NBPTS Test tomorrow

I take my NBPTS tomorrow! Have been doing some studying and preparing, but, as one mentor told me, it's not really designed to be a test you can cram for.

Section 1: Unseen poetry commentary. Read a poem, discuss three literary devices the poet uses and how they contribute to meaning. This is what I teach the kids to do, so hopefully this one is my strongest area.

Section 2: Universal Themes - I'll be asked to read a poem or passage, discuss the universal theme and human condition that lies within it, and bring in a non-print text (like a film) that also elucidates this theme.

Section 3: Language Study - I'll be asked to read and analyze an oral transcript and a section of writing from a ESL student, then discuss strategies to help that student in both speaking and writing.

Section 4: Teaching Reading - I'll get a short section of text, then read a wrong student response to it, and I'll have to discuss strategies and rationale for how I would teach this student how to read better.

Section 5: Non-fiction Writing - I'll be asked to analyze the techniques used and the audience for a non-fiction passage.

Section 6: Teaching Writing - I'll get a short essay written by a student, and be asked to discuss weaknesses in the writing and how I would address them as a teacher.

That doesn't seem too bad. Each section is a half-hour. Two of my colleagues have had extreme technical difficulties while it was occurring, and hopefully that doesn't happen with me. Wish me luck!

Kate Hooks' Story Now Online

I just got back from visiting Kate, the inspiring city teacher (at Poly) who blogs here. Kate recently had some pretty serious surgery related to her progressing MS, so please send her your good thoughts and prayers.

Her story, told a few weeks ago, is now online. Do yourself a favor and listen to it. What you should learn from it is that (a) Kate is an amazing person and b) Baltimore City kids, despite reputation to the contrary, have a great deal of empathy for their fellow human.

Kate told her story as part of the Stoop Storytelling Series; they learned about her story in this feature in Baltimore Magazine. They, by the way, learned about Kate's story from this very blog.

Up Front Magazine - considering

In ten years, when I see one of my students on the street, I don't want them to tell me that they remember what the mockingbird symbolized in To Kill a Mockingbird; I want them to tell me what they think of the latest Malcolm Gladwell book, or that they've picked up something like Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. I want them to learn how to read, and, thus, I need to worry less about covering content and, instead, in teaching strategies for all types of reading.

This is much harder than covering content. It means less focusing on what to teach from a novel, but how to teach a novel. This is one of the biggest challenges to the teaching of English, and the summer -- and the reading I'm doing now, stuff like Cris Trovini's Do I Really Have to Teach Reading?, is helping me re-focus on my own classroom practices a bit. I think I do a lot of what she espouses, but I want to continue to develop these ideas.

One thing I am considering next year is using the NY Times Up Front magazine. My goal would be to integrate more non-fiction into our course, as well as more real-world reading skills, and so our entire 9th grade team is considering using them next year with the freshmen. The subscription cost, I believe, is $10/year for the biweekly magazine. The samples I saw seemed pretty good. More information is here: Up Front Magazine.

If I am to create a mass of critical readers, I need to do more than make sure they know about Shakespeare's use of celestial imagery in Romeo and Juliet. I need to teach them how to approach news pieces and media and give them the tools necessary to read them and question them. That's the goal for next year, or at least one of them.

Macbeth vs. Richard III

One of the decisions I will have to make this summer is deciding between Macbeth and Richard III.

I loved teaching the latter this past year, but it's one of Shakespeare's early plays. It's a bit overlong and I think Macbeth might be a tighter teach. However, my joy in teaching Richard III has a lot to do with the Al Pacino film Looking for Richard, which is a pretty amazing documentation of a bunch of famous actors putting on the play, as well as an examination of contemporary attitudes towards Shakespeare.

If I were to switch to Macbeth, I wouldn't have that resource, but I would have another one -- the Folger edition of Macbeth, which just came out last year. It's a filmed version of the play that Teller (of Penn & Teller) put on at the Folger in 2008, and the extras have a lot of what Looking for Richard offers.

So, I'm considering the switch. I need to re-read Macbeth to make sure it's something I want to do. I really don't want to re-invent the wheel next year.

