YEAR of READING, YEAR of WAITING

    I announced the Year of Reading to my juniors yesterday. We are doing SSR at least one day a cycle. Because my school is a "no social media" school, I am not sure where this will go--for instance, the first time someone asks me if they can do their SSR on a kindle, nook, or their phone, I think I have to say no.  (it even hurts to type it!) I cannot fault administration for putting safety first, but am growing confused with  the vagueness of the term "social media." It seems to mean different things to different people, and am not sure how far it goes. Most teachers in my school are assuming it just means no facebook friending of students. I get that. I never friended them anyway. I am not their friend, I am their teacher, and want to stay in their memory that way--with the learning they experienced in my class. But I would have liked to start a private facebook page for my courses, which would create a central place for homework and project updates. And they might actually chat with each other about Beowulf!!!! Some of my other tools I would like to introduce to my colleagues include:

wallwisher

screenjelly, jing

diigo, delicious, digg, stumble upon, reddit

glogster, prezi

google docs; google scholar, evernote

aviary, audacity, garage band

reader, bloglines, RSS reader, feedburner

librivox, google books, Project Gutenberg, scribd

wikispaces or PBWiki

blogger or tumblr,  edublogs

voicethread

 garage band

wordle, quizlet

http://labs.google.com/sets

   All of these promote reading and writing, creativity and collaboration. They support some of the fundamental ways that kids' learning is changing. And yes, most of them are social. I have used many of them with the blessing of my school. But the line between useful, essential and dangerous is getting blurrier by the minute. I  am not sure where it is anymore.

   So this year's challenge for me is shaping up to be about social media. How do we define it at my school? What is our mission as we prepare students for their world? I think I need to step lightly, but continue the journey started when I first encountered a blog four years ago and saw the potential for my kids.

This will also be the year I begin to market to my colleagues (not just the poor English department, who hears about it constantly) more aggressively the essential changes that are happening in our students, in our culture and to our futures. I am starting with a diigo group for the English Department at my school. If we teachers bow out of the process that is evolving all around us, we have made ourselves obsolete. They will not need us to learn and we will not be able to teach them anyway. This year's challenge is to take the long view, and know that it will just take a little longer than I planned to lead my students to their futures.

UPDATE: Just saw this: speaks to the question at hand!

Beowulf may have to wait: taking care of our kids

I have spent the last few weeks preparing for my new students, working through what they will ask the first day, dreaming about the chemistry of each class, redesigning my classroom and their reactions to it. And just when I think I have exactly what they need the very first day, something happens to remind me of my real role in their lives.
One of my colleagues, one of the students' favorite teachers, died unexpectedly at the end of last week. It is hard for me to picture the school without her, to be honest. So I am preparing for her funeral tomorrow instead of the first day of school. I did not know her well: we taught different subjects, and she was a coach-type person, while I am a club-type person. She taught here for 20 years, while I am still a newbie with only four years.  But all I can think about are the students we share, and I have been thinking of them and how this is so much harder for them to understand than it is for me. And how some of them will need a hug, but others may want to talk. And still others are going to make the connection immediately that she and I were close in age. So, they will not just miss her, but they will have an early reminder that nothing is for sure, it could all change tomorrow. This generation is certainly more savvy about the transience of life and experience than mine was, but when it comes to a tragedy like this, they are still children who deserve to be nurtured and loved. So my first few days of school will be about listening to them, letting them see my feelings and still providing some foundation for absorbing the sadness and remembering a much beloved teacher, colleague and coach. This is the hard stuff, the most important stuff.  Beowulf may have to wait. Keep us in your thoughts and prayers.

SOMETHING LEFT TO CHANCE: to burn in hell or not?

Today I tackled my syllabi: it is time to make a stand and decide what I'm really going to teach each year. I always leave this task until last because it is the impossible task, at least for me. My school provides my mission and I can look at other teachers' plans from earlier years. Jeez, I have already taught each of these classes at least once before. But every year, I get a little agita because I cannot finalize my choices. And if I charge ahead and print out the syllabus with final choices, I invariably cross off numerous texts on the list as I start the year. So what is it that makes it impossible to choose? A teacher should be in charge of her content, shouldn't she? I have been doing this for years, I should know how to choose.

This year, the sticking point is Dante's Inferno. I know there is no time to read the entire Divine Comedy, but the last time I read the Inferno with my Honors Senior World Lit class, they loved it--and we referenced it throughout the year. And, let's face it, Hell is defined by Dante, and in a parochial school, we like our discussions of the ultimate evil.  But I have devoted myself to including more modern and contemporary works in my World Lit syllabus--I don't have too many restrictions as to what I teach, and students always seems to think that modern is good (though there are some who have informed me that modern means "written in my lifetime" and then they want to watch a movie from the 80s, and I've got them!) So, I believe that the Inferno is one of those "things we all oughta know, " but at the expense of something more "modern," say--Saramago's Blindness or Gaiman's American Gods? I think I will fall back on the best counselors I have--my students. I will leave room in the syllabus, and  learn my students' personalities and interests. Some choices will have to wait for my class.

