Pushing the boundaries

Today, I participated in an accreditation meeting at my local university. The English department has been working towards starting a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric, an area of study I pursued as a masters candidate in the mid-1990s. This new program has been in the works for years; I first heard about it when I attended the Northern Virginia Writing Project's Summer Institute in 2010. Since then, the proposal has developed and gone through a variety of approvals. If all goes well and the accreditation team gives the final thumbs up, the program will kick off this fall. The idea of a PhD program that focuses on this area excites me.

When I went to the University of Wyoming in 1995, I wanted to study composition and rhetoric. The Wyoming department was small, but there was a newly-minted PhD there who I liked and Comp/Rhet was an approved concentration area. Plus, they offered me the chance to teach for the very first time through a teaching assistantship. I had the vague idea I wanted to teach, so I pushed my own boundaries, moved from Chicago to Laramie, and gave it a shot. It didn't really bother me being the only person in my cohort not in the literature concentration. Little did I know, I'd also soon be creating my own program.

The semester after I arrived, the only rhet/comp professor announced she would leave after my first year. I had completed only a single course--the same teaching pedagogy course all my peers completed. She arranged to supervise an independent study for my second course. As the department's linguistics professor had taken a two-year leave of absence to serve as a visiting professor abroad and to pursue her research, my third would be an ESOL course taught by the department chair, who would also become my thesis committee supervisor. My research methods would be a qualitative studies course taught by the Education department. I was probably the strangest English graduate student Wyoming had seen in a very long time.

Don't get me wrong, though; it was a fantastic experience. I'm forever grateful to Janet Constantinides for helping me create a qualitative study of composition classes. Having the department chair as my committee chair allowed me to study two composition classes taught by the same instructor, something that probably required a little massaging of the teaching schedule. I didn't break any ground in educational research, but I learned what to do and not to do.

Also, I don't blame the professor for leaving. Laramie was a culture shock for her and she can't have had it easy being a pioneer comp/rhet professor (I believe she was the first full-time hire) in a department full of literature scholars. Since her research interests centered on studying the effects of technology on composition and rhetoric, Wyoming wasn't a good professional fit for her as a long-term placement. She has since become a researcher in human design engineering. Occasionally  I Google her and I'm pleased to see she's still on the cutting edge of the field.

Still, I'm not really a comp/rhet specialist, as I thought I would be. The self-directed nature of my studies has some significant holes. That was made abundantly clear to me as I sat in a brief meeting with other prospective PhD candidates, most of whom are recent graduates and/or adjuncts teaching at the university, with two well-respected comp/rhet professors, neither of whom I'd ever heard of or read her work. As I listened to one candidate and one professor/accreditation team member talking about the importance of multilingual composition studies and another pair talk about the value of linguistics combined with composition studies, I really had little idea what they were talking about. At that point, I knew I'd been out of academia a long time indeed, and I had not any real clue about the breadth of my field. Certainly, re-engaging in serious academic study would be a stretch for me, as it was when I started my masters program about 18 years ago.

And, I'm at a point in my life where taking three years off to work for a $12,000 stipend as I pursue full time studies would not be easy. In fact, it would require more sacrifice from my spouse than I'm willing to ask. There are some boundaries I will not push.

The next two months could rearrange my life in some significant ways.

Connection vs. proximity

Last night, I attended a small dinner party, hosted by a colleague and friend from school. She and her new significant other (do we still call them boyfriends and girlfriends when we're decades older than our students?) made a wonderful dinner for three current and former teachers from our school and their spouses. While the four teachers did inevitably engage in teacher talk, we also opened up the conversation to books and televisions shows, famous people we'd met in our lifetimes, and other topics that the non-teachers could have more to discuss. If you know teachers, you know how much we love to talk shop, so I counted the night as a win for our partners, who were no longer relegated to the sidelines of the discussion. Before I knew it, three hours had passed, and the party started to break up.

This was the second weekend in a row I've been at a friend's for food and conversation. Last weekend, two of our friends hosted their annual Chili Cookoff. This year was smaller than usual, with only 4 chilis in the competition and 15 or so people stopping by. As I moved from room to room, I had the chance to talk to most of those there, some I hadn't seen in several months. Conversations ranged from work to books to politics.  Stories about practical jokes two friends played on one another at work, the various aspects of police work (two of our friends work for different law enforcement agencies--lots of stories there), dumb things we'd said or done under the influence of general anesthetic had us laughing. Discussions about books made some of us write down new titles. The night passed quickly and enjoyably; we left after 10, full of chili and happy to have reconnected with friends we've known for years.

