When CS Meets Theatre Arts or That Time I was In The New Yorker

Earlier in November I was interviewed by the talented writer Betsy Morais, a member of the editorial staff at The New Yorker Magazine.  She was doing a piece for the Talk of the Town section of the historic magazine about Mayor Bill de Blasio announcement that computer science education would be in all schools, at every grade level, within the next 10 years. We spent a few hours together at a CSNYC Meetup, coordinated by Sean Stern, my colleague at AFSE. I was able to tell her a little bit about the project I was working on that resulted in the following piece:  "Can an English Teacher Learn to Code?"  The answer is: YES!  Not very well yet, but I am learning to use Scratch.  It was such an honor to be in The New Yorker and I think she captured me well.  Funny thing was, the day of the interview, it was the first day of the flu that plagued me for a week.  I was just happy I came across slightly coherent.

The interesting thing is- the unit I am in the process of designing and implementing is a theatre unit. While I am also an English teacher, I am a drama teacher too.  I am a proud alumna of NYU's Educational Theatre program and (University of Arizona's Theatre Production BFA program).  Theatre is in my blood.  I will be the first to say that Scratch, while foreign, clicked (pun intended- make sure you check out Scratch). When I did the boot camp Sean set up last spring, my mind began racing about ways to integrate this into content classrooms.  Theatre is what came to mind first.  I began developing the unit this summer and into the fall and last week, my two blocks of 9th graders (about 60 kids) began the first two parts of the unit.  They were assigned brief scenes from movies - having just finished Shakespeare monologues- all movies that are kid friendly and have some great teen characters to portray. The first two steps are to work on character development, and to put the director hat on for the first time and begin creating stage pictures using blocking notation.  For these classes I am calling it "theatre code" as to work to bridge the gap between theatre and Computer Science. 

Today we spent the period with one of the two blocks in the theatre on campus, just playing and rehearsing and continuing to create blocking for their scenes.  It is exciting to see them start to make connections and start to create truly authentic scenes.

The next steps will be to do the paper prototyping step where they will create a flip book of every movement the characters make and how long it will take for each character to make the movement.  How fast are they talking/walking? I am excited to see how their work continues to develop and evolve through the end of the month and into January.  They will begin Scratch when we come back from the winter break.  Can't wait.

Any thoughts? Ideas? Insight?  Feel free to let me know!

Can You Hear Me? Thinking About Women and Rhetoric

I was on Facebook this morning and I teacher friend of mine had posted the following image from Hillary Clinton's Facebook page:

It made me laugh because yesterday had been, as it is each Friday, discussion day in AP Language and Composition.  It is a day I always look forward to and the 11th graders challenge me, make me mad, and engage in amazing conversations about a multitude of topics and readings.  This week they had read and analyzed The Declaration of Independence (you might have heard of it) and a lesser known document known as The Declaration of Sentiments by Elizabeth Cady Stanton. The Seneca Falls Keynote Address was given July 19, 1848 more than 60 years before women's suffrage would finally achieve one of his greatest goals in getting the 19th amendment to the constitution passed and guaranteeing women the right to vote.   It includes lines like this:

The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

Teaching in a STEM school with 75% boys, I tend to push the lens of gender and rights issues more than I might if the scales were more balanced.  It's fascinating to watch their thinking challenged and shift with regards to whom they are in relation to the women in their lives while thinking about modern definitions of what it means to be a man and masculine. Because they are in 11th grade, they all, boys and girls alike, tend to rely on the emotional appeal or pathos of an argument rather than looking towards logic and evidence to support a position.  They don't yet see how both can work together to create a truly effective argument.

As I watched yesterday, it was interesting to see the differences in how students spoke when they brought something to the conversation.  The young men: confident, assertive, balanced tone and volume-- not too loud, not too quiet.  The young women were either meek and quiet, unsure of the validity of their position and as a result coming across as diminutive and subordinate or forceful and assertive with their thinking, but yes--the volume was louder.

It was not until I read the quote from Clinton that it clicked.  Volume is equated with emotion, emotion is linked to women (where men are logical). Men who speak at a softer timbre are seen as weak, feminine. Gender roles at their finest.

In doing a little research about women and volume when speaking I came across a website and blog on public speaking. In the comvort.com post "Women in leadership-- what makes public speaking so important to them?" the author raises the following points:

"Control your voice. Women should learn to control their tone of voice when holding presentations. They should stay away from sentences that seem like questions. Raising your voice at the end of a phrase creates confusion. That’s why you should listen to yourself speak first. Do that in private in front of the mirror, or better yet, record yourself speak. It will be easier for you to spot errors, not to mention that if you like what you hear your level of confidence will automatically increase too. Statements should sound like statements, so lower your tone and keep things casual."

Keep things casual.  Don't be or sound too serious, ladies.  Sigh.

This morning as I think about the rhetoric around how men and women speak to one another I have to question: how do I support my young women with finding the balance between meek and yelling and for my young men, how do we shift the thinking that when women are emphatic or passionate they are yelling.  Just because you're loud, doesn't make you right despite seeing countless examples of this in the media.  Do young women think that they need to get loud to be heard both literally and figuratively?

Ultimately, I want all my students to speak up and speak out. To find their voice and unique point of view.  How do we support all people with being heard and not questioned or dismissed?

Week 3: Navigating The "Grade Book" When There Are No Grades

Image via: HERE

Two weeks in...

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the third week of school here in NYC.  It has been a funky couple weeks with only three days of school each week because of holidays.  This upcoming week is the same, two more holidays on Wednesday and Thursday- it has made the establishing of norms, front-loading and developing routine challenging, but like any good school we trudge forward and do the best we can.