TEACHING IS A CONTACT SPORT

  I have been quiet on Twitter the past three weeks, have only skimmed my Reader files, stopped most posting to my delicious and diigo accounts, even forgot to check facebook (!) One week of that was vacation, so I was doing much more interesting stuff, but for the other two weeks I needed the noise in my head to go away as I hold my breath before school starts. And I am about to write a post for me,  without bullitts and and way too long.
  I don't know a teacher anywhere who doesn't hold his/her breath in those last days before the onslaught: I live inside my head more than most people (my family tells me so), so once school starts, I will spend some of the next nine months missing the time to think, savor, reflect, READ, make connections, explore any flights of fantasy that appear as I tackle each new text for the umpteenth time, and generally, let my abstract random learning style take my mind where it wants to go without considering the practical aspects of the time I am spending on non-school work. I am not going to write a book that will make it all clear for every single teacher who ever walks into a classroom. Don't want to.  Can't: it has become clear to me that it will take my whole career for me to develop the wisdom to teach anyone other than my students. And though this is certainly not the attitude I "should" have in this collaborative learning age: I know things my students need to know.
   For all of history, learned people have passed knowledge to the young. Methods have differed, but there it is. I have read anything I could get my hands on for 45 years, and this experience makes me invaluable to the kids I am about to meet. My enthusiasm for what I do makes me invaluable. We had a good laugh during one class last year, when someone asked if I slept. Surprised, I said "well, yeah, but not much--I can sleep when I'm dead." (They did not get the Warren Zevon allusion. Point to Healigan) They all laughed uproariously, and I realized that they wanted to know how I taught them, had three teens of my own, read books they would never read, stood at the movie theatre in line for both movies they wanted to see and the boring old stuff, liked both the Roots and Mozart, cared about punk art and knitted two of the hangings on my wall, noticed the weather change before they even saw it in the window, watched TV (though they do understand my lack of interest in Jersey Shore) and played video games, went to church every Sunday but admired Islam, etc. We stopped for a minute and I reminded them not to believe everything they saw on TV: regardless of the fact that I was getting older and I was living with wrinkles (horrors) and had to color my hair (toss of the head), the truth was, experience and age made people smarter, and THAT feels good. Class got more interesting for all of us after that. Sometimes kids just want to, need to, listen.
   SO.....though I have spent much of the summer getting great new ideas and techniques from my PLN on twitter and the EC Ning and a Way to Teach, and practicing how to manage a social life on the internet (not too good at it. Still a fan of face to face), I'm done now. Teaching is a contact sport, and summer is for reflection, but September is for playing the game.
   Now is for realizing
 1) what can really be accomplished in the next nine months, and
 2) the power that my particular school environment will have on what I can do with my
    new group of personalities,
 3) it does not have to be new to work, and
 4) we all have to have fun AND work hard. Oh, and that as of September, I will have to  
     avoid mixing my metaphors.
  The best part is that I concentrate on them day to day, that the roller coaster ride that is teaching teens just has to be enjoyed. It is a Zen thing: be in the moment, Leslie. Be mindful of this second and love it, no matter what happens.

Testing, testing. Hey, I can blog from my phone, if I can stand the mini keyboard

Teens and Music...could I make that Teens and Books?

Since my last post about movies and kids, I  found this blog post about the style rookie's obsession with Hole. Hole is (was?) Courtney Love's band. I'm not a huge fan, but the style rookie is,  and that is what is important. Style Rookie is a blog written by Tavi, a 14 year old girl obsessed by fashion and in possession of unique talent and aptitude for fashion-and self analysis. I read it for fun--and it is fun, ranging from complaints directed at Seventeen's addiction to appearance, to explaining her love of certain music, to her favorite shoes (miu mius at present), etc. Tavi's videos and photos show real talent.  But this post is about the power that music wields over all of us, all our lives. It starts before we realize it, but I became aware of its influence at about Tavi's age. We all laid on our beds for days listening to whatever touched our hearts, unconcerned that our parents could hear it too. It never occurred to me that my mom might learn something about me that I did not want her to know. I don't think she did, because she was mostly upset at how loud it was. She did protest "Dead Babies" by Alice Cooper, so I played it louder. I would have tortured her with "Cop Killer" if I was a little younger.

So...knowing all that, I felt tears rise in my throat reading her recent post about Hole and getting through 8th grade. For me,  it was a mixture of Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin, and Simon & Garfunkel. OK, that was embarrassing, but true. I swore that I would have "Bridge Over Troubled Water" played at my wedding because it was so romantic. Even my best friend asked, really (little dark)?  By the time I did get married, I was much more likely to play Bowie, Talking Heads or the Tubes, but that is another story. "I'm 18, and I don't know what I want...I've got a baby's brain and an old man's heart" explained exactly how I felt then, and for Tavi it is Hole:
At some point during the second half of 8th grade, I became sadder and angrier; to this I do not credit teenagerdom, or angst or any hormonal whatever, just learning, and not the kind that I was supposed to be getting from school. This is when it became necessary for me to talk my way into the computer room during art class to listen to “Northern Star” instead of researching whatever I said I would research and to bring my cassette player to gym class so I could silently confide in Live Through This...

