Universe As Text

“Ms. H, these answers are all right here in the text.”

Let us pause for a monumental moment of celebration. All year long, I’ve been working with my seniors on their ability to infer, interpret, and analyze. It used to be that if the answer to a question was not fact-based or found right in the book at hand, my students could not handle it. After months and months of discussion training, open questions, and constantly asking students to find and explain their own truth, they are finally getting to be pros at thinking for themselves. (I think they might even like it!)

I realized this today when I gave my students a simple worksheet that featured background information about the history of African American oral tradition. It featured questions afterward that were more of a “reading check”–each answer could be found on the sheet without much trouble. As my students began to work on it, they were actually confused by it. One raised her hand and said, “Ms. Harter… these answers are all right here in the text.”

“I know,” I replied, “I’m just checking to see if you understood the reading.”

“Really?” she asked, “That’s it?”

More kids started to look bewildered and added things like, “So… this isn’t asking what we think; it’s just asking for the simple answer?”

“Yes,” I told them, cheering in my head. “But don’t worry, tomorrow will be back to normal with some nice questions that are impossible to answer in less than a paragraph.” They smiled and groaned–but I know they were secretly relieved.

I finally did it. They are finally starting to think and crave the opportunity to give and support their own ideas. HOORAY! Once you get there, you can’t go back. Once a mind is opened, it gets sick of simple data processing with no heart and no meaning.

Writing Project (Back to School, Teacher Edition)

I’ve been given the great honor of being selected as a National Writing Project fellow, as part of the UW-Milwaukee Writing Project site.

My Writing Project work will start this summer, and I couldn’t be more excited to explore this chance for graduate credit, professional development, reflection, and my own evolution as a writer as well as a teacher of writing. I’ll be working with a select team of other educator-writers, with a wide range of teaching experience and writing strengths.

Here’s the research proposal I’ll be working on, along with a brief reflection on myself as a teacher-writer:

I am fascinated by the often overlooked connection between student image-making and written composition. It is my belief that creating visual art can prompt, guide, and enrich student writing, and I’ve experimented with this idea in many ways in my own classrooms, from illustrating grammatical constructions to using drawings as an alternative notetaking technique. However, one type of visual art hasn’t been used in my lessons very frequently—photography. I have the feeling it has potential to explode (in a good way) the possibilities of my writing-lesson repertoire, if only I can figure out how to use it!

Formalized, my question is this: How can photography be used in tandem with writing of various genres? The composition of image and the composition of writing share many traits—focal point, contrast, imagery, symbolism, mood, perspective, purpose… I feel that illuminating and working with these similarities would make students stronger, more mindful writers. Other possible uses might involve students composing visual essays with a companion written portion, using photography at the idea-generating stages of writing, documenting evidence of research with photos, or even using reactions to the images of others as a pathway to writing. Also, beyond just generating ideas for methods, I’d like to investigate this: How are these methods beneficial in learning, motivation, community building, and preparing students for our visually demanding cybersociety? Adolescents live in photographs. They are constantly taking, sharing, and posting digital pictures—this is how they record their lives. If implemented well, translating this tendency into classroom work may help students become impressive, image-savvy writers of today… and tomorrow.

As a writer, I am voracious. I write to understand myself. I write to communicate. I write to create. I write to get things from my brain out into the world in permanent form.

Being an author was definitely a consideration in my search for the ultimate career. I’ve been blessed with an easy grasp of grammar and mechanics from an early age, which freed me to use my time entirely to refine my ideas during revision. I’ve had a few pieces of fiction published in literary magazines, and I have a creative writing binder that’s thicker than a phone book. I love writing, plain and simple. When I worked as a college writing tutor during my undergraduate work, I realized that I loved tutoring and teaching writing almost as much as I loved doing it. My current writing class for 10^th-12^th graders, too, is my gem of the day. It’s a joy to teach.