Summer of Health

I am starting the summer weighing 254 pounds.

I am 32 years old and 5'9".

When I was 25, I weighed 190. When I was 20, I weighed 310. So, it's been quite a roller coaster for the last decade or so. I pretty much had a 2-3 year chunk of time when I was 23-25 when I was losing 40 pounds a year and ended up looking and feeling really good in my mid-20s. Then I had some unrelated health problems (double detached retinas!), and life got really busy and stressful, and I've slowly -- even with regular, if sometimes halfhearted, exercise -- gained the weight back. I've gained about 20 over the last two years, and this last year, full of stress and lots of work, was a bad one. I don't know how much weight I gained for sure, but I know I just stopped going to the gym for a bit in the spring, and stopped tucking in my shirts and occasionally buying XXL before that.

I have muscles, so I know that BMI does not work that well for me; however, it is currently at 37.5, which puts me squarely in the "Obese" category and I would like to get it around 30 (which would put me in the "overweight" category).

I am gravely aware of what it means to be this overweight. Last year, I suffered from racing heart issues, perhaps from a combination of over-caffeination and Sleep Deprivation, but the weight doesn't help, nor does the stress that mounts when I'm not getting the endorphins from exercise. See, for me, it's not really about weight, but about feeling healthy. I know when I feel healthy and I know when I feel like a giant slug, and that has been most of this year.

I usually feel pretty good in August, after a couple months of regular and intense exercise (including biking everywhere). Last August, I even dated. This year, it seems to have happened again, where I barely feel healthy enough to run a mile and thus don't feel very great about myself. I need the summer to reboot and get back to where I need to be. Hopefully by August I'll have shed twenty or so pounds and, then, I can be more regular about my exercise when I start school back up (and, this year, I'm not teaching any new preps, or doing National Board) and get my life back. This year just felt out of control, health-wise. I lived a disorganized and unhealthy lifestyle. I need to stop that.

My sister gets married in October. I'm the Best Man. That's another reason. Need to look good in those photos! :)

I started back on the horse yesterday, with a superb workout. Today, I feel that wonderful sore feeling. I'm heading back, and thinking about doing the cycling class at 7 as well. I need to really kickstart myself. I don't worry about overdoing it at first because I've proven to myself that I can stick with a program as long as I'm not busy and stressed otherwise.

Pondering IB Reading List for 2010-2011

Semester 1 (Part 2): Richard III or MacBeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Baldwin Essays, Song of Solomon (Morrison)

Semester 2 (Part 3): Theme -- The Roots of Evil. The White Tiger (Adiga), The Color Purple (Walker), The Fifth Child (Lessing), Oryx and Crake (Atwood)

This is a first draft of a curriculum for next year.

Why I like it: More women than last year, when I had two women. More diverse than last year, when I had four U.S. writers in a World Lit class -- now it's three. I get to teach The Color Purple, long one of my favorite books, and something that I think the kids will absolutely love (I know they've all seen the movie, which I actually think is a pretty poor adaptation of it.) Really tight theme in the second semester that kids could write about. Second semester novels are generally pretty short, so there will be plenty of time to practice with assessments. Really readable and high-interest texts in second semester when kids are getting bitten by senioritis.

Why it's still problematic: Still not very worldly -- three African American writers might be too many, especially because I've been asked to diversify the curriculum. I'll miss doing one huge novel that kids can pretty much draw from for any topic -- last year, it was East of Eden. Am I over-correcting my issue with length, which might not be an issue next year without the torrential snowfall we had this year?

What I could still do: I need to read some more books this summer. The list is so frustrating (I'm going to cut and paste it below again), because so many authors are out of print and also because, frankly, I haven't read most of the authors below who are not from North America. Also, regarding Rushdie, I need to double-check the rules, but I think Asia/India is out for me on the choices because I'm once again choosing The White Tiger (a big success last year).

So, I need to figure out some other things. If anyone has any recommendations of texts from the authors below, particularly texts that would fit the theme of the Roots of Evil, please let me know. I'll be scouring other schools' IB Part III lists and doing lots of reading this summer in the meantime...