So I want to remember Tavi's post when the school year begins, and they walk in with a song in their head, sure that what I have to show them could never deserve their time or attention. It does, but it will be competing with some important "teenagerdom" muses........

BOONDOCK SAINTS VS BEOWULF

As I prepare to start a new year with Beowulf as my headliner, I  am struck my some of  the incongruous ideas that my students and I will share regarding heroes. Beowulf can be a hard sell in 2010, but I usually manage to make them remember it. They will agree that many of the ideas they hold about true heroes probably do come from this 1500-year-old adventure story, without much change once it was written down.  But does Beowulf still represent any kind of hero they would recognize today?

Many of my male students are great fans of the 1999 cult movie BOONDOCK SAINTS. I must admit, it has a certain appeal for me as well.  The heroes are Boston twins who decide that the justice system--nor their religion-- cannot handle the sins of the truly evil anymore, and God tells them to handle it themselves. At the end of the movie, the twin "saints" invade the courtroom where a mafia boss is about to be acquitted of his crimes and take justice into their own hands-violently and irrevocably earning the title "boondock saints" in the neighborhood. This is their pronouncement as they prepare to kill the defendant:

"Now you will receive us.

We do not ask for your poor or your hungry. We do not want your tired and sick. It is your corrupt we claim. It is your evil that will be sought by us. With every breath, we shall hunt them down. Each day we will spill their blood til it rains down from the skies.

Do not kill, do not rape, do not steal, these are principles which every man of every faith can embrace. These are not polite suggestions — these are codes of behavior. And those of you that ignore them will pay the dearest cost.

There are varying degrees of evil, we urge you lesser forms of filth not to push the bounds and cross over into true corruption, into our domain. But if you do, one day you will look behind you and you will see we three and on that day you will reap it. And we will send you to which ever god you wish.

And shepherds we shall be, for thee my Lord for thee, power hath descended forth from thy hand, that our feet may swiftly carry out thy command. We shall flow a river forth to thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be. In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."

These sound like the words of righteous men, but are they? Our children have grown up in an American world in which it probably seems that  justice is not often served--the unethical practices of Wall Street, dueling political parties who deal in the lowest common denominator when serving their constituents, religious leaders who have betrayed, hurt those they are meant to protect, ridiculous people becoming famous celebrities while true heroes struggle in anonymity, school bullies implementing new, more humiliating ways to denigrate the innocent--so it is no wonder that this kind of  "saint" becomes heroic.

 Sometimes it feels as though I am swimming upstream all day long, just to stay in place, with my discussions of good vs evil or blog prompts that attempt to connect their lives with the novels and poetry we read. And then I wonder if the Boondock Saints have just returned the justice system to its Anglo-Saxon days, where the evil are destroyed.
http://homepage.mac.com/mseffie/assignments/beowulf/beowulf.html

THE QUEST FOR THE PERFECT COLLEGE ESSAY: SENIORS 2010

I wrote the following post last August as I planned for a senior class which blended Honors Seniors and AP level seniors. The AP level seniors elected not to take AP Lit, so they came to me. I figured that if they were willing to do a little extra work (1 mini project a quarter), then they deserved the extra quality points. We would design how that happened as we went along.

 Unfortunately, I was taught by their unremitting insistence upon resting on their AP laurels that sometimes things do not go as expected.  I dragged them kicking and screaming through some innovative (my judgment) mini projects that I will assign to my Honors students this year, because they could have been fun.  But one project will remain the same--the college essay. I had been reviewing college essays from first semester seniors since I began teaching at my school, and was always upset at the gap between what I knew about the students and how little of that showed up in their college essays. Having AP students in my class last year, I decided that there was an opportunity to use their superior writing skills to lead the entire class to a superior group of essays sure to make all of my kids make it to the top of the pile in the Admissions offices of their chosen colleges.

To no one's surprise but my own,  the best essays came from the students who were not afraid to think about themselves and their futures "outside the box."  We listened to a few of  NPR's This I Believe segments, and used that prompt as a way to start. The higher level students had a tough time letting go of their As being the defining trait of their personalities, but we got through it. This I Believe confounded most of them at the beginning.  It is, to an extent, about how well you did in school, but the best essays came from the interesting kids, no matter the level.

And my only job in this assignment? I told them to write about themselves and what THEY judged to be most significant about their experiences. I told them: Write about yourself, remembering what you believe. This year, we will be sharing our essays with each other, after the trauma of college admissions letters arriving February through April. Revisiting their September essays in April will be a good exercise in self-reflection: another critical skill for a successful adult. 

From August 2009:

 First essay this year is going to be the college essay: I review so many that are BAD, and it happens primarily because they do not know what to write about themselves. I think I will start by having them make a shortlist of the most important ideas in life. They can all tell me what they want to OWN in 10 years, or what they want to be DRIVING, or what JOB they should score, but few of them are able to identify what lies at their own core--maybe I should do a kind of "this I believe" (NPR)thing--they could podcast it, and then they could create an essay from that--the podcast will eliminate some of the conversational smoke they all blow in the written version. Now I have to come up with some models.