Two weeks ago I told AP that they would not be receiving any numeric or alpha numeric grades on the daily work or projects.  That twice a year- during what will look more like an intersession you would see in college (January and June) students will have to do a Defense of Learning that is in the process of being developed.  I am a huge proponent of portfolios and of students having to speak as to WHY they have earned the score they did for the semester or year.  Now that it is connected to Mastery Based Learning, my hope is that this will provide students with especially useful data to support their arguments- because it is about them.

The juniors dove in head first.  There has been no push back and in the first assignment they were asked to do for me- "Defend you seat in AP Lang: Why do you deserve to be here?"  They were surprisingly reflective and used anecdotal evidence well to support their position.  The lack of proofreading, as always, is astonishing but that is something to work on.  For the most part this is a strong group and even the kids who will struggle more will grow and move forward.  That is the larger goal- always.

I also kicked off assertion journals.  This year I have had students create blogs where they will do informal writing and homework.  I am shared as an admin on every blog and the blogs are linked from our class website so everything is 100% transparent for each other.  In addition to the weekly writing response (with required word count) they also have to read three peer blogs and provide a GLOW and GROW.  While some of the feedback is much better than others, I need to give more parameters for feedback- the biggest being, and it almost always is- SAY WHY.  I find this is where the kids always struggle the most.  Explain why you have the opinion you do.  It's not enough to just say it.  That doesn't help me as a writer.  SAY WHY.  However, the thinking is growing and developing and I am excited to see how the use of blogging helps student learning this year.



The Grade Book...

At our school we use a program from Data-Cation called Skedula.  I have been using Skedula as a teacher for most of my career now and we have grown up together.  The thing I love about this company is that it was created by teachers who know and understand what teachers need.  They saw a problem and created a solution.  Peter from DataCation came to out school this past week to do a training and he and I were able to talk more 1:1 on my #TTOG and how to modify the platform for our needs.  Thankfully Starr Sackstein, a trailblazing NYC high school teacher had already done a ton of work and advocacy to make Skedula a platform that would work for her as she TTOG last year and documented the entire journey.  Peter was great help and I now have some structures in place for how to "grade" moving forward.  

This weekend I began the documentation of tracking skills.  It defiantly needs some refining on my part.  I need to make clearer links to the College Board learning objectives and how they are linked to the mastery standards so students understand what each standard entails.  It is all language I have written up, I just need to be more transparent and spend some time (WHEN DO I HAVE TIME?) looking at it with students.  

I'll have students check Pupil Path (the student/parent facing side of the grade book) to support them with reviewing their development on mastery.  I am not sure that it really provides enough information for a student and I can see where parents may be frustrated.  What is the balance between feedback in Skedula and feedback on the paper?  Work smart, Towne.  

I would love to hear from teachers about how they give feedback and document in a MBA setting!  Tell me what has worked for you?  What didn't work and what did you learn from it?  

I'm off and running- Look out week 3!  Here we come! 

Diving Into The Deep End: Goodbye Grades, Hello Mastery Learning!

Last year my school began the shift towards Mastery Learning.  I was keen on the idea of mastering skills or content rather that simply working from assignment to assignment- seeing how a kid did and moving forward with out revision or truly looking at the why of the learning.  I had some frank conversations with my AP Lang students last spring about what they thought class would be like for them if they didn't have the pressure of grades.  Their thinking was insightful and eye opening, confirming much of my own thinking about student learning.  When they are not working for a grade, but on a skill, they will invest in a different way, working to improve the skill.  Students don't work to improve grades on individual assignments in traditional classrooms.  They look at the grade on the paper, cheer or cry, and move onto the next assignment with the hope of improving the overall grade for the course by bringing the average up.

Mastery in motion: Theatre Arts

I also teach theatre.  It is a required course for all students at our school.  One of the units, solo performance is where students have to select, learn/memorize, create character and blocking and ultimately perform their monologue for their peers.  It is a big deal.  Some kids come in and blow it out of the water.  Other kids melt down and cry.  I have two rules though.

1. Everyone has to try. If you are absent you go to the end of the list, but everyone has to get up and make an attempt.  This is what makes a student eligible to do a make-up and try again.

2. If you have tried, and you are not happy with your score, you are eligible to try again and you can earn up to FULL credit.  There is no penalty for trying again the incentive being improvement.  They get the rubric back after the first try, they have time to rehearse and revise, work on the skills that needed improvement.

I would say 75% of students try again.  It's usually a range of make-ups: kids who failed and kids who did well and want to eek out those last few points.  This is mastery of skills with room for revision and improvement to demonstrate a higher level of mastery. Every time I do this unit I see the same results and impact on student growth and learning.  I knew it worked.  It was about moving to put the theory into practice across the board.


The AP Pilot

Numerous conversations have taken place since the spring when I read Assessment 3.0  by Mark D. Barnes.  With the blessing and support of my administration team I, along with another teacher (who will be doing a similar pilot with struggling math students to determine a different POV of data points on Mastery learning).  

• I have created a series of rubrics on an assortment of Mastery Standards based on the language from College Board and the learning objectives students will need to work to master over the course of the YEAR.  
• In starting with all the skills I am better able to plan and support student development.
• Students will be required to come to office hours twice a month to conference with me about their development and revision of work, a non-negotiable. 
• At the end of each semester, because we are a public high school with traditional transcripts, we will have to come to a decision on a semester grade for fall and spring.  Students will be required to present a Defense of Learning to a small group of peers and adult mentors where they will have to present their learning and development of Mastery and propose a numerical grade that they believe represents their learning. Then a conference with me...

This year...

I am going to use this space to reflect on my process this year of throwing out grades and seeing where it takes me.  

How to Make A Disability Into Ability In The Classroom! But What About When It's YOU?

