The Pyre

Ekphrasis This poem was inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights and day six of NaPoWritMo . I pick up the saw, fashioned to cut bark and wood, not flesh and bone. Yet it slices through my flesh and cleaves by bone-- until finally the scorched foot is extinguished. I pause for relief. But tendrils of flame worm into me, wriggling through my veins, squirming into my organs. My bones contort; my fevered brain recoils. I again pick up the saw.

Yesterday, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly , alongside Commissioner of Education Randy Watson and Kansas NEA President Mark Farr , announced that school buildings would be shut down for the rest of the school year , but learning would continue.  Like many educators, I was equally parts shocked and sad. Now that I've had some time to process the announcement, I am looking forward to hearing from the KSDE Continuous Learning Taskforce of educators , including Olathe's John Allison and Amy Hillman . This is an opportunity for us all to rethink what learning looks like in Kansas. It's a time of great possibility--one in which our most vulnerable students must be in the front of our minds. Today, rethinking what learning and teaching looks like for me as an educator in ways I have never done before isn't enough. I've always been a "doer" in my professional life so my first step into this uncharted territory is this amateur-style youtube video . It's not fan...

KTOY 2018 Team at Newman University In a district, seven-seat Dodge Caravan, I began my KTOY 2018 Team adventure this week. Our team had scheduled most of our college and district visits, so it was time to meet face-to-face to nail down our collaborative message and delegate duties on the very big list of to-dos. Each team member brought something amazing to the table, and our planning session ended with success. Gil secured us the perfect room on the Newman University campus. Sam set our direction with a detailed agenda. Jamie and Sarah provided us all of their scheduling prowess. Jennifer kept us warm with snazzy jackets from her PTO, as well as her compassion for others. Megan gave us all of the #enthusiasm any team would ever need. Brad inspired us with our "Mission: Possible" theme. We all marveled at how close we felt with each other, despite the fact that most of us had only met one time before.  We all appreciated how our individual talents naturally dovetailed...

Developing lifelong reading habits in my students has always been a goal of mine. Along the way, other educators have inspired me with their reflections on evoking lifelong reading habits, including Donalyn Miller. I read Reading in the Wild a few years ago, but what I learned from this book continues to inform my teaching today. Shortly after reading this book, I collaborated with a colleague to create a framework for developing lifelong reading habits, which I shared in this blog post . I've been honing this framework every year since its inception. I'm sure I'll never be completely satisfied, but I hope that my efforts will pay off for my students for years to come. This quarter, my students and I have been making reading goals and monitoring our progress towards those goals. While readers make all kinds of reading goals, I started simple: I asked my students to make reading goals based on pages read by mid-November and the end of the semester. Then, they went back ...

I'm not gonna lie to you: the day Jessica Skoglund came up to me and said, "Let's have our students make collaborative documentaries," I was more than skeptical. But if you know Jessica Skoglund, you know that she makes amazing things happen by sheer force of will. And so, I began my first deep dive into  PBL  in the summer of 2017. Throughout the summer months, members of my PLC and I collaborated to bring together students' summer reading , current events in the state, and even a documentary from our own professional development. Most importantly, we wanted to provide students an opportunity to sharpen their skills and share their thoughts on education to an authentic audience. Thus, A Whole New School was born! Ready . . . Our first challenge was making sure students had the opportunity to build their background knowledge and skill sets required to pull off mini-documentaries. Our team felt well-equipped to do this in many areas--but we lacked th...

Why read? As a high school English teacher, teaching students WHY to read is just as important as HOW to read. Inspired by Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher , I dedicate class time to developing lifelong reading habits in class. The first habit is seeking out and self-selecting reading material. One of the most important things I can do to support this habit is model it, so I show students how I use GoodReads as a method for finding books. I use this website (or app on my phone) nearly every week. If somebody I know suggests a book that sounds interesting, I add that book to my To-Read shelf on GoodReads. I currently have 70 books on this shelf, so when I retire, I have LOTS of options for reading material! In fact, while students were using GoodReads in class, I noticed a few of them rated This is Where It Ends   by Marieke Nikamp    highly. As I asked them about the book, it captured my attention, so now, this book is on my To-Read shelf! Some students don't...

