SI Letter

Here is the rough draft of my letter for SI- I'm going to change the greeting obviously, Dear person I hope isn’t an empty suit, In an educational environment where people have to do more with less every day (increasing class sizes, tighter regulation of the classroom environment, lower pay) there are a few stars that light up the night sky. Separated by vast spaces of educational emptiness—the dark ages of our current era—are some bright lights. One of these bright lights is The Writing Project. During a two and a half week course teachers gather for 7 hours a day and discuss how to better teach our youth. We show each other some of our best lesson plans, things that connect to kids despite the rubrics that we are tied to. If we do not reach these kids, these young people, then they will not know how to operate successfully in the real world. It is of everyone’s benefit that they are given the tools to succeed, and understand the written world. The written world is all around us, from job applications to emails to television shows to writing a letter to your congressperson—and they need access to it. We need the tools to give them that access, and the Writing Project is an invaluable one. It is one of the best professional development programs out there, and certainly worth the ‘bang for your buck.’ It is not perfect, there are times when we get frustrated and disagree as educators, but it is important to disagree and reflect on the work you are doing, and this allows us that space. Please continue to support one of the few bright stars that we have left in the sky, and thank you for the history and funding you have been funding—it is well worth it. Sincerely, Benjamin Thomas Dudley

Day 11 at SI

Sally started us off with a poem from a woman looking back fancifully on her times working at a fast food drive-in. I chose to riff off of it, or riff on it, or make a riff of it; one of those things. Purse fat with tips, the moon sitting like a cheeseburger on a flat black grill, Eric Staton, an ex-Ceo of Goldman and Sachs plans out his fast food franchise. He has made millions during the recession, enough to open up a few dozen stores, and enough to need a bigger purse. His bouncing ponytail compliments his tacky suit shirt, which more closely resembles a bowling shirt. He begins to daydream about carloads of blonde-and-tan girls pulling up in red convertibles in their tank tops. Today I also really liked rethinking the quote that Tonya handed out to me for her demonstration. “Because students do not see revision as an activity in which they modify and develop perspectives and ideas, they feel that if they know what they want to say, then there is little reason for making revisions” (Somers 382). I wrote on how I could agree with this quote, but had something different to offer. I was searching more for the cause of the symptoms rather than treating them. I believe that students do not want to modify and develop other perspectives, and just express their idea or perspective that they have come up with throughout the process of writing this paper. It is perhaps the idea of the singular thesis that is the origin of the revision problem. Multi-thesis papers would encourage differing perspectives from the onset of the paper.

Day 10 at SI

Today the writing group troops were wearing a little thin. Our ranks were not as enthused as they normally would, so I decided to place myself on moderator and enthusiasm duty. I do not think this made any difference, but it was a nice try. There is something about getting really into what you are doing, no matter what it is, but there is also something to chatting idly. Breaks…there is something to breaks. And who needs breaks more than teachers? Nobody. I feel like we need a Carowind’s day. Our group is really easy to excite, but also really easily demotivated… which made realize that we are still students. Underneath all this experience and professionalism we’re still those ADD, self-involved, fun-craving, and yes, even party animal—kids. We’re still kids! How easily we forgot this after someone told us that we were adults…but being an adult doesn’t mean you aren’t a kid, it’s just like an addition. Steve said something near the end of the session I found interesting, that the “off-task behavior that really helped out.” And he was serious; I thought it was a really good combination of ideas. It was like free-conversation instead of free writing, and then we could switch back into formal conversation every now and then to help organize things. Hmmm... conversation as a larger part of the composition process, or more realized part... what a bizarrely interesting topic :).