This last week I traveled to my hometown of Seattle.  It was the first trip home since beating thyroid cancer this year.  Most of my close friends and nearly all of my relatives still live in the area and I know that being 3000 miles away from people you care about and who care about you is difficult when you are sick.  There is a powerlessness that goes with it.  My mom had flown out to support me and my husband and we were thankful to have her here for that time.

So on this trip home, I got to see many people.  One of the frequent comments was about my voice.  As some of you may already know, I have vocal cord paralysis of my right cord- a byproduct of my treatment as well as the fist size tumor I had in my neck (You can hear me in May and July).  People who have known me all my life commented on the new sound- "It sounds like you, just softer." or "Wow, your voice is so sultry." They are right, there is a new quality to my voice and it is changing how I teach.

My vocal cord specialist Dr. Pitman (Check out this interview he did in May) told me that teachers have the second highest instance of vocal cord damage and disorders only after singers.  58% of teachers have a vocal cord disorder, according to the interview.  It is a staggering statistic.  I don't know about you, but I never thought twice about how I was using my voice prior to my cancer.  I am a English and Drama teacher.  I have a substantial amount of vocal training, more than the average person.  I understand how to support breath and project.  I never lost my voice when I was teaching but when I returned to school late in March and was barely audible, I was afraid.  I had a new disability and I was not sure what this would mean for my career.  My voice is a huge part of what I do as is true for most educators.  There would be no more raising of the voice in my classroom.

Teaching with a mic felt like this!

Thankfully, my school was able to provide a small amp with wireless mic for me to use.  It sat in the front of my classroom (that is on the large side for NYC Public Schools) and I would walk around, talking into my mic.  It became part of the culture of my classroom through out the spring.  I could not and would not yell and my students for the most part, listened.  For the more soft spoken kids, or even discussion leaders I put the mic into play using it to build community and student capacity it became a gift rather than a burden.

The long term prognosis is this: it will be a year before we know what my voice will finally be.  I continue to work with my speech therapist on regaining strength in my voice.  Some days are much more difficult that others and things that I used to take for granted, like yelling to my husband from the opposite end of the house, is something I miss being able to do.  My vocal cord may always be paralyzed but I can continue to improve my voice.  At this rate, half way though the summer it is looking like the mic will be a permanent fixture in my classroom next year.  I can't help but wonder though, what if all teachers had the same resources in their classroom- how would that change their instruction.

Do you have amplification in your classroom?  How does it impact your practice? How do you turn disability into ability?  

(Photo Credit via)

Teachers On The Front Lines: Respect and Compassion, Caitlyn Jenner and Dignity For All Students Act

Last night, like many, I watched much of the ESPY Awards.  There were a few moments I was looking forward to, but the highlight for me was Caitlyn Jenner's acceptance speech for the Arthur Ashe Courage Award.

Bruce Jenner was always part of my American landscape.  I was born a year after the triumphant Olympic showing.  Bruce was a symbol of athleticism and pop culture, even throughout the 80's always showing up on TV.  When "Keeping Up with The Kardashians" came to E! TV, new generations met Jenner.  I remember feeling bad for him, the batterebyd sidekick to a flock of women who bullied and belittled under the guise of love.

This spring, in the midst of a unit on Language and Gender for AP Language and Comp, we talked at length about gender, respect and language used to talk about gender and oppression.  At the time, Jenner was still being harassed relentlessly by the paparazzi, targeted on a daily basis, photos being published in places like People Magazine.  That same week Glee would be having the episode highlighting the storyline of Coach Beiest played by the incomparable Dot Jones, that would be featured in People as well. We spoke at length about what motivates sales, language used in mainstream media and who is a target and who is a hero.  My students came to some clear conclusions about media and money and how the same issues could be covered so differently with in the same source.

* * * * * * * * * * 

Yesterday I began the preparation homework for the Dignity For All Students (DASA)Workshop I will be taking on Saturday at Hunter College.  It is now a requirement for all new state teaching licenses.  I didn't have to take it prior to beginning teaching 8 years ago.  I am going back to school this fall, a new license on the horizon and I thought I would take care of the requirement this summer.
One of the articles I had to read was called "Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression:The Role of Allies as Agents of Change" by The Rev. Dr. Andrea Ayvazian.  Having studied Theatre of the Oppressed and the work of Boal, the thinking in this piece was not new to me, but I could see how it could be not only new but transformative for others. Ayvazian does an exceptional job that outlines what oppression is and how allies can be voices of change rather than of continued oppression.

As I listened to Caitlyn Jenner last night, reflecting on the very public year and a half she has had and thankful that she did not fold under the oppression forced on her, especially by the media.  I thought the quote below was telling:

(Photo Credit: Leverne Cox Facebook Page)

That's the rub though, isn't it?  Kids don't have the same tools 65 year old Jenner has.  As advocates and educators we are on the front lines of growing up and it is our responsibility to do two things. The first is to be agents of change in our own teaching and learning communities, providing safe space where students, no matter the obstacle or oppression they may face, to feel strong, supported and empowered.  The second, is to provide our kids with the knowledge and tools that bullying, harassment and oppression is not ok and that while we are all members of some group that is oppressed, we are all also allies to another oppressed group.  Students have the power to be allies and agents of change in their own lives and the lives of others.  It is our responsibility to support them as they rise to the occasion.