UPDATE February 2011: This project went great this year: different kids, different experience. I have the privilege of teaching 10 AP level seniors which includes an Asian and a Hispanic student, two musicians and two artists in addition to my more "traditionally" gifted students. (this is pretty diverse in a religious school.) Wow.  What a difference a year makes. They each made a personal blog, and they keep me honest. And we are all having fun and learning.

see high school bits

Why I Love Summer

OK, I have used Wordle for years. Below is last year's summer wordle I made for my long-suffering family, who don't  see me much during the school year. I thought I would update it for this year, and try as I might, it will not create a wordle that contains the name of either my husband or my oldest daughter. The first one was of course dazzling, including all the flowers in my garden, all the books I am reading, my favorite summer songs, my summer knitting projects and numerous references to the best family on earth. It's late, so I am figuring my best bet is to post both so no one is slighted. Tom and Sam, your names were as large as everyone else's. I swear. Wordle, it's summer. You should chill out.

Today's bit of beauty....

Most beautiful thing I have seen today. Commercial, still art. What a strange world we inhabit!

http://www.alexandermcqueen.com/int/en/corporate/specialprojects_pumafiverings.aspx

Wonder Woman: 2010 version please!

I have the great fortune to live with three fabulous "wonder" women, my daughters, who don't let me get lost in my teacher-mind. Yesterday I discussed female comic book heroes with my youngest, who has been less than impressed with the female images in comic books and graphic novels: even less so after seeing Wonder Woman's new costume (left) and watching a recent History channel special on comic books. So here is her take on how she would draw/write a female hero:
1) flat shoes or boots. duh, gotta be able to run.
2) always a low unobtrusive ponytail, so there would be one less thing to grab, and no hair in her face.
3) some makeup, but not enough to look like a model, cause she's not. She's too busy to live for clothes and makeup.
4) and she could have glasses, and still be hot.
5) always dark colors--need to blend in. Also, black is never wrong. This ain't Miami Vice, mom.
6) NO skirts regardless of length, but yes, spandex for ease of movement. My daughter is a black belt in tang soo do, and still doesn't get the big loose clothing she always had to wear. Bike shorts would be optimal.  Short porn star skirts (her term is not printable) are not practical, and not the look her hero is going for. Women are stronger kickers than punchers, so those legs have got to be free!
7) And the hotness of the hero should be generated by the "kick-ass" internal engine of the female hero, not what she wore, anyway.

This conversation made me think the female comic book heroes who are drawn "sexy" (albeit in a 1940-1950s weird bondage, stripper way) to express how cool they are  inside. But we are still working on the transition to creating more than one way for the female to be sexy. So Superman has huge muscles because that is recognizable as a sign of power, cause men are the stronger physical specimens. Brawn works. And men can be big and strong and smart. But women are still drawn as sex symbols--ready for bed--not ready to defeat the bad guys. Admittedly, it is changing, but we did not turn up much when we googled comic book artists who drew contemporary female heroes. I mostly read graphic novels, so I only know Marjane Satrapi or Lynda Barry, not quite what she's looking for. And we did not discuss this, but I wondered how young men are supposed to recognize real life female heroes, if they do not dress like Lara Croft or Zelda???
photo:http://www.newsarama.com/comics/new-wonder-woman-costume-100629.html


UPDATE: here's an article from NPR about female super heroes: some good candidates! Can't get behind Angelina Jolie, though. Is  that jealousy? http://n.pr/cMv1I2  Most of these are not comic book heroes, but video game or film versions. Maybe  the  comic medium just missed us.

WIKI WORK: Grades and Learning-friends or foe?

Working on our class wiki, I instinctively know that the students are achieving authentic learning, but I am also still bound by more traditional assessment policies. So there is a constant struggle between wanting to roll with it, with the kids, and fitting the learning experience into a framework in which I can assign them grades. (I just read those two sentences, which prove how torturous the relationship of the learning and the grades are.) My latest attempt as a solution will place the focus of the grading on early stages of wiki creation, rather than their unique products. If they are to create quality content for our wiki, perhaps an initial mini-lesson about good vs great wikis would improve their evaluation of their own work. The steps in this mini-lesson might go like this:
1) critique two selected wikipedia pages together in class.  I will choose these--a good one and a great one. After judging the pages, we will decide what makes the great one great. 
2) students will work in small groups to develop a list of traits they see in a great wiki page, post the lists on our chat page in Studywiz.
3) homework that night: review and comment on at least two other lists. Comments will include comparison of items which show up repeatedly as well as items which you feel are not useful or are repetitive, with an eye to voting on the final list items next class
4) list of "Great Wiki Traits" finalized in class. NOW they develop a rubric for their own performance as we go into next phase of project. If needed, practice use of rubric or traits model in class on a wiki page from last year's wiki.
5) go to Tech Center and start with their  rubric in their hands. I usually provide a wiki start page with some ground rules and links to get them started. The first wiki the seniors develop include various world mythology pages. They work in small groups formed by the preferences they noted on our mythology newsboard in the classroom. 

