First year AP teacher comes up for air: DELIBERATE PRACTICE

I have not posted much this year because I am busy with two new classes and a senior seminar. But this week, I am getting close to the zone finally, and had a chance to reflect, albeit for about 10 minutes, on what I have been doing in my stream-of-consciousness teaching this fall.

All my students have been doing DELIBERATE PRACTICE this week. My honors juniors practiced interactive note taking, my AP juniors worked on sonnet annotations from three different poets, and my AP Lit class addressed reader response in their practice essays. To be honest, I think this perfect storm of parallel lessons happened because I have been embroiled in deliberate practice as a learner myself: I am teaching Macbeth, King Lear and Hamlet simultaneously in all of my classes. It may never happen this way again, but it has been a wonder-full month of thoughtful rereading, focused research and reflection on the essentials for me. I believe that my first year of AP Lit is reminding me what it means to be a good teacher this year: I must also keep that learner cap firmly on my head.

I had been ready, I thought, to teach AP Lit for a couple of years. It would be easy to teach students with a love of reading, good study skills and commitment to school. And it is. But the best part of this has been the ability to let my mind race ahead, to respond to their ideas as they happen, to consider every day if Shakespeare really is as relevant as I always say that he is. In other words, I am returning to my student days just as I am approaching teaching with new focus and delight. I must be a better learner in all my classes if I am to meet my own expectations as a teacher.

And I am also feel vindicated as a teacher in this first year in AP. Three years ago, when I started a Masters in Secondary Teaching to complement my MA in English Lit, I realized that I was not perhaps going to enjoy this second degree as much as the first. My prof announced the first night that he hated high school teachers because all they cared about was content! And here I was thinking the stories I loved were what inspired me to start my (third) career as a teacher. Now I stand in the center of a room with young people-my seniors, and all my juniors too-who are as genuine in their experience of reading as I still am. I am practicing my reading and my writing every single day. Healigan the teacher is loving being Healigan the learner as well. Well, done, my young friends. Once again I am in your debt.

IPAD APPS ENGLISH TEACHERS HAVE TO SEE...

I have had my iPad for 4 months, and much of that time has been spent bonding with “her” and finding the essential apps for my life. I also wanted to decide for myself if the iPad and other tablets really are something new. These 5 apps helped me decide that the iPad is, indeed, a tool that we have not seen before: original, spare, strange (homage to Hopkins).
My PLN on twitter, the EC Ning, and my own Google Reader have supplied some really great suggestions for what to do with the iPad. But this is also my first year teaching pre-AP British lit as well as AP Lit, so much of my research has to do with my raised expectations for my new crew. 

British Library: http://www.bibliolabs.com/projects/
So many primary research and literary sources online in their entirety:  the Library of Congress for the  Brits. Easy to navigate, with a scholarly appearance. Great for research skills. So many novels, so little time.
Biblion: http://www.nypl.org/biblion
a brand new iPad app from the New York Public Library. Gathers all the photos, news, media regarding the 1939-1940 World's Fair. It did not hurt that I am in the middle of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon, set in the same period. Luscious photos, diagrams, magazine stories, news articles, reviews.  Cannot wait until they expand this app to other events & periods. Another great resource for research skills lessons, and just FUN. The presentation is dazzling--touch is intergrated fully. This is not the reference room at your local library
World History Maps: http://seungbin.wordpress.com/historymaps-of-world/
I learned about this one at an iPad workshop for teachers.  Wish I had had this last year in World Lit. The app includes maps of every continent, all eras. Also includes maps from different sources for each time period. You could teach an entire history class from this app. I spent a couple of hours lost, while I found my way.
TS Eliot’s The Wasteland: http://touchpress.com/titles/thewasteland
If you have not heard of this app, then go NOW to the app store. It will change how you read poetry, and how you teach it.  Beautifully conceived and executed. My app budget usually tops out at $2.99, but this was worth every penny ($12.99 I think). I do not want to spoil the surprise, but those who do not understand or believe that eReaders will change reading, need to see this app. I want one of these for every Shakespeare play, every modernist work, Beowulf, Chaucer........everything.
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore: http://morrislessmore.com/
Since we are in the subject of new reading, take  a look at this book written to be read on the iPad.  It is a children's book, but one of the first I have seen that is actually post-print. And it is marvelous, engaging, well written and a great story. My 8 year old niece went nuts. I did too.