I know the semester is supposed to be winding down, but goodness, there’s so much to do!  I’ve been climbing this proverbial mountain and I keep coming to false peaks.  Although so much has gone splendidly in my student teaching experience, I have found an important area for improvement: grading.  Over spring break I planned to grade students’ nature journals and short stories, as well as make some serious progress on assignments for Methods.  Alas, I barely graded all the nature journals.  So this weekend I need to knock out the rest of the short stories.  I will certainly need to develop a better system next year.  For one, I’ve learned to not collect six assignments (nature journal = 5, short stories = 1) all at once.  And it didn’t help that I collected those on the same day that I started a four-week unit.  I know, I’m feeling sorry for myself, but I’ll get over it. 

Otherwise, the past four-day week was a success.  Yesterday I introduced a final assignment for the WWII unit.  Students are working with identification cards from the Holocaust Museum.  I sifted through the 600 cards available online and chose those that met certain criteria.  I made sure that they were gender specific and were on the younger end of the spectrum.  I ended up with a range of about three to thirty-three.  I am uncomfortable talking about this so casually, but I also made sure that only one-third of the cards were of those that survived.  This represents the fact that two-thirds of European Jews were murdered during the Holocaust.  Each of my ninety-six students will have their own card and are to get very familiar with the person represented.  I encouraged students to connect information in the card to what they’ve already learned in class and through reading novels of historical fiction.  I also encouraged students to do some research on items on their card.  For example, if the person was sent to Bergen-Belsen and students don’t know what it is, then they should research it. 

Next week students will be rewriting the stories told on their cards in their own words and in the first person.  These paragraphs will need to be edited and carefully polished.  Then on Friday the 24^th, students will present their story.  I plan to have students sit in a circle.  Each student will in turn read their written paragraph, telling the story as if s/he is that individual.  There will be a respectful pause between each presentation.  I will also be recording these presentations with equipment from the linguistics department at Virginia Tech.  I will then post each class’ recording on the class wiki.  I anticipate that this will be a powerful and moving experience for the students, and I am anxious to see how it goes. 

This past week was the first of the war unit.  We’re studying WWII and the Holocaust in conjunction with the students’ social studies class.  I started the unit by having students read “Stop the Sun” by Gary Paulsen.  Although this story is about the Vietnam War, the issue of confronting a traumatic past transcends this one time and place.  The story concerns a boy who struggles to understand his father who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder due to his experiences in Vietnam.  In the end, the boy realizes that he can never truly understand his father because he did not share in his experience.  However, he can try to come to some sort of understanding through acceptance and respect.  I used this as a metaphor for how the students will proceed with the unit.  I explained that we can never truly know what it was like for those that suffered, nor will we pretend to.  However, we will try to come to some sort of understanding through the knowledge we will gain and by acquiring that knowledge with respect and sensitivity. 

It is interesting, because as time goes on, children are becoming farther removed from the Holocaust.  When I first started talking about it in class, there were many students that didn’t know what the Holocaust was or anything that happened during that time.  Also, after the social studies teacher had introduced the unit, which was a few days before I did, I noticed students drawing swastikas.  I even noticed one drawn in pen on the back of a student’s hand.  I know that I wasn’t aware of many details about the Holocaust in seventh grade, but I knew the basics, and I certainly knew to never draw the swastika.  I am worried about the success of the unit.  I feel that I have a tremendous responsibility in teaching this material; I fear that I will do it a disservice.  I know that we will barely scratch the surface, but I want to make sure that the material we do cover is taught with care and careful execution. 

On another matter, students will be reading a novel of historical fiction during the unit.  There are nine titles, and students had some choice in the novel they’re reading.  I took an entire class to present the books, allow time for students to examine them themselves, and indicate their first, second, and third choices.  I then considered (at length) what book I would issue individuals, taking into account their choices, their reading ability, and the difficulty of the text.  This was an incredibly hard task, and I confronted a moral dilemma: do I issue a student a book of their choice if I know it will be far too difficult?  And, do I issue a student a book that is appropriate for her/his reading ability when s/he wants to read a different one?  I ended up confronting these issues on a case-by-case basis.  It was a meaningful learning experience for me, and I could clearly identify the benefits and drawbacks of providing choice when it comes to reading novels.

Book Titles:

-          Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli (advanced)

-          Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac (on-level)

-          If I Should Die before I Wake by Han Nolen (advanced)

-          Soldier Boys by Dean Hughes (on-level)

-          Elephant Run by Roland Smith (on-level)

-          I Am David by Anne Holm (on-level)

-          Number the Stars by Lois Lowry (more accessible)

-          The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen (more accessible)

-          Under a War-Torn Sky by L.M. Elliot (on-level)

The wilderness unit has been moving smoothly.  I’ve really been trying to work with students on developing their descriptive language skills.  Often, young writers provide little description, leaving their writing bland and vague.  The previous week, we had read the first chapter of Desert Solitaire.  Students then created a visual representation of the text by drawing the images and details they observed during the reading.  In a way, it was a different take on the traditional question-answer comprehension assessment.  I encouraged students to look back in the text for details and confirmation.  It was also an effort to help students visualize the text.