The Struggle With Staying Inside The Lines

Yesterday an article titled "Why Adults are Buying Colong Books (for Themselves)" by Adrienne Raphel in the New Yorker examined the phenomena of adults diving back into the coloring book market.  I am one of the many who are coloring for pleasure.  My first purchases were from Amazon,  My favorite: Adult Coloring Book: Stress Relieving Patterns  as well as a mandala coloring book (which I don't like as much) and one marketed for "stress-relief". They are time consuming and require focus, the idea being that you turn everything else off: no phone, TV, kids, spouses.  Just you and your coloring to zone out and see where the time takes you.  Unfortunately, my brain is not one that works that way and I like to do multiple things at once- usually one taking the majority of my focus (a gift and a curse) not unlike many of our students.  So in the evening, after dinner when we are catching up on the backlogged DVR, I color while we watch Mr. Robot.


Last Friday I was visiting a friend from grad school and fellow teacher upstate in Beacon, about 90 minutes north of NYC.  We stopped into one of the local shops on the main drag through town and I spent a few minutes looking at the books on the table and I saw this: Johanna Basford's Secret Garden that has now sold 2 million copies world wide. The shop owner told me the publisher reserves most of the copies for Amazon so it is difficult for the little guys to get stock in.  She went on to tell me she always sells out. I spent the extra few dollars to support my local independent bookseller and left with my new treasure.

On the train home from my visit I was thinking about what it would look like to have coloring books in my classroom. What would it offer my 11th grade AP students?  Plenty is the answer.

I had a A-ha! moment this spring. After spending more hours than I would care to mention here reading and writing feedback to students on papers they submitted I was looking in TurnItIn.com to see who had accessed the feedback and very few students had gone back in to see the comments.  It was frustrating for me on a couple of fronts.  1. Students are not looking at the feedback they are getting which means 2. They are not using the feedback to improve their work. (From me or a peer for that matter.) On some level I already knew this.  For some reason though, this time, the stakes felt higher.  This is Advanced Placement.  This is getting you ready to sit in a college classroom.  How do I do a better job of supporting my students with developing their own methods of critical reflection to support their own growth and learning? I suspected it had to do with grades but I wanted to hear from the kids.

One morning, thanks to yet another compulsory fire drill at our school, my class returned 60 minutes into our 80 minute period and because it was a wash, I decided to hear what they had to say about about it.  It was exactly what I expected. They are simply working for the next grade.  They see the number or letter on the paper or in the online grade book and that is enough for them.  If they did well, GREAT! (It helps my class average) and if they did poorly, it's Oh well, next time. (Crap, my parents are going to be pissed!)  We went on to have a longer conversation about what it would mean for them to not have to work towards a grade.  There were some great responses- challenging my thinking about what MBA can look like in my class room next year.

My school has already began to move towards Mastery Based Learning in this past school year. The more thinking I did about what was not working with feedback the clearer it became that I was going at this the wrong way.  I read Mark D. Barns' Assessment 3.0: Throw Out Your Grade Book and Inspire Learning and I was sold. I began following out the #TTOG on Twitter and looking more into schools using MBA.

These are my new questions: 

• When students relax, will they learn better/more/etc.?

• By removing the pressures of grades will the agency shift from teacher to student as the onus is put on them to master skills and ideas?

• What supports can I bring into the classroom to support students with building learning capacity?  

• Can multitasking in different ways- like coloring-help students do this?

Today, when I posted the New Yorker article on Facebook my former boss and brilliant theatrical milliner, Lynne Mackey posted,"But then you feel you need to stay w/in the lines.  How about a big page of blank paper.  No lines. No rules."  This is the comment that began this entire string of thinking today.  Throwing out grades is going to be like having a blank page of paper for my students.  Grades have become a crutch and my greatest goal has always been to model what passion for learning and thinking looks like and that my students go on to do that work on their own.

In February of 2006 I wrote to my high school English teacher, Tom Williams to tell him I was applying to grad programs to teach.  In an early exchange he said this to me: 

"...if you think you have to get students to think, you'll be putting more pressure on yourself than you'll ever be able to handle effectively.  Better to ask students to make meaning and the only way I know how to do that is to listen, and make meanings myself.  It's ok to share your meanings, but not necessary, or even generally appropriate.  Remember, the real subject in any classroom is each student. Learn them, and the rest becomes merely problematic, not impossible."

I come back to this periodically, a mantra.  I need to keep "learning kids" to support them with coloring inside or outside the lines.  I grow, they grow.  Needless to say, there will be coloring in AP Language and Composition next year.

25. Inspiration and Humility

When I started blogging about teaching in April I saw it an exercise to challenge me professionally, to think more critically about my work and to hopefully connect with other teachers.  Thanks to Chris Crouch, teacher leader, blogger and advocate who started the April Blog A Day Challenge.  It took my work to a new place. The writing in April also provided an opportunity for me to discover what is out there for teachers.  There was this community that I had been blind to, only because I was so focused on what was happening in my own classroom and school that I didn't make room to see and hear teacher's voices that would ultimately bring something new to my own work as educator and teacher leader in my community. 

When I started talking about the writing I was doing, the conversations I was having with teachers from around the country it was clear that this needed to be a permanent part of my professional work.  I was inspired by the work and thinking teachers and education professionals are doing.  I was humbled by the feedback I received as well as the learning I was doing.  

At my end of year conference with my principal, we had been asked to do some work prior to our meeting, completing prompts about our work for the year to serve as talking points for the conference.  As we sat down and began to go over the official end of year rating (done by a complicated algorithm reflected in a number) my boss asked me why I said I didn't think I had been successful as a mentor this year.  One of my responsibilities is mentoring first year teachers.  There were three that I was assigned, one ELA, one U.S. History and the other, Global history.  I was also teaching 16 periods a week plus advisory, an additional 30 minute period.  It was a heavy load.  Finding time to go into classroom or to even just sit and meet with three different teachers proved to be challenging and I often felt ineffective- not having a clear picture of strengths and struggles and wanting to be able to do more than what I had been.  I often watched the other teacher mentors working with the staff and doubting my ability to really support.  When I did get to spend time with my teachers, I tried to make the most of it, offering support, encouragement and ideas for actionable change aligned with the goals of our school.

