new favorite website

no. that's not me.
my... um... ego's not that big.

if "pictures of hot chicks with total and complete douche bags" makes you laugh just to keep from crying, check out my new favorite website...
hot chicks with douchebags!

VERY funny stuff. the commentary is also quite... trenchant. poetic, even.

cotsen

about a month ago, some people from the cotsen organization gave a presentation to our staff soliciting recruits for their foundation. in a nutshell, their philosophy is that teaching is a fine art--an art form that each teacher personalizes and makes his or her own. they believe in nurturing teachers' individual strengths through fellowship and collaboration with mentors. no one style or method is advocated (since there is no ONE RIGHT WAY TO TEACH), but that the end result--great teaching--is a product of personal expression.

since music is a medium though which i express myself, i thought this might be an opportunity for me to learn more fully how to integrate music into the language arts and mathematics curricula. i've already begun using songs that i developed in collaboration with the company, teacher created materials, to teach some reading comprehension skills, but i'd like to more fully utilize music across the academic spectrum, in different disciplines including science and social studies. this looked like an opportunity for me to realize that.

this year we were lucky enough to hire one former cotsen fellow, glenda bishop away from our neighboring school, alvarado. she's a complete dynamo! the level of work her 3rd graders did--and the amazing work she is currently doing in 5th grade with readers' workshop--is a testament to her incredible passion for teaching and learning and a huge endorsement of the cotsen philosophy. if you don't believe me, just click here and watch her for yourself. (check out the other videos, too--they're pretty incredible... and also short!)

st. mccain redux

donald graves pt. I

since there's been some complaints about the quantity of education-related posts, i present a report (written for my masters class) on "my distant teacher," donald graves... (sorry for the formatting issues--blogger cannot seem to double space and indent my paragraphs the way m.s. word does--weak.)

...

Since you are able to read and comprehend the words on this page, you implicitly understand the value of the comprehension skills necessary to be a proficient reader. These skills are a prerequisite for making my words and letters comprehensible. Most teachers understand this and work hard to reinforce reading skills with their students. These skills have become an integral part of reading instruction curricula largely due to the fact that so much research exists in this area of literacy (Graves, 2000). But what about the value of being able to actually write comprehensibly?

Given that one cannot practice comprehension skills without words, and words need authors to write them, it would seem reasonable that researchers would have investigated the development of children’s writing as well as reading. But in the 1970’s, student writing was not considered when researchers studied reading. It was a consciousness of this deficit—this neglect of examining student writing—that was the impetus for Donald H. Graves’ doctoral dissertation on children’s writing in 1971 (Graves, 2000).

As a Distinguished Educator, Graves’ work in the area of children’s writing has spanned more than 30 years (Graves, 2002). After receiving his Doctorate from the University of Buffalo, Graves began his career as a Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of New Hampshire in 1973. Soon thereafter Graves’ expertise was sought in Washington D.C. on planning educational research for the 1980’s (Graves, 2000). This led to his study of children’s writing for the Ford Foundation in 1976—which produced Balance the Basics, Let Them Write (1978)—its purpose was to investigate what type of writing was being encouraged in classrooms: “authentic” (student-generated, student-selected) pieces or “fill-in-the-blank” writing (Graves, 1991).

After receiving a grant from the National Institute of Education for a longitudinal study of children’s writing, Graves, Lucy Calkins, and Susan Sowers spent the next six years documenting the developmental stages of children’s writing. This led to the publishing of Graves’ Writing: Teachers and Children at Work in 1983 and many articles in Language Arts (Graves, 2000).

From 1982 until 1988, Graves worked with Jane Hansen (from the reading department of the University of New Hampshire) studying the relationship between reading and writing. Graves’ “The Reading/Writing Teacher’s Companion series… resulted from this work.” For the next several years, Graves began to study the impact of the writer’s portfolio on evaluation, and published Portfolio Portraits in 1992, the year he retired from the University of New Hampshire (Graves, 2000).

This did not stop his publishing career. Originally intending to simply revise and update Writing: Teachers and Children at Work, Graves produced A Fresh Look at Writing in 1994 as a partial rebuttal to critiques of his earlier work (Graves, 2000). Graves (1995) again addressed questions about the validity, value, and logistics of student-centered writing workshops after being bombarded with questions from teachers following speaking engagements around the country.

In 1996 Graves published his first children’s book Baseball, Snakes and Summer Squash: Poems About Growing Up. He has since published How to Catch a Shark and Other Stories About Teaching and Learning (1998) and Bring Life Into Learning (1999). The latter was a response to teachers—with increasingly impacted time schedules—who focused primarily on plot instead of character, ignoring the humanity in literature. “When people are bypassed the children are bypassed and the emotion of learning is often lost.” Graves wrote (2000). Given that “emotion is the engine of our intellect,” Graves (2002) felt plot should be subordinate to character, since characters drive the plot through their actions (Graves, 1991).

Recently Graves (2002) studied the effects of “No Child Left Behind” (and its requisite standardized testing) on classroom teachers’ instruction. While Graves was quick to commend President Bush for addressing public education in his first term of office, he cautioned that measuring progress through standardized testing did not necessarily produce high achievement in students, and he admonished the administration for mistakenly thinking that “a test is good because it is a test.” In other words, testing (or test prep) was not teaching. Increasingly, though, Federal money is being tied to test scores, and more teachers are spending valuable teaching time focusing on test preparation (Graves, 2002).