On Monday, we turned that lesson on its head.  Instead of having student create a drawing based on a descriptive text, I had them be the writers describing images.  First, I showed students an image from a naturalist’s journal, where his observations and descriptions surrounded a sketch of an eagle.  They brainstormed on the type of text, its purpose, etc.  Then I provided students with seven pictures of different birds native to this area.  They chose one and described it in detail on an index card so that someone else would be able to determine their choice.  Afterward, I collected their cards and redistributed them.  Students tried to figure out which bird was being described and circled words that helped them reach their conclusion.  We then went over some of these.  For those that guessed correctly, they identified the descriptions that were effective.  For those that didn’t, we brainstormed the kinds of details that would have helped.  All in all, it was a fun and engaging lesson. We took this newly practiced skill further on Tuesday by going on a walking field trip to the forest edge and cornfields behind the school.  Students made observations of the natural world for about twenty-five minutes in their “Nature Journals.” 

Later in the week, we watched “Lost Generation,” an amazing video on YouTube.  I used this as a catalyst for a lively discussion and reflective journal response.  We then created environmental bumper stickers, which was an effort to practice using language deliberately and precisely.  It went really well.  In this past week I feel as though students have had a lot of valuable practice in writing and have thought deeply about many important issues.  There were also many instances where students that are normally reluctant and resistant in class opened up and participated with interest.

By Friday afternoon, I was exhausted, and came home with a nap in mind and a stack of student work to grade.  We’re going to wrap up the wilderness unit in the coming week, focusing heavily on survival situations (hopefully a topic of high interest).  Then I’m heading full-force into the four-week WWII-Holocaust unit.  I have to admit, I can’t think that far ahead right now.  For the time being, I’m going to pour myself another cup of coffee.

Check out the “Lost Generation” video:

Excerpt from the journal of anthropologist William Duncan Strong (1933):

Birds Handout:

Last week, in my obnoxiously long vlog, I talked about the poetry unit we’ve been doing.  Well, we finished that up this week, and I must say that I’ve had my fill of the computer lab for a while.  We bounced back and forth between the “green lab” and the “red lab” on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  I spent my time helping students find poems at the last minute (oh procrastination), respond to them, put their projects together, and give advice on presentation.  I also learned to use a binding machine for students who wanted their project put together that way.

What did we do on Monday, you ask?  Well, my CT gave a lesson on the poem “Richard Cory” by Edward Arlington Robinson, which I modeled for fifth period.  I first played the song “Richard Cory” by Simon and Garfunkel; Robinson’s poem had been the inspiration for the song.  The students listened to the song once and then again with printed lyrics in hand.  I then read the original poem aloud.  Students worked in pairs analyzing the poem’s meaning and language.  Unfortunately, Monday was a two-hour delay, so the first few periods were screwed up, and we didn’t even get to see first.  As a result, I taught it again on Tuesday for first period, and that time my CT taped me teaching.  It went superbly well, if I do say so myself!  Students were engaged, despite their annoyance at the just-implemented seating chart, and although they weren’t familiar with the band, they seemed to enjoy it.  My favorite comment: “What’s a Garfunkel?” 

Friday was the most exciting day of the week, and the most exhausting.  I started a new unit that day.  Students (most of them) turned in their poetry projects at the door, and then walked into a different classroom arrangement.  The tables were set up like a college lecture hall, making half-hexagons that faced the projector screen.  As they went to their seats, I had them each feel the weight of huge backpacking pack (weighing 80 pounds).  And in the front of the room on a table lay an assortment of outdoor gear: stove, fuel canister (no fuel present, of course), compass, topographic maps, iodine tabs, souvenirs, rope, webbing, mosquito net, etc. 

After they settled down, I passed out nature journals that my CT and I made.  These spiffy journals are bound and have a cover that reads “Nature Journal,” has a picture of an oak leaf (classic), and a quote by Uncle Walt that reads: “Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons, it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth” (from “Song of the Open Road”).  The journal was modeled after my own expedition journals.  I had them write in response to a prompt that asked them about experiences they’ve had in the outdoors/nature.  After hearing from some students share their experiences, I began my presentation.

My presentation was on my own experience in Alaska with the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS), where I spent three months kayaking, backpacking, and glacial mountaineering.  I used PowerPoint to show pictures from the trip.  Fortunately, students were not bored.  In fact, most of them seemed pretty spellbound, which was extremely gratifying.  I am going to finish up the presentation on Monday.  In a way, it’s kind of like one big “hook,” but I think it’s worth the time and effort.  I already have kids coming up to ask how they can go on a similar adventure, and I think students will be much more invested in a unit on wilderness and environmental concerns after the presentation than if I had plunged into it without such an introduction.  I will keep you all posted as to how the unit progresses.