When will I feel effective?  What is the balance between effective in my own practice as teacher while balancing my additional responsibilities?

As schools have become smaller here in NYC, teachers and staff are challenged to take on more responsibility than ever.  I remember at my first school right out of grad school, at my interview the Principal told me that teachers would be wearing many hats and that has never been more true than it is today.  The small teaching and learning communities can be highly effective but they can also be limiting for teachers, spreading ourselves so thin that we are not doing anything highly effectively but are developing or effective.  

Next year will be the first year that we are populating all 4 grades, 9-12.  I know there is at least one teacher we have hired that I will be mentoring but in reality, there are at least 2.  I want to make sure I am supporting their development and one of the ways that I want to support will be though guided reflection.  Not- "just reflect at the end of your lesson or unit" but questions that will prompt deeper thinking and questioning of the craft.  I believe the teacher narrative needs to be owned by the individual, not the omniscient narrator.  

24. Revision and Feedback

It is day 2 of summer vacation and I am ready to dig back in.  I know I am crazy.  I know this about myself though.

I have taken myself to my favorite coffee shop around the corner from my house, I have a brand new pad of paper, a fresh charge on my laptop and a large iced coffee.

At the end of the school year I did an Exit Survey with AP Lang to get some much needed feedback on how they felt things went this year.  Most of the questions were on a 1 to 5 scale with just a few open ended.  They pushed students metacognitively, challenging them to think about their thinking.

Here are a few examples: 

As well as three open ended questions: 

(Starred questions are required.)

In the end, I got 26 of 31 students to submit feedback.  I was able to share the feedback with my Admins and it proved to be a great place to open a dialogue for end of the year evaluation/conferences.

I have always done some level of student self-assessment, but this was by far the most effective feedback I have received.

A few snip-its from the first open ended question included:

"Ms. Towne should dive into the most difficult aspects of the AP exam first, and in depth. By this I mean that sections that students struggled with the most this year, should be taught at the beginning of the course and the sections they were the most confident with, at the end."

"I feel that Ms. Towne should possibly make more use of turnitin.com, as it was very convenient to use just in case people couldn't print at home or at school..."

"Ms. Towne should spend more time having writing workshops where we could go over on creating really strong and structured essays. Even though it would seem a bit formulaic if we were to implement it in our writing, I think that if we were to go ahead and examine very strong essays and craft them at near the abilities then it would help us get in a habit of flushing out our ideas persuasively and clearly."


It was interesting to see what kids took in and what skirted over their heads.  Many of them expressed wanting more "test prep" which for me, I struggle with at the AP/College Level.  Everything I planned and ask them to do is preparing them to take the test. In college, test prep is done is study groups with peers, not during class time (at least it was for me) and I worry about the president that is set by always providing this support to students. Have we created a generation of students that is so unable to learn on their own that they need explicit test prep in order to prepare for an exam?

I do have some ideas about what I will do differently, structurally and when I will introduce certain aspects of writing to students.  On to revision and to a new year.

23. When Is The Right Time To Tell Our Own Stories?

I read a great article on The Players' Tribune by elite soccer athlete Christie Rampone called "This Is 40".  She raises great points about growing older, being a mom and wife as well as a leader to other women.  While I am not an athlete, nor a mom, I am turning 38 this year and I am a leader in my work community.  I forwarded the article on to one of my Juniors who plays four varsity sports, has had numerous internships in the tech industry over the last three years and maintains an extremely high GPA.  In the subject line line of the email I simply put: "Great Article".  About 3 hours later I got a reply: "Yes. It is." I know that sharing stories of strong women who are exemplars for new generations is an important part of being an educator.  

I began a class two weeks ago on memoir writing.  I had immersed myself this past year in the creation of a curriculum for Advance Placement Language and Composition, a College Board approved course that I taught to 11th graders this past year.  It is all about rhetoric and learning to read and be critical of nonfiction. It challenged me to think about audience and purpose, diction and syntax.  As I have begun the writing process of crafting what I hope will ultimately become a publishable memoir I find that I am thinking more than ever about not just what I am saying but how I say it.  However the larger question that I keep coming back to is, When IS the right time to tell our own stories? 

One of the first memoirs I remember reading was Me: Stories of My Life by Katherine Hepburn when I was in 8th grade.  My drama teacher that year had worked with the Great Kate on set in the year prior and I was in awe that my teacher had met this amazing woman.  Hepburn's work was more autobiographical than memoir- but it was focused on her 60 year career.  I love memoir because they are focused on a smaller period of time or aspect of life.  As a teacher, one of my favorites is Hole In My Life by Jack Gantos it is focused and intimate, personal and vivid.  My students have loved it and connect with his experience.  Have I had enough experience to craft a memoir that will resonate with an audience?  I think the last 4 years have done just that.  The question then becomes, have I done enough reflection and do I have enough distance to tell a story that is not about therapy and is about telling a great story.   Time will tell.  Maybe by the time I am 40.

22. What happens when the routine is what holds it all together?

It has begun.  The end of the year Facebook rants from teachers, myself included, about needing the year to be over.  Here in New York City we always work until the end of June, I think for the most part because we have more religious holidays in our school calendar than many other parts of the country most recently, the long awaited addition of Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha.  For high school teachers, the last two weeks of school are the administration of NY State Regents Exams, content specific tests that all students must pass a minimum to graduate.  For the K-8 crowd, it is a different story and I am sure in many ways even more exhausting than for HS teachers.  