The list (Parts II and III of the IB Reading List. Adiga isn't on here, but he fits the one WL text requirement -- not from the list -- that can be chosen.)

Africa: Ama Ata Aidoo, Cyprian Ekwensi, Bessie Head, Chenjerai Hove, Kojo Laing, Dominic Mulaisho, Charles Mungoshi, Isidore Okpewho, Ben Okri, Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Andrew Brink, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

Asia: Amitav Ghosh, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai, R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie.

Caribbean: George Lamming, Richard Lovelace, V.S. Naipaul, Ama Brodber, David Dabydeen, Caryl Phillips, Jean Rhys.

Europe: Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, William Conrad, Daniel Defoe, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Henry Fielding, E.M. Forster, Joseph Hardy, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, William Trevor, Virginia Woolf, Kingsley Amis, Iain Banks, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Roddy Doyle, Margaret Drabble, Graham Green, Ishiguro Kazuo, Rudyard Kipling, Doris Lessing, Iris Murdoch, George Orwell, V.S. Pritchett, Evelyn Waugh.

North America: Margaret Atwood, Paul Auster, Saul Bellow, Robertson Davies, William Faulkner, Timothy Findley, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Henry James, Margaret Laurence, Anne Michaels, Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, Edgar Allan Poe, John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, Edith Wharton, Richard Wright, Raymond Carver, Sandra Cisneros, Kate Chopin, Louise Erdrich, Zora Neale Hurston, Jamaica Kinkaid, Alistair Macleod, Herman Melville, Rohinton Mistry, Flannery O'Connor, Carol Sheilds, Leslie Anne Silko, Mark Twain, Alice Walker, James Welch, Eudora Welty.

Oceania: Janet Frame, David Malouf, Christina Stead, Patrick White, Tim Winton, Peter Carey, Janette Hospial, Henry Lawson, Katherine Mansfield, Olga Masters, Randolph Stow, Albert Wendt.

Summer Reading List

On my bookshelf for the summer:

Swimming in the Monsoon Sea by Shyam Selvadurai: My 9th graders really liked this during lit circles, but I unfortunately only skimmed it. Also need to re-read The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime (Hadden), which is summer reading.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker and The Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger: Choosing one of them for the 9th grade curriculum 'classic' novel, so re-reading both of them with teacher eyes.

Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black by Nadine Gordimer: The search for a readable Gordimer continues. I didn't like July's People at all. But she's a woman on the IB list, so she's golden. This book is short (I need to find two short books) and has a cool title. I'm also going to pick up My Son's Story by her.

Wicked by Gregory Maguire: This is my NY read. I'm seeing the musical with my mom.

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison: Have always wanted to read it. Ditto The God of Small Things.

Mother to Mother by Sindiwe Magona, Real World or Out by Natsuo Kirino, Moth Smoke by Mohsin Hamid, Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda: Each of the above are kind of the same ilk -- short international novels that look high-interest and possibly teachable someday.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang: Summer Reading for my seniors. Writing a quiz as I go.

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: Ditto.

Tim Winton, Cloudstreet: Ont he IB List, and I'm into this book so far. A woman at NCTE recommended it.

I'm also seeking two novels from the IB List that I can teach. Preferably at least one of them should be a female writer. The list--all writers who write in English--is below. Anyone who has any great suggestions, let me know! Specifically looking for shorter works, and already doing Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake). Don't quite have a theme yet, but it's going to be something about The Evil in Humanity (would be great if I added Lessin's The Fifth Child, which I'm considering, meaning I just need one more from the list below) or about Class Struggle. (The White Tiger is the other text I've chosen, so I have two more.)

Africa: Ama Ata Aidoo, Cyprian Ekwensi, Bessie Head, Chenjerai Hove, Kojo Laing, Dominic Mulaisho, Charles Mungoshi, Isidore Okpewho, Ben Okri, Chinua Achebe, Ayi Kwei Armah, Andrew Brink, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

Asia: Amitav Ghosh, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Arundhati Roy, Vikram Seth, Mulk Raj Anand, Anita Desai, R.K. Narayan, Salman Rushdie.