Looking back on both nights, I realized I have distinct preferences for the number of people at these types of events and my preferences have not truly changed much over the years.

First, I have to admit I've never been a big party fan.

Sure, I grew up just outside of  New Orleans, so I've been to my fair share of large gatherings. I went to Mardi Gras parades in the suburbs, which are exercises in large crowd control. But even at those, I would surround myself with a small group of friends and avoid the most crowded stretches of parade routes.

In college, I never went to large house parties. Most of the nights classified as "parties" consisted of 10-115 friends in someone's dorm room talking over pizza, gathering around someone's tv, and (a little later) having drinks together at an off-campus apartment.

In my 20s, I never felt the urge to crowd into fancy New Year's Eve bashes. I can remember only one very large dance club night; most of the bars and clubs I frequented were smaller venues.

Unsurprisingly, I find that the ideal number of people for me to feel comfortable and have a good time at dinner and parties remains the same. For dinner, it's 10-12. For a "party" where I can walk about, it's fewer than 20. More and I become overwhelmed by the number of conversations and the noise of so many talking at once. I lose track of those not in my immediate proximity at a table and don't make it around to talk to enough people at a party. In larger settings, I often leave feeling like I didn't get to say more than "hello" and "goodbye," and sometimes can't even remember who was there.

As I get older, I'm not willing to content myself with half-hearted, fleeting moments in proximity. I want connections. I want to talk to people. I want to share stories of our lives. I want to lose track of time and leave more refreshed than I arrived. So, last night's 9-person dinner and the weekend before's 15-or-so person party were just about perfect.

Pattern recognition

When I teach students about literature and language, I often tell them that reading is like "Where's Waldo" with words. Literary analysis, rhetorical analysis, and image analysis consist of recognizing common patterns and noting where those patterns break down or break away from the expected.

In life as well, I notice patterns. Right now, I'm in what has become my winter pattern.

Each December, I feel the withdrawal begin. Like the landscape around me, I hunker down. I withdraw into books and responsibilities. When I'm not working or spending time with my husband, Eric, I read, drawing solace and sustenance from the words on page and eReader screen.

This withdrawal leads me away from the computer, too. As my online friends reach out for community, I slowly disappear. My interactions become fewer, with the exception of reporting basketball game information and linking to articles on social media.

In my teaching and my personal life, the end of December 's school break bring a brief Indian summer of energy. Then, I reach out to others, share what's going on, participate slightly in the online worlds I've slipped away from with the turning of the seasons.

But this thaw lasts only about a week or two into January. Between January and March, my hibernation becomes markedly intense. The demands on my time from school include grading, preparing for March test (our end of course writing exams), operating the scoreboard and clock for basketball games, and maintaining my personal life at home. I shuffle to work, stay late, feel my senses dull in the repetition.

I watch the beehives in our yard closely, looking for signs of spring while I let myself become wrapped up in the pattern of work, home, eat, sleep. This year, the bees survived the colder months. When February gave them the taste of warmth to come, the girls took full advantage. Emerging from their winter clusters, they sought and found early pollen. Two hives vigorously collected what they found on the warm days they enjoyed; the other less vigorous, but still collecting in anticipation of the onset of the nectar flow. They will need the pollen then for the hive to thrive and multiply as they work all summer to prepare for next winter.

I, too, have come to see my March as a time of collecting: memories of the students I teach now; dreams for the summer; ideas for the next year. But my emergence is slower than that of the bees. I tend to linger in the familiarity of winter patterns, to go through the motions for a while longer. The routine lulls me; I know the expectations and the routes.

That's why I decided to push myself into the Slice of Life Challenge this year--I want to emerge before Spring Break, to feel renewed and reconnect. I can feel the seasons changing, and though I want to linger in familiar patterns, I know I will feel better about my life and my work if I can break the pattern early this year.

And so, a day later than I expected, I'm writing my first Slice of Life post. Here's to 30 more.

Rigel and the lost wallet

For a year in grad school, I shared an apartment with a Dutch rabbit named Rigel. I didn't set out to have a pet rabbit, though I had wanted one. Rigel was originally my friend Kate's rabbit. The summer after my first year, I moved out for dorms and into one of the apartments in Kate's building. She left for Naval Officer Candidate School, and I took over caring for Rigel until I, too, left Wyoming.

