End of Year Reflections from North Teachers

 

 

 

 

When I tell everything we're doing in PLCs and SLCs to my teacher friends at other schools - they often comment, "Wow. That is a LOT".  It does feels like a lot. But, a few months ago, it felt like a WHOLE lot.  A year ago, it felt impossible.  I think that means I've made it through the toughest part - and that's exciting!

Cannot believe summer is already here - and that's a great thing -  but I think I'm actually going to miss you all.

Practice What I Preach…

To begin, I consider it a privilege to be invited as a guest blogger for NHS.  You see, in my role as an “academic/lead/literacy coach,” we don’t always know where to hang our hat.  I didn’t realize how important this was as a teacher.  

From South Marshall Middle School in little Benton, KY…

to Wea Ridge Middle in lovely Lafayette, IN…

to Fairview Middle School in beloved Fairview, TN…

(with a little bit of USI in good ole’ Evansville, IN)

I have always been surrounded by colleagues that I considered friends…and even some family. 

With this role as a coach and my charge to serve 8 different schools, it has taken my relationship building to a new level.  I have had to learn to be intentional with my time, always looking for connections and similarities that can forge relationships quickly.  In seeking these bright spots, I thank so many of you who have reached out and invited me in.  Including this opportunity to blog.

And since many of you have asked, I want to take this blogging opportunity to share with you about the next step in my journey.

I’ll start with professionally…

Beginning this summer, I will be stepping into the new world of the River Bend Writing Project.( http://www.riverbendwritingproject.com/)  I will be going through the Institute this summer and then move into my new role of “Summer Institute Coordinator”  the following summer.  Already, I have learned  through my work with the RBWP that I have a lot to learn about teaching writing.  And that is ok.  (If the sound of RBWP calls to you and you have a desire to connect with a network of K-12 educators in the tri-state area who are passionate about learning from each other and desire to grow as writers and get paid while doing it, you should seriously check River Bend out for next summerJ)  

Also, beginning in the fall, I will go back to teaching in the English Department at USI.  For Fall 2013 , I am slated to teach three ENG 100 classes and one ENG 101 class.

 I can honestly say that I am forever changed as an educator due to my 2.5 years coaching in EVSC and I am excited to once again practice what I preach.  To start, those lovely MAX Strategies that you all have grown to hopefully love along with me will deepen as a part of my instruction.  And this newly discovered concept that I have learned from my work with Harrison High School’s Center for Family and Community Outreach/CFCO(http://www.thecfco.com/community-schools-project.html) will overhaul the way I approach writing…bringing my students to true purpose in writing and true authenticity in their audience.  All while impacting our community.  What is there not to love about that?  

I could go on here with all of my dreaming, but I tend to have a problem in life with biting off more than I can chew, so I’ll let the accountability factor that comes with this post fall here.

And finally, on a personal note…

My husband, Mike Allen(who is transitioning into working for Evansville Christian Schools), and I are about a year and a half in the process of adopting a little girl from Ethiopia.  We are told that our little 1-2 year old will join our family in about a year and a half.  That’s still a long time.  But I take heart in knowing that though it will probably be a year and a half…it could be tomorrowJ  Until then, I am trying to focus my energy into my present 3 & 5 year old boys, Isaac & Ezra.  From broken collar bones …to lost legos…to bedtime snuggles, there is plenty to give my attention to while we pray and wait.

So, for those of you who have asked me why I am choosing to make this transition, these words above are my answer.

I look forward to crossing paths with my North High School friends in the future.  Whether it be at Granola Jar or EVSC’s eRevolution or Walmart, I hope that when those paths do cross that you will stop and say hi and even better, share a bit about your world with me.  

Nothing but blessings to you, North High School.

2012-2013 North Attendance District Lead Coach,
Kim Allen

Freshmen and Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet has been a part of the freshman English curriculum since... well, forever. I remember studying it when I was a freshman 15 years ago. Wow. I was a freshman in high school when my current freshmen were born.  I remember wondering why we were reading this super old play that took forever to translate into a language that we could understand. The answer I gave over the last few years is the same answer I was given when I sat in my literature teacher's class: It's a classic, and it lends itself to the standards that we must teach. 

I'm not sure why I thought that was an okay answer to give my students. It definitely wasn't a good response for me when I entered high school and was trying to figure out who I was. This year, my English 09A professional learning community (PLC) took on the task of giving the students a better answer. A real answer.

The first part of our mission was to re-read the play.  The first night I began to re-read, my husband couldn't figure out why I was reading it again.  I should know the play cover to cover since I have taught it so many times. My response was that this time, I am reading for a different purpose. I'm looking for the relevance for today's teens.  I had a pretty good idea what I was going to find and a roundabout idea where to find it, but I needed the textual evidence to back it up.  The second night, he came up with ideas that he remembered that would help me out.