I can assess their work on developing the "Great Wiki Traits" as well as their honest, purposeful evaluation of the other traits lists on the chat page.  As they work on their own wiki, I can point out the aspects of the rubric that they must attend to. As always, we will stop and evaluate the plan as we go--once they get into the wiki construction, they may see flaws in the rubric and need to amend. I love that part. I am thinking that this may tighten up the project, while ensuring that control of the wiki does not rest entirely in my hands. Any suggestions, things I missed, always welcome

R-E-S-P-E-C-T: new theme for BritLit?

I voraciously cruised twitter this week, grabbing every tweet about ISTE that I found. I was jealous of everyone there, while simultaneously astounded at their intensity only two weeks after school had ended.  I need, really need, the summer weeks to recharge and de-tensify myself. It takes the entire 10 week period—I may be able to teach a course part time or do a ”camp” like last summer’s July PBWiki camp, but mostly I need to spend time sleeping till 8, going to the Y, taking care of my home, enjoying my family and randomly filling my head with books, knitting, hiking, vinho verde, my nieces, swimming and other quotidian ephemera, all of which somehow find their way into next year’s teaching. Random has turned out the operative word.

So, while I yearned for the excitement of hanging out with people who would not look suspiciously at me, English department geek, I also recognized my own style of firing up the muse. And only two weeks into my hiatus, ISTE tweets provided me with my first light bulb idea for the summer. SOMEONE (I was sure I favorited it, but now I cannot find it) noted that we teachers are still the best source of "character education" out there. I still hate the term, but I do acknowledge our power. Reminiscing about my own my path to inspiration and personal morality as a teen, when I fell in love with Anne Shirley and Sydney Carton I recognized that my entire value system, still working hand in hand with my more traditional religious practice today, was cemented sophomore year in college the first time I heard the line “Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know and all ye need to know” read aloud. Still gives me chills.

That is still my number one commandment today. I need at little beauty in my life each day—how you choose what is beautiful, or how you define “truth,” well that is another subject for another post. BUT revisiting the concept of teacher as character educator, secondary English teachers are in a particularly useful position. For the past three years, my Brit Lit juniors have walked into a classroom the first day greeted by posters, quotes, and music extolling the myriad ways that the HERO is at the center of all Western culture. Of course we start with Beowulf and almost everything we read subsequently gets the once over from that first look at what makes someone heroic—either his deeds, the community that supports him, or the values he embodies. It works, and provides scaffolding for their eventual understanding of where we all come from—all of us share a piece of British culture, even in this country of immigrants.  But what if I turned the hero archetype on its head and talked instead about what heroes inspire, rather than what they are made of? To introduce respect as a theme for the year and then analyze the topics, characters, values, community by what garnered respect, which inspired it, and what happened to a community-–or a story, or the dialogue, or even the devices used by a writer-- when respect is absent, could bring up some very interesting discussions.

Thanks, ISTE. Back to knitting and working through respect as an anchor for my juniors 2010-2011. I am going to ISTE Philly 2011 even if it uses up my book budget-I'll just record podcasts of all our texts!

Teacher first, Google addict second.

I am a teacher first and a techie second, so I will never be the frontrunner with my tech teaching. But since the summer is for review and reflection, today's topic is Google. I certainly am not the most educated user of "the Google," but I do find myself expanding my tools regularly. Though my skeptical half worries that Google "is taking over the world," my getting-through-the-day side lives and breathes Google. I did not realize how useful the myriad Google tools are until my husband asked me about my iGoogle page. So started an hour of show and tell discussion about just the few tools I use. If you are a Google beginner, here's a quick overview of some of my Google favorites:
Blogger: my first tools were on Blogger. I now have three blogs, Healigan's Home, where my students write, Healigan's Second Home, the blog you are reading now about teaching in Healigan's world, and Movies at St Marks, a blog that I am trying to get going with my Film Club crew at school.
Blogger is free, easy to navigate, and though not as zoot as WordPress, does the job.
Reader: I just switched to Reader from Bloglines. Both are owned by Google, but Bloglines is no longer supported efficiently, so I switched all my RSS feeds to Reader.
Google Docs: just starting to use word processing in the cloud. My most recent project was taking notes and tracking links as I read American Gods with @1B1T2010.  Cool. And since I think I am going to attempt the book with my Phase 5 (Honors x 2) World Lit seniors next year, I've already got a core source for my lessons. My colleague Mike D. just used Google Docs for his annual research essay with his juniors--start to finish. I 'm looking into that too.

