Professional Writing at Cortland

Check out a podcast from The Cortland Writer's Association and Professional Writing Program on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi9pH23MffM

What a cool way to promote a school program or club.

I recommend watching this clip--some fantastic writers read their work aloud.

Def Poetry

http://www.hbo.com/defpoetry/episodes/season6/episode05.html

If anyone likes to watch Russell Simmons' Def Poetry on HBO, this season's episode 15 was amazing. The video is not up yet, but it should be up pretty soon. I advise everyone to watch Lamont Carey's "I Can't Read," because it speaks specifically to teachers.

The speaker in Carey's poem was a basketball player and did not learn to read because he did not have to. They passed him because he played basketball well, and he planned on playing basketball to earn a living. But then when he hurt himself and that all fell away, he was just a guy who couldn't read.

My reenactment of the poem is definitely not as intriguing as the poem itself is, but I wanted to emulate the point because the video clip is not yet available on the internet.

(As a side note, I would love to do this with my students. This is such a popular new form of poetry that really interests young adults. Imagine them performing this in class, or even in a podcast?)

Anyway, can someone else find a clip that is available?

I've been wanting to watch it, but if you have DVR on your TV you can record that episode or watch it on HBO On Demand. I highly recommend it.

College Students in the US

On my way back from observation today, my friend was reading an educational article. She revealed this statistic to me, and I wanted to share it here:

Of all the college students in the world, only 14% are from the US.

14%? That's it?

Maybe I'm sheltered, or maybe I have been brainwashed that our country is more of a powerhouse than it really is.

Well, I guess that means that we need to be preparing our students to compete against the other 86%. It's not just the 14% of college students competing with one another anymore; job competition will be worldwide.

What else do all of you make of this statistic?

Did You Know?

I won't lie--I felt a little nervous after watching this video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHWTLA8WecI

The video is called "Did You Know?" and it basically shows how other countries will surpass us in the upcoming years, in regards to technology, intelligence, labor, standard of living, etc. Friedman's book also makes me a bit frightened, but the statistics used in this video really creeped me out. Or maybe it was just the dramatic music that gave the video such a scary effect.

Statistics that creeped me out:

According to Secretary of Education Richard Riley, the top ten jobs that will be in demand in 2010 didn't exist in 2004.

For students starting a four-year technical or college degree, this means that half of what they learn in their first year of study will be outdated by their third year of study.

China will soon become the number one English speaking country in the world.

And, I think Friedman would freak out the most over this one:

If you took every single job in the United States today and shipped it to China, it still would have a labor surplus.

Clearly, education needs to kick itself up a few knotches in order to match these predictions. Our country now has great competition because of this flattening world. We are no longer a powerhouse, but we must meet these challenges we face.

To tackle this, it starts in the classroom. We have to prepare students for jobs that don't exist against people from other countries, not necessarily a student from Texas. Not only do we have increased competition, but with so much available and rapidly changing information, we need to keep re-educating ourselves in our field of study. Thus, these self-learning skills must be taught at a young age so we can sustain them over a lifetime.

Perhaps I feel a bit helpless from this video, but I hope the statistics are more dramatic than they appear.

Making Sense of New Middlers

My last post explained Friedman's New Middlers and the job categories these "untouchables" must adapt to in this ever-changing technological and global world.

So, what does that mean for our future students?

What do we do as educators?

Each category screams of specific skills that need to be integrated at the middle and high school level. Many of these skills can be taught in ELA. I will provide a list of skills that seem necessary for new middlers to acquire in the classroom:

-verbal communication
-public speaking
-researching information
-synthesizing information
-explaining/simplifying complex subjects
-connecting digitally to others around the globe
-generating new ideas from pre-existing ones
-reintegrating new technology with old concepts/ideas
-self-educating
-problem solving
-keeping up-to-date with global news/advancements
-group activity
-getting involved in the community

Many of these skills I do not see applied in common schools I have seen myself. Many schools are caught in an old curriculum that has been the same for years. The problem is, the world has not stayed the same since that curriculum was made. New technologies, ideas, and information has surfaced, allowing more information at our fingertips, and there are new skills that students will need in order to hold successful jobs once they leave high school. What curriculum once was okay for students to hold permanent jobs will no longer suffice. We need to integrate these skills, or else our students will face extreme difficulties with the job market due to global competition and increasing technologies.