What did I learn? As my students learned about how to research their problem, I learned a great deal about teaching research skills. Teaching research is hard. Students link it's a linear process where people start with a question and then they find sources that will give them the answer. Instead, it's an incessantly circular process where sources give different perspectives and sometimes even more questions. On top of that, good teaching means making sure students question sources, especially those on the Internet. In the past, I've used CARRDS to teach students about assessing the accuracy of internet sources. The steps of the acronym are great, but it does seem a little repetitive and long. This year, I used CRAP instead, and I liked being able to say "Don't use CRAPpy sources." More importantly, the acronym is shorter and simpler. Most importantly, I learned that I need to model HOW to assess sources with the CRAP rubric, as well as provide students...

Why a survey? In the research portion of my Soul Force project , I found many stories from schools across the nation that have been impacted since the election. I also found a great deal of data, mostly collected through surveys of the nation as a whole. What I didn't find is what's happening here at ONW. Sure, I hear comments and receive reports from students about conflicts--but there was nothing that gave me a big picture of ONW. Thus, instead of interviewing somebody who is an "expert" in my problem, I decided to survey the student body. I can't think of a more credible and authoritative source than the students who walk down the halls everyday. What did the survey tell me? I am still compiling the results of ONW's 2016-2017 Climate Survey, but so far, I'm not surprised by the data. Overall, ONW is a great school with great students and great staff, and the data supports this claim. The key takeaway from the partial results has been the data fo...

Why My Problem Is Relevant February 2017 Vandalism at Shawnee Mission East If a picture speaks a thousand words, I think this picture totally nails why the problem of school climate after the election is important. While team rivalry and vandalism existed way before the election, graffiti such "Hilary Won LOL" and the swastikas refer to the backlash that's occurred since the election. There's no doubt that this election has fueled contempt . What Questions Lingered The questions that lingered after my pre-search were "How does school climate affect learning?" and "How can school climate be improved?". I felt my pre-search process revealed a clear picture of the rise in bullying, harassment, and assault in schools before, during, and after the election. I don't think just these problems are just going away on their own, so my research focused mostly on why school climate is important and how to improve it. What Source Addre...

This summer, I watched We Are Superman for the first time with a dozen other educators across the metro area who all shared my passion for teaching and writing. As we learned about the history of Kansas City together, my mind kept wandering: how could I use this documentary in my classroom to launch students into the kind of literacy-based problem solving shown in the film? Just a few months later, here I am in a cape--ready to introduce my students to the documentary and their new roles as superheroes. But wait . . . as inspiring as the activists in the documentary are, I knew that my students needed me to guide them along the way. And this isn't the time for me to pretend I know all of the answers. Pick a Problem Just like my students, I began my Soul Force project by picking a problem that bugs me: school climate. No, I don't mean how hot or cold the school is; I mean how "safe" the school is for students physically and emotionally. One of the reasons...

Too often, our students, staff, and schools hear the word no . My philosophy is yes . It is my job to say yes to preparing, empowering, and protecting. It is my job to say yes despite, to spite, and in spite of those around us and across the state who too often say no to adequate funding, no to opportunity seizing, and no to risk taking. In my work, the yesses are free; it’s the noes that cost our students the most.  I say yes to my students and their learning. Yes to the student in my class who asks to revise her “Myself as a Learner” reflection because she just figured out what imagery is—even though the due date was two weeks ago. Yes to the curly haired boy in the front who makes a laugh escape my lips even when my mind forms a salty retort. Yes to the challenges my students lay at my feet: how to teach complex sentences when they aren’t quite sure what a verb is, how to engage them in reading Shakespeare when they are hungry, how to make them feel they are un...