Caribbean: George Lamming, Richard Lovelace, V.S. Naipaul, Ama Brodber, David Dabydeen, Caryl Phillips, Jean Rhys.

Europe: Auste, Bronte (both), Conrad, Defoe, Dickens, Eliot, Fielding, Forster, Hardy, Joyce, Lawrence, William Trevor, Woolf, Kingsley Amis, Iain Banks, Julian Barnes, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Roddy Doyle, Margaret Drabble, Graham Green, Ishiguro Kazuo, Kipling, Lessing, Murdoch, Orwell, V.S. Pritchett, Evelyn Waugh.

North America: Atwood, Auster, Bellow, Davies, Faulkner, Findley, Fitzgerald, Hawthorne, Hemingway, James, Margaret Laurence, Anne Michaels, Morrison, Munro, Poe, Steinbeck, Twain, Wharton, Wright, Carver, Cisneros, Chopin, Erdrich, Hurston, Kinkaid, Alistair Macleod, Melville, Rohinton Mistry, Flanner O'Connor, Carol Sheilds, Silko, Twain, Alice Walker, James Welch, Eudora Welty.

Oceania: Janet Frame, David Malouf, Christina Stead, Patrick White, Tim Winton, Peter Carey, Janette Hospial, Henry Lawson, Katherine Mansfield, Olga Masters, Randolph Stow, Albert Wendt.

Cut hand

I hurt my hand last week pretty badly. Stabbed myself, nearly all the way through the top of it, while removing a mesh guard off my washer hose. It was a scary situation. I was gushing blood -- it even squirted in my face once -- and didn't know what to do. I had to find my cell phone, dial it without my hands, call a few different people, finally reach someone. They came immediately to get me and bring me to the E.R. I had contemplated calling 9-1-1, but felt silly for that -- it was just a cut, after all. But what if I couldn't reach anyone? I couldn't drive myself. It was weird and scary. Having friends who would come get me like that really made me feel good.

The doctor at Bayview examined me for about 2 minutes and superglued my cut. I thought it was a bit strange, but he was distracted and busy and that was that. He didn't seem concerned. However, the next day, the hand swelled up like something out of a horror film. It was badly infected. I went to Urgent Care, where the doctor seemed pretty concerned, even suggesting that I might be admitted to the hospital, but instead they gave me a shot in the butt and some antibiotic pills, and the infect was gone within 36 hours. Now, my hand looks barely like anything happened to it; I played softball tonight.

Nine years

Today, I put the finishing touches on packing up my classroom, and I'm about to call it a year. That's 9 years I've put into this system and this school. That's shocking to me, and next year indeed will make an even decade here.

Teaching is one of the only jobs that allows for complete upheaval every year, and the fresh start that comes along with it. I contemplated leaving some stuff on my bulletin boards today, but the yearning for a fresh start was enough for me to tear it all down.

It's been a long year. I don't want to use the epithet "burnt out" but it's on the tip of my tongue. A big part of it is the additional weight this year -- the weight of pressure from taking on additional classes and National Board, and the additional weight I feel like I'm putting on myself from not exercising like I should. Many of those things will be eliminated next year; National Board is over after testing in a couple weeks, the new course will no longer be new next year. Now, I just need to add exercise into my schedule and start feeling healthier and better about myself.

So, yes, I'm going to do my best to recharge the batteries this summer and get myself healthy and ready to take on my 10th year. On one hand, I want to spend plenty of time planning things out and putting into place some systems that will work better for the ever-evolving student here in Baltimore. On the other hand, I want to stop thinking about school for these 6 weeks, until I go back to school on August 9th for Summer Bridge. Hopefully I find a balance.

Need 9th grade novel

I need novel suggestions for a 9th grade curriculum. The novel should be by a woman, be around 200 pages (re: not long), be accessible to reluctant readers, and, hopefully, be Catcher in the Rye-ish. International would be great. So would a "classic." We've had too many middle school students reading A Lesson Before Dying and To Kill a Mockingbird in the 8th grade, and also want something that doesn't focus primarily on African American issues (Fences is already one of our staples).

