those students and help them. Other teachers are the inspirations for horror stories about low expectations and the self-perpetuating cycle of failure that some children are confined to. In addition to the teacher roulette of special education attention and labels, kids can be cruel. The stigma of being a student who requires special education is its own special burden. I don’t think my sister was teased, but being pulled out of one school and placed in a special school made her feel deficient in and of itself without the comments of her classmates and friends. Along my educational journey, I went from just surviving in school to doing well in school. The coping mechanisms I employed—usually, getting help with spelling and writing from my father and allowing myself extra time to read anything—helped me through. And along the way, shifts in my learning occurred. Reading and reading and reading and writing and writing and writing made me a better reader and writer. I began to look forward to reading books and writing papers. I progressed from college to graduate school. I became a teacher of reading and writing. I have an undergraduate degree and three graduate degrees from an Ivy League university. My doctoral dissertation was 582 pages long. I read and wrote through my reading and writing problems. At last the dictionary is my friend and an essential tool. I still am directionally challenged, but my rings tell me what I need to know. (I have replaced the pearl with a wedding ring on my left hand. The hand that doesn’t have my wedding ring is my right.) It wasn’t easy to overcome my reading and writing struggles—but most things worth having in life do not come easily. The important thing is to know what I did not when I began this journey: you are not alone,

other people struggle with reading and writing, and they can move past those problems and be successful in life. 18

Do you know other people with reading and writing problems? What resources are available? • According to Direct Learning (http://www.dyslexia-test.com/famous.html) the following people have or had dyslexia: Tom Cruise, Steve Jobs, Cher, Walt Disney, Thomas Edison, Salma Hayek, Nelson Rockefeller, Pablo Picasso, Hans Christian Anderson, Lewis Carroll, Leonardo Da Vinci, Magic Johnson, Winston Churchill, Danny Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, and Henry Ford? • Jenny Burm also has maintains a website called Happy Dyslexic with information about famous dyslexic people and other resources (http://www.happydyslexic.com/node/4). • Great Schools (a program funded by the Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation) also has articles and resources that address special education and learning disabilities (http://www.greatschools.org). • HBO released a documentary, I Can’t Do This But I Can Do That: A Film for Families about Learning Differences. View a description of the film at (http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/i-cant-dothis-but-i-can-do-that-a-film-for-families-aboutlearning-differences/synopsis.html) These are just a few sites that might be informational and inspirational. But there are a lot more out there. Although, neither Adrienne Rich nor Malcolm X were dyslexic or learning disabled, both have written about the transformative power of reading and writing. Adrienne Rich wrote a poem about the importance of really learning to read and write, “As If Your Life Depended on It.” She begins the poem by saying,

You must write, and read, as if your life depended on it. That is not generally taught in school. At most, as if your livelihood depended on it: the next step, the next job, grant, scholarship, professional advancement, fame; no questions asked as to further meanings. And, let’s face it, the lesson of the schools for a vast number of children—hence, of readers, is “This is not for you.” Rich’s position is that children in school are taught the basics of reading and writing in school. However, children are not taught to be passionate about reading PhilWP Journal

and writing and are not taught to understand that poor reading and writing skills will close off not only access to the great ideas of men and women all over the world but to professional and career advancement beyond a hidden glass ceiling of written articulateness. I don’t know where I would be today if I hadn’t internalized Rich’s message and began to read and write as if my life depended on it. Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “We Real Cool,” vividly comes to mind: We real cool. We Left school. We Lurk late. We Strike straight. We Sing sin. We Thin gin. We Jazz June. We Die soon. If I hadn’t improved my reading and writing, I would probably still be alive today. However, my life would have been vastly different and limited, just as my potential inarticulateness as a mother would have limited the futures of my children. So read and write as if your life depended on it. Reading and writing may not come easily. They certainly didn’t for me, but I hope my story and the stories of others who have struggled will give you the inspiration you need to keep at it and at it and at it. When you are angry and frustrated in your attempts, you might think of Malcolm X who decided in prison to start with a dictionary and copy page after page to improve his vocabulary. He filled notebook after notebook, copying the dictionary from A to Z. With 1,000 to 1,500 pages or more in a standard college dictionary, imagine how long it took him to copy and to memorize the words he copied. Years? The struggle is often long and daunting, and it is all too easy to give up and just decide that reading and writing well are “not for you” or that you are “too cool for school.” Don’t give in. Don’t give up. Read and write as if your life depended on it. ! Kathleen Murphey is an English professor at the Community College of Philadelphia. Kathleen joined PhilWP as a teacher consultant the summer of 2008. Kathleen started this piece in the journal she kept for the Summer Invitational Institute. Spring 2011