Rigel literally had been saved from the stew pot, or so the story goes, by Kate and her former roommate a year before I ever met her. Kate and her roommate were looking for an apartment-friendly pet and called a local rabbit breeder. The breeder didn't really breed for pets, but she had a young rabbit who she was willing to let them adopt. Rigel had a genetic defect that would prevent him from being showable. It was the kind of defect only a breeder would care about: his eyes weren't a uniform color.

After Kate's roommate moved out, Kate cared for Rigel. I loved coming over to Kate's place, which was far more comfortable than my small dorm room. Rigel made it even more homey for me. Kate often let him have free reign when she was home. I could have spent hours watching Rigel wander around the apartment. He would explore, then touch base with us, often nudging us for a scratch between the ears. Rigel accepted me as part of the family, dancing around and sometimes even circling me.

Rigel was a sweet, wonderful little guy, but he also had a streak of mischief. When he wanted to play chase, or when he wanted something he knew he shouldn't have (like a paper I was working on), Rigel would try to be stealthy. Instead of approaching the thing directly, he'd wander around, making a circuitous, but inevitable path toward the object of his desire. Kate and I jokingly called it the "lost wallet" technique because it seemed like Rigel was trying to convince us he was looking for SOMETHING ELSE. But, even though he appeared to be uninterested in the paper or other bit of stuff he wanted, he'd get closer and closer. Soon, he'd snatch the desired object and tear across the living room as if his life depended on it. One of us would give chase, and the game was on. When Rigel tired of the game, he'd drop whatever it was he'd grabbed, and flop over, letting us have our possession back and getting his favorite between-the-eyes scratches.

Today, as I folded laundry, did dishes, and tried to complete other more domestic projects during break, I realized that these were my own version of the lost wallet. Often, when I have a task that troubles me like writing letters of recommendation or reflecting on what I'm reading or teaching, I will engage in completely unrelated tasks as if I didn't have looming deadlines or self-created goals. Then, suddenly, I'll start whatever I was supposed to be doing and I'll tear through it, completing it much faster than thought I would.

Sometimes, it's avoidance. But sometimes, like today when I was having trouble forming a coherent response for an online discussion of Penny Kittle's Book Love, I need to take a more roundabout path toward my destination. My thoughts still haven't quite come together. But remembering Rigel and the sheer joy of the chase when he finally got his teeth into what he wanted, I'm ok looking around for my lost wallet for a little while longer.

YA Love

For the past 8 years, I have taught high school English. I became a high school English teacher in my early 30s and my initial enthusiasm for YA can be credited to Dr. Linda Hanrahan. Dr. Hanrahan, who is now Associate Professor and Chair Graduate Program at Ithaca College, was my English methods course professor at George Mason when I was seeking my initial teaching license.

I have always been surrounded by books, but didn't spend a lot of time with YA. Though I had read voraciously as a young adult myself, I gravitated toward adult fantasy and some science fiction. Sure, I had devoured A Wrinkle in Time as a young girl. I had spent time with Menoly of Anne McCaffrey's Dragonsong, too. But I hadn't really read anything that might be considered YA since the early 1980s because I had my brothers and my mom as reading mentors, and they were reading the "adult" stuff.

I preferred those other worlds to the realistic fiction and classics of the classroom, though I dutifully read or tried to read those, too. I was a strong enough reader I could do well in English, which allowed me the opportunities to read my own choices while others struggled through their work. Rarely, even in high school, was I not reading something beyond the assigned texts. Because I was good at the school stuff, my teachers mostly looked the other way when i pulled out my own paperbacks during down time. but they never really asked me about my reading or ma any links between my books and theirs.

As a result of Dr. Hanrahan's intro methods course, I understood more teachers were using choice and sustained silent reading (never an option given to me as a student) to help kids love literature and improve their reading skills. I realized the genres I love wouldn't necessarily be the ones my students would love, so I thought it would be a good idea to explore what YA was to find books to hook all of my students.

During the summer of 2004, Dr. Hanrahan taught EDCI 597: Young Adult Literature in Multicultural Settings. Some of my classmates from methods (many of whom were already classroom teachers) had signed up, so I had a feel for what the class dynamic might be. Then I discovered that most of the course was online, with only 6 face to face meetings. I got to read and I didn't have to spend my entire summer in night classes while still working my corporate job? i was sold.

