My very first classroom, classroom management, and Scarlet Letter Lit Circles

So, I have officially completed my county’s new teacher orientation.  Some of it was thoroughly mindnumbing, but there were positive aspects to it, as well.  I made friends with the other new English teacher in my high school, a first year (and, therefore, terrified) TAPP teacher who will be teaching tenth grade at another high school in the county, and an elementary school teacher who will be teaching fourth grade.  I, also, had the opportunity to become friends with a young man (as young as me!), who just graduated from college (and, is a TAPP teacher, as well).  It turns out that we are also hall neighbors, with him right across from me.

All in all, it wasn’t as bad as I had expected.  I took advantage of the free stuff, I appreciated the free lunch and, most of all, I took away some really good ideas for classroom management.  Thinking about the year to come, I had been struggling a little bit with deciding what types of incentives and consequences I would give my high school students.  High school students are often not as mature as they would have you believe, but you certainly don’t want to run the risk of making them feel as though you are infantilizing them.  Woe to the teacher whose students laugh at him or her over their misled notion that stickers are still effective motivators.

While the speaker at the last session of our orientation offered a lot of great ideas about how to manage one’s classroom, I felt that a lot of the strategies offered by our speaker, and based on the discipline strategies of Dr. Terry Alderman, were aimed mostly at younger students, particularly at the elementary level.

For high school, I did take away a couple things that I wanted to implement, however.  One of the things that I really feel silly about doing in front of the classroom is holding up my arm in some gesture as I wait for them to quiet down and give me their attention.  I don’t know why this makes me feel particularly stupid, but it always does, regardless of whether or not it works (but, believe me I have felt much stupider the times that it hasn’t worked).  One strategy that I took from our speaker, Ms. Savage, was to have a certain number of colored bracelets around one wrist, and switching them to the other wrist if I am holding out my hand and they continue to ignore that gesture for getting quiet and giving me their attention.

I really thought that it would be a good idea.  You could even pull this off with hair ties or rubber bands, although I would imagined that those plastic colored bracelets that have been all the rage and/or colored hair ties would be much more visible.  The important thing in all of the strategies that the speaker shared, regardless of grade level, was that students have a visual cue to motivate them and let them know where they stand on the behavior spectrum of “good” to “not doing so hot.”  I want to use them to determine how much time students will be given at the end of the class as free time to sit in their desks and read, talk, or work on their homework.  If I have five or more bracelets on the “good” wrist by the end of the day, they get their entire five minutes.  If I have less than five, they get the number of minutes left on the “good” wrist.  Bracelets will move from the “good” to “bad” wrist in my class when I have to wait more than ten seconds for the class to quiet down or when a student blurts something out while another student, or I am talking.  One student can only lose one bracelet for their class in a day.  If that same student breaks any of the guidelines again that day, they will be given a warning, and then teacher detention.

My teacher detention usually builds by increments of 15 minutes.  I start with 15 minutes and if a student commits another offense, another 15 minutes will be added on to their time.  Students have a week, or five days, to come and serve my detention before I will write an office referral.  Of course, all major offenses will be dealt with by an immediate office referral. 

Students for whom it is difficult to refrain from talking or any other minor, but persistent, behavior, will be dealt with in teacher-student conferences.  Once a student receives three teacher detentions, they will sit down with the teacher and fill out a behavior contract that outlines their understanding of the problems that they seem to be having with the classroom guidelines, the strategies that the teacher and student will use to try to fix the interruptions, as well as, motivators and consequences for sticking to or breaking the contract.

I think that this is a wonderful idea because it allows me to talk one-on-one with students about what is troubling them, lets them know that I am on their side, and that tells them that I am willing to problem solve with them about how to solve these problems.

As another incentive, I am going to employ what Ms. Savage called Mystery Motivator.  Whenever I catch a student being prepared or staying on task at certain random times, I will give them a slip from my paper cube.  They will write their name on this piece of paper and slip it into the jar marked for their period.  I will let the jar accumulate for two weeks, and then I will pick a random name.  The student whose name I pick will be given a secret prize kept inside the mystery box or mystery envelope.

