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
July 19, 2007
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.
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.
GCTE Presentation: Graphic Novels, Picture Books and YA Lit
February 11, 2007
Hello, again. It’s been a while, but some of the stress that I’ve been experiencing has been lifted off my shoulders this weekend; so, I am temporarily escaping my black hole. I presented at the GCTE (Georgia Council of Teachers of English) conference at Jekyll Island this past Friday and it went fabulously. I found the conference to be an extraordinarily enjoyable experience for it being my first time. I was surprised at how few student and first-year teachers were in attendance, and was also surprised by the fact that so many first-year teachers that I DID see there were over thirty and coming into teaching as a second career. I’m already excited about the GCTE conference next February, where I hope to present again.
The second really big thing that happened to me this weekend was that a few people from Houston County came to hear me present. They seemed really interested and I can’t wait to see where this leads and if I will be getting a job in their school district. So, that’s exciting. But, enough about me. If you are reading this you are probably wanting to hear about the resources I have to share. And, I do have stuff to share.
I suppose it would be appropriate to start off with my own presentation. As a refresher, my presentation focused on how to integrate Young Adult Literature into a secondary English Language Arts classroom. While I say secondary, I believe that some of the lessons that I created would also be appropriate for a seventh or eighth grade classroom, depending on the standards that exist in your state or district and the class goals that you have, individually, set for your students.
My presentation started out with a PowerPoint that provided a rationale for why Young Adult Literature should be considered for use in a secondary English Language Arts curriculum and how it defies many of the perceptions and misconceptions that many English teachers have about the genre. Why YA Lit?
My mentor teacher, who presented with me, outlined some YA novels that you could pair with a canonical text in a thematic unit to scaffold student comprehension and understanding of the probably more difficult and less accessible classic text. My best advice is to use a book, written by Sarah K. Herz and Donald R. Gallo, entitled From Hinton to Hamlet to get ideas for which YA titles would be the best matches for canonical texts. They include pairings for a wide selection of canonical texts including The Scarlet Letter, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Odyssey, The Grapes of Wrath, Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Lord of the Flies, Julius Caesar, and many more canonical titles. The book also provides information about how you can pair texts up according to the situational and character archetypes they feature.
We concluded the presentation with a brief mention to three lessons that I came up with for incorporating YA Lit into an ELA classroom. One involves using Graphic Novels to Teach Dialogue (as well as narrative voice and figurative language), and includes a good resource list for those interested in exploring graphic novels. Another lesson that I created involves using Picture Book to Teach Inferencing. Included, also, is a list of picture books appropriate for use in a secondary English classroom. I really enjoyed creating these lessons and feel that they will be useful for helping teachers to see the value and possible use of graphic novels and picture books. My hope is that English teachers will begin to see these works as resources for scaffolded teaching that reaches engages student interest, instead of harboring misconceptions about and ignoring these works as remedial, immature and not worthy of academic attention.
The last lesson that I included in our presentation packet, is more of a loose outline, or skeleton, if you will, of a unit that may be implemented after a semester or year of student exposure to and reading of YA Lit titles and authors. The unit idea seeks to bridge YA Lit with Research and Writing in a creative way.
I will try to put up more resources that I obtained at GCTE in the next week, or weeks, to come. Until then, back to student teaching I go. 
Presenting at GCTE in February
November 7, 2006
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.