Here are some of the issues/topics that we came up with: anger management, teen violence, instigators, concern for/worrying about others, young love, wanting what you can't have, literacy, vanity, depression, tolerance, revenge, bullying, overbearing parents, forbidden friends, teen suicide, and teen sex.

Do teens deal with any of these issues? Yep! Did we find the relevance in Romeo and Juliet? Yep!

The last month has been kind of eye opening.  As we read this text that is over 400 years old, we stopped periodically to talk about the issues that the characters deal with. Almost every student contributed to the discussion.  Almost every student volunteered to read.

At the end of the play, I had a young woman livid because of the ending! Never mind the prologue gave away the ending and there was foreshadowing all over the place.

The students are now building websites about a topic of their choosing from the play. The students are using textual evidence and research to help other teens see that the issues they are facing today aren't new issue. Teens have been dealing with these same things fro hundreds of years and they've all made it through.

Our students get it. Don't get me wrong, they're complaining about the amount of work they are putting in to this project.  However, they understand WHY we read the play.  They enjoyed reading it. They get it.

Mind: blown.

When the sites are published I will share them in the comments section.

Your mission: find the relevance!

Christina Bartley

Learning from Twitter...and a funny video

I'm a big fan of twitter.  It is more than learning the latest Kardashian drama, getting accidental spoilers on your favorite tv shows, and learning about T'eo's relationship with his fake girlfriend.

Through twitter, you can learn about instructional strategies, tech tools, and the various current "initiatives" in public education.  You can take part in professional chats with other educators around the world.  (And the state, try searching for "INeLearn" on a Thursday night.). Basically, you get to choose your own professional development and the possibilities are endless.

I've found that if an educator does not like twitter, they probably don't know how to use it to discover their personal and professional interests.  If anyone would like to learn how to get started and use it professionally, let me know.

You can use twitter with your students, too.  Last week, my fourth period class joined other high school students in talking to physicists, astrophysicists, and college professors about the asteroid and meteor events.  @timwilhelmus recently tweeted this website http://bit.ly/X8f12w. Lots of ideas on how to use twitter there.  If you already are on twitter, could you comment below with your username? We can make sure that we're all connected :)


Anyway, I've had a very hard couple of weeks.  @kevinhoneycutt (who spoke at a past elearning revolution event) retweeted this video.  It made me laugh because I definitely related to it this past week.  The script is the result of a girl trying to teach a younger girl how to subtract.  Not a great example of how amazing twitter can be as choose-your-own PD, but hey, it made me laugh.

A Metaphor

I spend a lot of time hanging out on 14,000 foot mountains.  I bagged my first 14er, Mt. Elbert, when I was a sophomore.  I climbed in jeans and Nike tennis shoes and compared the experience to child birth, even though I had no idea at that time what that experience was likeJ  After I married Chad, it wasn't very long until he fell in love with the mountains, so we started climbing as a team.  On our first time climbing together, we tried Mount Princeton—in the Collegiate Peaks.  Right above tree line, we came face to face with a boulder field, covered in snow.  Even though I feel like I’m a pretty adventurous person, the minute my safety comes into question I’m out!  It didn't take long on the boulder field to realize that Mt. Princeton had thwarted me, and I had to turn tail and hike back down (we were at the 8 hour mark when we turned around).              

Over the last 11 years, my husband and I have tried to summit Mt. Princeton 4 times.  The second attempt, we made it 500 feet below the summit.  Chad was hiking with my 5 iron—he wanted to hit a golf ball from the summit (in retrospect we realize how crazy dangerous that idea was).  He attached the club to the outside meshing of a day pack, so the face of the club was sticking straight up.  One thing that I've learned from the mountains is that they mean business when the weather shifts.  There are plaques all over Colorado honoring people who died due to lightening.  This time we made it past the boulder field and could almost taste victory, when the clouds rolled in with a vengeance.  One crack of thunder, and immediately the sky lit up.  We frantically turned around and started scrabbling back across the now slippery boulder field.  Chad was in front of me, and I realized that with my 5 iron, he had become a human lightening rod.  I yelled at him over the din of hail bouncing off of the rocks—he yanked the club out of the backpack and hurled it down the mountain—never to be found again (and my set is still missing the 5 iron)! 

The third attempt at Mt. Princeton was just by Chad and a group of hiking buddies.  On the way up, they saw a mountain lion on the trail below them, so they decided not to take the same path down.  They missed the window of time to summit before the storms rolled in, and began bush-whacking their own path, only to “cliff out” and get stuck at a precarious angle.  Luckily they had a tracking device with them, called The Spot, so they pressed the button, which alerted search and rescue to their GPS location, and settled in for a really uncomfortable night.  In the morning, Chad climbed down 1500 vertical feet to meet search and rescue, and then turned around to take the rescuers back up to where the guys were so they could assist them in repelling down.  They survived the night with one Nalgene of water between them, a few rationed granola bars, and one emergency blanket (and the fear of a mountain lion looming in the dark). 