My flaws as a writer also spring from my personal connection to the task of writing—my words can tend to become self-involved. I sometimes get so caught up in trying to express exactly what I’m thinking that I miss explaining clearly what I mean. For some reason, when I write, I sometimes turn into that too-mysterious movie that nobody truly understands, even when the credits roll. So my main challenge lies in making sure that my writing makes my thoughts clear to my readers. This carries directly into my writing instruction as well. The students who are authors-to-be get all dreamy-eyed when I wax poetic about, for instance, sensory imagery. However, that other 90% of my students may not be receiving the message. I need to make writing accessible for my students, and let them find their own reasons to love it, rather than expecting them to absorb mine by osmosis. None of us is alone in this world; nor should our writing be.

I am so looking forward to summer, anticipating the fresh new ideas that will come with rest and study, and knowing that I’ll find things to translate into my teaching. Year One is going great, but I’m already looking forward to Year Two, because I can’t wait to start building on the (still small!) base of techniques and curriculum that I have at the moment. I’m ready to work hard, and–again–I’m so grateful for the chance to become part of this academic community!

For more information on the National Writing Project, visit their website HERE.

You’ve Done Wonders…

The teacher who had my classroom before I moved in stopped by for the first time since he moved out in the summer. (It’s amazing how some staff members rarely venture out of their wing to see the rest of the school! I, myself, can be guilty of this.) As he peeked in the door, his eyes popped. “Wow!” he said, “You’ve done wonders with this room!”

“Thank you!” I replied, thinking to myself: Oh, my friend, you have no idea how happy you have made me with that single statement.

“Yeah,” he added, “Well… you saw it before.” And with that, he gave me a smile and headed back to the first floor.

I am insanely proud of my room, and while I know it’s not perfect, I feel like I’ve been able to do a lot with what I was given. When I came on the scene, the room was set up in long, straight rows, with little more than a giant chalkboard, graffiti-ridden bare bulletin board, and beige walls.

This is what it looks like now, complete with Semester Two improvements!

Message Board

Full View of Class Arrangement, “Circle of Rows.” This was a new design that I came up with to keep me always within three desks of any student, plus it makes it easier for them to see both the chalkboard and the projection screen, which are on different walls, without their views being obscured.

Plus it gives TONS of space in the middle for me to roam around in as I lecture.

Ask and ye shall recieve–I finally got my laptop and projector, which lets me do Powerpoints, video clips, interactive internet stuff, and more! AWESOME.

I keep this guy by my desk to remind myself that not only do I have a cool job, but I also get PAID to do it.

Supply closet, with some nice images!

Publication wall for student work.

Every morning, I gather my things on a sunshiny table, look out the window at the pine tree, and beyond that, the city streets. I take a deep breath, smile, and get ready for another day!

Calm, Assertive Energy

One of my senior students waltzed in my door during my prep hour for a meeting that we had scheduled to work on some scholarship applications. “Hello, Ms. Cranky,” she said, smiling, and plunking her books down on a desk. “I hate it when you’re cranky. It makes me feel tense.”

Ah, yes. I deserved that. That particular day, I had been forced to regroup my morning senior class several times after they had erupted into various disruptions. The yelling across the room, petty remarks, and general sense of simply NOT PAYING ATTENTION had been building in a steady crescendo over the previous two weeks. Day after day, I became increasing irritated by their notorious line-walking, their immaturity, and their resistant attitudes. I began to get frustrated with myself. What was I doing wrong? The same class who was peacefully co-existing with me for weeks was suddenly reverting back to the way they had behaved the very first time I met them. Where did I fall off of the classroom management wagon? In an effort to reclaim my territory, I just started snapping at any student who put a toe out of line.

However, it didn’t seem to be doing much good. And now I was “Ms. Cranky” on top of it. To hear my student’s reaction caught me off guard. I mean, I knew that I was cranky. But I had no idea how evident it was, nor how much it was affecting the mood of one of my best students. That night, discouraged, I flopped in front of the TV to indulge in a guilty pleasure–The Dog Whisperer on the National Geographic Channel.

Now, if you are a dog lover, as I happen to be, The Dog Whisperer is one of the greatest shows ever. Cesar Millan, trainer and dog psychologist du jour, works with animals and owners to create behavior changes (both in the dog and the human) that correct damaging habits that range from aggression to barking to fear to anxiety. While Cesar’s touch seems to be magical, it really comes from a very small set of simple concepts. Number one is that the human must be a pack leader. And this leader must demonstrate calm, assertive energy at all times. If the pack leader becomes fearful, tense, or anxious, that behavior will trickle down to the other members of the pack, making them erratic. Or, worse, the dog may see weakness in the owner and try to take over as pack leader! That makes perfect sense, I thought to myself, I know that my emotions are definitely influenced by those around me.