A lot of classrooms are focused solely on teaching to the novel, but other skills must come from teaching ELA. One can teach a novel WHILE applying these skills; complete focus does not have to revolve only around the novel's specific content. Students will get more out of the novel if they are interacting with it on a level that is most up to speed and up to date with them and their lives. If they are electronically researching on novel topics or issues, writing to companies about problems in the novel that exist currently, exchanging emails with students across the globe, writing articles on problems and publishing them on the internet, then studnets will retain novels more in depth because they will seem more real to them. These skills can also correlate with this ELA teaching, so this continuous system of teaching the same material for years and years can finally end. We can cause that change if we are ready to work hard to continuously adapt our own curriculums to this changing world.

The New Middlers

With an increasingly global world, Friedman believes that many middle class jobs, that currently are available, will be less accessable or available to future middle class people in America.

Friedman offers several categories of available jobs that middle class individuals can keep in this ever-changing, ever-adapting global world. With this flattening, job opportunites will be taken over by other countries and even advanced technologies. These "New Middlers" can safely hold a job if they can adequately hold one of these categories:

Great Collaborators and Orchestrators: New Middlers will have to have great communication and collaboration skills within their own company, local businesses, and businesses worldwide. Then, these local businesses will bring these global networks to the local scale.

Friedman writes, "These new middle collaboration jobs will be in sales, marketing, maintenance, and management, but what they will demand is the ability to be a good horizontal collaborator, comfortable working for a global company [...] and translating its services for the local market, wherever it may be. It is about being able to operate in, mobilize, inspire, and manage a multidimensional and multicultural workforce" (283).

The Great Synthesizers: New Middlers need to be creative, putting two unusual things together to create hot-selling products and services that will be at a high-demand for users.

Friedman calls these products and services "breakthroughs" (283). Common breakthroughs we know are search engines and mash-ups.

The Great Explainers: New Middlers bring "disparate things together" who have great explaining skills. They "see complexity but explain it with simplicity" (284). These jobs include managers, teachers, writers, producers, and journalists. In order to explain well, this person must have vast knowledge, great communication skills, and skills that can simplify tough information for others to better understand it.

The Great Leveragers: New Middlers will have to keep up with the changing technology, constantly reintegrating the newest advancements with their own business.

Friedman explains it well: "It's all about combining the best of what computers can do with the best of what humans can do, and then constantly reintegrating the new best practices the humans and innovating back into the system to make the whole--the machines and the people--that much more productive" (289).

The Great Adapters: New Middlers become "versatilists," encompassing the definition of the word: they are able to adapt to change, are competant in many areas, and have a vast amount of knowledge. They are looking to improve, not sitting comfortably in a job that runs the exact same way it has for the past thirty years. They are improving, changing, adapting, instead of regurgitating the same old, same old business/curricula/product/etc.

Friedman describes versatilists as "apply[ing] depth of skill to a progressively widening scope of situations and experiences, gaining new competencies, building relationships, and summing new roles [...] They are constantly learning and growing" (289).

The Green People: New Middlers should be connected to the enviornment, as much attention is needed on it during this time. Since more countries now are industrializing, more environmental problems are arising from this increase. We must become "sustainable" and "renewable."

Friedman explains sustainable and renewable as "renewable energies and environmentally sustainable systems" (293).

The Passionate Personalizers: New Middlers must not become alienated and isolated, but they should become socially engaging professionals in order to keep their jobs alive, especially when connecting with other companies and within one's own company. They are happy to be at their job, and you can tell. They are passionate about what they do, and they interact positively with their customers.

"Human beings are social animals who enjoy human contact" (294).

Friedman, then, writes that, "in future decades, as personal services come to be more predominant, that trend [stated above] seems likely to reverse--possibly leading to less alienation and greater job satisfaction" (295).

The Great Localizers: New Middlers must recognize that the global world is constantly adapting, so local businesses must shift with this change. Local businesses should listen to these new changes, and then make them available at the local level.

Friedman states, "Those who are successful at this will understand the emerging global infrastructure, and then adapt all the new tools it offers to local needs and demands" (295).

Within the next few years, if the "new middlers" do not adapt to these new job roles, then their jobs will be taken over, redefined, or lost from growing technological and global changes.

So what do we do now?

Seinfeld

Over spring break, I saw Jerry Seinfeld at the Palace Theatre. He is absolutely incredible and still on top of his game.

But, a big portion of his stand-up routine was focused on technology. He posed the question:
Don't we all just want to communicate?