While I don't mind being busy, I find that I depend on the routine and the business of the calendar.  This is my light week:

The longer I teach, the more I know I thrive in the routine.  I wake up at 5:30 AM, take my pill, shower, get ready, make lunch, walk to train (I have 2 routes I always take- there is no variation), get coffee , 99% of the time iced- even in the winter (there are also two coffee places, but I prefer the cart across from my school over the corner deli, but the deli has better blueberry muffins), go in, work through my day and what ever after school activities I have, train home, usually have dinner with my husband, watch an episode of something while doing last minute work/email/grading, in bed by 10.  Wake up- repeat.  I AM a creature of habit.

I know that not all teachers are like me.  There are the teachers who need the time off to decompress, to spend time with friends and family, to travel, to pursue other interests.  After about 2 weeks I begin to get stir crazy.  Two weeks is enough time for me to catch up on sleep, go to a couple movies, see non teacher friends who I otherwise never get to see because I get up at 5:30 in the morning and struggle to stay awake past 9.  I am already 6 weeks into reevaluating my curriculum for the next year and wanting to dig in and start again.  (This process usually begins around Memorial Day, sometimes earlier.)  By three weeks in I begin to struggle with the time off.  There is only so much sleeping one can do. I don't have children so my time is my own and last summer was the worst yet and I would say I was a bit manic.  

This year was nutty.  I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer in February and have been recovering since then.  My body is more tired than usually and it is hard to tell if it is school or my now removed thyroid that is contributing to my exhaustion.   I remember standing in my principal's office in early March, prior to my thyroidectomy, and telling him that having cancer was not going to slow me down.  That I would continue to move forward and pursue my career goals and I have done just that.  I just started a summer class at NYU that will take me through the end of July and in the fall I will be heading back to school to begin a second MA in addition to teaching Theatre and AP Lang and Comp next year.  I have a lot on my plate.  It's good.  

So how do I fortify and refuel while keeping myself on a schedule?  Honestly, I am not sure yet.  I know I thrive when I am busy and I will look for other things I love, in addition to my summer class and curriculum planning.  I have a trip to the west coast the last week in July and vacation with my husband the first week in August.  We go back to work mid August and I find myself counting the days as establishing routine will hold me together.

21. When Do You Feel Most Like You Work On A Team? Reflection on what makes a successful department. #edblogaday

Source: Golspie H.S.

You have all heard it, "There is no I in TEAM."  I always tell my kids that cliches are cliches for a reason.  I have had some amazing team work experiences.  They seem to empower all the players, celebrate each person's strengths, and showcase what working together and hard can produce.  I have had experienced this trifecta of teamwork most frequently when I worked in professional theatre.  I think it is in part because each member of the team has a speciality and focus, something unique that they bring to the table and that is celebrated and capitalized on for the betterment of the production.

In schools it is the same, yet different.  Yesterday at our spring day long professional development we began the day with an exercise I have done at least three times now.  The Leadership Compass Self-Assessment (from Be The Change Consulting) You go through the list of traits for each of the compass points and then determine which direction represents you the most.  We were then directed to go and stand at that point.  I moved to the East- the "visionary".  I looked around the room and one member of our ELA department stood at each point of the compass.  This is why we work so well.  We all bring different strengths to the table and we balance one another.  

As we have interviewed new ELA teachers this spring, its been interesting to really think about what we as a group need.  What will both challenge and compliment?  What strengths does someone need to bring to the table to further build an already strong group?  I think there is a lot we could do to work better as a team.  My hope for next year is that there is more time for content specific PD for our department, to learn and grow together, not just facilitating business/administrative decimation of information. I want to see us evolve, take on different points of the compass and navigate through out first year with 9-12 grades.

20. Growth Mindset- Holding On To What Is Important.

Summer growth: important for teachers too! (Photo: M. Towne)

When I started teaching, I had the dream of being in the same school for the duration of my career.  I had teachers in high school who had always taught at Roosevelt High- Mr. Brink, Ms. Ryles, VK. My father's best friend had been a student of Mr. Brink in the 1960's for history and I took his class in the mid 90's.  It was in Brink's class that I really leaned to take notes- good notes.  The note taking skills that would serve me through college.  He was a legend and had a legacy.  Ruben Van Kempen, affectionately known by his students as VK has just retired this year after 37 years. Ms. Ryles taught sewing and textiles for 30+ years as well, truly a dying art form.  I loved those teachers and those classes.  They were tied up in the romanticism of teaching for me as I went through graduate school.  This is what teaching was going to be like.

I was wrong.  I will say this- there is a HUGE difference between my affluent, super white, privileged high school where something like 85+% of students go onto 4 year colleges right after graduation (I did not) and the majority of NYC public high schools.  It's ok that I was wrong.

I started my career in an alternative high school in Brownsville, Brooklyn.  I don't know that I thought I would be there for 30 years, but I wanted to be there for a long time.  I wanted to learn and grow into the educator I knew I could be.  At some point my evolution halted and I felt angry and frustrated with the career I had loved so much.

How do we, as educators, as professionals continue to develop and grow- to hold onto that growth mindset, the for many of us pushed us to teaching in the first place?  

I am doing two things.

First, I am taking a class, that starts this week actually at NYU School of Professional Studies.  It is all for me and is not about pedagogy.  It is a writing class and my hope is that it will challenge me professionally and intellectually and as a result I will discover new things to being back to my classroom.  

Second, I am beginning a two year program in school administration.  While I don't know at this point if I want to be an admin, I do want to understand more about how schools work and the nuts and bolts that hold all the parts and pieces together.  I want to be a better coach and mentor to teachers as a teacher leader and to develop a deeper understanding of the bigger picture.  