DING. A lightbulb went on in my brain. Calm, assertive energy. Even animals recognize this as leadership, and people certainly look for it. I started to envision myself in front of my class, shoulderblades clenched, just waiting for what I believed to be an inevitable outburst. I was tense, on-edge, shaky. Definitely not very assertive, and surely not calm. Just as Cesar accuses dog owners of “creating” their companion’s bad behavior, I started to question whether I, too, was in part creating the bad behavior of the morning class.  So a plan started forming in my mind. Ok, I told myself, Tomorrow, we will test out Cesar’s theory with people. Seems to work with dogs. Why not try it? With that in mind, I set out to purposely project an attitude of calm, yet assertive energy. If it was to work like it did on the show, my students would become calm when I was calm. (Of course, this seemed a little, well, crackpot. But what was there to lose? At least I wouldn’t be called “Ms. Cranky.”) I opened day one of C.A.E. with a deep, slow breath, a small smile, and the simple words, “Welcome back. I’m glad to see you guys. Let’s get started.”

Believe it or not, this simple, conscious change in my voice, body language, and attitude throughout the hour made a GIGANTIC difference. Seriously, it was a very visible change. I was blown away by how much more calm, pleasant, and open my students instantly became. It was kind of ridiculous how well it worked! It’s been about a week and we’re still going strong. I am now making a renewed effort to be more aware of what type of “energy” I am projecting when I teach. A very calm, happy person by nature, I am gifted with a natural talent for leading groups of people with a gentle authority. However, if I let negative emotions of anxiety, fear, or frustration to corrode that natural zen, I have nothing. I do love what I do, and I want my kids to see that. A person who loves her job is not on the verge of screaming or pulling her own hair. A person who loves her job is in control, with that small smile lurking on her face, saying, “Wait ’til you see what I’ve got for you today.”

Take it from me, and from Cesar. Half of being a leader is showing a calm, assertive energy at absolutely all times. It’s great psychological advice for puppies, for people, and likely many other species.

Top Five Cinema Hero Teachers

I remember back in my teacher preparation program, we were cautioned against beliveing in the idea of the “hero teacher” that gets glorified in the occasional movie that comes along with a classroom as the setting. True, these stories are often exagerrated to make the main teacher character look like a magical being that can take a horrible situation with underachieving and troubled kids and turn it into a college prep school in a matter of months with very few struggles. Not completely realistic.

The real teacher heroes, my professors told us, are real teachers just like us–teachers that have moments of brilliance, but also a day in, day out job that will be full of challenges and problems that take real time to solve. To some degree, I agree with that. Men are not angels–we cannot transform every life we touch. But you know what? I do believe that teachers can do incredible things. I see them do inspiring things every day. And I’m fairly certain that I know a couple people who could have movies made about their teaching experiences. So don’t tell me that hero teachers don’t exist. They do.

In honor of this unrelenting belief in the teacher hero, here are my top five teacher heroes of contemporary cinema. Watch these heroes in action, and see if you can find anything familiar about them–you may recognize a former teacher, a colleague, or even yourself.

**Honorable mention: Dead Poet’s Society (Mr. Keating is on his very own level of awesome), Stand and Deliver (Jaime Escalante: so good, people were convinced that his kids cheated on their tests).

5. The Ron Clark Story,  Matthew Perry as Ron Clark

“The problem isn’t the kids. It’s not even what they can achieve. The problem is what you expect them to achieve. You are setting the bar here. Why? Set it up here! They can make it.”

I like this film because it felt incredibly real to me. Teaching in an urban district will give you a fierce loyalty to kids that outsiders like to put down, and Mr. Clark is right there with us. Also, just like any elementary classroom, this film offers many opportunities for the unexpected, the uplifting, and the comical. Up against a seemingly impossible task in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the country, Clark became one of the top teachers in the nation. Best thing? Based on a true story.

4. Finding Forrester, Sean Connery as Forrester

“PUNCH the keys, for God’s sake! No thinking – that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!”

