Angela’s Area

Dear God,

     I am writing to thank you for so many things.  I have been blessed in ways that I cannot even comprehend.  I have a wonderful husband, two beautiful children, a nice, warm home and cars that get me to and from my destinations.  I have more than enough to eat and friends that make my days happy and fulfilled.  However, there is one thing in particular that I most want to thank you for.  I am grateful that I cannot remember the times that someone may have treated me unfairly and I know that it is because of the grace you gave me that helps me forgive others as you commanded.  More than forgiveness, I have been able to wipe these instances from my memory.  What good is it to dwell on past hurts and regrets?  I try to learn from these experiences and move on.  Lord, you know I’m not saying I’ve never been hurt or treated unjustly, just that it is not worth remembering.  Keeping myself on the straight and narrow is a hard enough job without trying to keep count of the faults and failures of others.  As you know God, anytime I try to do good, evil is always present.  But, I will leave judgment and vengeance to you  and I will pray for those who deliberately try to tear me down.

     I am by no means a perfect person and Lord, you may have to remind me of these words now and again.  It seems that rude and obnoxious people have overtaken this earth that you first created to be a paradise.  It must break your heart to see what your handiwork has become. How did we get to this point of hating instead of loving, tearing down instead of building up and turning our head to our neighbor’s plight instead of turning the other cheek?  No matter how bleak the situation looks, I will remember that in the valley you restore my soul. 

     I will close this letter now with a humble request to always keep me in your grace and mercy and keep my feet on the righteous path.  Now and forever I will give you praise for all your worthy deeds.

Your humble servant,

Angela  

Swimming the Rhine

     I never knew the man called Norman Chapman Preston, my grandfather.  I guess I was enamored by that fact and was fascinated by the mystery of this man.  My father adored and idolized him and the stories he told were colored by his bias of his notion that he was a great man.  Others told me quite different stories of this mystery man and many were not as flattering as the ones my father revealed.  Grandpa had favorites among the grandchildren and made no bones about letting them know on which side of the fence they stood.  He was controlling and abusive to my beautiful, funny and free-spirited grandmother.  I was so proud of her because, despite my grandfather’s controlling nature, she was an independent woman who was one of the best teachers in our small rural area.  But, this story is not about her, it’s about him.  Even though I had heard many conflicting tales about this mystery man, he still captivated my thoughts.  I asked to know more about him but got little information from the family.  Dad said he once asked Grandpa about his war experiences.  He was particularly interested in whether Grandpa had ever had to take another human life.  Grandpa gazed down at the ground and only replied, “You see me standing here don’t you.”  My father understood that he had indeed killed, but only out of necessity to save his own life. 

     The story I remember most and the one told most often was that Grandpa had a unique talent for swimming.  My dad referred to him as a fish with legs and said he taught him to be buoyant by throwing him in the water and watching him flounder.  I wanted to know more about this side of Grandpa and that’s when I heard the most memorable story about this man I so longed to know.  During World War I, Grandpa had been stationed in Germany.  He and one of his fellow soldiers had been fighting side by side that day in an intense battle.  Trying to escape enemy fire, Grandpa and his comrade jumped into the river to get to safety on the other side.  This river was not just any river, but the Rhine River, one of the longest in Europe.  The two men swam all the way across thinking they had evaded their foes only to find them waiting on the other side.  The only option was to swim back.  Exhausted and afraid, the two drew upon all the strength they could muster to keep afloat.  Had it not been for Grandpa’s expert swimming abilities, both would have perished. 

    Perhaps if I could have learned more about this man I might have been able to understand his actions in later life.  Maybe if his family had known of his struggles during this horrible war, they too would have empathized with him.  I can only speculate about these questions and I suppose the man will forever remain a mystery.

Native or Immigrant?

     “Mom, come here and create a me so you can play” Jared declared after purchasing the latest craze in video equipment.  “What in the world is a me?” I replied.  The “me” Jared was referring to was creating an animated personality on the game system that you could design to your liking with whom you would play with each time you played the system.  I have absolutely no idea how to play these new fangled games.  What ever happened to watching cartoons on Saturday mornings?  Kids today are much different than kids in the age in which I grew up.  Computers, video games and televisions have been a part of their lives from the time they were born and they are more than comfortable with the newest technology.  This generation is known as digital natives because they speak the language of all these digital devices.