This is basically the classroom management plan that I have put together for my class this year.  I feel that it’s both fair and respectful to students.  I just hope that it ends up being a successful plan, because I know how difficult classroom management is for so many first year teachers.

In other news: I received my one hundred dollars from the governor.  “Sonny Money” as some teacher apparently refer to it.  I don’t know what I am going to spend it on, yet, but there is certainly a lot that I could spend money on.  I am still going to ask my department head if it would be possible to purchase a certain set of books for me to teach literature circles with the Scarlet Letter unit in order to get students more engaged in this difficult text.  I believe that while the text can be exceedingly difficult in its language and syntax, that students will be able to better understand and access the themes, if they have to read thematically-related books about which they can more easily relate.

The Young Adult novels that I have chosen as perfect literature circle selections to read in conjunction with The Scarlet Letter are as follows:

Monster – Walter Dean Myers

About a boy who is on trial for his participation in a robbery turned murder. This book begs a lot of questions regarding the degrees of innocence, the responsibility ability of one person to judge and decide the fate of another person, as well as, the degree to which an experience like this changes the way people look at you and you look at yourself.

Speak – Laurie Halse Anderson

Amazon.com Review:
Since the beginning of the school year, high school freshman Melinda has found that it’s been getting harder and harder for her to speak out loud.  What could have caused Melinda to suddenly fall mute? Could it be due to the fact that no one at school is speaking to her because she called the cops and got everyone busted at the seniors’ big end-of-summer party? Or maybe it’s because her parents’ only form of communication is Post-It notes written on their way out the door to their nine-to-whenever jobs. While Melinda is bothered by these things, deep down she knows the real reason why she’s been struck mute…

Contains some sexual themes, as the reader finds out that Melinda was the victim of a rape.

Baby Be-Bop – Francesca Lia Block

From School Library Journal:
Grade 10 Up? A prequel to the popular books about Weetzie Bat and her circle of quirky friends and relatives. This novel is about her best pal, Dirk, in his pre-Weetzie days. He’s in high school (in L.A., of course), living with Grandma Fifi and struggling with how to come out to his best friend and soulmate. When a gang of gay bashers beats him up, he drags himself home and passes out. While he’s unconscious, long-dead relatives he’s never known come to him in what seem to be dreams.  His visions assure him that “There was love waiting; love would come.” Block writes distinctively and convincingly, interweaving the hallucination scenes smoothly. She makes the power of stories felt?and here, more purposefully than ever before, she weaves a safety net of words for readers longing to feel at home with themselves.

(Brief drug references, some sexual content, sensitive subjects dealing with sexual orientation.)

The First Part Last – Angela Johnson

From School Library Journal
Grade 8 Up-Brief, poetic, and absolutely riveting, this gem of a novel tells the story of a young father struggling to raise an infant. Bobby, 16, is a sensitive and intelligent narrator. His parents are supportive but refuse to take over the child-care duties, so he struggles to balance parenting, school, and friends who don’t comprehend his new role. Alternate chapters go back to the story of Bobby’s relationship with his girlfriend Nia and how parents and friends reacted to the news of her pregnancy. 

(some potentially sensitive subject matter about teen parenthood)

Native Son - Richard Wright

From Library Journal
After 58 years in print, Wright’s Native Son has acquired classic status. It has not, however, lost its power to shock or provoke controversy. Bigger Thomas is a young black man in 1940s Chicago who accidentally kills the daughter of his wealthy white employer. Though his fate is certain, he finds that his crimes have given meaning and energy to his previously aimless life, and he goes to his execution unrepentant. Out of this tale the author develops a profoundly disturbing image of racism and its results that puts Bigger’s experience in horrifying perspective.

(Parents should be aware of violent language and situations contained in this book.)

Return from Summer Hiatus + Review: Octavian Nothing

So, it has been quite a while since I have been able to update this blog.  I have graduated, moved into my new loft, and taken the entire summer to have as much fun as possible before this upcoming school year.  I just found out that I will be teaching two classes of American Lit and one class of World Lit.  I’m very excited, but, also a little bit nervous.  I suppose that is only normal for a first-year teacher, though.