This film is an amazing portrait of the power of words as well as the bond between teacher and pupil. It’s also the perfect tribute to all of those seemingly crochety, old, rough-around-the-edges teachers out there who in fact have nothing but love and devotion for what they do. The two lead characters are perfect counterparts, and remind us that the teacher often learns just as much as the student. Finally, it’s a great model for classroom feedback, both good and bad!
3. School of Rock, Jack Black as Dewey Finn

“Are we gonna be goofing off like this everyday?”   “We’re not goofing off. We’re creating musical fusion.”

Dewey poses as a substitute teacher to scam cash off of his legit roommate, Mr. Schneebly. Despite his early efforts to be the laziest teacher of all time, he ends up leading his students through the ultimate creative project: the creation of a rock band. Don’t dismiss him as a hack, though–Finn’s uncanny knack for bringing humor and utmost reverence for rock music into his classroom ends up being one of the best educational experiences his students could ever have!

2. Remember the Titans, Denzel Washington as Coach Boone

“This is where they fought the battle of Gettysburg. Fifty thousand men died right here on this field, fighting the same fight that we are still fighting among ourselves today. This green field right here, painted red, bubblin’ with the blood of young boys. Smoke and hot lead pouring right through their bodies. Listen to their souls, men. I killed my brother with malice in my heart. Hatred destroyed my family. You listen, and you take a lesson from the dead. If we don’t come together right now on this hallowed ground, we too will be destroyed, just like they were. I don’t care if you like each other of not, but you will respect each other. And maybe… I don’t know, maybe we’ll learn to play this game like men.”

If you haven’t seen it, you need to. This story, based on real people and events, is about a man who not only instructed his boys on the ins and outs of their sport, but also how to interact with respect, brotherhood, and leadership. If only Coach Boone could do a community-building workshop with all of our students! Remember the Titans makes me cry, laugh, and cheer every time.

1. Freedom Writers, Hilary Swank as Erin Gruwell

“I don’t want excuses. I know what you’re up against. We’re all of us up against something. So you better make up your mind, because I am not letting you fail. Even if that means coming to your house every night until you finish the work. I see who you are. Do you understand me? I can see you. And you are not failing.”

One of my students once told me that I reminded her of “that one teacher from Freedom Writers.” I considered that the highest compliment of all time. Also a real person, Erin Gruwell used writing to transform a classroom of conflict, hatred, and insecurity into a safe haven where her students could acheive what they never thought possible. She gave up so much in order to be the most devoted teacher she possbily could. She gave her students the power to let their own voices be heard. She’s still out there, fighting the good fight, and that makes her number one.

So, break out the popcorn, and enjoy. Teacher heroes are everywhere! (However, only on the big screen will they look as beautiful as Hilary Swank. )

How Contemporary!

Even though I’m on week five of the new semester already, it seems like it just kicked off yesterday. I’ve had many new transitions during this period, including a brand new room arrangement, new class decor, and a new committment to both giving the best and expecting the best from my students. While it’s been a transition, including the gaining, losing, and rearranging of students in my classes, I feel like it’s been a really great first five weeks.

One of the most major changes curriculum-wise has been the shifting of theme in my senior literature class. While semester one was British Authors, semester two is entitled Contemporary Authors. I’m lucky enough to teach at a school where I have a considerable amount of curricular flexibility, as long as I’m giving quality teaching that addresses state standards, so I decided to design an introductory unit that was writing-heavy rather than literature focused. If you follow this blog, you know that teaching writing is my first love; however, that’s actually not the main reason behind this switch. The reason was Reader Burnout. To put it simply, my seniors were exhausted from reading old, British texts that took several run-throughs to make sense of. After back to back texts like Pride and Prejudice, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, and some John Donne thrown in for good measure, English can start to look and feel like a foreign language for the average adolescent reader. By the end of semester one, I still had them with me… but barely. I was fighting hard to keep interest  alive, to take a metaphorical windshield wiper to those glazing eyes, but (fight as I may) I was not winning too many fans for the classical literature team.

As the new semester–Contemporary Literature–rolled around, I wondered, ‘Okay, these kids have dutifully read classics with me all year long. When do they get to read and write about things that they find interesting?’  After asking that question in my head, I found myself answering, “Tomorrow.”

