Poem

"Two Sitting Figures - New Orleans, LA"

This sculpture before me.
This thing I can name.
This black copper
—industrial, geometrical, anonymous.

Two bodies, I think.
A woman and man, I think.
A couple, I think.

The woman in peace.
Something about her legs, hushed before her.
Something about the way this face tilts away.

The man leans near.
Wants to hear.
Wants to say.

I want to ask if she is young or old.
(I can't tell.)
I want to ask if she's with child.
(I can't tell.)

Sculpture, your heads are those windows
built above doors.

Sculpture, your robes are stiff and stark.

Sculpture, does it really matter what you mean?

The pine needles gather at your toes.

This lizard takes to a shoulder,
soaking the heat.

And I take to this poem because
how else would I do it?

a poem called "Where It Hides"

"Where It Hides"

In the kitchen, while cutting mango.

With the folding of laundry at night.

Every time I straighten my toppled books.

In the green candy my aunt bought me in the shop below her job.

In the courtyard in summer under the fans.

With the smell of New Orleans under the oaks.

With the oranges Brod ate in the canoe on his birthday.

When the red apple glows a galaxy—cloudy with stars.

When the yellow balloon rolled toward my bike.

In the gold of my nephew's curls.

In the way they sing "free" with "me."

When I walk to get there because, really, what's the rush?

whither core skill?

I was daydreaming over coffee today asked myself this question: what core skill—above all else—do I want my writing students to learn? My answer (which I'm sure will change a year from now) is DEVELOPMENT—that is, students must learn how to effectively develop an idea in writing. Why?

• Development, at least in the idealized sense, rests on the belief that people can come together and listen to ideas based not just on claims, but on how they are also supported. And, truth be told, is anything taught less in our schools than the importance of support for an opinion? We are so busy teaching our students how to make a focused and singular claim that we often fail to teach the larger lesson, which is this: Argument is not just the thesis statement, but also the collective evidence one is using to support it.
• Effective development involves a chain of reasoning that acknowledges other perspectives exist, that wrestles and responds to such perspectives in good faith.
• "School Writing" is often characterized by a certain flatness. The point is stated early and often and then it's over. The end. Some of my colleagues call this "circling the drain of generality" or "pained" writing. To break students of this style, a fellow teacher explains development thus: "An idea gets handed down the page, sentence by sentence—like the baton in a relay race." Totally.
  
• We can't talk about development without talking about order. When a writer is effectively developing an idea, his or her discourse demands a sort of "logical sequence." Change the sequence, and the entire thing falls apart. Simply put, if the arrangement of your sentences is not bound by a certain causal connection, then you've put forward nothing more than a pile of bricks. For more on this, consider how a baseball manager puts together the lineup. The same is true for how writers put together ideas.
• When a writer has effectively developed an idea, the logic is visible—that is, we (as readers) can take note of how the ideas are sequenced according to an intention. Rereading the text, we even able to name the precise relationship between how each sentence connects to the preceding one. What's more, we're able to summarize what larger point all the sentences add up to.

In sum, all ideas (if they're worth writing about at any length) contain layers of complexity. When we develop our ideas, what we're doing is taking our ideas apart to better see what they contain, what they're built upon, how they interface with other ideas, and so on. When we do this, we are doing more than just writing; we are engaged in rhetoric. Speaker, topic, audience, context: all the moving parts. But forget all that. All you need is this: raise questions. Raise questions while you write. It takes time, it doesn't happen overnight, but it gets easier and more natural with consistent practice. And it's the only way to get the bulb switched on.

That said, freewriting (making a mess, embracing chaos, exploring ideas to see where they go) is still the start of it all. We can't develop an idea that we don't have.

DIAGNOSTIC

This test is designed to help assess certain English skills strengths and weaknesses.

TEST A

TEST B

Vision Statement

OK, so in my last post I shared my teaching mission statement, which was

To create a quality environment where students experience, discover, and develop key critical-thinking tools for academic engagement.

Now I want to take a crack at writing a vision statement. Here goes:

To create a dynamic team of students who sharpen their analytic reading and writing skills through inquiry-based classroom dialogue.

Simply put, I want to create a virtuous circle where my students write thoughtful responses to challenging texts after (and only after) they've closely read the work and deepened their understanding through Socratic class discussions.

Mission Statement

As a teacher, my job is to create the conditions for optimal learning. This is an idea that I keep coming back to time again and again. Why? Because it helps me remember that, among other things, my lesson plan is only as good as the educational outcomes it yields. Anyway, this is all topical because I've decided to draft a mission statement to better clarify who I am, what I do, and who I serve. So far, it looks like this:

To create a quality environment where students experience, discover, and develop key critical-thinking tools for academic engagement.

My emphasis on "experience, discover, develop" comes from my belief that learning happens when we have an experience wherein we discover something that changes (develops) us. I place critical-thinking tools at the center of my mission because analysis, reflection, open-mindedness, etc., are essential for success in the classroom, workplace, and community. Finally, "academic engagement" because active learning is at the very core of education. Without it, problems-solving and dealing with difficulty become cues to quit, rather than opportunities for growth.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully have a vision statement ready to share.

charter

So it's summer break and time to pull back and reflect—but also reload. Put another way, it's time to think deeply about the experiences I've just had, so I can prepare for my classes in the fall. As a heuristic, an opening salvo, I've decided to pull my old UbD workbook off the shelf and see if it can't help me "backward design." So here is my "first thought, best thought" attempt.

Mr. Zeiger's ENGLISH COMPOSITION 101 class.

Established Goals. Students learn how to write essays based on comprehension and analysis of texts. (See also: DCC's First-Year English Syallbus, WPA Outcome Statement).
Enduring Understanding. Quality writing is—above all else—persuasive.
Essential Questions. What are the main qualities that make writing persuasive? How can we elevate our own persuasive-writing skills?
Knowledge and Skills. Close reading, academic conversing, quality writing. By that I mean,

Students can use the following close reading strategies

• summary statements 
• question statements 
• prediction statements 
• critical statements 
• reader response statements

Students can throughtfully discuss writing with their peers using the following core traits: 

• Elaborate and clarify 
• Support with ideas and examples 
• Build on and/or challenge a partner's idea 
• Paraphrase 
• Synthesize conversation points 

Students can compose writing that

• is sonically appealing 
• exploratory 
• purposeful 
• critical 
• uses clear sentence structure 
• improves with revision 

OK, so that's a start. Later this week, I want to explain what I mean by persuasive writing—and why I value it so dearly. I also want to delve into the importance of "sonically appealing" prose.

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