Day 8 at SI

What Did I Learn in School Today? This is a question based on testing assessment. There is a cyclical ignorance that comes along with teaching to the test, especially when it comes to language arts. The arts of language are not something that can be tested on a Scantron very well or coherently, and have been neglected by a legislative act that passed almost about ten years ago. Given the financial crisis that crippled funding for education and the demand that students be taught by the test, it has left the English community desperate and floored for change. What is strange is how rarely we talk about how to change this. Wouldn't it be nice to know what we could actually do to effect the way that we teach? Where does the future politics of teaching lie? These are the thoughts and questions the intro that Sally provides brings to my mind. Next, Tiffany’s Demo brings these thoughts out: The word Journal, or Daybook… The first thing that comes to mind is a long *sigh* - followed by a reluctant beginning. Then, after about 3 minutes of silence and delving into something, the mood changes, my mind is slowly opening into something that actually starts to be kind of fun...and then we are out of time and it is over. Words and thoughts that come directly to mind: Oh Jeese, well at least I can ignore the prompt and write about something I want to, journal seems like something I can do for myself and not for a class, boredom, surface, inability to think deep, why can't I choose my own prompt? This is the negative association that I am used to in my mind with those old terms for student notebooks. Can't we re-name "daybook, or journal?" the terms still make me want to vomit. What are better names for a daybook? Book of awesome? Writing book, genius scribbles? Then, tiffany tells us that we must think of prompts that are: Odd, astonishing, comical or intriguing, and she lets us choose the prompts and put them in a hat! That makes me excited, obviously. I get a good amount of writing out in her 3.5 minute writing segments, and feel quite a catharsis, here is my favorite of the prompts we pull from the hat: Write about a scar that you have: There is a mark on my arm, that was just a mark...it was an odd cut, one that had layered colors, but that would heal normally if I'd just left it alone. The woods at the age of 16 behind my cousin's house was our smoking area, our talking place. We talked about deep thoughts for the first time out there- thoughts that had experiences coupled with them that scarred. One day, I was having a bad week. I was chronically tired, frustrated at not being able to find myself, and in that perpetual flux of teenage angst- I took my lit cigarette and purposefully melted it into my scar; Impressively Scaring my cousin for the first time. This mark of teenage masochism lives with me today, to remind me how unhealthy we all are at that age, and all the stressors that we forget about. We are so inclined to think that our current age is the toughest and most important, when there is only one age that is this way, all ages. So now I can look back over at my arm, flex my muscle, and feel proud and aware that I too was a destructive teenager once, and that that piece of me is still there.

Day 7? at SI

Day 7? at SI I may have forgotten which day it is…but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I have found that Loosing track of time is usually preferred throughout my life. Kimo (Kim’s demo) Free write: What makes a hero? Joseph Campbell

(lol, blogspot said that was the small size...) tells us that it is chosen death of an old self and rebirth as someone new that is the hero’s journey. I think that he is smart in realizing what we write about in literature, but his definition of hero is slightly different than mine. To me, a hero must be a bit more. I think that about sums it up—they have to be something special, someone that appeals to us both in a moral sense and in an egocentric sense. To be a hero, they must earn, or deserve it, through trials or through exhibiting super-human (above normal) ethical wisdom. An ethic that gets people out of their minds and self-absorption, and truly inspires on a level that is above cognition and spiritual in aesthetic. Heroes to me: Dumbledore- not necessarily Harry Potter, he’s too reluctant. Sir Thomas Moore, my Grandmother Gene I was given a picture of Capitan America: Captain America is kinda lame. People create temporary heroes based on what they need in their life at that moment, but these do not always last. The image of a person I would describe as a hero is permanently soldered into our hearts and minds, and is not forgettable or remove able in any way. This is the difference between what gets us through the day and what gets us beyond the day—getting through the day is not a heroic feat, walking into fire is a heroic feat. Past my hero rant, my writing group ran into some snags during an assignment we had to pull from a text and create symbols of the story that it told. The short story we had was leading us into teaching by culture acceptance. However, the writer of the piece had written a book which one of our members had read, and thus for her the story this piece told was much different and in a broader context of language. The lack of sleep and general emotionality of our group helped contribute to a gaff of communication. This is turn upset and confused our productivity on the particular assignment, and in fact, became bigger than the actual assignment. Our group was having an internal discussion about acceptance and understanding which occasionally externalized. We had to reorganize our thoughts and expand in order to see what was going on as individuals, and then we could all feel it together. After such a day it was a great time for my presentation. I knew it would be a nice break from intense group work, and a good time to not only let go of demands by allowing ourselves to write badly, but also to get into ourselves as individuals. I was quite nervous offering up my demonstration to twenty or so more experienced teachers, and especially sense I had never before taught the lesson I was giving, but it had very few snags. It was amazingly tough to judge time length- another one of those things that comes with experience and feedback. Once our second classmate was halfway through her purposely ‘bad’ writing, and almost everyone was having a good laugh, I breathed a sigh of relief. My presentation wasn’t going to be a disaster! It was actually going to fit in nicely with what we needed at the time. If there has been something to sum up the conference so far, I think that it could possibly be the phrase “What we needed at the time,” because everything has seemed to come and go with a purpose, an abundant serendipity.