Right now, this is the best way for me to continue to grow as an educator. Going back to school scares the heck out of me.  I have the support and encouragement of my current administration, a huge piece in this next step.  Inevitably, I will move forward to new challenges and professional endeavors.  I don't know that I was meant to be in one classroom in one school for 30 years but I want to be a strong voice in my field and I will do everything in my power to continue to "grow" the strength of my voice.

19. Getting Lost In The Exhauastion

I hit the overtired place but there is no room for slowing down for a few more weeks.  I am thankful for tomorrow and the brief respite from classes with the day of early Regents exams and then all day PD on Thursday.  In the mean time we had interviews last week and two more today.  It's a process thinking about who and why and where they would fit in and what they would bring to the dynamic of an already strong team.

There is also the larger piece- thinking longer term- beyond the next year.  What do we as a team need in the next 3, 4 and 5 years.  Where will I fit into this dynamic? Who will still be with us?  Who will have moved on, moved forward.  I suspect this will be a school that people stay with for a long time (provided the school culture does not dramatically change).  So what is the compliment.  An argument can be made for many of the amazing people we have met.  Only time will tell.

I donated the remaining three weeks before Regents exams to the Living Environment department- to help support 9th graders prep for their exam.  Much of the work I can do with them is with literacy skills and close and critical reading of science texts and breaking down reading comp questions.  I am glad to help.

My AP students are also wrapping up their speeches that they will present next week in class.  There is some fantastic work taking place and I suspect this will be a powerful experience for many of them.

The small wins outweigh the exhaustion and I am doing the best I can to not get too lost.  I am starting a class on NYU on Thursday- memoir writing.  Kicking writing into overdrive.  Stay tuned...

18. The Reflective Practitioner and Calculated Risks #edblogaday

At the end of each of our lesson plans and unit plans is space to reflect on how it went and attach student work (digitally).  Admittedly, I seldom take the time to reflect on the lessons this way.  It has never felt authentic but rather forced.  When I began blogging for this project at the beginning of April, it didn't feel forced.  My thinking felt authentic, honest and it was true to me.  While I know blogging is the long form of reflection, what is the happy medium between nothing and blogging that still gives me time to think about my teaching in a brief yet authentic way that really does serve a purpose?

I have found of late that my reflection has centered around many WHY questions as I work to dig through the much of my craft.  As I was walking out last night, I walked along side my Principal and I was sharing with him that a teaching colleague, who had applied to another admin training program (one I applied to but did not get into) had been accepted.  It will be an intense one year program.  I applied to another program, that is 2 years, will culminate in a second Masters, give me my 30+ credits and support my development in a cohort of 24 professionals while being supported by Hunter College and our network New Visions.  My boss told me he was glad I was taking the route I was- even though he graciously wrote me recommendations for both programs.  I am too.  I think this is a better fit for me.  As we parted last night he left me with the thought- WHY am I going though the administration program?  What do I want to do at the end of 2 next two years? 

I relayed this story to my husband when I got home.  He told me that he thought the push from my principal was the right step.  He is challenging me to really begin thinking about the WHY and what this next step may mean for me.  At this point what I know is that I have begin to develop some very clear thinking about what it means to be a part of a school community and in order to really understand the HOW of educational systems, I need more training.  I need to go back to school.  

I worry that I am too emotional, too sensitive and that I could never be as removed as it seems principals feel they need to be in order to be truly effective school leaders.  This part I don't understand and I believe I need to go through this process to learn what being a school leader means to me and should look like.  What if I go though this process and decide that being a school leader is not what I want?  I think this is an ok risk.  I know it will push me to be more reflective, to be more critical of my own practice and as a result hopefully it will make me a better educator and leader.

17. Laughter and Electricity: The Solution to Exhaustion #edblogaday

Today was  along day.  An epic day at the end of an epic week.  I am tired.  I can feel myself starting to hit the wall of the school year.  I know that it has been a Herculean feat just for me to get through this year.  It's ok that I am exhausted.  Last night I got to go see Fiasco Theatre Company's production of Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona.  I got all dressed up and my wonderful friend Primo came with me.  We laughed and schmmozed and drank wine.  It felt good to laugh and relax and escape into the theatre for a few hours.

If you are in NYC you can see this show through June 20th!

Today was long.  Up at 5.  Out the door by 6:30.  Heavy teaching day, lots of student conferences, quick coffee after school, back for meeting at 3:45 to prep for interview session from 4-6, run interviews for group of 17, chat with applicants after, debrief with Admin, pack up, answer phone messages, out the door by 7:15, on the rain by 7:30, home by 815.  

I don't have much left.  I do have an inbox of 32 speeches students wrote- first drafts of their Raising A Ruckus Project (modeled on Ted Talks), the culminating project for AP Lang.  I am excited and they are doing amazing writing and a lot of it.  This project feels electric and I know I have hit something big.  You know the feeling.  This is the feeling I will just to ride out the rest of the school year.  Laughter and electricity. 

16. Appreciation and Expectations- My Journey Through Heartbreak #Edblogaday

A friend of mine posted the above image on Facebook last week and I set it aside, knowing that it would become a blog post.  I suppose it would have made a great Teacher Appreciation Week post, but after participating in the #NYEdChat last night on Twitter, it is clear to me, now more than ever, that teachers thrive in positivity.  This does not mean that we need to inflate each others egos or provide untruths.  It means that teachers should speak up and speak out about what IS working.  This is why writing about appreciation, not just for a week in May is integral to growth, development and cultivation of community.

