Holy cow - they're acutally reading!

Teacher Musings:
When I started teaching I was very lucky to have many great mentors and veteran teachers at my school who were always willing to pass along resources. Along with many other incredibly valuable lessons, handouts, etc. (some of which I didn't even understand the value of until years later) I was bequeathed reading journals and reading quizzes. The reading quizzes were usually to assess comprehension - they were supposed to test if a student actually understood the book and/or story they read. The reading journals, in their various forms, were designed to both help students track information as they read (be it important quotes from novels, character development, theme, etc.). Most of the reading journals involved some part where students recorded specific quotes and/or summaries of what they read, and some kind of analysis/inference/interpretation of that section.

I very quickly stopped giving reading quizzes and tests in my class. They just didn't seem to be worth the time and focus they took. I might very well go back to using comprehensive tests one day, but for now I'm just trying to really focus on helping my kids not only understand what they read, but also helping them recognize the tools and strategies they are using so that they can apply those tools to new texts. As part of this pursuit I have developed a reading log assignment over the past two years that I have found really helpful. The other aspect of student reading I have been working on is having them discuss the reading in groups. I have been trying to integrate reciprocal teaching into my class, with moderate degrees of success. Several weeks have now gone by with my reading logs, my wiki and my student reading groups all somewhat functioning, and I have seen some results. To be fair, we are in the middle of a non-fiction unit where students read articles of various types about the subject of teen nutrition, so this will definitely look different when we go back to reading novels. However, I have seen more students clearly explaining the main ideas of their articles and thoughtfully analysing the author's writing choices. I have seen this mostly in reading logs, but it has also been apparent in their reading group discussions as well. As I reflect back on these developments, I think there a few factors that have really contributed to the improvement in student reading from last year.

a) Our science department has worked really hard to get students to use reciprocal teaching as well. I think I am starting to see the payoff in my classes.

b) Students have some choice in what they are reading - I often let them choose an article from a section of our reader. Several students have told me that has kept them more engaged when the reading gets difficult.

c) Students are discussing the reading in groups. In these groups, they are all responsible for understanding the article, and many of them are asking each other questions and trying to figure out the answers together. I have watched students struggle through the readings together when I refuse to give answers.

d) Students are getting immediate feedback from me on their reading logs (thanks to my new wikipage set-up). After using this for a few weeks I had a couple students actually ask an authentic question on their reading log, and then write a line such as "Ms. L-P, what do you think?" or "Could you help me understand this?" While these may not seem like deep questions, they do show a deeper level of engagement with the text, and the reading log, than student's showed when it was just something I read over every 3-4 weeks. And this engagement seems a bit more authentic - like actual readers asking questions, rather than trying to b.s. their way through an assignment.

Not all of my students are reading and comprehending the dense articles we are working with in class - heck, I can think of at least ten kids who probably didn't attempt the reading in the first place. But the students who are trying are definitely demonstrating a stronger critical reading ability than I have seen before. And that makes me excited!

Yummy Stuff:
When I first moved into my own apartment in college, I was very excited to cook. I wasn't vegan then, but I was (and still am) a huge fan of cookies. I searched online for recipes and found one for chocolate chip cookies that the G-man and I both loved. I had never tried to veganize it - not because it was hard to do, but because I was a little afraid it wouldn't work and I would be disappointed. Well, tonight the G-man had a hankering for these cookies, so we gave it a shot. They came out great, so here is the veganized version of the ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe!

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie
Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) or Earth Balance (or other non-dairy) butter
1 cup of granulated sugar
1 cup of brown sugar, packed
2 TB of flax seed meal, mixed with 1/4 cup of water
1 TB of vanilla
2 and 1/2 cups of oats (ground into oat flour - you can use a food processor or a coffee grinder)
2 cups of flour
1 tsp. of baking soda
1 tsp. of baking powder
4 oz of dark, unsweetened chocolate (like Scharffenberger's baking bar) grated
12 oz of chocolate chips (vegan of course!)

Directions:
1) Whip the flax seed meal and water in a small bowl with a fork. Set it aside
2) Make the oat flour in the food processor or the coffee grinder
3) Cream together the butter and sugars
4) Add in the flaxseed meal mix and vanilla and thoroughly mix with the butter and sugar
5) Mix in 1/2 of the flour, 1/2 the oats and the baking soda and baking power until fully mixed in.
6) Add in the rest of the flours (regular and oat) as well as the graded chocolate bar. Mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon.
7) Mix in the chocolate chips.
8) Bake in a 350 degree oven for 11 minutes. Let the cookies cool on the pan for a minute or two and then transfer them to a cooling rack.