Last summer, Chad and I invited a couple to Colorado with us.  We decided one last time to attempt Mt. Princeton.  Because I’m not the biggest, I don’t always get the say, so when the guys determined that we would try to avoid the boulder field by walking the ridgeline, my fit throwing fell on deaf ears.  Even the best laid plans….so, at hour 6 as I found myself clinging to vegetation at a 45 degree angle, knowing that my window of opportunity was quickly closing, I had to make a decision—either kill my husband, or just give in to the journey and give up the destination. 

I still haven’t bagged Mt. Princeton.  I plan on making another attempt this summer in late July—the Aspens are the greenest then, and the marmots’ barking remind travelers that we are not alone on the mountain.  If I don’t make it to the summit, I’ll still be reminded of the air in my lungs and the beauty of the hard-fought journey.  

Reflections On Being a High School Counselor, by Karen Halle

 

“So, like, I didn’t know if you were the kind of counselor I can talk to, or one who only does your schedule.”  This is the comment a student made to me this week, after coming in upset and talking with me about serious stressors in her life.  This statement exemplifies the many hats school counselors wear and the resulting confusion from sometimes conflicting roles.

 

Yes, I am that kind of counselor, as we all are.  I have a master’s degree in counseling, which is awarded based on knowledge of counseling theories and practice.  But, yes, I am the kind of counselor who does schedule planning and adjustments, and more adjustments, and more adjustments.  A great deal of our time is spent with these adjustments, based on need and desire.  Today, in the 5^th week of the semester, a student requested changing one elective to another.  And I got to be the kind of counselor who says, “No!”  So sometimes I’m the good guy, sometimes the bad.  Sometimes this is with the same student, very confusing.  Ultimately I am an advocate for my 370+ students.  Which many times equals being like their mommy at school.  And sometimes mommies have to say “No.”  We have to keep the bigger picture in mind, which is not always easy for teenagers, and many adults, to comprehend.  We have to be fair.  We try to protect the integrity of the classroom, so that teachers can teach, the main reason we are all here. 

 

Being a school counselor is a rewarding career.  We share in the extreme highs and lows that our students experience during their teen years.  I appreciate being a part of several innovative movements at North that have directly affected my role.  Our counselor alignment with students has been adjusted twice since I began 19 years ago.  First I was responsible for half of the juniors and half of the seniors, divided by alphabet.  After a few years, we decided to expand that division and each have one fourth of all grades, allowing us to stay with the same students for four years.  Recently North has moved into our Smaller Learning Community structure.  The counselors have been realigned to match with the students in an SLC.  So I have all students in the Arts and Humanities SLC.  I wanted this assignment very much, since I am passionate about music.  However, I was, as we all were, sad about relinquishing responsibility for my current students who did not move to my SLC.  But I know they are in excellent hands with the other counselors.  And best of all, I have met some really great students that I would not have had the privilege to know!

 

Karen Halle

Something to Smile About :-)

"No matter how tired or frustrated I may be, spending a couple of hours with my favorite teenagers, aka North TeenPower, always makes me smile." This is what I posted on Facebook last night after a TeenPower performance at the Dream Center. And I seriously meant it! Regardless of what stress this job may conjure up, I am always rewarded in the most astonishing ways--thanks to my involvement with TeenPower.

TeenPower is a club that encourages positive decision-making skills. As a group of students committed to abstaining from drugs and alcohol, we also work to develop leadership skill among our members. Last night we had the privilege of performing a series of skits that demonstrate the the power of positive choices to a group of underprivileged middle schoolers at the Dream Center. This was our fourth such performance this year, and it was entirely student-led.

In addition to the these performances, last week TeenPower hosted the 4th Annual Taste of North. For those of you who may not know, the purpose of the event is threefold: to raise money for the counselors’ Compassion Fund, to provide fundraising opportunities for student groups and clubs, and to increase school spirit. The first year was a huge success in meeting all three goals, and the event has continued to grow each year. Each of the participating groups rents a booth for $20. This fee is donated to the Compassion Fund. Beyond that, any money the groups make is their profit to keep. This year we were able to donate $440 to the counselor’s Compassion Fund, our largest donation yet! In addition, approximately $2000 was raised collectively by the participating student groups. The Taste of North has quickly become one of North’s most anticipated traditions.


I apologize if I sound like I'm bragging. It's just that I am so proud of these students for all that they have accomplished and all that they stand for. It was a beautiful moment last night witnessing our kids standing strong in their convictions and making a difference in the lives of others. Seeing these students give up their precious time and energy for the benefit of others is a constant reminder that our future is bright. And that, my friends, is definitely something to smile about! :-)