I have spent some time this summer reading some YA Lit.  So, here is one YA Lit book review for now.  I’ll be planning for my classes in the next couple weeks, but hopefully I will have the opportunity to update again.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party – M.T. Anderson

M.T. Anderson is by no means a stranger to the world of YA Lit, having written several highly acclaimed young adult novels that have already found their way onto the library shelves and course syllabi of many high schools across the nation.  I noticed that his novel Burger Wuss  made it onto the summer reading list for my high school this year; and, perhaps, his better known novel, Feed, was a National Book Award Finalist a couple years back. 

His new novel, Octavian Nothing, follows the childhood of a young boy in the American colonies on the eve of the Revolutionary War.  We know that Octavian is the son of a princess and prince from a country across the ocean.  We know that Octavian is the brilliant protegee of the “enlightened scholars” who populate the Novanglican College of Lucidity, behind whose walls Octavian lives his studious, but sheltered, life.  What we are left to answer for ourselves is the question of who Octavian is.  Why is he so important, and for what purposes is he being taught and sheltered by the Novanglican Church of Lucidity?

Written in elegantly heightened and beautiful prose, from the point of view of our protagonist, Octavian, M.T. Anderson allows readers to witness the birth of a nation from a point of view that continues to be largely ignored in historical accounts and fictional narratives, alike.  Anderson asks us to examine the hypocrisy that exists between the ideals on which countries are founded and the reality of those ideals in practice.  Through his focus on the horrifying experience of one individual through a time that is generally looked upon idealistically and nostalgically, we are confronted with the question of what it means to be a citizen of or a traitor to a nation. 

I cannot praise this book enough.  I think that it should be required reading for all high school American Literature students.  While the language may prove a little difficult, it would be more than worth it to try to teach a book that deals with such compelling, important and contemporarily relevant themes.  This is, by far, the best YA book that I have read, and I can’t wait for the second volume to come out.

Hopefully there will be more posts to come, now that I am back in the habit of thinking about school.

Good luck to everyone anticipating and planning for the beginning of another school year.

YA Lit Book Review: The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer

If you are interested in some background about how I came across this book, read background.  If you are only interested in the review, I have so kindly split this entry up into two sections.  Simply skip down to the review section.   

Background: 

Since I have more time than I know what to do with right now, I’m trying to read as much YA Lit as possible.  I figure the more YA Lit that I am able to read now, the better I will be able to serve my students next year and in the years to come.  I started to fall into the trap, lately, of believing that all YA Lit was boring fluff.  (I had been reading Scott Westerfield’s Uglies [Book 1 of the Uglies Trilogy] and Peter Dickinson’s Eva.  Both are good books and I would recommend reading the reviews on Amazon.com sound at all interesting to you.  I found the topics interesting (Uglies dealt with a futuristic society in which everyone, at the age of 16, undergoes surgery to become superstar gorgeous.  Eva concerns a teenage girl, Eva, who wakes up after months in a coma to find that she no longer inhabits the body of a human, but that of a female chimpanzee) and believed that they had potential to be great YA Lit books.  So, it was not the fluff part that got to me.  It was that I found these books incredibly tedious to read.  They were, in some areas, utterly boring.  The timing and flow of events in each of these books was completely off, dragging the action out far longer than it should have been.

I am happy to say that Nancy Farmer’s The House of the Scorpion changed my mind about YA Lit once again.  My interest in incorporating literature circles in my future classes is at an all-time high, so I’m trying to group books into thematic units.  I came upon The House of the Scorpion because I’m currently interested in accumulating a list of books that would fit well into a utopia/dystopia unit.  This is the same reason that I was drawn to the Westerfield and Dickinson novels that I mention above.  Farmer’s book, however, is the first one I’ve come across that I would not hesitate to include as a choice for utopia/dystopia literature circles.

