Digital Technology

     In my new role as an ENL teacher, technology has become an even more indispensable part of my teacher toolkit. English learners benefit from anything that adds context to speech and text. The ability to add images, video, and sound effects to our class materials helps English learners draw connections between the content knowledge they may have in their home language, and the academic vocabulary they need for their English-centric education. While collaboration has always been an important aspect of my classroom, it is even more necessary for English learners who may need help from their peers. Collaborating with classmates also allows English learners to practice their speaking and listening skills. Although these strategies are possible to use without technology, some technological tools have made them infinitely easier. 

    One resource that my colleagues and I love is Edpuzzle. Edpuzzle allows teachers to upload their own videos or pull videos from other sources like Youtube. Then, teachers can embed questions, notes, and resources throughout the video. This ability is a game changer for English learners, as they can learn about content through video instead of just listening to a lecture, and they can rewatch the video as many times as they'd like. Teachers can also embed closed captioning in English or other languages to help students comprehend. 

    Another great website that capitalizes on the power of video is Flip (formerly Flipgrid). This tool not only allows students to record and view videos, but also allows students to respond to each other. Unlike a traditional discussion board which may pose a challenge for young children or students with limited writing skills, Flip allows all students to speak, listen, and collaborate with the assistance of video to help them learn and understand.

They're Always Ours

     There are four of my former English teachers I keep in touch with through Facebook, women whose impact on me extends well beyond inspiring me to become a teacher myself. We don't chat or get together in person, but we watch each other, occasionally exchanging likes and comments. We are familiar with each other's major life events.

     My sister-in-law is ten years younger than I am, so she recently started her junior year at the two-year boarding school my husband and I attended. Two of the first people she met were those former English teachers, Dr. Smith and Dr. Nagelkirk. We exchanged pictures and anecdotes, glad to continue to be connected to each other. I figured that would be the end of it.

     But then, a few weeks later, my mother-in-law told me something that withered me. She had met Dr. Smith, my AP Composition teacher. She had asked if I was still writing poetry. She remembered reading it, admiring it, sharing it with other faculty members. I was ashamed.

     You see, the truth is, I don't write poetry anymore. Not seriously, anyway. There was a time when writing was a part of my everyday life, a time when I was never without at least one notebook, often several (one for fiction, one for poetry, one for miscellaneous notes, etc...). But that time of my life was in the past. I went to college; I suffered the indignity of formal "creative writing" classes (never again). I got married, got a job, got a house. Other priorities took over.

     And yet, here was Dr. Smith, ten years later, wondering if Grace Casimer was still writing those beautiful words. But Grace Casimer doesn't legally exist anymore, and neither did my writing habit. I never got in touch with her to answer the question. I couldn't bear to tell her the pathetic truth.

     I was, as the kids say, "shook," but life pressed on. I had lessons to plan, a house to clean, grades to enter. It was 9:00 on a Sunday night when I got to the last student notebook. As a signal to me, students dog-ear the pages of their writing they would like me to grade. The last five pages of this notebook were marked. Each one contained a gorgeous, roiling poem, full of color and life and extended metaphors! It would have been impressive writing from an adult, let alone an eleven-year-old. It was the best student writing I had ever read.

     I left my student effusive praise and then sat with her notebook in my hands for several minutes. It would be a crime of the greatest magnitude if this little bard grew up to never write a poem again. If, fifteen years from now, I asked her the same question my teacher asked, if she let life get in the way of her writing, I'd be crushed. No matter how old she gets, no matter how far she goes or how often we speak, I will always be rooting for this young poet.

     And then, the irony washed over me. All these years later, Dr. Smith was still rooting for me, waiting for news of my literary successes. And what was I doing?

     Years ago, in her Introduction to Poetry class, I wrote that I didn't think the poem we were reading meant anything, that the poet was simply trying to create a beautiful image. On my paper, Dr. Smith wrote, "This is lazy." I was furious with her, outraged, scandalized. Until I realized she was right. I needed to spend more time and energy with that poem. Hearing that she had asked about my writing gave me that same defensive, exasperated feeling. I had been lazy. I needed to spend more of my time and energy on my writing, something that was once more important to me than eating.