A Teacher Voice

Teacher Musings:
I have not written a post for a few months, mostly because I have been on maternity leave. This means that I have not been teaching and have, in fact, felt rather out of the loop when it comes to my school. While I don't miss the school politics and difficult behavior issues, I have found myself missing teaching lately. I am looking forward to getting back to my classroom and my students in September, although I will miss the wonderful time I have now with my little one. There are a lot of changes going on in my school right now, most significantly a change in leadership. As I consider what this means for me and my career at my school, I have also started wondering about what larger changes in education are taking place, especially all that has gone on with Race to the Top in the last few months. I read a number of education blogs, and I have been following Anthony Cody at Living In Dialogue for quite a while and I have been especially excited by his rallying of teacher voices through Teacher Letters to Obama. As I read what he and other teachers have written it has really reminded me of what teacher's voices mean in the discussion about how society can re-shape our education system. Teachers are on the ground and we are the ones who see how policies play out on student's lives. Sometimes this means we can be almost too focused on our immediate realities, but in general I have encountered more teachers that are both able to deal with the urgent needs in front of them while simultaneously taking the long view than teachers who are stuck in their own limited reality. So when I heard Arne Duncan in an NPR interview (I think it was on Talk of the Nation) I was a bit pissed off when I heard him say he was a "teacher" ("well, really an 'educator'" as he put it, since he had been educating his whole life) even though the closest he got to actual classroom teaching experience was helping out his mom in her classroom when he was a kid. I'm not necessarily opposed to educational leaders who do not have classroom teaching experience, although I do think that classroom experience can be a huge asset for obvious reasons. What bothers me most about Ducan's response was the utter lack of respect it shows for teachers and the work they do. If you think that being in the education "field" in an administrative role (oh, and helping out in mom's classroom) makes you qualified as a teacher you really have no clue what it takes to teach - which is scary when you are making far reaching decisions that drastically impact students and teachers.
One of my good friends and I were recently discussing how frustrating it can me when you tell people that you are a teacher and people immediately launch into the their thoughts and opinions about teachers, their experiences as students and then - the final touch - give you advice about what you should do in your professional capacity as a teacher. I am happy to hear about people's classroom experiences but what I resent a bit is the idea that anyone is qualified to tell a teacher what to do if he/she has been a student. I have spent years and countless hours not only doing the work of teaching, but reading, writing, researching, thinking, meeting and engaging in countless hours or honing and improving my craft. When someone suggests that there is some easy fix to makes teachers and schools better (such as "fire the bad teachers," "don't assign busy work for homework - I hated that" or "be really tough with the kids - that worked for me!") it suggests that teaching is simple - and it is not. While I definitely need to hear the outsider perspective to keep me from getting to focused and blinded by my time in the classroom, it is important for those who are not classroom teachers to thoughtfully consider both what they can offer to help teachers and schools improve and what insights they need to get from teachers who have a wealth of knowledge and experience that is too often overlooked or barely touched.
I really didn't plan for this first post back to be a rant. Perhaps part of my frustration is due to the fact that recently I have felt like a bit of an outsider since I have been on leave. When I talk to teacher friends sometimes I have to keep myself from giving advice because I know that I am missing crucial context since I have not been in school for months. On my time away, as I consider new legislation on both the state and federal level, I do feel like the Race to the Top issue has the potential to be a positive step forward for our schools, but I have yet to see people on the federal level really tackling the assessment question. Like many others I am behind the idea of teachers being held accountable for student growth. However, the question becomes how that manifests itself. What I hope is that Race to the Top leads to an overhaul of our assessment systems that start to look at the assessment work that teachers do every day in their classrooms. Perhaps if we look to teachers first, before we look to testing companies, we can find more authentic assessment models (instead of standardized tests) and creatively think about how to use those models on a larger scale. But hey, this is just a teacher talking.

Yummy Stuff:
After my slightly snarky rant, I would like to provide something a bit more palatable - how about a yummy bean recipe! In my current post-pregnancy state I am trying to get back into shape and deal with my changing hormones, so that means returning to what I call my "beans and greens" diet - lots of veggies, fruit and legumes and little starch and very little sugar. This week for dinners we had lots of lentils and bean dishes, but one of my favorites was the black bean soup I veganized from the Easy Beans cookbook. After making it the G-man and I decided that we would like it a bit thicker and with more stuff, so we will add more veggies next time (another carrot and bell pepper) and decrease the stock a bit, but I will give out the version we made this time - it was quite good!
Classic Black Bean Soup (Vegan Style!)
Ingredients:
2 cups dried black beans
3 TB olive oil
2 large onions, chopped
1 red or green bell pepper chopped
1 carrot, peeled and diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
10 cups of veggie broth
4 bay leaves
1/2 tsp savory
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
1/4 crushed red pepper
1/2 cup white wine
juice of 1/2 lemon

Directions:
1. Soak beans for 8 hours (I started them soaking when I got up at 7am and then started cooking around 5 pm). When they are done soaking, rinse and drain
2. In a large soup pot, saute the onions, bell pepper and carrot in olive oil for 10 minutes. Then, add the garlic and stir for 1 minute
3. Add beans, stock, bay leaves and savory. Simmer 1 1/2 hours (90 minutes)
4. Remove bay leaves and take 4 cups of the soup mixture and puree in a blender or food processor until smooth. Return mixture to soup pot
5. Add cumin, oregano, crushed red peeper, white wine and lemon juice. Stir well and heat until piping hot.