Tell them your teen-stories

One of Annie Lamott’s favorite authors once wrote that there are three stories she uses whenever she wants someone to fall in love with her: one around-the-world sailing trip, one cooking fiasco, and one lover’s quarrel that ended well. Somehow that makes sense to me--we tell stories with a purpose. Each personal story emphasizes a flattering side of yourself: the daring, the funny, the bold, the traveler, the voice of reason in a world of chaos.—all the things we wish we were 100% of the time but aren’t.

Last year I tried to tell some personal stories about living in Chile to freshman. Oh look at me, aren’t I the cool teacher taking time out of class to share a little slice of my personal world with you? Isn’t this fun? Aren’t you lucky to get to know me? Oh please Ms. Davis tell us more about lollygagging across the Chilean countryside!

Well. Their eyes glazed over a bit and some started packing up bookbags pre-maturely. Besides feeling the wounding blow to my ego, I was perplexed: over pizza and beer my peers generally enjoy this particular pack of backpacking adventures—why didn’t it resonate for teens?

It is easy to forget that most teens go home every weekend, hang out around their houses or the mall, watch videos on youtube, go to school dances, and sleep. Travel stories of complete freedom and possibility can be difficult to relate to, hence the droopy eyes. Instead, tell them about yourself when you were their age and your plights were more similar to their own.

(This is dorkey, I admit) but I made a brainstorm of stories from when I was a young teen with morals or lessons attached so I can figure out when they might be useful. Some of them can be writing triggers. Some of them illustrate a point. They are not the same stories of bridge jumping and skinny-dipping that pepper so many of your adult stories; it is a different genera altogether. Try lots of stories about pets and trying to look cool but failing, and maybe even a first love if you can make it about acceptance and moving on rather than just smooching.

They listen differently to stories and remember them much longer.

So what was the best little drama of your life when you were 15?

Visit to Wahiawa Elementry

Just before my school started up I visited a public elementary school where my friend Mr. Duffy teaches. The grounds were beautiful and the students goofy and engaged: everyone was ready to sprint to the water fountain and several girls wanted to hold my hand--so welcoming to visitors!

Mr. Duffy and I planned to coordinate letter-writing between his public school and my independent school to encourage literacy in the younger grades. What third grader wouldn't love to receive a letter with a story from a high-school pen pal? However now that he has his schedule handed to him and the realities of prepping for state testing have hit, there is no time for such projects.

I left enthused by the students who wanted to stay after school on a Friday and disenchanted with the system that so limits teacher planning and creativity.

Synapses ready? Fire!

I'm reading a book called Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen. Stale as the raisin-bran that struggles to stay fresh in our Hawaiian heat, this book is still worth my time just because it is so applicable to teaching. I'm clearly not lapping it up since the bookmark lies a meager 43 pages in, nor do I grok much of the neurology described (why can't they make a layout and choose images based on the research they have done about how brains digest information? Arg.) However, the book has affected some change in my classroom.

First, I started playing music in the classroom between breaks that sets the desired tone for the lesson. This is really easy using Pandora.com, an online radio-station that plays any genre of music you invent. In the morning when I want them awake and focused, I play an upbeat latin-music station. During the first break before we do a close-reading of a text, a Mozart-centered station pops on. They seem to appreciate the added stimuli--when I forget to hit play they say "why don't we have music today?". In theory, it is priming neural pathways to increase the speed, sequence, and strength of the connections they will make about poetry.

I change what is on the walls about once a week because change is stimuli for the brain.
I am careful to eliminate threat (verbal abuse, mockery etc.) because a scared brain is not absorbing anything.

According to the brain book, enrichment is all about challenge and feedback. Allowing students to choose their own books for class should insure that they read at the level challenging for them. Right now we are in the process of choosing free-choice books that students will read individually and write about on their blogs. This is instead of reading the Odyssey as a class (the debate is still open as to the validity of this, but lets just wait and see). Today we visited a junior-filled composition class to hear about their book recommendations. These students are reading such interesting books! just a few of the suggestions were Faster than the Speed of Light by Joao Magueijo, Eragon by Christopher Paolini and 1984 by George Orwell, This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, and The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers. Just hearing these students do a Reading-Rainbow-style plug for books raised my confidence in students today.

So in an ideal world, challenge comes via the free-choice book, and feedback comes via blog when they write about what they are reading.

Finally, one last change regarding feedback. In college, I recall slipping away excitedly to read the feedback on my papers (dork!) as soon as I got them. But not everyone does that, and not all comments make sense, even if you do manage to read the teacher's terrible handwriting. Lots of students make similar mistakes, and having them corrected in relation to work they have recently done apparently makes a different. So lately when I return a batch of papers I choose 2 issues that came up for almost everyone. Perhaps it was weak verb usage. Perhaps they mis-punctuated dialogue. I do a mini-lesson the day I return their papers and it seems to sink in.