I ended up revisiting a unit that I did last summer, about Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, and transforming it for the senior level. As it happened, this was the ideal transitional move. Monomyth–a term coined by Campbell to describe the Hero’s Journey process of calling, struggle, and transformation–can be used to examine the form and characters that appear in texts across time, across cultures, and across genres. As we started talking about the structure, it gave the students a chance to showcase what they had learned in semester one, citing examples from classical texts we had already read. But the fun part was seeing the lightbulbs go on as they began to realize that similar plotlines and characters are featured in today’s books and films, relatively unchanged from their ancient roots. We had some phenomenal class discussion about the idea of the Collective Unconscious, and how humanity tends to share common nightmares, desires, and dreams. “There’s only one story, and we all know it by heart” became our motto to prove or disprove as we looked at varied examples from The Odyssey to Avatar.

Using that knowledge as a stepping stone, I set out to examine the most contemporary authors possible–my students. Over the course of the unit, my kids completed a rigorous creative writing assignment, which required them to implement the all stages of monomyth within an original plot, create a story setting and worldview, design archetypal characters, and showcase the effective writing skills that we had workshopped in class. And they worked hard. Even the slobbish slacker that always sits in back handed in a paper over ten pages long, smiling a goofy, proud smile as he handed it in (just one day late). Other kids created novellas that would have a freelancer with writer’s block simply salivating. Students that struggled to squeeze out ten sentences about The Exeter Book were now creating complex masterpieces. “Finally,” the class atmosphere seemed to say, “I get to make something cool on my own terms.”

Today’s high school students still need classical literature. The skills, cultural knowledge, and academic maturity gained by interpreting these texts are important, without a doubt. But let’s remember that reading and writing can be–and at times should be–purposefully new, exciting, and relatively free of prescriptive requirements. My first priority for my seniors is getting them college-ready. Still, a close second is getting them to understand that reading and writing are not only vital, but life-giving as well.

(Besides, even when creating something new, they can’t ever totally escape the incorporation of classical story structure. Little do they know, the same tools used by every canonical writer are already lurking in their young, unsuspecting brains. *Wink*)

West meets Midwest: A Collaboration Story

 Even with the huge variety of options that one has as an English teacher, it can still be hard to come up with ways of teaching that can shake adolescents out of their “I don’t care” coma. I mean, let’s be honest: most high school students are far more concerned with showing off and meeting new people than they are concerned about discussing literature. But wait! What if those two were one and the same? Now we’re getting somewhere.

This past October, at the WCTE State Convention, I attended a session that was given by two of my colleagues: “City Mouse Meets Country Mouse, or How Technology Brought our Classrooms Together.” The presentation gave highlights from a really unique collaboration between an urban teacher and a rural teacher in the same state. Both teachers had the same grade level, and one of the same texts. So, they decided to teach it together. They met ahead of time and “synched” their unit so that the same lessons would be taught on the same day to their respective classes. But the most important part of the unit was online book discussion, facilitated by the teachers through Goodreads.com, a social networking site built around books. With a private “room” just for these two schools, students from the city were able to offer their insights on the book, and the rural students could then respond, eventually branching out into full-blown, academic discussion between kids from totally different walks of life. I loved this idea for several reasons: (1) It was just plain cool, (2) It involved teacher collaboration, which I’ve wanted to learn more about, and (3) It gave the students exposure to some new faces, expanding not only their literary horizons, but their social ones as well. We all need to understand each other better, and it starts with common ground. When that common ground is a book, it breathes new life into the idea of  “required reading.”

I was dying to try this in my own classroom, but I wasn’t sure who to collaborate with. I really wanted to expose my students to another class outside of Milwaukee, somewhere that would expand their understanding of the world beyond their own backyard. Most of my friends teach in the city, so I tried to open my brain. Who did I know that taught somewhere… else? Then, it hit me. Of course! My cousin, about 7 years older than I, teaches English at a high school in rural Oregon. Now that’s  far away. I shot off an email, and, lo and behold, she teaches seniors, too. And she liked the collaboration idea.