SPOTLIGHT ON STUDENT WRITING

write on

As a computer teacher at

Overbrook Elementary School, I have opportunities to work with students on various projects. I enjoy making the effort to incorporate writing into my classes. Sometimes I use standalone lessons during which students write shorter pieces such as poetry. Other lessons involve longer narrative or descriptive pieces that I work on in collaboration with the classroom teacher. The tools of technology support studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; efforts and enhance their options for sharing. Following are samples of some student work and the context of the assignment.

by Rita Sorentino

SEASONS CHANGE The following poems were motivated by the advent of March, the much-awaited season of spring, and the annual Flower Show at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. March by Tanirah, Grade 2 March is fun. When March comes, things change. The weather changes. Good-bye winter! Please come soon, spring.

Spring by Chrisjon, Grade 2 Spring is like a holiday. All the animals are going to come out and play Like baby rabbits and baby birds.

A Salute To flowers by Anissa, Grade 4 To colorful blossoms everywhere To bees buzzing around the flowers To different sizes and shapes of beauty To a sweet nectary smell To gardens full of bright colors To soft pedals of fragile flowers To a bouquet in the center of a table A Salute to Flowers!

You do not need a coat. You can run and play. Hooray! PhilWP Journal

OVERBOOK’S GOT TALENT The students in fifth grade were required to write an informational piece. For this assignment, they were given a prompt to write about a talent or skill they have or would like to have in the future. During the brainstorming stage one student suggested we use these for a bulletin board and name it, “Overbrook’s Got Talent.” Since the students were writing something of interest to them, they put great effort into the planning, writing, and editing of their pieces. As a follow up, several students are creating digital versions of their writings that showcase their talents. Working with these students on their traditional and digital versions helped me learn more about them and observe some otherwise shy students finding their voices and sharing with a large audience.

My Musical Talent by Christina, Grade 5

My Artistic Talent by Tanhiya, Grade 5

I started singing as soon as I learned how to talk. It started with short rhymes, and I got better at them over time. The first song I knew all the words to was a song from my church choir. I sang my first solo in my church choir when I was five years old. I’ve been singing all my life; now singing is my LIFE!

My talent is art. I started drawing when I was in kindergarten so I was five years old. The pictures I used to draw were simple. I used to draw flowers, people, dresses, and things like that. But the things I draw now are out of the ordinary. I draw funerals and caskets because the caskets have so much detail and the people can be crying and there could be a pastor. To me it is fun to draw these things. The other things that I draw that are out of the ordinary are people playing sports like basketball, baseball, and more.

I like singing during performances because it feels good when the audience claps for me. When the audience claps for me it gives me confidence to sing even better. Singing certain lyrics can change how you feel. Sometimes I cry when I sing, sometimes I laugh. When I sing during performances I have to sing loudly. That way the audience can hear me and appreciate my song. I sing everywhere, and I sing mostly everything. Singing is everything to me. I sing certain songs when I’m bored, mad, sad, or nervous. Singing has given me friends and enemies. That’s why I love singing.

