AVReading

  Welcome back to those of you returning! Welcome to those of you who are new.  I am the school’s reading coordinator, and as part of my work here, I publish a monthly newsletter to highlight important literacy and reading topics and practices.  I also administer reading assessments to students when teachers suspect that there might be a reading problem involved.  Additionally, I work with teachers in both full staff sessions and one-on-one appointments to design literacy rich curriculum, develop better assessments, promote reading strategies, and finally to foster environments of engagement.  I also am available to visit classrooms to teach comprehension strategies and open up my own classroom for observations if you are interested in seeing a particular strategy employed in real life.  Please feel free to come to me with questions or concerns you have related to literacy, reading, and / or engagement.  I am here to help! Each year, I identify a the...

  For as much as a sense of community is needed for a rich, transformative educational environment, I am aware that there will always be resisters.  These are students who, despite our best efforts, simply refuse to join the community.  There may be many different reasons for their resistance.  And the truth is, discovering the reason is not always necessary or important.  And despite our own wishes to have everyone included, community does not happen when it is forced upon people.  On a certain level, I understand the nature of a classroom will always include a type of involuntary participation in community and that it will always feel a little contrived, maybe even forced.  Yet there is a distinction between a classroom where conditions are created for students to more willingly join into community, and one where students are coerced into group action.             For those who resist, careful ...

            AVHS was built around the idea of a circle.  It began as a quirky, architectural choice in the building’s original design with these massive circular windows that span the height of both floors and look out from the building’s front facade.  In the last wave of remodeling, the circular theme has become infused throughout the building.  Our marquee at the front incorporates the circle, our expansive commons area uses the design in the carpet, massive circles hang from the ceiling, and the newly painted walls are decorated with them.  Even the exterior walls of our theatre follow the curve of a circle, defying the usual square corners of large rooms and buildings.             It is a different feel from the traditional spaces of schools, where we have become accustomed to hard angles, straight lines, and clean, tidy box-like clas...

  Creating community in class is important.  Reaching out to families on a regular basis is perhaps just as important to that sense of community.  Considering our class sizes, this is not an easy or simple task.  Still, the advancement of communication systems has allowed us to more easily reach families.  It might mean a quick email to a parent or guardian or a mass message sent through the school’s course management system.  Letters home through snail mail, conferences, and parent / student orientation nights are also excellent ways to make connections with families.  With this said, it is still a struggle.  In theory, communicating with families makes a lot of sense.  In practice, it is not easy to do.  Our school days are so hectic and compressed that in some cases we simply forget to make the call home to touch base.  Or perhaps we are so busy putting out immediate fires that we just never really have a ch...

  Guidelines for Writing a Commencement Address The draft you write for consideration does not need to be a final version, but should give the panelists a clear idea of what you plan to say in your speech. The traditional commencement address has had content which reflects back on the class's experiences and also gives advice or guidance for the future. The tone should be one which inspires and motivates the listeners. Although the Commencement Address is directed at the graduating class, the message needs to be meaningful and appropriate for the adult audience present as well. Content, language, or style which parents or grandparents might find offensive is not suitable for a Commencement Address. Humor can be an effective minor element of a Commencement Address. The predominant message, and consequently the predominant writing style, should be serious, thoughtful and inspirational.   Format: This a general map of graduation speeches.  It is not required. Feel ...

  As teachers, one of our favorite “go-to” activities for a fun day in class is playing games.  These can be a lot of fun.  I am always a little taken aback how a usually reserved or quiet class can be whipped up into a frenzy when the element of competition is introduced.  It is fun to see these people engaged and even passionate about winning the prize, even when that prize might be something insignificant, like a Jolly Rancher.   These games are great for review days, where actual test items can be converted into “trivia questions” that students try to answer for individual or team points.  It is an attractive choice for teachers, in part, because there are so many online resources and tools that make “gaming a lesson” quite easy—Kahoot and Gimkit to name a few.  These games are fun and dynamic and a good choice every once in a while. However, they can also create a tension within a community, especially if those games are...

  A good deal of teaching is about balancing.  We try to create a balance between a classroom that has too many rules and expectations and a classroom without enough of them.  We try to balance a classroom between having too much fun and not enough learning and too much content without much fun.  We try to balance between presenting ourselves as strong and confident figures who have everything perfectly planned and presenting ourselves as open and vulnerable beings willing to take risks.  It’s a lot easier to stick with the former.  If you are like me, you love control.  You cherish a lesson where you know exactly what is going to happen, where things move along exactly as you had orchestrated them, and where everybody does exactly what they had been instructed to do.               With that said, I must admit that some of my most transformative educational moments hav...

  The factory model of schooling has driven so many of our choices in education.  Unfortunately, this model does little to recognize the rich diversity of approaches that students may have in learning and in demonstrating their knowledge.  While schools could be much more efficient if we could simply apply a uniform system of education to everyone, we have learned that when we try that so many students are left behind.              As we strive to create a sense of community within our classrooms, it will be important that we do our best to pull in everyone.  And to do this, we will need to privilege some of the unique differences that exist within our classrooms.  The idea here is that most of our work and assessments within a classroom revolve around limited outcomes of academic tasks: essays, quizzes, tests, speeches.  These are important, and we must work hard to help our st...

  I am sometimes profoundly moved by the wisdom of my students.  I recall one student who once told me she was taught growing up that, “We can run faster alone, but we can run farther together.”  With that simple exchange, my thinking around community and collaboration totally changed.               Under the idea of constructivism, this all makes sense.  Students can try to learn the concepts and skills we give them on their own.  A teacher can assign readings and papers and projects, and expect students to process these lessons and learn in their own little silos of thinking, and they can move pretty quickly. They do not have to wait up for slower moving, less motivated or distracted peers.  They just get the work and move on to the next lesson.              Yet, there are so many limitations to this way of lea...

As a young teacher, I remember visiting the classrooms of my mentors and being awed by their ability to lead the group rather effortlessly through a learning experience.  On a superficial level, I was impressed by the attentiveness and orderliness of the group.  Students did not talk out of turn, they had their materials ready, they had thoughtful things to say. It felt just like a scene from Dead Poets Society or even Harry Potter where nearly all of the classroom scenes reflected a very eager or (at the very least) a very compliant collection of students.              Unfortunately, my observations were entirely misguided.  For starters, my data set was limited to fictional classrooms or-- in the event of my mentors-- Honors and AP classes where the level of participation  is different from the average on-level or intervention class, which I was much more likely to teach.  Furthe...

  As a society, collaboration and community does not come very easily for us.  So much of our cultural narrative is built upon the idea that people just have to tough it out on their own.  If you want to make it in this world, you have got to take matters into your own hands and power through.  You can’t depend on others, and anyone who does not do their share is simply a freeloader.  Additionally, we are not very trusting.  We are more likely to be suspicious of our peers than we are to engage them in conversation, or get to know them.  In fact in the classroom, “creating community” which too often is lumped in with “collaboration” is more often than not dreaded by students.  Inevitably, students complain about the ugly side of group work where one or two participants end up doing a disproportionate amount of the work.              Students also come to class with his...