GoogleBooks: no more do I have to worry about students who "lost" their book or left it at home. Not my problem. Any book no longer under copyright is being scanned into GoogleBooks faster than I can write this. Many books can be read online or downloaded for free. Nuff said.
GoogleScholar: this is a great source to start your students on a research project. A search engine that contain only articles, mostly actual research, on your topic. My students resist researching with tools other than Google, so Scholar offered a happy medium for my classes.  I teach English, so take that with a grain of salt if you teach other subjects.
Gmail: I love the way it tiles conversations.
Google Calendar: I access my calendar from my iGoogle page. It tracks personal and professional calendars and I link it to the calendars from members of my family. Now that everyone is 18 +, our schedules are wild and not totally under my control, so this feature helps.
Google Translate: each year I teach several students for whom English is a second language. For some of them, using Translate for small blocks of text which are difficult is a real boon. One Chinese student survived Frankenstein this way last spring.
Google Earth: I first used Google Earth for Google Lit Trips to Macbeth's Scotland and the Odyssey. It gets better and better. It is just too cool to miss. Considering having one of my classes build a LitTrip next year--Oohh, that would be fun with American Gods!
Sites: I am investigating Sites this summer as a possible replacement for my wikispaces pages.
Picasa: I only keep blog photos on Picasa. Not a great lover.

So there is the minimal scoop. Enjoy.

DIGITAL DOSSIER: Your Life on the Net, Part One

This April, we watched the Digital Natives YouTubes video in class before I assigned a Digital Dossier project to my seniors.  We were approaching the end of the year, zero hour, and I thought I might hide the unit on World Poetry I introduced in APRIL ("you are one wild woman, Ms Healey," Ben told me. Really.) if I added this "fun" project too. What a laugh! The drama, the angst, the panic... I figured after a year with me, the Tech Center could hold no sway over their tender egos. I was wrong.
It appears that only two of my honors seniors had ever even considered their identities on the net--and those two are wannabe hackers (maybe real hackers, but it could just be panache). So the project became more important than the World Poetry Wiki. (scroll to the bottom of the wiki page to click on their individual wiki pages.) So we began with Facebook--how many friends do you have, how many of those friends have you actually met, photo tags, QUALITY of the photos in which are you are tagged, etc. While they were proud of the number of personal photos on Facebook, some admitted that they were not so happy with the prospect of me seeing them. SCORE. And so it went. Discussion, then work, then many questions in many emails at night.
The amount of time that they spend watching (not creeping though, they swear) others is astounding, unless you consider that in high school, what peers think and believe is truly more important for many than what they think themselves. I laid out some parameters for the project--letting them know up front that I was new to this too--and gave them a deadline. We  moved the deadline as needed. I requested that they post their dossiers on our secure school site (Studywiz Spark--another post required later). And when they were completed, discussion began anew.
 Not one student asked what I was going to do with all this personal info on the official school site. Not one. And every single one gave me some info and photos that they could not possibly have wanted me to see. SCORE. What are you doing, people, giving me all your personal info? AND posting on the school site, where any teacher or dean could access it? They did not know that I was not going to scan every photo or read every post, or that I would take it down the minute I reviewed that they had completed the work.  (I know enough to realize that nothing is ever really gone, but really, there was nothing illegal or disgusting, just high school). Your life is yours. Time to start asking questions, people, with respect of course.
First rule in the digital world: no one will protect you unless you protect yourself.
Second rule: think before you post. Consider your audience--there are as many audiences as there are websites.
Third rule: You get to be who you want to be on the Net--maybe even more than one "you." But...make sure YOU decide who you become and don't let it just happen to you.
Another post below: what I learned about my students!

DIGITAL DOSSIERS PART 2

The digital dossiers are gone because I copied them to a flash drive and then deleted them from the school website. I made sure to tell my students I did it, to model decision-making on the net. Teens seem to be sure that we are all watching them 24/7, so they got it. I doubt anyone at school was dying to see the digital CVs, except me. In fact, some of my colleagues thought it was just another one of my "techie" things.
But it wasn't "just" techie. It was one of the most important projects I did with my seniors this year. They are well read and had already written almost double the amount the school requires them to write each year (and none of them realized it). This was one last way for me to get them ready for the challenge of college. One last time to talk about WHO ARE YOU? This project will return for next year's seniors as well, because I learned so much! I will spend some time this summer ruminating over these facts and how they will influence my teaching next year:

1. Many of my students are entirely comfortable shopping online with credit cards, but not able to build an excel worksheet. ARGH!
2. The self-identified artists had done the most to create themselves online: deviantart.com, myspace, tumblr, youtube, etc.And those sites were wonderful, creative, intelligent.
3. Almost none of them is supervised, not even in a "how many hours have you been playing Halo 3?" or "What did you buy?" kind of way. (I am guessing many have their own credit cards)
4. The ones that did not have facebook accounts were too busy for facebook--many other things taking up their time, like volunteering, a job, close family (usually evidenced by their photo files).
5. They all visit youtube, but few had accounts. No one manages their viewing list on youtube. Few other video sources were noted, except the ones that I introduced like vimeo.
6. They visit many media sites but do not comment or register. (this makes their online lives easier for sure, but just by accident).
7. Some (three) protested "life on the net," and really had limited presence there. I can respect that, but advised that they keep track of what other people and organizations post about them.
8. The athletes were documented over and over, and could not believe how many places the same pics and stories were posted--and how far back they went (middle school, for some of them). That certainly led to a class discussion of whether newspapers were really dead or not.
9. The scholars were not documented anywhere near as often as the athletes, and most of them did not care. Scholar athletes noted the imbalance as well.
10. My students' perception of their online lives was baffling. Very few even noted our wiki or their blog postings on their dossiers! No collegeboard.com mentions. No COMMON APP, which I know 80% of them used as part of the college application process.
11. They did not note the brand new email addresses that most of them had received from their colleges. Teens as a rule do not use email unless it is with a teacher. We discussed how this would have to change, and soon.
12. Since I teach at a private school (albeit parochial), all have phones and many have smartphones. No one noted that that their phone apps constituted internet connections. This part seemed to upset them. Still not sure why. They did not seem to understand how texting worked either.
13. No one counted iTunes or another music source as an internet connection unless it was illegal. This is important to all of them, but they did not note it.