     There is another generation of technology users and we can call them immigrants.  We were not born into the technological age but have been forced to learn to keep up with the changes in our environment.  I am part of this age group and I know from experience that coming on board with these advances has not been an easy task.  I struggle for sometimes hours with tasks that take the natives just minutes to complete.    

     My lack of interest in these video games and the time it takes me to learn them has kept me from mastering the newest way to fight boredom.  So how do the gaps between the immigrants and the natives affect how teachers teach in their classrooms? Students come to us who are born in to all this technology and are used to learning visually with awesome graphics and fast paced entertainment and we want to educate them in a classroom where the best we can do is use colored markers on a white board.  Talk about a generation gap.  In order to bridge the gap between the immigrants and the natives, educators must be willing to incorporate technology into their teaching.  Using such tools as web quests, Internet, videos and other apparatuses that appeal to visual learners, students can link their learning to real world situations and therefore have a deeper understanding of core subjects. 

     The only question left to answer is: are you an immigrant or a native?  If you are an immigrant what are you going to do to get on board with the advances that are available now and how will you use them to be successful?  To blog or not to blog, that is the question. 

Dear Facilitators

     I can only imagine your first impression of me.  You must have been thinking that I was sorely out of place in this most sacred of writing environments.  You would have been right.  As a new teacher and a very inexperienced writer, I felt totally incongruous.  Sacred writing was a time I always looked forward to but sharing made my heart tremble.  As time went on, my writing improved noticeably and I actually looked forward to the sharing.  I found that even though I was a new teacher, I had good ideas and gladly shared them with my SI fellows who readily took my ideas for future classroom use.  By the time my turn came to do my demo I felt very comfortable with our close knit writing family and I knew they would support me even if my demo was a complete and total disaster.  To my relief, the fellows responded well to what I had to show them and the hour flew by as we enjoyed sharing the pieces we created.

     I have had so little experience that it is hard to elaborate on teaching practices.  However, I have tried to incorporate all the best practices I was taught and have had many examples of this modeled here at SI.  I plan to include as many of these as I can in my classroom.  A few examples would be making lessons authentic for students by connecting my teaching to real world situations.  Others include incorporating technology, using visuals, utilizing films and using graphic organizers.

     This electronic portfolio shows the evidence of all the benefits I’ve received from the National Writing Project Summer Institute.  The pieces I have chosen show that I have indeed grown as a writer and teacher.  The first pieces are my personal pieces.  I am most proud of these because I have discovered my true love during SI, poetry.  The words seem to come easy when I am passionate about my topic.  Under the professional writing category, I have chosen a piece entitled “Why Write?”  This explains the rationale behind the idea that writing across the curriculum increases student comprehension and performance.  Also under this section is the final draft of my demonstration report.  The development of an inquiry question is also included in the portfolio.  The query I chose to pursue was the ethical issues of journaling.  An experience I had with a student led to this inquiry and it is a question I hope to find answers to.  The next section shows a piece that went through several revisions before it was ready to be called a final draft.  I was very pleased with the results of these modifications.  The last section of the portfolio includes pieces that show my reflections and thoughts during my experiences here at SI.  Some of these came from sacred writings, exit slips, and other encounters during my short time with the fellows at NWP.  I have learned so much about myself as a person and as a writer with the creation of every piece.  I have learned that I can create beautiful poetry and even though my writing is not as eloquent as others, I have my own definite style and what I have to say is worth hearing. 

     Thank you for taking the time to peruse my portfolio and I hope you have as much joy reading it as I had creating it.  I have far to go down the path of writing before I can get to the place that I can call myself a true writer, but I am enjoying every step of the journey and with each piece I produce I discover something about myself and the craft of writing.  I thank God for this opportunity and thank the National Writing Project for caring about making students more successful in the classroom and in life.

Sincerely

Angela Stroud

WHY WRITE?

     Educators have long known the value of journaling.  They have been used for centuries for such things as recording journeys, studying behavior patterns in patients, and by many schools in writing class.  However, it seems lately there has been an influx of students entering the workforce with poor writing skills; and employers are spending vast amounts of money to retrain these employees to better communicate through writing.  So how can we as educators make sure our students are receiving the instruction they need to become effective members of society? 

     According to Daniels, Zemelman, and Steineke in their book Content-Area Writing, writing helps students on standardized tests and assists them in meeting state standards.  It also keeps them engaged in their learning so that they make connections and have a deeper understanding of the content.  The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics have realized the benefits of writing in their content and implemented writing for deeper understanding of problem solving.  If students are able to explain in words how they solved a particular problem, they really have that deep understanding for which teachers are striving. 