Day 6 at SI

Day 6 at SI Today we begin with a daily write underneath the topic of ‘marking.’ We are given a poem by Linda Pastan called Marks. It’s a neat little piece, and it brings the idea of grades into other aspects of life. On one hand it shows how ridiculous grading is, on the other hand I really want to start getting grades in other areas of my life so that I can strive for something and just have an idea of how I am doing at everyday things. How’s my driving? I’d imagine an A-, probably a mid-B for going a little too fast, but some extra credit because of creativity and adherence to turn signals and not cutting in line. My cooking? Definitely needs improvement, but shows promise— I’d get a sympathy passing grade for dealing with mild Celiac’s disease and a lactose intolerance, but sighs from the teacher. I’m on “Find Five” duty today- I finally have to figure out what that means. I think it is finding five other teaching writing groups and posting into their conversations; I wonder if I’m supposed to do this after class or during? I suppose I will wait seeing as how my electronic devices are not quite up to par. I have this desktop at home that I can do anything on and here all I have is a lab top I can write on but not connect to the internet, a tablet I can connect to the internet but only tablet text on, and my I phone. It is odd that I have three electronic devices and yet none of them are really great for what I need in this class. There is a writing marathon from 9 am to 1:30 pm on Saturday, which sounds lovely. I hope I can find the motivation to get up that early on a Saturday to join. Ashley begins her presentation, in which she focuses around a quote: “Never before have we had so many forms of writing at our disposal, and never before has our sense of loneliness and alienation been so profound” Johnathan Martin This is an interesting quote. It is impossible for me to compare to other times of loneliness, because I have grown up in this technological world. I can compare when I was a child and played outside more often to when I started playing video games, but that’s about it. I do miss everyday conversations with real-world people, but that’s just because we are moving so fast, and doesn’t seem to have as much to do with technology as much as America moving too fast. Other developed country’s day to day lives seem much more warm and slow with communication – like it is important when you are talking with someone face to face. The profound sense of loneliness would seem just as great during the Great Depression or other eras to me, although we may talk about it more now. Here are some quotes and random passing thoughts from my day: We tend to look at our society as “the most something always” Nick Dearmas. How different are you online than you are in person? What about phone conversations? Who teaches this? What ever happened to them, should we use them in the class? There is no consensus on whether or not technology changes communication for the better or worse, but the conversation is certainly vibrant. After lunch we have our second demo— Second Demo! Jenny Jenny Jenny Jenny is a teacher at Monastery school. Her kids are from 3-6 years old, so she has a difficult environment for sharing in a circle because of the huge difference in age level. I think this would be because they are at such differing reading and writing levels. Her presentation is refreshing. It is nostalgic of a time when learning was a lot more fun, and with much less pressure. It makes me want to revisit early education and pull from it to make my classroom less stressful and kinder to students.

Day 5 at SI

July 9, 2013 at SI 6 word memoirs What are we doing, oh memoir! I only have six words to… Woke up, woke up, woke up Where am I? What is that? Playing, Yay! Working, Boo! Teaching, Booyah! Reading Envy and Free writing – We underlined key words or phrases, and then read them allowed like we were at a Quaker wedding. The language of the story was older- a 1950’s written language that I have never heard but only read about or falsely heard through screenplays reformed into movie quotes. What did these people really sound like? I wonder. My version of a selected paragraph: Growing up, I could have died from an overexposure to positive energy. It was the only time in my life I’ve ever felt complete, and the only time where I was consistently happy. My mom was always around, I got to play with my brother and friends outside, all the time. I had so many good close and warm people, and felt so safe that I was just as happy when I was alone. As opposed to my later years, when being alone seemed to make me feel so vulnerable, open to harm. When I was a child, I played in my imagination constantly, totally happy and self-entertained, but fully unprepared for the blight of real world suffering. Next we made drawings of Sandra’s life from Envy: Then we had our break at 10:45. This led into an analysis of Sir Francis Bacon’s Of Studies, which we broke down and discussed in multi-faceted ways. We broke into groups, we highlighted key phrases, we did a round-robin read of our most important sentence… Sally had us try and insert paragraphs into the piece, as it was written before the printing press/ before there were paragraph breaks, which was interesting. I was noticing how not having paragraph breaks makes all sentences more transitional. Imagine how exhausting it would be to be constantly transitioning? Perfect Circle is to real world circle As Ideal Paragraph is to ? Writing is linked to ideas – Brannon Thoughts: These scissors are a paragraph- look! This object is a circle, it looks circular to us, but this is a language we created, and so is English, so see the scissors as a paragraph – what does it look like? What does this mean for language? Wri How is Sir Francis Bacon’s Of Studies relative to us as teachers today? I especially bonded with the simplicity of his breakdown. I need more experience to match all this reading and learning that I’ve been doing, and it really is making me feel slothful, because I’m not getting enough practice. The other’s in this class either have a much more thorough teaching background or are currently teachers, but I’m not and I’m starved for action! I want to change real world things. Grammar and Conventions: The way that we teach grammar and conventions in grade school often hinders writing development. Developing writing takes motivation and desire, whereas repetition and out of context exercises are mundane, and quell that all important love that writers cradle as carefully as a premature baby. With that said, they are immensely important. Conventions are constraints, and all writing has constraints. Grammar is further down the line on importance, but can be beautiful. Grammar is a tool, not rule. Our computers judge our grammar now – expand Consistency is important for Grammar, as long as we can find the method, the meaning. Rule comprehension: This made me think about how grammar and comprehension was originally organized. It was thought out a few different ways and then they picked one that accounted for a lot of different ways to do things. This doesn’t account for every possibility, but still shows a general intuition geared toward working through grammar.