     The students we teach are always ours. It doesn't matter how old they get. Until this week, those words were merely a platitude.

     But now, here I am, writing this blog post, buying new notebooks, dragging myself out of bed to write down story ideas before I forget them, frittering away my only plan period with writing instead of planning lessons or analyzing student data.

     Now, I get it. I know what I have to do.

Now What?

Today is the last day of my first ever Slice of Life Story Challenge! I am proud of myself for taking the time to post every single day, and I am leaving this challenge feeling inspired to continue and expand on my habit.

So, now what?

Now, I am going to commit to writing a little each day. Maybe not a full post, but a little.

Now, I am going to continue to slice on Tuesdays to stay connected to this amazing community.

Now, I am going to seek out other challenges to try! (Especially over the summer. What are your favorites?)

Now, I am looking forward to meeting with a writing friend tomorrow to extend this streak to thirty-two days of consecutive writing.

Now, I am going to remind myself that if I can make time to write every day, I can manage to get all this grading done in time for the deadline tomorrow.

Now, after a more tumultuous spring break than I had planned, I am excited to get back to my routine, and most importantly, my students.

Thank you to everyone for this enriching experience. I am so glad I did it, and I will be back next year!

Uncles

We call him Uncle Bony because he's a bonehead. Even when he was young, he had wrinkles around his eyes from laughing. He wears cowboy boots with his bathrobe. He's a master of funny noises and lame jokes. Uncle Bony has invented several games, including but not limited to Fantasy Sumo and a checkers-like game played with pennies. He is a treasure trove of obscure niche information (not unlike Cliff from Cheers). My highly erudite, law professor dad acts like a sophomore when Uncle Bony is around. Because of Bony, my dad maintains a variety of absurd habits like calling the TV remote "the calculator." Uncle Bony can't have coffee anymore because he gets overexcited.

When I was a kid, we'd visit Uncle Bony and Aunt Marianne several times a year. We'd drive to Ohio and spend a whole day in King's Island, or at Put-In Bay learning about local wildlife. Or they'd come to our house, and we'd scour the beach in search of the World's Smoothest Rock (a game we continue to this day with Bony's grown children and other relatives).

But Uncle Bony, whose children I've been raised with, whose wife played Barbies with me, who attended my wedding, who we see regularly despite living across state lines, is not my uncle at all. He's one of my dad's fraternity brothers.

Today, my husband and I are visiting Purdue's campus again for his fraternity's annual Hog Roast. I'm a vegetarian, it's raining, and my favorite fellow wife is absent, but it's okay. Eight years after my husband pledged, his brothers are mine. They sleep on our floors and couches, and we sleep on theirs. We drive hours just to spend the day bar-hopping in Grand Rapids, or just playing games and enjoying each other's company in Fort Wayne. We've stood up in each other's weddings and been there through break-ups, failed classes, major changes, coming outs, moves and job applications.

This isn't the family I was born with, and it wasn't the family I chose, but it's the family that came with my husband, complete with their own silly nicknames (the origins of which are closely guarded fraternity secrets). Someday, our children will have uncles called Merc, Blue, Sizlak, and Artoo. Uncles who have taught us our own share of bad habits and sophomoric behavior, and who never let something as silly as distance, work, or rain get in the way of a good time.

Some Data-Driven Reflections

As we get closer to the end of the challenge, I've been thinking about the quantitative data of my posts.

Poems: 6.5
Lists: 5
Informational posts: 3
Teaching Strategies: 7
True Slices (as opposed to "band aids" or just other genres and topics): 14
Posts I'm Personally Proud of: 7

Of the "true slices," most are about moments in my classroom. I imagine this has a lot to do with me having been on Spring Break this week.

Most of the lists are from days when I was in a hurry (much like today).

My posts about particular teaching strategies, though not often true slices, were the ones that received the most interaction from the community, both in views and comments.

The informational posts are three of my personal favorites. They're not necessarily my best writing, but I just enjoyed doing them.

