why aren't my daughters workshopping?

After 6 days without school and another one on the way, my 10 year old (call her Ten) and 7 year old (call her Seven for now) have practiced piano for 30 minutes, read at least 30 minutes, and completed a math activity.  Yet here I am, a self professed writing teacher, and my little girls decided to take writing into their own gripped little fists (My ELL class would really help any writer so I don't know what makes my class just for ELLs.)  Here it was Valentine's morning, and I received a hand crafted love poem, not from my husband of 11 years, but from Ten.  She loves to write poetry.  How did we discover this 2 years ago?  Not from her classroom experience, there isn't a workshop teacher in that school.  No it was at the Maine Writing Project's Summer Writers' Camp in Bar Harbor.  God bless that teacher who showed my daughter how writing can be fun. Until then it was just something, "Mommy does at school with her students."  Since that writers' camp Ten asks, "Why don't my teachers do writer's workshop?"  I ask myself, why don't I "do" writers' workshop with her?-Ugh-more guilt.  Do we really "do writing?"  That sounds so task driven. Exactly the reason I put it off.  (Update-I did read and respond to my students' portfolios today. What a joy!...still don't know why I put it off. I love reading my students, "going meta"!)  My daughter needs to workshop her writing like my students do. That means she needs a sense of audience and purpose with peer feedback.  She has also asked about updating a blog from last August-oops forgot about that one.  Will a blog give her a workshop experience?  I have opened an account on 21Classes for my 2 ELL alternative HS students. If nothing else, she will get an education in the lifestyles of the disenfranchised young immigrants.  Seven has to wait. She is too much of a critic to be kind to my ELLs.

too much of a good thing

I think one can have too much dark chocolate and heart cookies in the name of love. I have eaten 2 of everything for the sake of balance ( on my hips).  Maybe having a week off of school has been too much of a good thing also.  I have realized that I work under pressure rather than eeking out parts each day.   Have I read the 7 portfolios that my students worked so hard on and I promised a letter in response/feedback? Ugh-guilt-no.  So does that make me flexible and understanding when the students still in my class miss deadlines. Although I can't say I have set- in-stone-deadlines.  Life happens.  Can they still turn in an article a day late?  Sure because in every single case it is better than what they would have whipped up quickly.  So it saves me from reading dribble.  I work under deadlines and so do my classroom-mother-waiters-driver- writers. Maybe we are thinking, tell me when it counts, when it matters, and when I really have to take it seriously.  Too many deadlines or rich fudgey treats in the name of doing what's right for is really a dull man's trickery.

night air

We have been out of school over a week. The snow is inspiring. I miss Maine. Have you smelled snow at 10 pm? That is now my cherished smell. It is the smell of laying in a field, a yard or the middle of the street and feeling the rest of my life is as wide as that bright black sky, as brilliant as the belt of Orion and as serpentine as the asphalt my head rests upon. I shared my secret with my 10 year. Yes she stretched out in the middle of a suburban lane with me and pointed out Orion's belt. Our senses opened to cars on the adjacent street, to the snow embracing underneath us and the smell that cleansed our souls. That's it. The smell of snow cleanses my soul, I don't know about you or anyone else but for a girl from the North, it has filled a place I didn't now needed filling. Is that why I have been ice skating for the last year and pulling my daughter into it? The smell of clean ice wipes my slate clean, the tragedies of the day dissipate with each blade slicing my ice. It is my ice just as the snow on my lane is mine. My home comes to me with low temperatures and precipitation. What is home to my Central American students? What smells and sensations revive their souls so they can challenge another day in vinyl sided cells?

Advice to Chit Chatters

One evening I was lamenting on the chit chat in my class, the kind that goes well beyond brainstorming and setting a mindset for writing. Well this 3rd grader is recalling a time, way back in Kindergarten, when she was one of those chit chatters. Her problem wasn't finishing her work but rather she distracted her tablemates. You know the kind. Maybe we do learn evertyhthing we need to in kindergarten. Since almost none of my students went to kindergarten, they are catching up for lost time. Oh the memories!