His comment was focused on technology, but then he added, "What else am I doing up here on this stage talking to you people?"

Seinfeld further went into jokes regarding our increased communication as of late. I found this amusing, especially because Seinfeld (at the height of his career) was around the mid-nineties. Now, his bits are progressing with the shift of technology.

Seinfeld included jokes on cell phones: "Do we still really need to have that operated woman on the line saying 'Leave your name and number after the tone. Aren't we past that yet? Are people really saying 'Hello, this is a woman, goodbye.'"

He also included a joke on emails, which he considers the lowest form of communication. He says that he is insulted when he receives emails because it is one person's own conversation with themself at you. They do not want to speak with you, otherwise they would have called, so they just want to contact you at their own leisure time saying everything they wanted to get out of the conversation without any input from you. Thus, he sees emails as lazy insults, which I agree with his opinion, but maybe not to that exaggerated degree.

I may not be as hysterical as Seinfeld himself, but I tried to recreate his jokes that related to technology. However, getting back to his original question, don't we all just want to communicate, is highly true. What else am I doing here on my blog? Why else would someone write, but to communicate? The internet is now this incredible source to share information, ideas, opinions, stories, recipes, comedy, you name it!

I'll listen to Jerry communicate to me any day.

What to Do in Middle Schools?

Early adolescence is a difficult phase for most teenagers. From sixth to eighth grade, adolescents are going through an extremely awkward phase confronting issues like "who am I?" or basic hormonal changes. The last thing on their minds is the reading assignment they have due in English classes.

An internet article, "Trying to Find Solutions in Chaotic Middle Schools," confronts the problem that middle school students are extremely hard to reach, but at least they are trying to do something about the problem they have before them. This problem does not seem to be relatively new, by any means, but now we have more resources available to help tackle this issue.

Currently observing in a middle school, I often see this problem. Students are unengaged and uninterested. Like I commented in my last post, this could be partly because the texts are 100% print-based. There is no technology used in the classroom whatsoever. Given that the classroom has limited technological resources, what can a teacher do to promote interest in course material?

If teenagers are hard to reach and are uninterested, have students write about their experiences they are going through. Connect their personal lives to course material. Allow journal writing and creative writing to explore the emotions they are going through. Allow independent reading for students to connect with characters that are going through similar issues that they are currently facing. Maybe when they have choices and freedom, then they can have more motivation, stimulation, and interest to complete classroom assignments.

I want to teach adolescents because I know how awkward of a phase that it can be. I just hope to use all strategies I have learned from my classes to help this process become less difficult than it has to be. Reading and writing can help alleviate this process through creative writing and reading as therapeutic outlets. Hopefully I can spread this to others, because this can be carried with a person beyond their middle school years into adulthood.

Print vs. Electronic Texts

Well said by James R. King and David G. O'Brien from a chapter entitled "Adolescents' Multiliteracies and Teachers' Needs to Know: Toward a Digital Detente:"

"In schools, print predominates" (41).

Why? Tradition.

I think it's fair to say that some schools are technologically behind, many still clinging to lesson plans born thirty years ago. Many schools are adapting many digital strategies towards lessons, but print is still the dominant textual source.

Shouldn't schools be embracing this new surge of electronic constant access of information as a gift? I remember being a sixth grade student, and the internet was fresh and new. I was so excited to be able to access any information I wanted immediately. I could not pry myself away from the computer screen. Isn't this reaction what we want out of our students--that thirst for learning? We can promote their learning; we just need to know how to do it right, because most of us will be placed in conservative schools.

So what do we do from here? King and O'Brien suggest to give "assignments challenging enough to be interesting, yet flexible enough to provide students considerable leverage in controlling the level of difficulty" (46-47). This approach stimulates interest in assignments, gives freedom for assignments, and allows students to challenge themselves beyond the borders of the original assignment. They can intellectually grow with this allowed space to learn.

Why else would digital texts be preferred over traditional print texts?
Using digital sources "promotes increased student ownership of classroom learning," meaning that students are finding their own texts online, creating their own opinions and judgments from them, commenting on a publishing source, having a voice when they might not feel heard on lined paper handed in solely to the teacher, and displaying their work, creativity and intelligence to a national audience (46). The classroom then does not become teacher-centered, where the teacher is the sole distributer of information; the students work together in a learning community.

