Last Day at the UIWP

Today is the last day of the UIWP.  I can’t believe how fast it has gone by!  While I was putting together my website last night, I was amazed at how much writing and “composing” we produced!  I was initially worried that I wouldn’t have good quality writing pieces to include in my digital portfolio, but, that’s why I’m thankful for deadlines.  I just put my writings out there, knowing that, knowing me, I could spend forever working on them!  Thus, prolonging publishing my digital portfolio for a while.

I was also picturing the journey I feel like I’ve been on for the past month.  Actually, beginning with the interview, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I knew there would be some work involved – maybe collaborating to develop some lesson plans, listening to guest speakers, being introduced to some technology.  What I got instead was a crash course in digital technologies and a fresh approach to writing instruction.  I think I did what Katherine Blake Yancey explains as using the scientific approach to make teaching a system.  I did this with writing somewhat because I didn’t really have my own philosophy or understanding of writing instruction.  Now, I see endless possibilities with writing.  I see writing as a knowledge-making activity, even creative writing.  I think Judy’s poem on her Cherokee background is a great example of how I envision using creative writing to incorporate social studies into the classroom.  I just wonder how many students are out there with untapped writing potential that need good instruction or guidance?

Overall, I will miss the morning writings, the challenging assignments (in technology), and the intensive feeling of being in a “boiling pot” that drew out creative thinking that I did not know I had in me!

What is it about writing?

As I walk to the library each morning, I think about writing.  These days, ever since I didn’t pass a job interview successfully, I have been stressing over finding a job.  I am wondering if I’m completely wasting my time writing and wonder if I should spend time looking for a job instead (I am when I’m not at the library).  Writing seems like such a waste of time.  Writing seems like something people who have settled lives can do, not someone like me, who is obviously going through some major changes.  I wonder if I’m being totally irresponsible by spending 4 weeks of my summer writing, thinking about writing, making writing videos and podcasts, and reading about writing.  Maybe I’ve lost my sense of responsibility and reality.  I think my family certainly thinks so, as do my friends in Chicago and, even down in Champaign.

Reflections on my demonstration

I need to reflect on my demonstration before I forget.  First of all, yes, I was definitely nervous.  I had worst-case scenario thoughts about a silent room, awkward silences during the discussion portion, or just complete disinterest.  However, I was wrong.  I actually thoroughly enjoyed giving the presentation and could feel the energy in the room.  It felt smooth, like people were getting into the same thought processes I went through as I thought about place and time and life stories.  I guess the questions about how to write about the mundane and getting students to realize how interesting every small moment in their lives can be have been brewing in my mind for a couple of years now.  That, coupled with the TCKs I’ve been meeting (and me being one) plus the idea of bringing stories to life through video and podcasting just added more possibilities to what could be done with life stories.  I wish I could have gathered everyone’s stories, like I would in my classroom.  I am thinking of ways I could really use all these ideas with the TCKs I personally know.  We have retreats and conferences and one is coming up this November.  I am thinking of making a video about the TCKs that I personally know and their own life stories.  There is something really validating and “identity-forming” about sharing one’s life stories.

Also, I’m realizing there’s a big difference between “telling” someone, no matter how close a friend, about your life versus writing about it with the intention of having someone read it.  I know of TCKs  who journal, but I think its powerful when there’s the possibility that someone will read our stories.  Fletcher is right.  We write more powerfully about subjects that matter to us.  For the classroom, I think that’s why Lucy Calkins made some great decisions when she brought in personal narratives as a genre of writing to teach.  Three years after I tried out her curriculum in the classroom, I feel like I am finally “getting” her.

Scrubbing my dormroom floors

About two to three weeks before the end of each term, I would begin thinking about packing and the dreaded floor scrubbing routine we performed every 3 months.  Our dorm mom would tell us weeks in advance about the end of the term cleaning and packing routine.  I didn’t mind cleaning the bathrooms or wiping down the walls, or, even packing, but I dreaded the scrubbing.  To preserve our pale grey linoleum floors, they were waxed at the end of each term.  However, it was none other than our job to scrub the wax off the floors.  On more than one occasion, I had the job of scrubbing the hallway floors as well.

Once we packed our bags, we had to move our bunk beds to make sure we got the wax off every corner and crevice.  My roommate and I would each take a six-inch long bristle brush, a bucket of soap and water, and get on our hands and knees and start scrubbing away.  It would have been easier if we had used hot water, but that was reserved for showers.  So, for several hours, we would scrub away at the wax that had hardened quite beautifully over the 12 weeks.