Funny Stuff by Kayla, Grade 5

Now I’m going to tell you who taught me. Me! I taught myself. When I saw paintings and pictures I got interested. My dad is an artist so I got some of my talent from him. The reason why I love or like to draw is because I can, and I do it well. I love art so much. When I grow up, I am going to have two jobs: an art teacher and an architect. When I become a teenager, my drawings are not going to be normal. I’m going to draw baseball and basketball together, the sun and moon having tea and more. Like I said, my talent is art.

I love making jokes because it makes people laugh, and I love making people laugh. It makes me feel good, and it makes them feel good too. The funniest person I know that is funnier than me is Bill Cosby. He is an artist! Everybody would want to watch his show and listen to his routines. Making jokes is like a gift to everybody, and it’s just amazing how it cheers people up. That’s why I do it. What makes me funny are the jokes I tell like, “Why didn’t the skeleton cross the road…because he didn’t have any guts.” “What did the pig eat for breakfast… bacon and his friend.” Those are the jokes people laugh at. I just love making these and other jokes. Being funny is a talent that I share with others.

Spring 2011

THE CITY After students read and discussed Langston Hughes’ poem, “The City,” they wrote their own poems to reflect their experiences of coming to school in the city.

The Children by Nadia, Grade 5 In the morning, the children Open their doors Rushing to school Making a song about being happy About friends and recess and fun In the evening, the children Go to sleep Dreaming about tomorrow With the bright moon and shiny stars Outside their windows.

PEACE POEM FOR MARTIN LUTHER KING For Martin Luther King Day, students wrote poems about peace in his honor. They used a template encouraging them to use their senses to incorporate similes and metaphors. A Poem in Honor of Dr. King by Sydney, Grade 4 Peace is like a ray of sunshine. Peace looks like happiness in smiles. It sounds like calm waves, and It is not always here, But peace can be possible.

The Kids by Jada, Grade 5

A Poem in Honor of Dr. King by Jordan, Grade 4

In the morning The sun shines bright The kids spread their wings Going to school Some are nervous Some are excited All of them are children with joy in their hearts

Peace is like a soft gentle breeze Peace looks like geese on a lovely pond. It sounds like family and friends, and it can be like love and happiness, but you have to work for it if you want it always around you. Peace!

In the evening The kids come home Doing their homework Getting in their bed to sleep Looking out at the stars Knowing the sun will come back up again tomorrow.

Rita Sorrentino is a computer teacher at Overbrook Elementary School. Rita joined PhilWP as a teacher consultant in 1993. Some of the student writings have been posted on The Blacktop, an online journal for Philadelphia youth. Visit the journal at http://www.theblacktop.org. PhilWP Journal

BEARS & Bears In the Eastern European Jewish

tradition, as in many cultures, humans had a

deep spiritual relationship with animals, such as bears and cubs. Accordingly, baby boys were given Hebrew and Yiddish paired names: Dov Ber, Aryeh Leib, and Zev Volf, in the ursine, leonine, and lupine cases, respectively. Related to this phenomenon are the names of sports teams: the Chicago Bears, Detroit Lions, and Michigan Wolverines in football; the Chicago Cubs and Detroit Tigers in baseball; and the Minnesota Timberwolves in basketball. My maternal grandfather’s name was Dov Ber; and I have a first cousin Brian, who is named after him. In my tenth-grade high-school class at Edison High School in Philadelphia four years ago, I had a student named Brian Santiago, who used to remind me of my cousin Brian because of their height, husky build, and their name. In my subconscious, I associated both Brians with playful bears. Bears, to be sure, can have a frightening aspect; and, accordingly, I shall never forget one experience of close proximity to a large brown bear, which may well have been the scariest event of my life. My ex-wife and I camped for a week in the summer of 1969 in Big Meadows Campground high in the mountains of California’s Yosemite National Park. Bears frequented the garbage dumps of the campground. They were not ferocious grizzlies (and yet such bears have been known to kill people for one reason or another); they lumbered around casually outside of the campground; and the park rangers assured campers