Electric Feedback

Blackboard isn't so sleek and stylish as many options for electronic communication via the internet. I am always looking for new options that will engage my HS ELLs. I think I found one. They were writing about place and identify in the class' discussion board. Usually I ask the students to respond to the ideas so they have a conversation over a period of time. That way irregular attendance won't hold up the conversation. They can pick it back up when they return that week. This way of using the DB has been about the topic rather than the writing. That changed when I gave them an electronic writing conference guide. I had 2 classes using the BB site so this was a great chance for them to see each other's writing. Here is what they used as a guide:
Tell them your overall impression* of the piece.
What is the best part?
What did they show you?
NOT -My grandfather was nice.
Yes - My grandfather took me to the ice cream shop and bought me a chocolate cone every Saturday. Then he took me to the park to play baseball.
*syn. feeling, idea, sense
This morning, when a student in read the feedback from the other class, she was buzzing. "Wow, R wants to try the meatballs." She read the comments on show not tell writing and began revising her story. I was thrilled to see she was excited to get feedback from other students. Maybe the students get bored of the sames responders and this is a change of pace. Maybe electronic writing conferences can cross classrooms and build writing communities.

Slide away the winter chill

ELLs as Writers, Speakers and Leaders

When we give students a space to be role model for their peers, they feel the power of their voice. I started an ESOL student meeting for my students 3 years ago. The most powerful piece of this meeting is the student speeches. Each year, we ask two ELL students who exited from the program to speak to their peers. Thanks to technology, one of the students sent me her speech via gmail and we started a collaboration. I wish we worked on googledocs but there was a quick turn around for the speech time and she hadn't used it. (I can't schedule when my kids get sick so I missed school and then there were teacher work days. However, we worked through it.) This student has been in the US for 5 years and is graduating in June. She was so happy to write this and speak before 70 people. We recorded her speech and gave it to her on a CD. This is what writing for an audience is all about-it serves the writer even more! Here is her speech.

I came to Mt. View in 2006, with the goal to graduate faster. However, things were not as easy as I thought. I would like to share with all of you right now something that for a moment I thought was the correct thing to do. Last year I tried to quit school because I felt that nothing was going right in life. I was frustrated about the way I lived. I made the decision to stop coming to school and worked more to pay my bills, my rent and my car. At the time I thought that education wasn’t as important as money. Thank god there was one person, my sister who made me understood that once you quit from school it is very difficult to come back again. This person told me that what I wanted to give up was the most valuable thing that would make my future prosperous. Also she told me to remember that money goes like water but education stay with you forever. All of these words made me see that what I wanted to do was a terrible mistake that probably I would regret for the rest of my life. Now I owe a lot of thanks to my sister because she was the person who made me see how important education is. My advice based on my experience, is never give up. Education is the only door that conduce us to succeed in this country. That is the reason I am here, trying to pass through that door and become a professional person because I don’t want to be flipping or wrapping burgers all of my life. I want to succeed and I am 100% sure that I can do this and that everyone here can do this. We have to appreciate what we have. We all know that this is a great and an independent school that gives us the opportunity to be educated no matter how old we are. However, sometimes we take advantage of some privileges.
Many of us never take the chance to think how important is to attend at all of our classes every day. For each day that we skip from school we fall behind from every subject that we are taking plus it’s not the same borrowing notes from the classmates that been there actually hearing what the teacher said during the class period. We loose a lot of essential information that we will need if we have a project to do. Many times we have a lot of absences for things that are not in our hands but sometimes we just let ourselves to get influenced by others to just skip school. We should not let other persuade us in our decisions the best thing to do is to stop and consider the consequences that will eventually affect us in the future. Not finishing school or just skipping classes mean that you just don’t care about your education it also mean that didn’t have the courage to step up for yourself.
As you noticed members of Mt. View are our second family and for some students there are like the first one. Right here we feel that we are around of people who care about us, people who help us, no matter who you are or where do you came from. They always are there with their arms wide open waiting for us. We don’t have to be afraid to ask any questions or to talk about our lives because we know that we can trust them with our problems. No matter the reasons that you skip classes or think about dropping out of school, you have the teachers that are willing to help you with everything that is possible.
I think this great team is glad to listen to us, to help us to achieve our education, to make us better persons everyday and to obtain a better future. I’m glad that we have them as our teachers and I’m sure they are happy to have us as students. We might not be perfect but we try to be better everyday.