At the core of the class were book group discussion board posts that reviewed each of the 20-25 books each group member chose to read that summer. While I revisited Madeline L'Engle, I also added new author friends like Jerry Spinelli, Linda Oatman High, Rodrick Philbin, Gary Paulsen, and Sonya Sones (how delighted I was to watch her twirl and perform at ALAN this year!). Through the 21 books I flew through between June and August and the postings of my book group's reviews, theme studies, and author studies, I began to see what I had been missing by not reading YA. These weren't simplistic characters of teens enduring the sting of peer pressure and puppy love in saccharine, teen magazine fashion. The YA books we read and shared not only reflected the complexity of contemporary teens and elevated their stories beyond mere stereotype, they spanned genres from poetry to historical fiction, and even non-fiction. My own theme study of gender and sexual identity in YA revealed a broadening array of gay, lesbian, questioning, and even transgendered characters, thanks to works by Julie Ann Peters, Alex Sanchez, and Nancy Garden. These books were nothing like those "children's" books I expected.

Even though it has taken me quite a while to begin the explore the balance between choice and whole class reading, the foundation of and love for young adult literature I developed in Dr. Hanrahan's summer class continues. From the first day I finally entered the classroom in January 2005, I had those authors and stories with me to help match kids and books. While I'm still working on getting the breadth of book knowledge held by my choice reading heroes (readers and lead learners like Donalyn Miller, Paul Hankins, Penny Kittle and Teri Lesesne), I have added 114 ya books to my GoodReads YA shelf since I started more seriously tracking and logging my reading in 2010.

My class library now occupies almost 3 full-sized book shelves, books I bought, gathered, or was given. Works I acquired at, and are finally arriving in the mail from, the 2012 NCTE Annual Conference and the Assembly on Adolescent Literature-NCTE (ALAN) workshop will likely fill 3-4 more shelves. I know I have many to replace because they have walked off with readers over the years, and for as long as I teach, I will replace and buy many more. But I will continue to spend my energy, time, and money to seek advanced reader copies, talk books with my online and in person friends, comb thrift stores and bargain sales, and develop relationships with booksellers to have even more choices for the young readers in my classroom.

Why? Because YA makes reading contagious and easy to pass to kids who don't see themselves as readers. Reading and falling in love with YA gives me and my students a chance to look into ourselves and slip into the lives of others. As along the way, we become better students, better citizens, and better readers.

Thanks, Linda, for starting me on this path.

NCTE and ALAN 2012, part I.

This year's NCTE took place in Las Vegas. I thought I'd be smart and go to work on Thursday, catch a flight there, and be ready to go to the Friday morning general session. If I was 20 years younger, that would have worked.

As it was, I realized I was approaching 23 hours without sleep when I arrived at my hotel near 11:30 p.m. local time, as it was 2:30 a.m. on the East Coast. So, I missed Sir Ken Robinson's 8 a.m. keynote, which many are citing as highlight of the conference.

Still, this conference drove home for me that it's not really about the names, though I did see some of the rock stars of the English teaching world. It's about the connections and thoughtful reflections. Oh, and the books. It's always about the books. But, more on that in another post.

So, Friday was a fairly light day for me.

I made it to two fascinating presentations that forced my jetlagged brain to consider what I hadn't before. Probably the most thought-provoking for me for both Friday and the entire conference was "Teaching Adolescents As If They Already Knew What They were Doing," a panel chaired by Randy Bomer that featured presentations by Katherine Bomer, Deb Kelt, and Allison Skerritt.

Randy Bomer began the session with a story of a former student, Craig, who was also an assistant manager at a local Pizza Hut.  Craig came alive when talking about his work, but became defeated when faced with typical literacy tasks in the classroom. Bomer began to wonder how he could bridge the gap between Craig the defeated student, and Craig the animated manager. Thus, it was Craig who began to illustrate for Bomer the difference between appreciative and deficiency stances toward literacy practices. Really, Craig already had many of the skills he needed to be a successful student, though some weren't fully developed. But, instead of focusing on what kids like Craig already know and can do, we tend to focus on what he can't do now or must do in the future. Instead of treating education like an apprenticeship that buildings on existing structures, we tend to focus on filling kids up with the requisite knowledge and skills.

The rest of the panel built on Bomer's ideas.

• Katherine Bomer brought up Stephen Colbert's interview technique, an improvisational rule called "Yes, and..." that posits the work of the classroom as building a scene together. To build a scene in improv, everyone has to accept what's going on, pay attention, (Yes) and build the scene together (and...).