My posts started out longer and have become much shorter in general.

Of all the things I have taken out of my first year doing this challenge, I think this data about how I respond to different types of days and feedback is the most useful. As I work on building a daily writing habit outside of this challenge, this information tells me a lot about how I can work through writer's block, and how I can help my students do the same. It also tells me the traps I fall into when I am feeling lazy: lists, planning, objectivity. (I realize now that I also do this in writing stories. I will plan and outline but never actually get around to writing the story itself.)

 The posts that make me proud also share patterns. They are the posts I tended to start the day before, or perhaps ruminated on all day and didn't get to until later when my thoughts were more fully-formed. Yesterday's slice, which I posted at 11:55 pm EST, is one of my favorites and one I'd like to write more about in a fictional setting. While stealing fifteen minutes here and there to write is a great start and the thing that has saved my writing life over the course of the last year, I know that my next step is to dedicate larger blocks of time to truly think and craft.


Twenty-nine down, two to go!

Night Vision

     They say you don't see them unless you're looking (which is true). Most of the time, you also don't see them even if you are looking. But one chance accident and your entire attitude changes. Suddenly, you are pressing the side of your face into the window, trying to watch both sides of the road and the middle at the same time. The glass is cool against your cheek, but you sit up, eyes darting left and right like a pendulum clock, moving more sharply than you need to. Stands of dark, secretive trees seem to run toward you like death itself.
     You try to comfort yourself. This happens to most people only once, and not usually so close to the city. It's working until you spot it: a slip of white, a wide mass where there should be only winter-bald trees, branches moving and bending in ways branches should not. You break hard, but not to a full stop. It's not in the road, but there are others nearby. There are always others.
     You spy more of them all the way home, sometimes real, sometimes cruel imposters. Trash bags, mailboxes, piles of lumber. But plenty, too, that are true. Shadowy, hulking figures, biding their time, choosing who to spare and who to strike seemingly at random. If you are lucky, you'll know them by their green, reflective eyes. If this were a fairy tale, perhaps they'd pass judgement on us: who is just, or kind, or wise?
       Maybe this is a fairy tale, a modern morality play on the virtues of choosing a safe, reliable vehicle. Maybe it's about being present in the moment, spotting for danger together rather than looking down at our own personal entertainments. Maybe it's a statement on the inevitability of fate. But like fate or luck or opportunities, you'll never see them coming if you're not looking.


Presented without context. Is it too vague? Is it clear what I am talking about, or do I need to be more concrete?

Frogging

Frogging: the act of deliberately unraveling a knit or crocheted project. Frogging may occur for a number of reasons such as a mistake made several rows back, loss of interest in the project, or the discovery of a flaw in the pattern that throws off the whole endeavor. It is called frogging because sometimes you just have to "ribbit" out. (Yes, really.)

I hate frogging. It feels like admitting defeat. In a large project, a row or two may have taken over an hour, and in seconds, it can fall apart in your hands. Some of the more experienced women I knit with can do it quickly. I imagine that takes some of the sting out, but when I'm alone, passing each stitch carefully back onto the wrong needle, the loss of time and productivity makes me just want to set the whole thing on fire and start over!

I almost never frog. I'd rather accept a mistake in the finished project and just call it "artistic license" or "rustic," but I've spent some time working on an intricate Christmas stocking for my husband. When it's done, it will be a true work of art, something I hope will become an enduring image in the background of holiday pictures. Many somedays from now, I'll make one for myself and our future children, too, each one unique, but connected by the same colors and themes. Simply put, there is no room for mistakes here.

So today, I spent two hours carefully unraveling fifteen rows of his stocking, not because I made a mistake, not due to an error in the pattern, but because I just wasn't satisfied with my color choices. It could be better, should be better. At this rate, maybe it'll be done by Christmas. If not, there's always next year. This is a labor of love. Unlike anything else I've made before, it's meant to be kept and cherished, so while I work on accepting mistakes in other areas of my life, just this once, perfection is the goal. Just this once, frogging is necessary and worth it.