If we, as ELA teachers, want to promote literacy, we need to think in terms of multiliteracies, and that includes printed texts to digital texts. If we know students are interested in electronic media and texts, then we can promote their learning on that source. We can then additionally use print sources, but we must not rely predominantly on printed text sources. We must use both hand in hand, not only to stimulate interest, but to create multiliterate individuals who can communicate to a variety of audiences, both digitally and non-digitally. Communication, nowadays, is dominantly electronic, so we need to adhere to this shift and engage students further into electronic communication.

DATE Conference Overall

"Who dares to teach must never cease to learn." -John Cotton Dana

What an experience the DATE Conference was. Previously, I went to an NCTE Conference in Albany, but this conference was just as motivating. Besides my other two posts, I was so excited to hear Jennifer Donnelly speak about her book, A Northen Light, and about her process as being a professional writer. Visit her website at www.jenniferdonnelly.com.

The main advice I received from Jennifer was pursuing your passion despite road blocks. She is now an award-winning author, but her road to get there was quite challenging. It took her years before she became published. She was denied many times, but she finally came out to be as successful as she is now. This advice inspires me to pursue any writing I want to do and to not give up when turned down.

Otherwise, I was also heavily inspired by a session led by Carol Mikoda and Jen Rimualdo called No Workshop Left Behing: Reading and Writing at the Middle Level. Their discussion on implementing a Nancie Atwell reading/writing workshop classroom motivates me to include this in my own classroom.

The three main components to the workshop is time, ownership, and response. Students need to time to read independent books and create their creative writing pieces. Students need the ability to choose the genre in which the read and write. Students need to reflect on their growth as a reader and writer, and they need to evaluate one another's process.

How else can we get students to become independent learners if we are spoonfeeding them questions and answers? This approach focuses on self-discovery, teaching oneself how to engage in a text and write effectively.

Overall, the experience was worthwhile. I enjoyed interacting with colleagues and peers towards our quest at becoming influential English teachers. It was fabulous to see new ideas and perspectives outside methods classes and observation. This conference shows me how much knowledge is out there and how a teacher can reinvent his/her curriculum every day. I'm not even at the teaching level yet, but I have an entire toolbox of information that I can draw from already.

Project Based Learning with Shakespeare

Another inspiring session I encountered was called Project Based Learning: Incorporating Technology into the Classroom. This program comes from Shade Gomez at Ithaca High School.

Mr. Gomez uses media projects to help his students understand Shakespeare. His students create projects, mostly digital projects, focusing on major themes, events, quotations, etc. from a Shakespearean play. I can't even get across to you how enthusiastic and deeply engaged these students were by viewing their projects. I was amazed with how much effort was put into each project, on Shakespeare nonetheless!

Mr. Gomez offers advice for this program:
-Get to know your librarians. They are experts in the digital world and with tools you'll need to help your students work and present.
-Find out what interests them, bores them, and gets them angry. They can develop a project off these items.
-The teacher must be excited about this! They will not be if you are not.

The program has the following components, which all serve as assessment:
1. Models: The teacher uses models from previous years to give students ideas that they can work with. They can brainstorm from these models. The models also serve as review for textual information.
2. Proposal: Students write the details of their project and what tools they will need for preparation and presentation.
3. Project: Students create project. I would have them continue to document their progress as they go along.
4. Presentation: Students show off their projects in oral presentation to the class, describing the process.
5. Reflection: Students respond to peer's work. I would also have them do self-evaluations.

Examples of projects, non-digital are posters, children's books, pop-up books, sculptures, statues, models, dioramas, t-shirts, fabric art, wood carvings, stitch-work, quilts, dolls, puppet shows, hats, vests, costumes, paintings, drawings, collages, bead work, board games, dances, and MUSIC.

For digital projects, students used Photo Shop to recreate scenes from a play, made their own movies, recorded their own music, made their own movie trailers, used animation, recreated movie scenes with video camera using games like The Sims and legos, etc.

Seeing these digital projects, I was FASCINATED at the amount of effort and skill level students put into them. They must have been so proud to complete these assignment, and they needed a lot of talent to make them! This project is great because students can use their talents to express themselves through creativity while analyzing the text to portray their project.

These projects could all be posted on the class' website. What better material to have on the site than actual student work! The teacher could post their digital projects, and then he/she could take still pictures of the other assignments and post those pictures. If a student performs in class, the teacher could record the performance and post that as a podcast. Imagine how much pride a student would feel if their performance or project was only a click away! They could show off their skills to others, making this project highly authentic.