Ideas I have so far:

Ellen Foster. Positives -- it's a good book, it's coming-of-age, it's a female protagonist. Negatives -- it would be our second work written primarily in dialect; it uses the n-word a few times, perhaps too focused on race (it's been a while since I read it.)

Broken Glass Park by Alina Bronsky: I just picked this up and read about a quarter of it this weekend. It has a lot of the attributes (female, Catcher-in-the-rye-ish) I'm looking for, plus it's international, but I'm now getting a little bored by it and think it might be a little too cerebral for the 9th graders. I want them to have a good time raading a book.

Other thoughts I'm having:

Bee Season by Myla Goldberg: Wonderful book, but I'm not sure if I can get my colleagues into it.

Yellow Raft in Blue Water by Michael Norris: Too bad it's by a man; it would be perfect (it's also about female characters, so maybe I can justify it in my head).

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson: I don't have a good reason against it right now, although I'm not sure it would be a great choice for our boys.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker: It's always been a dream to teach this one, but it's another African American novel right after Fences. Not much exposure to the wider world.

By the, the curriculum is looking like this:

Summer Reading: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time (Hadden) plus either The Book Thief (Zusak), A Long Way Gone (Baeh), and Does My Head Look Big In This? (Abdel-Fattah)

Book 1: Persepolis (Satrapi)

Book 2: Fences (Wilson)

Book 3: The Novel

Book 4: Perhaps Oedipus

Book 5: Lit Circles novel -- Students choose from Swimming the Monsoon Sea (Selvadurai), Life of Pi (Martell), In the Time of the Butterflies (Alvarez), or Nectar in a Sieve (Markandaya)

Book 6: Romeo and Juliet

So, too male as it is, probably.

Getting out and about

I was invited for brunch at Woodberry Kitchen today. I programmed the address into my GPS and ended up in a world that I never new existed in Baltimore -- a world that was hip, yet small-townish, slowly-paced yet trendy. It was beautiful, and a nice and much needed reminder that Baltimore can still surprise and thrill me. Not only that, but the food there was magnificent; I had biscuits and gravy for the first time in at least 12 years except it was made with smoked rockfish. It was superb.

We planned brunch under the pretense of preparing for National Board examinations, which I'll be taking on June 24th. I haven't prepared at all for them, and it's probably time to start. I haven't even thought about National Boards since I turned in my portfolio on March 31st. It's time. We didn't end up studying; the food and company were too good.

It was so great to get out and about. I've been in a year-long rut, at least, here in Baltimore. It's been a hard year at school (new, stressful class; National Boards; mounting politics), socially (I haven't had much of a social life this year), and health-wise (my weight has ballooned and I just don't feel very good). I'm having visions lately of moving back to Michigan, as I'm homesick and things in Baltimore seems to be bugging me more than ever (why do I have to pick up litter around my house every other day? why did my private gate fence get busted down and my second lawnmower in a year get stolen? why do 3rd grade kids around my way cuss worse than the dirtiest sailor? why do parents of 2-year old children let them ride on dirt bikes, and then not turn in the rider of the dirtbike who caused someone's death?). I'm hoping it's all a rut and that the summer will slow me down and let me re-focus on the things that I need to make me happy, starting with my health but continuing with just getting out there more, especially meeting new people. As of now, I had a good year with my students, but that's about it.

Not much I can say

I'm at a point now where I'm increasingly feeling like I can't write about the issues facing an urban high school teacher in Baltimore City, where it seems more and more like "getting the numbers" is more important than educating the children. I posted some things over the weekend that I took down, just because of fears of repercussions. We really, really miss Sara Neufeld.

Inside Ed has pretty much died, and no one seems to be covering city schools anymore. It's too bad. Checks and Balances are needed right now.

I can talk about how miserably hot it is in the building right now, and how asking students to learn in the temperatures and humidity they are seeing is a challenge.

I can talk about the wonderful time I'm having with my 9th graders right now, as they finish up their years and, between whines, realize they've come a long way over the last ten months.

I can talk about books I'm thinking about teaching next year, like Tim Winton's Cloudstreet, which I'm currently reading.

I'm ready for the summer, though. Need a paradigm shift.