The past couple of years, students enrolled in PreAP English II at Olathe Northwest High School have read Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori and Rom Brafman. This book is a short Malcolm Gladwell-esque look at why we humans do all of the stupid things that we do. The great thing is about this book is how it sparks so many valuable discussions about bias, labeling, politics, group dynamics, etc.  My work with students reading, writing, and talking about all of these topics have made me realize that my experience with students in teaching this text has taught me more than I would have ever learned just reading the book. Here are these top five lessons: Lesson #1: Cheater, cheater: loss aversion eater! Early in the book, the authors articulate a simple definition of loss aversion: "our tendency to go to great lengths to avoid potential losses" (Brafman and Brafman 17). They develop the readers' understanding of loss aversion through examp...

Your blog post should delineate the top five things you learned from your experience with the book Sway and related readings, writings, and discussion. Emulate the Top Five Social Media Lessons blog post we read in class to help you with your writing. Here are the requirements of your post: Compose a first paragraph in which you introduce the topic in an interesting way (consider relating it to yourself) and preview the rest of the blog post. Include a numbered list of the five lessons you learned from Sway and related learning experiences. Consider revisiting your focus questions, evidence connections, and Socratic Seminar packet as you brainstorm what you are going to write about. Your lessons can be SPECIFIC TERMS (like "loss aversion"), SKILLS (like how to compose central claim statements), or IDEAS (like re-evaluating your own biases). Develop your ideas in at least one paragraph under each numbered lesson using anecdotes, definitions, quotations, definitio...

That first day of school. As a student, those words sent shivers down my spine. As a teacher, those words absolutely terrify me. But the reason I'm terrified of the first day of school as a teacher might not be what you expect. On the first day of school, I want to welcome my students. And get to know them. And build a sense of community. And let them know what to expect from my class. And I have to do all of this in between accomplishing all of the things I'm required to do like fire drills, tornado drills, distribute planners, etc. This year, I attempted to accomplish as many as my goals for the first day of school by playing a tabletop game called Witness . In essence, this game requires players in groups of four to communicate and collaborate by piecing together clues to solve a mystery. I've wanted to integrate tabletop games into my classroom the past couple of years, but quite honestly, that's pretty much as far as I went. Thanks to my sophomore collabo...

First, a confession: it’s been over a year since I began toying with the idea of integrating tabletop games in my classroom, but I have yet to use even one. Recently, I attended my second MNU Games and Learning Conference. So, the pressure is on now. No excuses. A key part of the conference was time to play games from the Center of Games and Learning’s games collection . One of the games I played was Snake Oil . How to Play the Game The goal of Snake Oil is simple: convince a customer to buy a product in 30 seconds. The player who is the customer selects a card that provides a descriptor: anything ranging from “senior citizen” to “beggar.” The other players have six cards in their hands with words like “TV” and “glasses.” Players combine two of the words to create a product the customer would want. For example, I might pitch “TV glasses” to the “senior citizens”: “Have you ever trouble seeing that TV from across the room? Ever been frustrated by misplacing t...

The Writers Place Creative Introductions: Poems of Introduction  and Response to Creative Introductions Seven Blind Mice: Reaction Scribe Notes:  6.15.16 Zoom Notes Reflections on Orlando:  Permission Nicole's Poetry Exercise: My Life as a Fla ir Pen Rankine's  Citizen :  Reading Response Power of Place: Out of Place Shelly's d6 Tables of Creative Creation Exercise: Byron's Vociferous Gun is Unloaded   Casey's TIW Exercise: Write a letter convincing somebody to date you (commitment fear evident) Teacher Inquiry Workshop:  Tired & Haggard (Research Paper)  and  Presentation   Colby's  Some of My Best Friends Are Black :  Reading Response Literary Luncheon:  Offering Poem Inspired by AC Cleaning:  Poem for Rowan Myself  as a . . .  Writer , Reader , Teacher , Learner and Second-Language Learner GKCWP KC Tour: Blue Hil...