Spring 2011

Brians by Edward Levenson

that the bears “would not bother us if we would not bother them.” But an important rule was to secure all food in our cars overnight. I never left food out; but one evening I forgot to clear from the picnic table, which was six feet from my tent, an empty, clean pot. In the middle of the night, I was awakened by a bear’s guttural grunting and snorting and the clanking of the utensil. Fear gripped me of the danger of the bear ripping into my tent and making a meal of me. I froze stone cold for three long minutes before the bear finally went away. One day, I had my overhead-projector screen down in the front of the classroom, whereupon Brian Santiago thought it would be very funny if he would hide behind it and then pop out at me. Though quite good-natured, he was a very mischievous “class clown”; and he used to hide in nooks and crannies, and under tables of the room to the delight of his fellow students. When I caught a glimpse of him behind the screen; however, my heart skipped ten beats. I instantaneously associated the screen with my tent canvas of old and Brian with that bear! When a student asked me whether I had suddenly gotten sick, I replied that I had just relived a very unsettling experience and that it might take me a little time before I wanted to tell about it. ! Edward Levenson is a social studies teacher at Edison High School. He participated in PhilWP Summer Institutes I and II in 2007 and 2008. He has camped at many of the spectacular national parks of the United States.

REFLECTIONS ON LEADERSHIP

Coaching

Collaborative

Teaching by Cozette Ferron

In the Spring of 2006, a sense of community and

feeling of re-energized collaboration happened during a time of ongoing change in the School District of Philadelphia. The Office of Specialized Services (OSIS) was selected to participate in a Secondary Program Pilot for the Delivery of Special Education Services. I, in collaboration with another central office special education manager Kathryn Donahue, designed, implemented, monitored, and evaluated the Access to the Core/Secondary Co-Teaching Pilot. We launched the Secondary Co-Teaching Pilot as a collaborative partnership between the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and the Philadelphia Writing Project (PhilWP). The project’s goal was to establish a cohort of regular education/special education teacher pairs to implement researched-based instructional models aimed at improving academic performances among students with disabilities through the inclusive delivery of instructional practices. The SDP was implementing a rigorous, citywide standards-based Core Curriculum in regular and special education classrooms. Both regular and special education teachers reported a lack of resources and guidance to support struggling students with standards-based instruction in the content areas. Students in the regular education class were often not receiving the instructional support level of accommodations needed to master the content to which they were exposed. In the special education classes, many students with disabilities were not benefiting from the content knowledge and subject area expertise of regular education teachers. As a result, graduating by the “IEP” became the norm and more students were dropping out due to a lack of sufficient credits to graduate. Current research and legislation recommended implementation of differentiated instruction and collaborative teaching in regular education classes for all regular and special education students. We created a program that addressed differentiated instruction as a foundational inclusive practice, purchase of appropriate supplemental materials and co-planning time between regular and special education teachers. We actively recruited teacher teams (regular and special education teacher) in 22 school sites. Our school community was a true diverse

PhilWP Journal

Reflections on a Philadelphia Secondary Co-Teaching Pilot Project population of teachers seeking ways to enhance and improve their instructional practices. Our schools ranged from the three new progressive schools that were newly opened (Science Leadership Academy, and Constitution High School), three charter schools – Imhotep, Hope Charter, and Germantown Settlement High School and 17 Comprehensive High Schools (Edison, Frankford, Lincoln, Fels, Washington, Fitzsimons, Rhodes, Paul Robeson, Bartram, Olney 704 & 705, University City, Carver, William Penn, Dobbins, Gratz, Strawberry Mansion, Elverson, HS for the Future, and Ben Franklin. Phase I included the following: Three Saturday workshops in the spring (May-June 2006) provided by the Philadelphia Writing Project that created a sense of community and was successful in using writing as a critical tool for learning across the curriculum. The central office project managers facilitated three followup workshop modules in August 2006 – (team building: General and Special Educators, Effective Co-Teaching Strategies, and Co-Planning Curriculum Using State Standards). Phase II involved on-site implementation of Support (Fall 2006-2007) and a Leadership Academy for Co-Teaching for principals in the summer 2007 for planning in the fall 2007 and beyond (cohort of 22 high school principals attended this training). The result-oriented outcomes developed by the project provided evidence of the success of this innovative project. Video interviews with co-teachers and administrators were successfully used to introduce inclusive practices to educators, parents and community groups. The video from the participating sites was edited for a variety of uses, with the central goal of embedding video modeling into interactive and technology-based professional development. Ongoing videotaping of the program supported a model of sharing classroom best practices in co-teaching to a variety of audiences (administrators, teachers, parents, etc.). The video also included interviews illustrating the impact of inclusive practices, featuring administrators and co-teachers at three different sites: a magnet school, one charter school and one comprehensive school. As an outgrowth of this project, classroom vignettes documented this inquiry-based approach of reflecting on instructional practices through looking at student work. Ongoing dialogue did occur between the co-teaching sites through collaborative professional

