Unexpected productivity

I've been writing Essay, Discussion and Quiz questions for the core texts I will be teaching. It took me forever to do half of Romeo and Juliet, but that was when I was unfocused, still forming a clear plan of action as to how I would shape my units plans. Now that I had those discrete categories I breezed through the rest: finished 3.5 acts of R&J and 2.5 sections of Of Mice and Men with lots of questions. Of course I need to make full plans and there are 4 more core texts to go - including lengthier texts like Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird. But at this rate, with all of July and half of August, I am in good shape to finish... Are there details I forgot to think about? I guess there is good ol' grammar - but I'm glad I won't start T1 (year one of teaching, analogous to Med schools' M1) in a panicked rush :)

I'll post some of my work soon. Multiple choice questions writing - because all on the factual recall level - is pretty effortless and even creative in the necessity for clever distractors! 

Fusion

Teachers need to bring together the subject matter/disciplinary literature with knowledge of their teenage audience. Reading what critics say is one half of the equation. More on this tomorrow.

Planning for Planning

It's true what Gretchen Rubin says about happiness: once one goal is reached, the happiness is short-lived because you then have a new unfulfilled goal with challenges in between where you are and where you want to be once again. So after the relief and joy of promised employment, my next challenge is to lesson plan for the year. I know the 6 core texts I will teach.  For my Honors 9 sections, I will teach To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, Romeo & Juliet, and the Odyssey.  For College Prep 11, I will teach The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and one of the Arthur Miller plays either Crucible or Death of a Salesman. In addition to re-reading them all with critical annotations, I have to create unit-long daily activities. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed with how to begin creating my lesson plans. I needed a plan.

One principle hammered in us in my teacher ed program was to begin at the end, known as Backward Design (McTighe & Wiggins). The next step is to design activities and assessments with these pre-determined final objectives in mind. Simple... except I felt I did not know what my objectives for the classes were. I went to the Common Core Language Arts page (www.corestandards.org). Wasn't inspired. Hmm okay, stepping back, I realized that the end PRODUCT I wanted was a literary analysis paper and for students to be able to speak about these canonical texts confidently. So I had to read excellent literary analyses and make sure to teach how to write them memorably! Today I found contemporary Of Mice and Men book reviews (1930s-40s) that hit on all of the biggies in OMM succinctly and with specific references (score! Specificity is one of my teaching rules...).  I made sure to note mentions of themes, story elements, and tone/mood/diction in order to create graphic organizers that support getting students to appreciate Steinbeck's simple yet eloquent tragic storytelling about friendship/goodness in the midst of - not evil - but apathy/broken dreams/bitter adult reality.

A G.O. for Themes in Of Mice and Men

With Romeo and Juliet, I read a literary analysis rather than No Fear Shakespeare. A clear objective for R&J is simple comprehension of the language. But have they truly comprehended the book if they  don't know what overarching message Shakespeare is sending? That's why the unit has to scaffold understanding of an Essential Question, probably something like "What is the nature of love?" What I realized through reading the literary criticism is that Romeo & Juliet is structured in contradictions! There are so many things to point out - couplets, setting, voice, humor,  allusion - but I think I can hit much of it if I ask kids to find the contradictions (lust vs. love, love vs. violence, love vs. time).

Scaffold for personal connections in Romeo & Juliet

Whoo! It's great to know what the goal looks like and where it is. Now just gotta make the plays.

Gooooooooooooooals

In the game of teaching, does this matter more?

or this?

Or this?

I watched a World Cup game yesterday. I can't tell you who any of the teams in the above pictures are. But I certainly noticed what scenes made up most of the programming. It wasn't the scenes of winning - those came at the end.  No, the small advances, the blocks that prevented the other team from scoring, and the fans' reactions made up the bulk of the camera shots. There were also many shots of injuries on the field and quick recoveries. The analogy is that this blog will have its share of conflicts and resolutions, tangents, indulgences and drama. It will probably often be the recipient of stress release. And spectators, I need your feedback, in the comments.

In short (and many posts will be short and simple, a key principle to excellent teaching), this is my journal of moving onward - sometimes I'll stumble, under and overestimate, miscommunicate, miscalculate, hyperventilate, erupt, and neglect - but I'll be moving nevertheless. It is how I'll become a teacher.

--

...slightly longer introduction, if this is still interesting to you:

Just like teaching, it's ideal to start off with what I want to accomplish in this endeavor. Well, I want to keep notes - some more cohesive than others - of my first year of teaching, beginning now, the summer before AUGUST 25 (the first first day of school).

On this blog, I want the reader to:
-be interested. and keep reading.
-to assume some parts of the blog are just for me, and not try to decipher or care about everything I write. Usually the stuff with pictures are for you :)
-re-live yet read more than just narratives of my experience: synthesis, artistry, prose, fantastical ideas and proposals

I plan to reflect. Boring? But as an English teacher, I must discover how reflection is useful for the writer by doing it myself. I want to reflect on my plans for the kids and how they actually played out in order to figure out what I learned [teacher mode]. I will also reflect on the institution of teaching [teacher educator mode]. I hope the reader will enjoy both.

My grandest objective is to grow - in real life and right before your very eyes on this blog. Growth is, after all, happiness, and the reason that is hard to recognize is because growth doesn't always feel good.  The thrill is the journey, chase, and climb - NOT being at the summit, finish line, goal (Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project).  Don't get me wrong - I think there will be victories and concrete milestones. But I'll continue past them, a brief hiatus, a touchdown in a loooong football game filled with yards gained and lost (yup, a sports analogy. Please don't think I know anything about sports. The analogy was adapted from Matthew Johnson's Finding Success the First Year).  But maybe this blog will actually help me notice, track, and celebrate growth as I stumble, under and overestimate, miscalculate, hyperventilate, erupt, and neglect this year.

One more note. I read other teacher blogs, since the cliché advice is to keep a log of your first year teaching. I read mostly the ones that have the blogspot address I wanted (teacherdiary, iwillcontinue, firstyearteacher, teacherblog). Many seemed to have the spirit of a student forced to do what he/she should: a passable attempt, but really not intrinsically motivated, and ultimately abandoned. So a simple goal is to just keep doing it, get something down, even one sentence, and make it meaningful and authentic (Rubin again, her one-sentence diary).  A simple goal - such goals really are the secret to teaching - is to go onward, teach. (yeah this is the blog URL I finally settled on that was unclaimed. Somewhat unoriginal, but so are most students' titles. I'll talk more about the importance of inhabiting their shoes).

Thanks for reading through this first, semi-experienced post. If you liked it, you'll like the rest, and it'll only get better as I warm up my blog-writing skills. Stay tuned :)