After a while, the scrubbing began to become rhythmic and provide room for reflection.  I would relish the idea of getting all the wax off, and now wonder, if I didn’t manage to also get some of the linoleum off the tiles as well!  It almost became a compulsion for me to get the tiles clean – it fed my perfectionism.  Thinking back on this time of my life, I am grateful to my school because we could have had everything spoon-fed and done for us, but I think the administrators knew that we would need to learn how to take care of ourselves.  The irony is that when I came to the U.S. for college, I didn’t know how to use a washing machine, because, strangely enough, we had our laundry done for us!

My first poem

Glinting Machetes

I have wanted to write a poem all week, ever since Scott shared his “Bar Hopping” poem with us.  Then, Dave started writing some great poems, and now I REALLY want to write one.  So, I have been trying to decide what to write about – there are so many possibilities.

Shhh…something is wrong outside

An ominous huddled mass stands 10 feet from my window

The muffled moon casts a smoky glow

Something glints over a shoulder

Harsh whispers emanate an eerie evil.

Terror grows vines over my mind.

Thank God my sisters are asleep.

I creep into my parents’ room.

Thick darkness suffocates my terrified soul.

We fall to our knees and pray.

My least favorite writing experience

During my last year in preschool, before I entered kindergarten, my teachers told us that we were going to start writing.  I was not very thrilled about this idea.  In fact, I think I was slightly terrified.  I remember that they talked about writing for some time before we actually started writing, and, instead of making me look forward to the day of writing, I dreaded it.  I guess I had a bit of performance anxiety – even at that age!  However, once we started learning how to write, I think I enjoyed it.  We got to draw pictures and write short sentences underneath each picture.  I think we had learned the alphabet and how to write words before this point.  I don’t remember the details of what we wrote and how we learned how to write.

Using embedded sentences with 4th/5th Graders

Romeo was in love with Juliet.  Juliet thought Romeo was great, too.  Romeo and Juliet’s parents were not happy about their relationship.

Too Much Fun In the Library

In Breakthroughs: Classroom Discoveries About Teaching, Peter Trenouth, a high school English teacher writes about an activity he used with his students to strengthen their descriptive writing.  He had found that his students’ writing assignments were often “mired in hollow thought or stilted prose”.  Even “creative” assignments would come back “weak, either mechanistic or formless.”  He discovered that getting his students to write descriptive papers often solved this problem.  However, I appreciate how he asks why students should learn to write more descriptively, other than saying its to meet state standards or testing requirements.  He developed an answer:  descriptive writing should be “anchored in experiences” if they are to have meaning.  Meaning does not stand by itself and when we experience the sights, sounds, textures, and odors of life, and we describe them with language, we give meaning to life.

Working with English Language Learners

I have worked with English Language Learners of all ages, ranging from a second grader to doctoral students as well as helping my mom with her master’s thesis and my dad with his doctoral dissertation. They have all been native Korean speakers, whose first language is Korean.  I think I will write about the doctoral student I am currently helping edit her articles and dissertation proposal.  I guess I’m in a slightly different position from the students I work with because I am most comfortable communicating in English but I am also comfortable speaking in Korean (as long as it is not in a formal setting because I lack a lot of complex vocabulary in Korean).  I am most struck by my student’s courage to study at the PhD level in a second language.  For myself and many other native English speakers I know, writing a dissertation is a daunting task but ask any of us to write it in another language, then, I think we would honestly be at a loss.  However, my student is very positive and approaches the language barrier as just one hurdle to deal with and she does this in a very matter-of-fact way.  She knows what she wants to say and knows her research inside and out, so it is just a matter of communicating it in a way that her audience can understand it.  As I read her writing, I notice that she tends to write in the language that I have come to associate with academic writing – writing that I sometimes have to read over and over again before I can make sense out of it.  I think this has something to do with Korean syntax.  Formal Korean tends to take on a very passive voice.  For example, it is the type of writing where, “the ball was thrown to me” rather than “John threw the ball to me.”  So, I find myself switching gears in my head as I read her writing – from trying to visualize what she is saying, to trying to connect it to anything I know.  Koreans also tend to struggle with using articles in their writing or using the correct article because we don’t use articles before a noun.  A monkey is “monkey” and “please pass the salt” is “salt to me pass, please.”  I still don’t know how to teach my students to use the correct article in their writing.  I think this is something that has to be innately learned through being immersed in the English language for a long time.  My dad still has trouble with it.

A personal childhood story

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

Dedicated to:  Elizabeth Slifer

When I was around 9 years old, I almost lost my two front teeth.  So, the song, “All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth” almost became my childhood theme song.  We were living in Nairobi at the time on a large compound with many other young missionaries – it was very communal.  We had our meals together and worked together.  My younger sister and I shared a room, which was, now that I think about it, a converted porch.  Our room served as a bedroom, with our steel, green bunk bed on one end, and a dining room, with a small dining table on the opposite end.  The walls of the room were draped in long, slightly sheer curtains to cover what were actually long windows.