Over winter break, after Grandma’s delicious Christmas dinner, Ms. W. and I were able to sit down on the couch together, face to face, and create an initial to-do list for a collaborative unit on Zora Neal-Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.  While we still have a couple months of preparation ahead, the cogs are turning and it’s looking like we’re going to be connecting kids not just between a rural setting and an urban one, but over whole regions of the country. I am so excited to give my students the opportunity to discuss a text with some new faces–ones that will seem different at first, but that will inevitably become familiar as they explore the text with other kids all the way across the nation. Wish us luck! You’ll hear more when the unit comes ’round.

The Perfect Assignment

As a teacher who is always trying to be innovative, creative, and just plain “not boring,” I try a lot of different types of lessons with my students. As a new teacher, I have a lot of lesson attempts that need fine-tuning, and a handful of utter flops. However, there is one strategy when it comes to literature lessons that–even in my short experience–has never let me down. It works with practically any fictional text and any age group. This strategy (which I definitely am not the first to come up with) is character letters.

In a character letter assignment, students write a letter to a character, usually for a very specific purpose. I think the secret of this assignment’s vast success lies in the fact that it’s very entertaining for students, yet very informative for the teacher. As I inspect textual references, tone, and reactions in their writing, I can tell quite a bit about how my students are understanding and interacting with their reading. Also, the products are often hilarious and spot-on.  Let me tell you just a little bit about how I’ve used this teaching method.

Variations: Students can write in their own voice to a character, or from one character to another. You can assign student pairs to write to each other and respond back, still in their character roles. You can have students, individually or in pairs, create an instant message conversation between characters (they have a great time creating screennames and such). Students can read examples aloud to the class, while others try to guess which character is speaking and who’s being addressed. You can have students write diary entries in the voice of a character. The list goes on. Basically, the goal is to create an assignment that asks students to assume the role of a character and to react to that character and others as if they were real people. You’ll be surprised at the strength of emotion that quickly surfaces!

Examples: Here are some concrete examples of character letter assignments that my students have tried.

*Beloved. Write a letter from one character that lives in House 124 to another that also resides in the house. This should be a letter of apology or one that reveals a previously hidden emotion. Refer to at least one specific incident from the text. Your letter should be written so that it would be given to the recipient directly after this event.

*Hamlet. While examining the tragic form, we’ve learned that tragic heroes have a flaw that leads them to their doom. So what’s Hamlet’s problem? We’ve all been in the situation where we see a friend making some bad decisions that could create even worse consequences. Write a letter to Hamlet, telling him what he’s done wrong, and what might happen if he doesn’t set it right.

*The Pearl. We don’t see our protagonists say much to each other throughout the story. What would they say if they had the time? In pairs, assign one person to assume the role of Juana and one person to assume the role of Kino. Write a letter as your character to the other, explaining everything you want to say. Once done, exchange with your partner. Keeping yourself in character, write a response to what he or she has written.

*Pride and Prejudice. While most of the verbal sparring we see in the book takes place via conversation or letters, if Elizabeth were alive today, it’s likely she’d find a lot of her drama online. Pick any character from the novel and write an email from this character to another. This should be a serious message of at least two paragraphs. Please feel free to use modern English and online abbreviations to create a message that stays true to the way the characters interact in the novel.

Try it! As you can probably already tell, there are tons of different ways to transform this assignment type to your purposes. Try it out, and you’ll likely be delighted at the entertaining, heartfelt, and shockingly accurate character portrayals that your students create. Whether you’re working it into a complex unit plan, or just need something new to keep your kids on their toes, character letters are an awesome way to go.

Project: Screenplay

I just finished a successful, intriguing, enjoyable unit with my writing lab class, and I’m just busting to share a little bit about the experience, how and why we did it, and the results.

It all began near the end of the persuasive essay unit, when I was glancing ahead to see what else I had scheduled for my writing lab kids. As I perused the syllabus, my eyes swept over the answer: expository writing. I groaned a little inside. We were just wrapping up a research-heavy, academic jargon-heavy, crisp logic-heavy writing project. The thought of assigning some boring, report-like paper about facts seemed just a little too dull for this particular group. [Background: My writing lab kids are my absolute favorite class. They're a mixture of English fail-outs, aspiring authors, English language learners, and "I just took this class for the heck of it" misfits. Coming from grades 10-12, they are a peaceful, curious group who will follow me pretty much wherever I ask them to go as writers. And many of them have major talent. I knew something else was in order.]