Spring 2011

communities. A website was developed to extend the cohort’s collegial community into a virtual environment where they could share best practices and continue their engagement in collegial support. Dialogue, expansion of the project and posting of more video and audio clips were to be the next steps in this project. When the school year ended, a new central administration came and changed the structure of central and regional staff. Many involved in the project were reorganized into the district’s new empowerment model. Although the Secondary Co-Teaching Pilot Project/Grant ended, it generated many possibilities of collaborative partnerships, in the midst of major changes in our School District. As I reflect on the work of this innovative Secondary Co-Teaching Pilot program, there are days that I wonder if collaborative teamwork is still happening in the targeted pilot schools. I remember a national consultant, Lisa Dieker, in a two-day training on “Effective Strategies for Secondary Inclusion” sharing, “Change comes slowly, but it does not matter how slow the process is, as long as it does not stop!" Research indicates that it takes three to five years to adopt new and promising practices. In response to changes in our district with co-teaching, I have seen positive learning outcomes and a shared sense of success when students with disabilities are included in the general education classrooms. Lisa Dieker, in her book Demystifying Secondary Inclusion, states, “Teachers act differently but, more importantly, students who are different feel a sense of sameness by being given the opportunity to have the same teachers, sit at the same desks, and learn the same ‘good stuff’ as their nondisabled peers.” As we move forward, teachers and administrators require more training and collaborative team planning to truly demystify secondary inclusion across grade and subject levels in our schools. Cozette Ferron is the Co-Director of Professional Development for the Philadelphia Writing Project and retired as a special education administrator with the School District of Philadelphia. Cozette became a PhilWP teacher consultant in 1992. Cozette originally wrote this reflection for PhilWP’s Leadership Inquiry Seminar. Video reflections of the pilot are available in the PhilWP office.

books are sailing through the air, and your principal is quickly advancing down the hall?

collaborative review

The New

Teacher Book

by Sam Reed, John Pickersgill, and Lauren Goldberg

We began this school year with a critical eye and had high expectations for our students and ourselves. We knew that it would be difficult but had confidence that we could handle the challenges. We knew we could stay afloat, and that we needed to do whatever it takes to lead our students to success. No excuses. Only five months into the school year, we already look back on our intentions as naïve and short-sighted. Books, such as the second edition of The New Teacher Book, in addition to the advice from our colleagues and online resources, have been a lifeline during our early years in the profession. When we picked up a copy of The New Teacher Book; however, we had our skepticism. We expected empty promises cushioned by idealistic fluff that did nothing to validate our reality. A major qualm that we have with most advice guides for new teachers is that they tend to be too ambiguous, or on the flipside, prescriptive. Some new teacher books try to provide how-to tactics that seem unrealistic. Use proximity, then eye contact, and finally, the dooming “verbal warning.” What if students sound like a freight train,