     It seems that as our awareness of the benefits of writing across the curriculum has increased, so have the hindrances that would allow us to implement writing into the classroom.  One of the biggest obstacles teachers face is the amount of time it takes to include such writing into their already crammed lesson plans.  State standards are always looming over teacher’s heads and many are afraid to add something to the curriculum for fear of not covering all the necessary components of the dreaded end of the year test. Feelings of inadequacy in their own writing may prevent others from adding this necessary element of instruction and still others may foresee disapproval from the administration who think writing in other content areas is not necessary. 

     So, let’s go back to the original question.  How do we make sure our students are getting the writing opportunities they need to be productive in their future employment endeavors?  William Strong in his book Write for Insight, has many suggestions on allowing such writing opportunities.  Since math is my content area, I was especially interested in his suggestions in this subject.  Some of my favorites were to write story problems like the examples given in their text books and then share these with a partner, or write a weekly letter to parents explaining what was learned in math.  There were many other examples of writing opportunities that take very little time and effort to put into practice.

     So, why should we write you may ask?  In the words of William Strong, “To write for insight is to make sense to oneself, first and foremost.”  Writing is essential to student comprehension and to not include this concept in our classrooms would be the ultimate sin for an educator.  After all, getting students to understand, retain and apply what they have learned to real world situations is the goal of any educator.  So why write?  Because it’s the right thing to do for our students.      

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Daniels, Harvey, Steven Zemelman, and Nancy Steineke. Conten-Area Writing. 1st Edition. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann Publishing, 2007.

Strong, William. Write for Insight. 1st Edition. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, Inc., 2006.

What’s a Web Quest?

     I am what you might call almost technologically illiterate. I have used the computer for years and still don’t know about many of the shortcuts and useful programs that others seem to utilize every day. I envy those people who can sit down in front of the screen and navigate without the feeling of frustration. The term that best describes me is a technology immigrant. Now imagine, I am returning to school after __ years (I won’t reveal my age) and now they want me to do a what kind of quest? What in the world is a web quest? They looked so difficult to do and to say the least I was intimidated. The instructor of the reading course in which I was enrolled was an immigrant as well and was not much help as far as technology how to.

     Someone once told me if you need help in college ask another student who has been where you are now and they will give you the help you need. So, I took this advice and sought the help of a fellow classmate who already had experience in this area. Not only did she help me, but she also typed specific, step-by-step directions for how to create a web quest using Front Page for the entire class. After I selected the book I wanted to use for my activity, I followed her directions precisely and before long I had a finished product of which I could be proud. I had hyperlinks that worked, pictures, a rubric, everything that made a web quest what it should be. Wow, I even impressed myself, and since I’m my own worst critic, I guess I did pretty well. I have done other web quests since, but that first will be one that will go down in the history books of my mind.

     I learned many things about this experience with technology, but the most important lesson was that new things should not intimidate me just because they look hard.   Students respond very well to lessons that include this type of technology and as a teacher, I must be willing to learn new things for the benefit of my students.  

The Ethical Issues of Journaling

Introduction     

      We all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die.  Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.  (Goldberg xiii)  We have long known of the benefits of journaling and how they facilitate students in expressing feelings and emotions they couldn’t otherwise tell.  However, I am curious as to the ethical issues associated with what students divulge in such journals.       

       I became concerned with this topic while completing a long-term substitute position at a very small, rural school.  Since the school was not over-populated, it was not hard to get to know my students and quickly learn the good, bad and the ugly of their personal lives.  One student, whom I will refer to as Jane, was of particular interest to me.  She was 9 years old but wise beyond her years.  She seemed to thrive on the negativity in every situation and to crave the disappointment emitted from her teachers when she was bad.  I realized she was trying to gain attention and she felt negative attention was easier to get than positive.  Jane was not actually my student; there were two of us teaching in the special education room and Jane was the other teacher’s responsibility.  However, I watched the interaction between the two of them and cringed inwardly at the way Mrs. X, as I will call her, handled the situation.  Jane was crying inwardly for help and I knew it.        .  Mrs. X was exhausted with her efforts in trying to change Jane’s behavior patterns and finally one day approached me for ideas.  From my observations, I realized that Mrs. X would have to downplay anything Jane did that was bad and only respond to the good.  This was hard for the teacher because she was a total authoritarian and never liked to give any control over to the student.  But, she didn’t realize that Jane had control because she was getting exactly the reactions she wanted.  I proposed that Mrs. X ignore any appalling behavior unless it was detrimental to Jane or another student; only acknowledge the good.  This worked for several days until Jane became wise to what Mrs. X was trying to accomplish.     