So, I created a Writer-Interest Survey with loads of different options for them to pick from for their next unit. We discussed, debated, voted, and debated some more. In the end, screenplay writing (you know, writing scripts for movies) was the clear winner. They really wanted to write their own short film scripts. So I said, “Ok. On Monday, we’ll start learning how to write screenplays.”  Having absolutely no idea how to teach screenplay writing, I knew I had a weekend of research ahead of me. I was blessed enough to stumble upon three fantastic teaching resources for screenplay writing. Using them as my scaffold, I went to town on planning a five-week screenplay unit.

RESOURCE ONE: Good ol’ Google. As it turns out, if you simply type the title of your favorite major motion picture along with the word “screenplay” after it, you can find the full script for most movies out there. [My search query was "Jurassic Park screenplay.] There are many online databases devoted wholly to collecting and making available screenplays that have seen success. Of course, you have to wade through these to find quality samples, since many of these screenplays are reproduced by amateurs. However, when you find a good one, it’s an invaluable resource, especially if you can pair it with the actual film clip.

RESOURCE TWO: Script Frenzy Young Writer’s Program. I discovered something wonderful in my quest for screenplay tips, and that’s Script Frenzy. Apparently, this program is open to all who wish to participate–it’s a challenge to write a complete, 100 page screenplay in the month of April. This is a challenge for adults (more specifically, crazy adults), but there also happens to be a modified program for students that’s accessible all year round, including a complete workbook with really nice teaching supplements. I can’t say enough about how awesome this completely free resource is. Here are two links to get you started:

Click for SCREENPLAY FORMATTING

Click for SCREENPLAY WORKBOOK (HIGH SCHOOL LEVEL)

RESOURCE THREE: Make your own Movie Poster! I also happened upon a fantastic movie poster generator on the web that allowed my kids to create super-cool, authentic looking promotional posters for their screenplays. You have to fiddle around a little bit to get the best results, and only .jpg files can be loaded as the main image, but once those two things are out of the way, students can come up with amazing results. Particularly when they take their own photo with a digital camera or scan in original artwork, the final result looks great. Here’s a sample poster I’ve made for your viewing pleasure… Click on the image for full-view.

Cool, huh? Try it by clicking HERE for the movie poster generator.

As the unit went on, we did all kinds of cool things: character development, realistic dialogue, avoiding cliches, identifying and blending genres, using media skills, applying a specific formatting style, how to construct a satisfying plot, time management, mimicking masters, finding inspiration, and action writing. And the students loved it. Whether they were penning comedies or psychological thrillers, they were all quite “into” their stories. Last weekend I had literally an armful of pages to take home–almost every student had met my daunting ten-page requirement. One boy even made a full-length, amazingly artistic trailer for his film. Some of my favorite film concepts were:

*A crochety old man, denied a discount at McDonald’s, seeks revenge by patronizing other various fast food establishments.

*An imprisoned man develops a close relationship with a fellow inmate as they attempt to make a jailbreak.

*The ghost of a teenager tries to come back to the living world, but only one friend can see him.

*A man struggling with mental illness decides to live his life through the identity of a deceased friend from childhood.

*An exchange student simply can’t handle the irritating antics of his host family.

Once again, I have had proven to me the fact that when students are doing something that they are interested in, they outperform even the highest expectations. During this unit, I wished I was in my own class so that I could do the project. It was so touching to watch them excitedly buzz around each other’s writing, asking “What are you gonna put next?” or “You know what I can picture here? Let me tell you…”  Next time I teach this unit, I might work in an actual film component as well. I highly, highly recommend trying out some screenplay writing. It may not be a very traditional thing to teach, but it makes reaching the state language arts standards as easy and light as a song.

P.s. If you’re in the Milwaukee area, Collaborative Cinema is another cool opportunity related to screenwriting. We had a guest speaker come in from this program, and he was great.