This second edition of The New Teacher Book is different. It is meant to provide practical advice and pedagogical ideas by addressing multiple perspectives. It consists of a collection of essays, from novice and experienced teachers, from urban and underfunded school districts to private and suburban ones. The selections are divided by theme, and each offer discussions, challenges, remedies, or successes that characterize the authors’ practices. The themes covered are relevant issues that are rarely or inadequately covered in our teacher training programs. Topics like creating a community of equity and respect, addressing the dangers of standardized test inequities, and succumbing to the “undertow” are central questions that may help new and seasoned teachers avoid burnout. The first parts of The New Teacher Book offer poignant and realistic experiences that will resonate with most new teachers. We are glad to see that we are not the only ones whose idea of free time is watching TV while grading stacks of papers. How did some of the contributors know that we “get lost in the everyday details,” or we continually get so “caught up in the immediacy of teaching that [we] don’t pay enough attention to the larger context"? It felt good to realize that we are not crazy and, despite what it felt like, we are not necessarily failing as teachers. The overall tone of this book acknowledges that new teachers must pace themselves and be patient. Dale Weiss, a 3rd grade teacher from Milwaukee, in a “Voices from the Classroom” (http://www.urbanedjournal.org/articles/article0023.p df) excerpt, warns, “Don’t be harder on yourself than you would your most trying student.” This is good PhilWP Journal

advice to remember in a profession that expects you to hit the ground running your first year. The authors create a balance of validating new teachers and providing valuable advice by sharing the feelings they had early in their careers, but then continue to highlight what turned things around for them, and how in their own contexts, those strategies became long-term successes. Having our feelings validated could only carry us so far through the book. This would be a fantastic book to read over the summer when there is time and space to think about the larger picture of social justice in our classroom and over-arching educational theory. However, this is not the summer. We read this book for practical advice and ideas that we could use now. Don’t just tell us that you have trouble taking class time to give effective feedback to your students. We want to know how we can solve this problem! We don’t have time to waste reading over 300 pages on struggling teachers. We could just look back at our own classrooms. There are some true pearls of wisdom in the New Teacher Book; it is just a shame that we had to spend so much time finding them. The Q/A sections are invaluable. Quick questions that impact teachers’ everyday lives are answered, and practical ideas are provided. Instead of just advising new teachers to get to know their colleagues and observe them, the Q/A sections suggest you sit down with fellow teachers and take a look at their written lesson plans. In fact, it would be even more useful for you to ask a veteran teacher how he or she goes about planning an entire unit of study. The New Teacher Book does a great job of answering critical questions with practical advice that can be used right away. Questions like: ! How do I build community in my classroom? ! How do I effectively assess my students’ learning? ! How do I get the attention-seeking class clowns to give me the "stage" to teach? These questions and more are addressed and, because of the diverse voices, there are ample ideas and perspectives that will work, or can be adapted to work, in any one's classroom. One theme that resonates with us is building community. We learned that it is our job to acknowledge the differences among students and dispel negative stereotypes within our school communities in order to create an atmosphere of respect in which Spring 2011

students feel safe. In Linda Christensen’s article (http:// www.lclark.edu/graduate/faculty/members/linda_ch ristensen), “Building Community from Chaos,” she states that real communities are forged out of struggle, and recommends that teachers provide a curriculum that teaches empathy. She uses materials that create connections for students,“The reverberation across cultures, time, and gender challenged the students’ previous notion that reading and talking about novels didn’t have relevance for them.” To strengthen communities, she suggests that teachers employ activism and work toward a common goal; to find a small crack in the exteriors that students put up to create a community. The collections in The New Teacher Book help us learn a valuable lesson—there are many solutions to our challenges as new teachers. Herbert Kohl advises that teachers, “Pick and choose, retool and restructure the best of what you find and make it your own. Most of all watch your students and see what works.” There are many strategies to effectively teach or manage students because children are dynamic, diverse, and human. As we move forward as teachers, we plan to remember that as long as we diligently work towards the safety, enrichment, and success of our students we will become better over time. !