The last section of the assignment had them imagine what results would appear on a Google search of their name in 5-10 years. I read ALL of these and was delighted to see their dreams  and their creativity. Some designed an updated Google page, and others noted their accomplishments. Most of them will be in the news (for good or bad), if their plans come to fruition. The last thing we discussed was how the internet would play a role in making their dreams come true. It was a great end to the year.

Let me break it down for you

Revising my poetry devices sheet for the 850th time last night, I realized that they were not using it because they did not see how it could help them. We had just used the Romantic poets to choose common examples of all the traits of poetry for their final exam study sessions over and over again. But no one seems to have put it together. I am embarrassed to say that that I forced myself to relate it to math: "It's an equation, people, all these add up to the prize=meaning and delight."
"I know.....right? Ms Healey, does this worksheet count towards my grade?"

Tonight I am thinking it is all a matter of semantics, of word choice. Let me break it down for you.......
I am confounded by their immediate, powerful response when I read poetry to them and then their complete shutdown when I ask them why they feel so strongly. It sucks the fun and feeling out of it for them, and I do not know why.  Should I turn my lesson on its head-make them take control of the inner workings of the poet's mind? And how shall I do that--more to follow.

NOTES: WHAT ARE WE DOING IN HIGH SCHOOL?

WARNING: the yearend meltdown continues. Remember that I teach high school juniors and seniors. Paramount to my teaching is the knowledge that they are about to be released into the wild, and I do not want them to be eaten alive by other wild animals........
  So many thoughts are roiling around in my mind as I grade research papers, and I realize that they prove my two overriding observations this year:
1) children need more practice in thinking critically and therefore writing critically and analytically because they do not read as much anymore, and
2) the emotional and moral youth of my students may prevent them from achieving what they so desperately desire-independence, integrity and happiness. Add to this the random (really?) ideas that come to me by way of students, other teachers, our student teacher, blogs I read, my kids--
** the move to retreat to young adult fiction for high school students that our student teacher is researching in her classes (not very happily either)
**the negative judgment of the classics as worthwhile (or the canon as I hear it now, though I am not sure what is on that list)
**the acceptance that new modes of writing are equal or superior in their significance and skill sets to the "old"--emails all of a sudden are "long" writing, blogs replace reviews, tweets are great creative tools, etc etc. Why can't we see them as new and not replacements?
**the expectation that everyone copies homework and that's not a big deal (for teachers either). For me, that means reading enotes is as good as reading the novel. Knowing about the book is the same as knowing the book. Really?
**that students cannot sit for long and should not have to.
**everything we teach should be fun and instantly engaging.
**grades are bad for kids. no grades are good.

The list goes on. I feel the need to react to these new "truths" in some way--no one wants to fail all the time (meaning me, not them). But everything in my heart cries out for the measured journey to achievement, surviving the bumps in the road, doing the hard stuff and being proud of yourself. Even the characters in the novels know this--Elizabeth Bennett suffers through her life until she knows what she feels. Holden Caulfield won't let go of what he instinctively knows to be true. We all suffered this year with Oedipus as he careens desperately towards truth and damnation in equal parts....... Kind of how life works, isn't it?
Is it true that they really do not need to read, to consider their own visceral reactions to something someone else wrote, anymore? I do know that I will not be teaching carmen figuratum to seniors in the future, because on the list of skills they must have, it is lower on the list than it used to be (a very long story, I assure you). But I would not understand my life today if I didn't know I exist in the myriad layers of human experience that now mark soft spring rainfall as a motif that a billion human beings still recognize as an archetype for cleansing.  But are there skills and concepts that I feel are critical, that aren't anymore? Have I lost my instincts?

And maybe this only means that I need to stop focusing on the kids that take the short cuts or know that doing the minimum will be enough, and focus instead on the great kids, who GET what you read and want to learn with me.....more later. Got to read more papers, hoping that they are the authentic ones.

Healigan loses her heart......