Roll of Thunder, Hear Our Cry

I’ve been teaching a unit with my seventh graders based on Mildred D. Taylor’s novel, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry. As I previewed the book, I found myself recoiling from the harsh depictions of racist violence, which are very true to what really went on in Mississippi in the 1930′s, ’40′s, and ’50′s. I wondered if my classroom–a racially disparate group of 12 year-olds–would be able to handle it. I’m not sure what I was so afraid of… I guess I felt like reading about those events really hurt me, and so perhaps it would hurt them, especially if they didn’t have the maturity to understand it. I was feeling similar to a group of parents who wanted to censor the book back in 2004, saying the content was too mature and disturbing for middle schoolers to be exposed to.

But then a little bell rang in my head. Why was I trying to shield these kids from the truth of what happened in history? If I did so, wasn’t I just playing accomplice to the thousands of sugared-over history textbook editions that have lain, guilty, in classrooms across the nation for decades? If I was nervous to talk so directly about racism in my classroom, with black kids and white kids, Latinos and Hmong, wasn’t that my own little contribution to racial tension in our own society? After this mental tug-of-war, I convinced myself that I would tackle it, and after an introductory explanation about the need for grown-up behavior, sensitivity, and reverence, we plunged in headfirst.

Best move ever. The responses from studying this novel have been the most heartfelt, complex, and complete responses I’ve gotten from my seventh grade. Not that it’s been without pain–for instance, when I was explaining how tar-and-feathering was a humiliating and excruciating “punishment” that whites inflicted on blacks for the most minor offenses, I was interrupted mid-sentence by a cocoa-faced, curly-haired girl with watery eyes: “But why would someone do that? Why would anybody ever think that was ok? What made them think that wasn’t wrong? It’s wrong!”  The only answer I could give her was, “I wish I knew the answer myself. To be honest, I really don’t know where racism or hate of any kind comes from. But it’s bad, bad, news and it’s really hurtful, isn’t it?”

One of the most interesting  lessons we did involved using poetry to talk about how race interactions were more complicated than simply pitting whites against blacks. For this activity, we analyzed Jeremy’s friendship with the Logan children by connecting it with Countee Cullen’s “Tableau,” which I’ll post here–

 TABLEAU

Locked arm in arm they cross the way/The black boy and the white

The golden splendor of the day/The sable pride of night

From lowered blinds the dark folk stare/And here the fair folk talk

Indignant that the two should dare/In unison to walk

Oblivious to look and word/They pass, and see no wonder

That lightning brilliant as a sword/Should blaze the path of thunder.

Here are a few of my favorite student responses to the poem:

I say what happened in the poem was two kids (black and white) fighting against racism. They were signaling out that skin color does not effect a person’s feelings. And when the lightning struck and cut through the segregation, it burned all thoughts of hatred and led people to think. If God made different races for a reason of hope, why was it used as a reason for bad individuality, segregation, and downputting of someone of another skin type or race? All races form the reason of life. People, living, and being are the cause of the new age. In Roll of Thunder, segregation was at full cruelty. But every action has its own special consequence.

I love this poem because I think it is so true about white kids and black kids becoming friends, without anybody having the right to say anything. Countee Cullen is impressing with this poem. He’s awesome!!

I see hope in the poem where they don’t care what people are thinking about them. I think that it would be unfair if we couldn’t hang out with someone because of their race or their religion. It’s unfair to judge people because of the color of their skin and it’s rude and cruel.

I think the poem is trying to say “don’t care about what people think.” If you think or know what you are doing, have trust in yourself and go for it. They are trying to tell us even when it is hard, don’t give up because we’ve come a long, long way just to give up. In the book, the blacks are going through hard times. A couple nice white people are trying to help them go through that and say something like, “What is the difference between us?” but without words.

I’ll end this post with the wisdom of Mildred D. Taylor herself, in her response to the attempted censorship of her novel. Here’s a quote from her, courtesy of the National Coalition Against Censorship website:

“As a parent, I understand not wanting a child to hear painful words,” Taylor wrote. “But also as a parent I do not understand trying to prevent a child from learning about a history that is part of America… I must be true to the stories told.”

Thank you, Ms. Taylor, for reminding us that we have to look the world straight in the eye in order to form our own opinions of it. Even if we’re twelve years old.

P.s. Every day, I am greeted at the door by a different child that whispers to me, “Ms. H, can I read first today?”