Samuel Reed is a School Based Instructional Specialist at Beeber Middle School. Sam became a PhilWP teacher consultant in 2000. John Pickersgill and Lauren Goldberg, teachers at Beeber Middle School, collaborated with Sam to write this review. Lauren is in her first full year of teaching, while John is in his second year. This review was originally written as a blog entry for and published by The Philadelphia Public School Notebook. Visit www.thenotebook.org to view more of Sam’s blog posts.

Miedo a Escribir por José-Manuel Navarro

Tengo miedo. Tengo miedo de escribir. Tengo miedo de expresarme Tengo miedo de que me refuten, me cuestionen, Me condenen, me citen mal, me ignoren. Tengo miedo de que me lean. Si me leen, me pueden refutar. Si me leen, se enterarán de mis secretos. Sabrán lo que soy. Si saben lo que soy, me desvelan al mundo. Si me desvelan al mundo, me desnudan en público. Si me desnudan en público, me abochornan. Si me abochornan, me incomodo. Incomodarme es sentirme algo menos de lo esperado. Incomodarme es creerme peor de lo que se espera de mí. No sé quién lo espera, cómo, ni cuándo, pero lo esperan. Yo sé que me esperan. Me esperan para leerme, para oírme, para criticarme, para refutarme. Me tienen asustado, anodado, confuso. Tengo miedo. No escribiré.

PhilWP Journal

Fear of Writing by José-Manuel Navarro

I’m afraid. I’m afraid of writing. I’m afraid of expressing myself. I’m afraid that they’ll refute me or question me, if I write. I’m afraid they’ll condemn me, misquote me, or ignore me. I’m afraid that they’ll read what I write. If they read me, they can refute me. If they read me, they might uncover my innermost thoughts. If they uncover my innermost thoughts, they’ll reveal me to the world. If they reveal me to the world, they’ll strip me naked in public. If they strip me naked in public, they’ll shame me. If they shame me, I’ll be uncomfortable. To be uncomfortable is to feel that I am less than what’s expected of me. I can’t be less than what’s expected of me. I don’t know who expects what, how or when, but they expect it. I know they’re waiting for me. They’re waiting to read me, hear me, critique me, and refute me. I’m scared, speechless, confused. I’m afraid. I won’t write.

José-Manuel Navarro taught social studies and history in the Bilingual Multicultural Program at Edison High School for 8 years. He joined PhilWP as a teacher consultant in 2002. While at Edison, José-Manuel taught courses in Puerto Rican history, politics, and civilization and supervised master’s projects in La Salle University’s Master of Arts in Bilingual/Bicultural Studies program. José-Manuel taught all coursework in Spanish.

Spring 2011

TEACHING. WRITING. REFLECTING.

findingmyvoice by Molly Thacker

An English Teacher’s Reflections on Her Own Development as a Writer

I have always written as a way of

making sense of my experiences and have always treasured being able to turn to writing as a way of making something beautiful out of something painful or difficult. I remember receiving a blank journal for my 13th birthday from my mom and reveling in its empty pages, then filling them voraciously with angst. I have also enjoyed reading for as long as I can remember. To this day, I can recite almost word for word the book I learned to read with (The Large and Growly Bear) and have distinct memories of sitting with my grandmother at the breakfast table and reading the daily newspaper to her, peering over my tea cup to make sure she was paying attention and was sufficiently impressed. In fact, it is my love for reading and writing that has guided many of my decisions in life, from studying literature in college to becoming a high school English teacher. It is what brought me here to Philly and why I now lead the life that I do. So why, so many years later can I not seem to find the time to write a 100 word blog post about issues I am truly passionate about? How does time slip by without me finding a quiet corner in which to journal about the mundane or monumental events of the day? Why do stacks of books gather dust on my bedside table and patiently wait to be opened until June when I finally feel like I have the freedom to read something besides an essay written by a fifteen year old or an article about education policy? Why do I not make reading and writing more of a priority, like I urge my students to do, even when they are so much a part of what gives my life meaning and pleasure? The short answer, and perhaps the easy excuse, is a lack of time. Between the mountainous to-do lists and endless stacks of grading and lesson plans, life seems to get in the way of putting pen to paper. The longer, more complex answer involves me addressing fear, which I try to avoid doing. Finding my voice as a blogger was a strange experience. When Spring 2011