      It was clear that neither I nor Mrs. X were making any kind of positive progress with Jane and after talking to a counselor from another school on the district, we realized that she had all the classic signs of sexual abuse.  We didn’t know how to help Jane, as she had other psychological issues that we were not trained to handle.     

      Journaling was part of every day.  The students responded to a given topic with at least three sentences and a picture to go along with their narrative.  One day, Jane wrote in her journal about sleeping with a male family member the night before.  There was nothing in the entry to make me think that anything else happened, but still I was concerned that she had actually thought to write about this.  Mrs. X was not at school that day so I took it upon myself to show the principal.  Although he knew about our concerns for Jane, he felt there was nothing we could do with this bit of information.  I was frustrated and felt helpless.      This feeling of inadequacy has prompted me to do some research into the ethical issues that journaling creates and what, if any, the teacher’s role should be in responding to what we learn reading these journals.  Students carry heavy burdens these days and many times these are revealed through their writing.  I believe that when this question is answered in my mind, I will be able to help other teachers who may be facing the same dilemma in their classrooms.      

     The topics I wish to address are broad, but are necessary in my mind to answering my query.  These would include what by law am I bound to report after reading?  Should I read my students journals at all?  Should I limit the topics on which they write?  These questions will be addressed as I research the issues concerning journaling in the classroom.        

Technology and Research     

     Technology has opened up a whole new world for teachers and students. The process for gathering information for research projects has gone through a dramatic transformation.  The days of trekking to the library to check out an encyclopedia are long gone. Now you only have to look as far as your keyboard and mouse to delve into as much information as your brain can possibly handle. It would take hours or even days to sift through an equivalent amount of books in the library. This kind of access changes the way students do research. Because technology is available in most homes as well as at school, students can maximize their time and complete projects in shorter time periods or even tackle larger projects.  Some sources at libraries must be ordered from other suppliers and this can take time, but researching on the web can give you sources that would otherwise not be available.     

      However, there is a downside to having this much information at your fingertips. Anyone can publish a website and put any kind of information on the site they want. Students must know how to evaluate the information they are viewing and know whether or not the research is reliable. At times there is so much information available that students must wade through a plethora of data to get to what pertains to their topic. So, now we have a new twist to writing research papers. Students who were not part of the technological age did not have this worry, but research for them was a whole different animal.       

     Today at the National Writing Project Summer Institute we were shown many databases that makes research much easier.  Narrowing down the amount of information on a certain topic is easy when you know how to search in the most efficient way.  The databases that we were shown in today’s presentation can have many uses within the classroom.   Not only is research important but taking theory to practice.  The goal of education today is to be able to make real world connections to increase comprehension.   With some of these websites, you can show your students how they can apply what they have learned to a real situation they may encounter in the future. Making these connections is a necessary part of education today.

The Language Playground

Demonstrator:  Angela Stroud  

Target Audience-

All grades, all contents

Introduction: 

Every time the word journaling is mentioned, even the bravest writers sometimes tremble with fear.  And then the age -old question is asked, “But what do I write about?”  I always had this problem any time I was given the freedom to write about anything I wanted.  This was the driving force behind my demonstration.  Teachers need a way to tap into the creativity of their students and this demo will show you one way to accomplish this.  The idea for this demo came from a writing workshop I attended at Boyd County Middle School while student teaching.  Professor George Eklund presented his method of helping students find the topics that are important for them to write.  He began by explaining that language is like a playground and we can run with the “wild girls of our imagination” on the language playground to discover the things we really need to say.  He begins by putting a few apparatuses on the board on which students play.  These apparatuses are sentence starters like “I hate…” “ I love…” “I can’t stand it when….”, etc.  Students continue writing on these topics until they can think of nothing else to write and then they will switch to another apparatus.  The pages of thoughts they create are called wild text.  After creating several pages of wild text, the students move to the next stage that is assemblage.  At this stage, students peruse their wild text to find similar topics or sentences that could be combined to make a complete thought.  These sentences and thoughts will be written together and then formed into a rough draft of poetry.  From this point, the writing process continues with revision, editing and eventually some form of publication. 