I, like many of us, have already had many jobs in my short 38 years. I have had great employers and I have had horrible ones.  When I saw this image, the first thought into my head was, of course I do! I want to work hard when the hard work is recognized.  I have always thought of myself as someone who does work hard.  My parents let me get my first job when I was 10, as a Mother's Helper- before I was old enough to babysit.  I worked at the local Rec Center on Saturdays, earning a paycheck for score keeping through the winter basketball season.  (Though at the time it was really just a way for me to be around the older boys from the neighborhood who I thought were cute.)  I think I filed my first Federal tax return in middle school.  I understood that hard work pays off and leads to more work, more OPPORTUNITY. 

Teaching is the first field I have worked in where appreciation is much harder to come by than punitive gestures.  It leaves teachers feeling guarded and overly cautious, and as a result, not trusting themselves to do the work they know they are trained to do.  The work they know they are good at and in most cases they love.  At the end of year 4 I was crying almost every day at work. I should have found a new job.  I felt a loyalty to my students and stayed one more year, even through it was not a good decision.  I no longer had the support of my administration (and it was unclear why this has happened) and it felt like nothing I could do was good enough.  I had tenure.  I had great test scores.  I moved students forward every year.  It didn't matter.  I didn't feel appreciated.  I felt hated and as a result I didn't want to take on any more than I needed to.  I left right at the end of the school day.  My job that I had loved more than anything was breaking my heart.

The longer I am in the system, the more stories I hear like this.  It now frames my thinking about what it means to be a leader.  I am starting an admin program this fall and I have started to build many ideas about what it means to be a school leader. I have been watching our administration more closely, noting how teachers are supported, encouraged, developed and appreciated.  It's all food for thought as I grow in my career.

Most days, I do feel appreciated. Most days I know I play an important role at my school.  I don't know that every teacher at my school feels this way but I think it's possible for appreciation to be felt by all.  Not just for one week in May.

15. Supporting Parents- The Conversations To Be Had #Edblogaday

I have never felt like this was something I was especially good at. I am not that great advisor that is in constant contact with my students. I also have a number of parents, who after two years have still never met and to my best knowledge have not ever come into school.

I have three families who I text, call, email pretty consistently, there are a couple more who are in between lots of communication and none at all. When there is none, it's because I never get a response and their kid is not failing, so I have let it slide. There are bigger advisory fish to fry.

The Chancellor built in, with our new contract, time for parent outreach. It's the time for midday phone calls that often are bad news. It sucks and doesn't really feel constructive. I often wonder what it's like for K-8 teachers who have 32 families they have to keep abreast of everything and not just 10 to 15.   While I think parent outreach is a great idea, the current structures don't work that well.

I also think a lot about better ways to communicate. I was reading through the informal parent survey from the last PTA meeting and while most of the feedback is positive, frustrations do center around communication. In the digital age people have come to expect instant information and access and in many ways parents and students do with things like online grade books, parents and students can track their progress.  If teacher doesn't grade fast enough, parents are frustrated.  My school sends home weekly progress reports on top of parents and students having access to the same information- putting even more weight on traditional grades and I worry that the weekly reminders about failure don't inspire change but just degrade and oppress students who in many cases are already struggling.

How do we shift the conversations that we are having with parents?  Especially around things like grades and learning?

I have watched kids fall apart this year because of the pressure from home around grades.  I am not a parent and I make no attempt to pretend that I am or that I understand what a parent deals with.  I am a teacher though and I see the correlation of messaging from home coupled with messaging from schools and the impact it has on students.  I know some of this is huge and systemic, but this is where my brain is right now.

14. The Hiring Season: Department Accountability #Edblogaday

I love this time of year.  I love it because it warms up, people smile at each other more, and I can wear sandals.  This is also the time of year that I start thinking towards next year.  I don't know if all teachers do this but it seems to be my pattern. I start reflecting on all the things that I want to do differently, tweak and retool for next year.

Now, I have to be 100% honest here.  I have NEVER taught the same curriculum two years in a row.  My first 5 years of teaching I was in an alternative HS with 12 week trimesters so over 5 years I wrote roughly 30 different courses. It was quick and dirty planning and the style I developed meant that on paper I didn't necessarily write down every step I was going to make through the lesson.  I also didn't need to. My years of theatre training have served me well as a teacher.

Last year, I co planned with three other teachers to build the new 10th grade Global Lit curriculum.  I struggled with this kind of co planning.  My process had been so organic that writing lessons that others could use and follow was challenging for me. Having to learn to put down on paper all the things I was doing, so someone else could do them was hard.  I learned a lot last year.

This year, theatre class grew from a semester to a year long course and I took on AP Language and Comp for the first time.  New curricula, again. I was also working solo and I found it difficult to not have people to really collaborate and be held accountable to.  I do like planning on my own though and I was back to working and creating in a way that I felt the most fluid and effective.

Why do I go through all this?  Well, yesterday we had interviews with two prospective teachers because it is that time of year- The Hiring Season.   We are going into our 4th year and will be fully staffed, as well as having 4 grades for the first time.  I facilitated two interviews as the majority of our department sat with me, listening and taking notes on the responses from both candidates.  As the senior teacher, it's interesting to see and watch at the group dynamics and how this powerful team is developing at our school.  The person we chose to bring in needs to compliment but at the same time be able to work independently and confidently.  It is good to hear the thinking and concerns that my colleagues have. I feel protective of them and want to see our department continue to grow.

I have been thinking a lot about what I have to offer our department.  They are strong, confident, independent, leaders in their own right, two will be mentoring new teachers in training next year in a program with the network we belong to- one, moving into his second year will just continue to get better with time and experience.  I think a lot about what we do need as a department and how we can develop.  The new person we add to this mix will have a dynamic job and a powerful group of people to work with.  I reflect on my process and my contributions and I know I have so much more work to do on myself and as a colleague, collaborator and teacher leader.  Only time will tell.  Hopefully, we choose wisely.