I was writing publicly, I became concerned with the implications of putting my voice “out there.” On one hand, I became part of a new network and community that was very positive and encouraging – my work was being validated in a powerful way, in a way that I wasn’t used to, and I liked it. I felt like my voice was being recognized and valued not just as a teacher but also as an intellectual and a community member. On the other hand, there was a lot of risk involved in entering that space of public writing. I had to ask myself who I was and if I was representing myself authentically, not sugar coating or angling my experience a particular way. In the back of my mind, though, always, was the fact that I don’t just represent myself. I also represent Teach For America, the School District of Philadelphia, the school at which I teach, the family of which I am a part, and the organizations with which I align myself including PhilWP. Speaking on behalf of all those entities at times felt overwhelming and impossible.

But it feels so much better to speak up than it does to stay quiet. Finding and refining my voice as a teacher/writer/activist has been tricky and I imagine, like finding and refining my identity as teacher, it will be a long, continuous process. No matter how often I get sidetracked, though, I hope that I will always find my way back to writing because, in searching for the right words to say, I am brought back to center, back to reality, back to my true self. And that’s exactly who I want to be.! Molly Thacker is a high school English teacher at the Arts Academy at Benjamin Rush. Molly joined PhilWP as a teacher consultant in 2007.

op-ed

speak up The purpose for the PhilWP Journal—and the theme of this inaugural issue—is to provide a space in which teachers (re)assert their voices. Which implies, of course, that those voices have somewhere, somehow, been silenced. As indeed they may have been. Some teachers’ voices have been silenced by outrage— buried beneath the rhetorical fallout from politicians and pundits who claim to be outraged over the failure of American public education. Most of them treat this alleged failure as if it were fact. And none has any trouble assigning the blame—loudly, vindictively, and with a characteristic disregard for things like data from validated research studies. In other cases, teachers’ voices have been silenced by the increasingly hostile and outrageous circumstances of our professional lives … the frustration of a teacher who is increasingly required to do things that are not teaching … the isolation of a teacher whose knowledge is unheeded and even vilified … the alienation of a teacher whose practice is subject to constantly shifting demands, secret agenda, and Kafka-esque accusations and judgments. But perhaps the greatest outrage is the silence that is of our own making. The silence that results from the inability or unwillingness of teachers to speak up for themselves. Inability or unwillingness—doesn’t matter which. And it doesn’t matter why—fear, disengagement, simple lack of time. There can be no justification for silence, no rationale for passivity—especially not in the face of the kind of coordinated attack that’s being waged against teachers today. It’s not yet too late. We must believe there still is time. There are still voices raised on our behalf. Matt Damon, for example, has recently been saying that “the idea that we're testing kids and we're tying teachers’ salaries to how kids are performing on tests—that kind of mechanized thinking has nothing to do with higher-order. We're training them, not teaching them." But Matt Damon is, unfortunately, an endangered species. Increasingly, even our traditional allies are distancing themselves from us. We can depend no longer on friendly voices, so we must raise our own. Because silence, dear colleagues, will make us complicit in our own betrayal. George McDermott is an English teacher at Simon Gratz High School. George joined PhilWP as a teacher consultant in 2009. Spring 2011

Editorial Team The Spring 2011 issue of the Philadelphia Writing Project Journal was compiled and edited by Tamara Anderson, Teri Hines, Trey Smith, Molly Thacker, and Diane Waff. The Next Issue Interested in submitting a piece to the Journal? Submit ideas and questions to philwpupdate@gmail.com. The theme for the upcoming issue is maintaining a balance, sustaining an educatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s practice and spirit.

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