 Rationale/Justification

According to Natalie Goldberg, “We all have a dream of telling our stories-of realizing what we think, feel, and see before we die.  Writing is a path to meet ourselves and become intimate.”  (xiii) Brainstorming how you feel about certain topics opens a floodgate of good writing.  Students sometimes surprise themselves, not realizing how they really feel until they begin to write.  Writing is a release of the inner soul and can be a coping mechanism for many difficult situations that students face.  I have seen this technique of freewriting unlock some wonderful ideas and turn into a beautifully crafted piece of writing.  Although I have never seen it used in other content areas, I believe it can be successfully adapted and I have a plan for how I will use it in my math classroom.Goldberg uses a similar technique that she calls first thoughts in her book Writing Down The Bones.  She has six rules that apply to this type of writing that free the writer to focus only on what they are thinking in the moment.  Peter Elbow also uses freewriting in various forms.  The first he discusses is just simply writing down any thought that comes to mind without stopping.  He moves on to talk about focused freewriting that stays on one topic, but is still free to think of anything on that subject.  Clustering and mapping is a form of freewriting that allows you to even draw pictures along with your thoughts.  William Strong says in his book Writing For Insight, the first priority for a writer is to find something on which to write.  There is nothing to revise or edit if we can’t get the words on paper first.  Therefore I feel the concept presented in my demonstration is the basis from where all good writing comes.  The bare bones of writing is finding your voice and the passion that drives you to write. 

 Narrative

I will begin my demonstration by explaining the procedure used by Professor George Eklund at Morehead State University.  I will introduce the audience to the language playground.  This is an imaginary play place where writers can play on various topics called apparatuses to look deep within themselves and write to discover their feelings, fears, happy thoughts, etc.  These are usually sentence starters like “I like…”, “I love….”, “I hate…”, and so on.   I will allow them to play on different apparatuses and freewrite for a total of two minutes on each apparatus.  The thoughts generated during this playtime is called wild text.  After the freewrite I will introduce the concept of assemblage.  This is the step where we read over our wild text to see if we have any common themes in our wild text that we can put together to form a rough draft of a poem.  Writers will peruse their freewrite and find similar entries to pull out to assemble into some form of cohesive writing.  After this, writers will move on to revising and editing.    After a brief sharing time a brainstorming activity will follow.  I will ask the audience to come up with a list of sentence starters, or apparatuses that would pertain to various content areas.  When the list is complete, writers will pick three to five apparatuses to play on for about ten minutes.  They will move on to assemblage, revising and editing.  Sharing will be next and I am anxious to hear the creative poetry that will be shaped from this activity.   

Conclusion

My objective for this demonstration is that teachers will be able to help their students overcome the dreaded writer’s block and facilitate writing by allowing students to write uninhibited, without a final product in mind.  The first thoughts of a writer are full of energy and it is crucial to the writing process to get these on paper.  This concept of freewriting plays a major role in transferring those first thoughts from the mind to the pen.  Like Goldberg, as teachers we need to push our students to write more even if they think they have nothing more to say.  Sometimes the most creative writing comes when we think we are finished, and then we push harder to writer more and realize we have only begun.  It is my desire that all of you will find a place for wild text in your classrooms and that your students will generate some of the best writing yet.  

Bibliography

Elbow, Peter, and Belanoff, Pat. A Community of Writers. Third Edition. Boston, MA: The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 2000.

Eklund, George. “Wild Text.” 7th grade Language Arts Class. Boyd County Middle School, Ashland, KY. 10-26-06.

Goldberg, Natalie. Writing Down The Bones. Second Edition. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Inc., 2005. 

Strong, William. Write For Insight. Boston, MA: Pearson Education, 2006.  

Ode to the Wind

How I love to feel you gently caress my face. 

Your soft breath blows through my mind

Cleansing it of all the thoughts that threaten my sanity.

When you move I feel free.

You show your great strength just before a storm,

But I am not afraid.

I know you have to free the sky

Of its moisture laden clouds

So the earth can be watered.

Some feel you are a nuisance,

And would rather live life without you,

But oh not me.

At the beach, as I stand in awe

Of the heavens coming down to meet the deep,

I hear you whisper in my ear the matchless wonders of our God.

On the mountain top you declare His glory

And in the valley you are the peace that speaks to my soul.

Blow on now and forever

And throughout eternity tell of the matchless grace

Of the One we both serve.