This is the second time this year that the idea of using improvisation-based thinking as a way to build skills has come up. The first time was at the Journalism Education Association's Adviser's Institute last summer. Mark Newton led a session called "Yes, and..." which focused on using improv techniques to get student media leaders to establishing a community of trust and creativity.

• Allison Skerritt shared how much she learned by giving students cameras to document their literacy practices. By opening up literacy as something more inclusive than simply reading and writing in class, Skerritt invited students to share their interests and expertise. This became the foundation of class practice.
• Deb Kelt, a 9th and 10th grade teacher who works with the lowest achieving students in her building, also shared practices geared toward appreciative thinking. She used texting as a way to discuss inference skills with kids. Kids GET inference with texting, but panic with books. By using texting as a way in, she was able to let them know they already had the skills they needed to succeed as students.

Honestly, this idea of deficit thinking versus appreciative thinking got to me.  I watched Katherine's writing conference accept and celebrate student interests and strengths; I saw how Allison Skerritt students' demonstrated their literacy practices in a way that allowed them to express their cultural identities; and I heard Deb Kelt's story of a student who told another to hang his dreams right over his head in the classroom so he could always reach for his dreams. This session made me realize I need to seriously consider "Yes, and..." as a philosophical approach. Sure, I've read Penny Kittle's work on writing, and I subscribe to a significant place for choice reading. But, how much more can I do if I assume that although I'm the lead learner, I'm not the expert? Isn't that what "yes, and..." is? What do I exclude in my focus to get students to a specific place or a specific skill? How many students have I closed off with a "No, but" instead of opening up with a "Yes, and..."

And that was just the first session of the day...

Then I got to see the rock stars: Kelly Gallagher, Penny Kittle, and Tom Newkirk. As I expected, each challenged me and the session seemed to have been designed to build on the discussion I had just left.

• Kelly emphasized reflection as a writing territory that's vital to kids understanding of themselves and extending that understanding to the world; again, we start where kids are. Our classroom literacy becomes an imaginative rehearsal space for the world (with credit to Kenneth Burke). We, as the lead leaders, guide discussions where we read, analyze, and emulate writing. We do, I do, you do, you reflect. Really, how much more straightforward can that be? And why am I not doing it all of the time?
• Penny Kittle described a research writing elective where students used story as a springboard to in-depth research. Again, she started with student interests and allowed them to build text sets of fiction, non-fiction, journalism, informational writitng, charts, graphs, tables, infographics--a wide variety of media--to begin to write from data. I loved her idea that writing becomes a duet of you and your sources! Kids need to be able to tell the story of the data rather than just regurgitate it, and that story becomes the duet.
•  Finally Tom Newkirk talked about the idea of narrative writing as being at the core of all other forms. Newkirk, who I'd read but never seen before, had us laughing at his stories and thinking as he discussed how we are hardwired to see the world in causal terms.Stories help us form the patterns we need to make the abstract concrete. To hold information and to expand our range of sympathies, we need stories.  He specifically mentioned Kristoff's op-eds in the New York Times, which made the horror of the sex trade real for readers by bringing to light individual stories of girls sold into prostitution. Also, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address gave listeners a narrative on which to base the reconcilliation of a nation. But what really had us rolling with laughter was Newkirk's inclusion of an example of how narrative brings informational writing to life. He displayed at read the opening from "The Big Heat," a New Yorker commentary on the drought of 2012 by Elizabeth Kolbert. If Kolbert's description of corn sex doesn't make you see pollination in a more vivid way, I'm not sure anything I can say can impress upon you the power of story to help us make sense of our world.

Honestly, by the end of these two presentations, I was ready to connect with some of my Twitter friends. I ran into Jen Ansbach and together, we spent the next 3 hours cruising around the exhibit hall, gathering ideas, buying books, and getting advanced reader copies of upcoming titles. I left the hall $30 poorer (it would be much more than that by Sunday), but richer for the conversations I had with Jen, Gary Anderson, Tony Romano, and several others who I met along the way.

And that was just day 1 before dinner...

Is there any question why I spend my own money and take personal time to travel half way across the country?

Confessions of an erratic blogger

I don't suppose I have much to confess; the archive to the right says about all that needs saying. The urge to blog comes and goes, which ensures I won't have much of a following here. But, I still think there's good in reflecting in my blog.

I'm still trying to process NCTE and ALAN this year. I've already written 3 reviews for books I acquired as a result.

Perhaps I need a challenge, like I've seen so many others undertake.