     Well, it has been a week since I  got my iPhone. I will admit that I was anxious to get a phone with internet access--my feeling that my own children would communicate more often with me has proven true. I know, we texted before, but now I am getting pics and I am in their loop--just another person on the list every day. Yes!
     But... I find myself struggling to leave it in my desk, instead of checking that quote or looking up the word I need.  I teach at a cellphone-free school, for better or worse, and though as a teacher, I am not restricted in my cellphone use, I have always tried  to respect the students by avoiding my phone throughout the day. Whether or not I agree with the policy has been irrelevant. Not so anymore.
     First, I did not understand the strength of the addiction that they must feel all day long every day when they cannot answer texts or check facebook. After the first hour, I found myself thinking of the phone as "she." After one day, I wanted to name it. And I love the way it feels in my hand; it is beautiful, like the Movado watch in the MoMA. Third, there are changes in the way I work already. Using my StickyNotes app to assess student  iMovie presentations Monday night, I found my iPhone notes to be succinct and more meaningful than the notes I made on my MacBook after the phone battery died.  It forced me to get it done, and working did not feel like working. The more informal work pattern--in my hand instead of sitting with a flat surface for the laptop--was great.
    So today, after six days in AppleLand, I went to Tech and demanded that they load Words with Friends on the 10 iTouches the school owns so my seniors can play on their last day of classes (next Monday). The problem? They have to set up a network to work it out--and I'm impatient because I do not have to wait for ANYTHING with Mr. Job's little toy. I am not usually demanding and petulant, but I suddenly realized that I was being rude and impatient. I am not sure how I feel about myself with an iPhone......more to come later. I am stopping now to go read American Gods on my Kindle for iPhone.

In which the bookworm teacher misses reading........and her seniors

Recently, I have been reading blogs from teachers linking children around the world,  digitally collaborating to create knowledge,  and developing methods and techniques to prepare our children for this new world. They inspire and motivate me to keep my mind and heart open to my children, to celebrate what they teach me every day.  At the same time, I love my literature: not only its beauty, but also how it has painted the world for me throughout the life. I have not traveled much, to my great regret. Many of the reasons have been beyond my control. But books always filled in the blanks for me, helped me never to lose that desire to know more, to meet others, to ask questions, to thrill at the unfamiliar.  So it is always a mystery to me that my students 1) no longer enjoy reading and 2) don't believe me, the avid reader whom they respect, when I say "try it, you'll like it."
And maybe my mystification comes from being educated in the latter half of the 20th century. During my school days,  teachers knew "it" and they gave "it" to us. We did what we were told, because our teachers knew. We worked alone. Studying paid off. If you got an "A," you were smart. Everything was measurable. Working hard had its rewards. Owning information or a book was achievement.  Reading the book, living the unknown secrets the author hid between its leaves, ploughing through the book even when it was hard,  have become the foundation for my fondest memories of school and childhood.
And then all of a sudden it was 2000,  and knowing where to find information became achievement instead. Reading about Jane Eyre was enough. Knowing the story got you what you needed.  Information. Not the tingle of love, epiphany of self-discovery, the thrill of not knowing, hate that you could taste in your throat, grief for which there (still) are no words, edge of the seat suspense,  madness that made you step back in fear: that is why Jane Eyre is still one of my favorite books. I suppose that I read it at the moment I needed it, when I felt the female becoming in me, but did not know yet what it was. If you tell someone the plot of Jane Eyre, their eyes glaze over. They have heard it before (I know, it is THIS plot that has been copied, but they do not know that). I still yearn for every moment stolen in a story read late at night with a flashlight under my covers.
Jump to the present: we just finished two critical projects in my World Lit classes: video podcasts on magical realist writers and personal digital dossiers. The podcasts are fabulous because at the end of high school, magical realism taps into the limitless possibilities that all my seniors can feel at this point in their lives. The world is theirs, all they can see is the blue sky and endless road ahead. I remember feeling that way, and my heart still jumps at the joy of it. It is how I manage my middle aged sadness every year when I lose them to their futures. Magical thinking is the last thing I can give them. They leave with their heads full of women with stars in their eyes and men who live forever. They never forget Federico Garcia Lorca or Charles Baudelaire. Students always return later, wiser, and tell me they understand "Get Drunk" now--seriously, Healigan, I do.

I'm getting lost here. I can imagine the comments sternly reminding me that they discover these joys themselves, that the new ways are better, and I get it. I really do. And I teach accordingly. But the reality is, they are just learning facts, listing plot points when they read sparknotes and wikipedia, just like I did when I memorized the names of all the Victorian authors. But what I remember most about English in high school is deciding on a Trollope summer after my 11th grade English teacher went nuts about him in one of her numerous digressions while we read Great Expectations. My students, who know so much, are not internalizing the experience of reading. So much of our learning throughout life is unconscious, experiential, random. Every time they wrote an essay this year, I find myself naturally sorting the essays by who reads and who doesn't, because their writing is starving for the experience of reading, of easy, sure expression of one soul communicating across centuries, genders, lands, races, languages, to touch one other soul. Reading is personal, intense, thrilling and creative. It informs their thoughts, feelings, relationships, values, clothes, music, driving, tastes, and decisions. Literature is the final and most critical character education (am I using the PC term?) that we have at our disposal........and posting 140 characters on Twitter (follow me, I'm @1healigan) is just not doing the same job.