The Review:

Mattéo Alacrán lives in Opium, a country that borders the United States to the south and Aztlán, formerly Mexico, to the north.  Mattéo is the highly protected clone of the powerful, one hundred and forty year old drug lord and ruler of Opium, El Patrón.  As a little boy, Mattéo loves El Patrón, even as everyone in Opium, including El Patrón’s family, cowers in fear of the old man.  The House of the Scorpion follows Matt on his journey to discover who he is and why he was created, as well as the terrifying methods that El Patrón uses to keep all the inhabitants of Opium under his tyrranical control.

Nancy Farmer (also, author of The Ear, The Eye and The Arm) exhibits, in this novel, a perfection of timing.  The House of the Scorpion is the perfect balance between beautifully detailed descriptions of character and setting and action.  Building suspense with each turn of the page, Farmer keeps this almost 400 page novel moving smoothly, without imposing artificial excitements or leaving loose ends.  Perhaps, more importantly from a teacher’s point of view, Farmer’s novel touches on a variety of weighty and provocative themes, including what it means to be human, the responsibilities of a society to the people who create it, the influence of nature vs. nurture on the personality of a human being, the ability of greed to corrupt and the opportunity to make good or bad decisions.  Matt’s movement from the world of Opium to that of Aztlán may also provide a great opportunity for comparing and contrasting the social structures of each society and each societies treatment of its citizens. 

I highly recommend this book, and will probably try to incorporate it into literature circles in my own classroom.  I would recommend this book for high school students, grades 9-11.

Presenting at GCTE in February

I think I’m really going to do it.  I had initially planned to present something along the lines of reading comprehension strategies for low-level 7-12 students, but, as a lowly student teacher, I don’t feel experienced enough yet.  Instead, I’m going to tackle something with a little less pressure attached to it: Young Adult Literature.  I don’t think it’s a big surprise, considering how ambivalent I tend to be toward “The Canon.”

What I plan to do is introduce why Young Adult Literature is important in the middle school and high school classroom, how it can be included within an English curriculum at these levels and how to keep up with and access YA Lit novels using journals and the Internet.

I just returned from the library with some nice print resources that I’m going to draw from in preparation for my presentation and accompanying paper.  These are definitely great resources for the English teacher curious about YA lit and how to incorporate it into the classroom. 

Herz, Sarah K. and Donald R. Gallo. From Hinton to Hamlet: Building Bridges between Young Adult Literature and the Classics.  Second Edition. (2005)

Monseau, Virginia R. and Gary M. Salvner, Eds. Reading their World: The Young Adult Novel in the Classroom.  (1992)

A great online resource is The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents, an organization who publishes a Young Adult Literature journal called the ALAN Review.  The ALAN Review publishes articles about the genre or YA Literature as well as book reviews of newly published YA novels.

The Art of Inference, A Curious Incident, Indeed

So, I’ve been helping my MT with a class of struggling readers for the past month and a half, now.  I’ve been borrowing very heavily on Kylene Beers’ (who was just recently elected NCTE’s Vice President) When Students Can’t Read, What Teachers Can Do.  It’s, honestly, one of the most helpful books I have come across as far as providing realistic and useful strategies for teaching low-ability or low-interest readers.  Every English teacher should have this on their bookshelf.  Since I have just sung Ms. Beers’ praises, I may as well provide a link to some of her reading strategies and lesson plans. 

This past Monday I presented a slightly modified inferencing lesson that I snagged from Beers.  I created a PowerPoint that briefly defined inference (authors imply, readers infer) and contained two images to start using inference with.  The follow-up was having students make inferences with a very short text:

 

He put down $10.00 at the window.  The woman behind the window gave $4.00.  The person next to him gave him $3.00, but he gave it back to her.  So, when they went inside, she bought him a large popcorn.

 

My first two texts were pieces of art that I thought might serve the lesson well.  The first piece was Pablo Picasso’s La Vie.  While I was preparing the presentation, it didn’t even enter my mind that nudity would be an issue with my oh so mature bunch of ninth graders. But, when my MT clicks the slide, I hear:

Giggle, giggle.