Instead, teachers should teach reading and writing skills—life skills that encourage long, deep thinking as opposed to the short, “5-meter sprint” of one-answer-only questions found on most standardized tests (Graves, 2002). Only “Long Thinkers,” (like Einstein, Jefferson, and Darwin) have the capacity needed to sustain thought—a requirement for solving the tough problems of Business and Democracy—a necessity for our country to survive. To wit: the strength of our democracy—and indeed, capitalism—is in its ability to innovate, invent, and/or improve solutions to problems, not in finding the One And Only Answer (Graves, 2002).

According to Graves (2002), standardized testing, “conditioned” students to look for that mythical One and Only Answer—with the misguided belief that that was learning—consigning critical and creative thinking to a secondary status. In an interesting proposal, Graves suggested a role reversal: let those who make the tests, take the tests as well! Some parents did take these tests and found more than one answer to some of the problems. Still they received no credit for their ingenuity.

donald graves pt. II

Graves (2002) work on teachers’ energy issues—what provided energy and what took it away—was itself empowering. He noted that it took energy to get energy—“energy begets energy”—and that teachers needed to “find energy in what they did well and practice it,” instead of focusing—like we so often do—on what’s not going well. He listed four sources for filling up our teacher-energy-tanks:

· Students (through humor and rapport)

· Colleagues (through collaboration and friendship)

· Curriculum (through characters, rather than events)

· Asking questions (“How does this policy/practice result in learning?)

Teachers teach because we love learning and want to instill this love of learning in our students, so that they in turn become life-long learners. This takes a lot of time and energy, everyday. Unfortunately, the numbers of energy-filled teachers is on the decline—more teachers are quitting citing stress, fatigue, exhaustion. Thankfully, learning generates energy, which in turn generates creativity, which generates more energy, and so on—it’s cyclic—teachers need to understand this: it behooves us to be constantly seeking knowledge because as educators, we feel most energy-filled when we learn ourselves (Graves, 2002).

* * * *

Graves’ work is inspiring for a number of reasons. I was literally energized by his research on teachers’ energy issues. It was quite revelatory, since I’ve always struggled with having enough energy to be effective meeting the needs of all the students in my classroom. Indeed, I drew energy—I felt truly motivated—from reading about this study and the notion that “creativity generates energy.”

At our school we call these energy-providing situations “treasure moments”—those times when “little things” (like a student’s question or response) invigorate a lesson or enliven a school day by virtue of their creativity or poignancy. Graves did this through his study—I actually gained energy from reading it—which again illustrates his point: “Energy begets energy.”

It was great to see Graves mention “Long Thinkers” like Jefferson and Darwin as paragons of intellect and thinking since they are heroes of mine. I believe that an informed populace is the only way to have a functioning democracy, so it was encouraging to see Graves support and champion this notion. Indeed, had we accepted a deep-thinker as President seven years ago, we wouldn’t be stuck in Iraq at this very moment… but I digress.

“Writing a research paper is like writing a poem,” Graves (1991) said; “Trust the Shadows.” This intrigued me. When I realized what he meant—that while researching or drafting we must first say “yes” to all information, (even the shadows) before we say “no” during revision—I was able to apply this knowledge successfully to my writing as well as my teaching. This process of distilling information has helped me compose poetry and prose, and has been a valuable lesson to teach reticent or struggling writers when they are confronted by The Bothersome Blank Page.

Since I use the Columbia Writing Program in my classroom, I am completely aligned with Graves’ principles of student-centered, authentic writing. It’s a far cry from the prompt-generated writing that students were producing a few short years ago. The quality and investment that students make in their craft is quite remarkable. This is because students feel empowered to make writing decisions themselves. When students exercise this sovereignty, they are doing the work of real authors, and they in turn feel empowered and motivated (Remember: Energy begets creativity and vice versa.)

This small sampling of Graves’ work compels me to read more. He’s a wealth of information as well as an inspiration. I will continue to implement Graves’ techniques and strategies in my classroom to build life-long learners—learners that will one day be asked to make the tough decisions that are required of the populace in a free and functioning democracy.

st. mccain

the washington post exposes their deep liberal bias by featuring two hard-hitting pieces on john mccain. here's one:

PAGE SPRINGS, Ariz., March 2 -- If he loses the presidency, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) will have a career as a barbecue chef to fall back on.

At his weekend cabin just outside Sedona on Sunday afternoon, McCain took a break from campaigning and grilled ribs and chicken for three dozen reporters, some staff members and a few Republican friends from the Senate...

....

McCain offered a tour of the property, which if he is elected will no doubt become the latest incarnation of the "Western White House," the equivalent of Ronald Reagan's Santa Barbara ranch, President Bush's place in Crawford or the first President Bush's Maine retreat. . .

McCain's aides said the three-hour gathering was intended as a "social event," not a glorified news conference. And by and large, reporters agreed to those rules, asking him substantive questions only a few times.

....

The idea, McCain said, was to allow reporters to get to know him and his staff under less stressful circumstances. (The fact that the media spent the weekend at a resort called Enchantment probably contributed to that feeling.)

isn't that cozy? i wonder if the post paid for the "resort." either way, if this is what passes for press objectivity, let's just skip the election and swear him in now.

for the masochists, here's the other fluff piece.