Addicted to Dickens

At yesterday's DATE Conference, held at SUNY Cortland, I became so excited with so many new ideas I could bring into my future classroom. I will share with you some of these ideas, for perhaps I can inspire others with what I learned.

The first idea: Addicted to Dickens: using the internet to teach the novels of Charles Dickens in weekly installment, just like it was initially published. This program is developed by Georgia Peach at Skaneateles High School.

http://dickens.stanford.edu/archive/tale/two_cities.html

Using the above website, students read A Tale of Two Cities online over the course of a year. As you can see, this website includes downloads for each chapter and additional information about the book. Students read a chapter or two (depending on length) once a week, when the teacher posts the chapters on the class website, and the class has discussions and writing assignments on the assigned reading. To see how this would actually pan out in an actual classroom, here is Mrs. Peach's website:

http://www.scs.cnyric.org/ataleoftwocities.htm

This program is great because students can read Dickens like his readers did during the 1800s! Also, they are reading from an online source, one that they are already using like crazy, so this motivates them to do the reading assignment. In other classes, one problem we have been discussing is the issue that some classrooms do not have enough copies of books for students to take them home to read. This program would solve that issue, for they just use a computer to do the reading homework! They can read anywhere, anytime, as long as they have a computer nearby. Students don't have to worry about bringing their text with them, for they can interact with their monitors to do active reading.

In addition, a course blog could open up to discuss these weekly installments. The teacher should post a weekly question, and students could comment from this (if they need direction) or they could post on a topic of their own. Then, students could comment off of each other's comments, creating a massive network of communication about Charles Dickens.

This program absolutely intrigues me. Perhaps it is because I am halfway through Great Expectations right now, which is absolutely breath taking, but I had fears about teaching such a dense book to students. However, I could see myself teaching Dickens in this way. Others ways, I think, would be extremely difficult.

You could adapt this program to other works of Dickens, or you could adapt this to Alexandre Dumas, for he published his works in a similar weekly fashion. I would love to do The Three Musketeers in this format, for that is another lengthy, but thrilling, book that was published weekly. I hope I serve as some Dickens inspiration.

What Kind of Reader Am I?

In class, this question was brought up. I've been thinking about it for the past couple days, and I choose to explore the question:

What kind of reader am I?

What made me the avid reader that I am? What made me fall in love with reading and literature?

In middle and high school, I was a typical teenage student who just completed the assigned readings. I did not LOVE books; I just read them as an assignment. My family encouraged me to read certain books, so I would read books that were recommended to me by those I respected. I did not start to love literature until I came to college here at SUNY Cortland.

I took a class with Dr. Faulkner, Introduction to Fiction, and I became obsessed with reading. He taught us to read text in a new way I had never been introduced to in middle or high school. I was taught several different ways to analyze a text, which we are all well aware of, and this new ideology really turned me around from being an occasional reader to a constant reader.

Now, I read everything I can get my hands on. I like to read different kinds of texts so that I am not limited to only one genre/subject. I read every month's addition of Rolling Stone Magazine. I love reading about new media/music/entertainment, but that magazine is a sophisticated source.

I read a different genre every time I pick up a new book. I always transition from one book to the next so I am continuously reading. I read short story anthologies to memoirs, classic Dickens to YA Lit. I read more than I watch television, and I read often.

I read during my lunch breaks at work on my job. I read on airplanes, under trees in my backyard, on the beach, or before bed. I fill my spare time with reading because there is so much I want to read in so little time.

I want to be able to give this experience to others, be it my students, friends or family. I want to share and give this love for reading to everyone, because it touches us each in our own way. Every person needs to discover what kind of reader they are, what genres they enjoy, what texts intrigue them. I hope to help others find their own path so they can be lifelong readers like I know I will be.

Bookmaking

So, my last project was on social bookmarking---now it's bookmaking.

My group, Jessica, Meghan, and I, are creating a book through iPhoto. We are going to take pictures relevant to ELA and English Education field here at SUNY Cortland. Our pictures will combine into creating an actual book that can go on display in the English Department.

We plan on taking pictures at the following places:
-The DATE Conference
-English Club Meeting
-English Education classes
-English classes (including ENG307)
-Bulletin Boards
-Student teachers in the field
-Graduate classes
-Observation classes, perhaps an AVID class

If you have any more suggestions of images/pictures that you think would really represent this program well, let me know! We could use input and/or any suggestions for further help!