“They’re naked! Ms. P., why you showing us naked people?”

“Alright, get it out.  They are naked.”

Then one of the students pipes up, “Gosh, haven’t ya’ll ever seen a naked person before?”

 

More giggles.  For about two minutes.

 

I wonder if I’m ever going to get through this lesson.

 

When I finally do get them to start playing the game and giving me some answers, they came up with some really good inferences.  It was going fairly well when I asked a student volunteer to take everyone’s inferences and try to create a story for the painting.

 

“Well the girl on the left is the woman with the baby’s daughter.  The old woman on the right went to the store.  When her Mama gone, the girl on the left invite her boyfriend over and they start doing their thing, ya know?  Ya know, Ms. P?  They doing their thing and t    he Mama come back and she was mad, that’s why she look so mean.  The boyfriend has his hand out ‘cause he’s trying to explain.  That’s what’s happening Ms. P.”

 

Giggles.

 

I just know that I have lost control.  But, hey, check out the inferences.  So, I motion for my MT to click over to my next slide.  Surely, I can gain back some control here.  The piece was Edvard Munch’s The Scream.  No nudity here.

 

So I repeat the process and ask a volunteer to create a story from the inferences we heard.

“So, like this boy gets lost.  He gets separated from his family and he’s all alone, ‘cause in the picture he’s all alone.  And, he starts screaming because he’s retarded, too.  That’s why he’s screaming, because retarded people scream and they look like that.  Yeah, that’s what they look like, right Ms. P?”

For twenty seconds, I swore that I would never let my kids speak in class again.  Thank god, I have a more than understanding MT.

YA Lit and Detention

Lately, I’ve been immersed in the world of YA Lit as part of my preservice teacher education program. My fellow TCs and I have been given a list of YA literature that I’m sure will prove to be a handy resource in the future. The list:

Adult Contemporary Literature

Kalisha Buckhanon – Upstate
Tracy Chevalier – Girl with the Pearl Earring
Amanda Davis – Wonder When You’ll Miss Me
Alicia Erian – Towelhead
Gregory Galloway – As Simple As Snow
Hark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time
Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner
Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go
J.R. Moehringer – The Tender Bar
Ann Packer – The Dive From Clausen’s Pier
Nancy Rawles – My Jim
Kit Reed – Thinner Than Thou
Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones
Curtis Sittenfeld – Prep
Martha Southgate – The Fall of Rome
Art Spiegelman – Maus
Tobias Wolfe – Old School
Craig Thompson – Blankets
Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveler’s Wife

Contemporary Adolescent Literature

Laurie Halse Anderson – Speak
M.T. Anderson – Feed
Judy Blume – Places I Never Meant to Be
Joshua Braff – The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green
Ann Brashares – The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
Martha Brooks – The True Confessions of a Heartless Girl
Stephen Chbosky – The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Robert Cormier – The Chocolate War
Sharon Creech – Walk Two Moons
Jennifer Donnelly – A Northern Light
Alex Flinn – Breathing Underwater
Mel Glenn – Who Killed Mr. Chippendale
Karen Hesse – Phoenix Rising
A.M. Jenkins – Damage
David Levithan – The Realm of Possibility
Melina Marchetta – Saving Francesca
Tom & Laura McNeal – Crooked
Stephenie Meyer - Twilight
Christopher Moore – Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Michael Morpurgo – Private Peaceful
Richard Mosher – Zazoo
Kenneth Oppel – Airborn
Phyllis Alesia Perry - Stigmata
Cynthia Rylant – A Fine White Dust
Louis Sachar – Holes
Jerry Spinelli - Stargirl
Sarah Weeks – So B. It.
Scott Westerfeld – Peeps
Chris Wooding – Poison

Multicultural Adolescent Literature

Julia Alvarez – How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
Francesca Lia Block – Witch Baby
Joseph Bruchac – The Heart of a Chief
Sandra Cisneros - House on Mango Street
Linda Crew – Children of the River
Sharon M. Draper – Romiette and Julio
Louise Erdrich – The Birchbark House
Will Hobbs – Bearstone
Merle Hodge – For the Life of Laetitia
Angela Johnson - Bird
Victor Martinez – Parrot in the Oven
Carolyn Meyer – White Lilacs
Kyoko Mori – Shizuko’s Daughter
Toni Morrison – The Bluest Eye
Pam Munoz Ryan – Esperanza Rising
Walter Dean Myers – Monster
Lensey Namioka – Ties that Bind, Ties that Break
Gary Paulson – The Crossing
April Sinclair – Coffee Will Make You Black
Gary Soto – Buried Onions
Martha Southgate – Another Way to Dance
Rita Williams-Garcia – Every Time a Rainbow Dies

‘Classic’ Adolescent Literature

Douglas Adams – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Anonymous – Go Ask Alice
Judy Blume – Forever
Orson Scott Card – Ender’s Game
Robert Cormier – The Chocolate War
Chris Crutcher – Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
Anne Frank – Diary of Anne Frank
William Golding – Lord of the Flies
Bette Greene – Summer of My German Soldier
Jeanne & James Houston – Farewell to Manzanar
Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
Robert Lipsyte – The Contender
Lois Lowry – The Giver
Katherine Paterson – Bridge to Terabithia
Gary Paulson – Hatchet
John Steinbeck – Of Mice and Men
Mildred D. Taylor – Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
Theodore Taylor – The Cay
Cynthia Voigt – Homecoming
Paul Zindel – The Pigman

Nonfiction

Steve Almond – Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America
Melba Patillo-Beals – Warriors Don’t Cry
H.G. Bissinger – Friday Night Lights
Lynn Cox – Swimming to Antarctica
Barbara Ehrenreich – Nickel and Dimed
Henry Louis Gates – Colored People
Jon Katz – Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho
Alex Kotlowitz – There Are No Children Here
John Krakauer – Into Thin Air
Lealan Jones – Our America: Life and Death on the South Side of Chicago
Walter Dean Myers – Bad Boy: A Memoir
Michael Pollan – The Botany of Desire
Mary Roach – Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Brent Runyon – The Burn Journals
Julia Scheeres – Jesus Land: A Memoir
Eric Schosser – Fast Food Nation
Tobias Wolfe – This Boy’s Life
Koren Zailckas – Smashed: The Story of a Drunken Girlhood

Sexual Identity Themes

Nancy Garden – Annie on My Mind
Marion Dane Bauer – Am I Blue
Ellen Wittlinger – Hard Love
Garret Freymann-Weyr – My Heartbeat
Judd Winick – Pedro and Me
David Levithan – Boy Meets Boy
Bette Greene – The Drowning of Stephan Jones
Jacqualine Woodson – From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun

Fantasy/Science Fiction

Philip K. Dick – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner)
C.S. Louis – Chronicles of Narnia Series
Philip Pullman – His Dark Materials Trilogy: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass
J.K. Rowling – Harry Potter Series

Obviously not comprehensive in the least, but it provides a good starting point for those who are foreigners to the realm of YA Lit. Some of the ones I’ve read lately and highly recommend are The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.

As for the second part of this post, as promised, I need to talk about detention.  One of the things I have the most trouble with is disciplining students when I feel like my MT’s classroom is not my own.  They definitely don’t take me as seriously as her, and possibly never will.  The point is, though, that I need to learn how to discipline.  Giving detention is integral to this.  I don’t have to worry about administering their detention since I am never there after school, but I am wondering how I am going to administer detention next year.

I know that a lot of teachers make their students serve detention by forcing them to write and write and write.  The problem is, what kind of message does that send my ENGLISH students if I make them write as a punishment.  I really wish teachers would stop making their students write the one sentence over again.  Or, even writing the chapter, even if it is a chapter they are going to be studying anyway.  What I want is to force my students to clean my fishtanks, my desks, my floor, and, perhaps, help the cleaning personnel with after-school clean-up.  I wonder how other teachers do detention for their students ….