josieology-blog

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"When you write fiction, you’ll start a sentence using something in your experience as a departure point, but before the sentence has finished—if it’s a good sentence—it will have taken you to a new place…"

-Boris Fishman (via publishersweekly)

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When I see a student on Facebook during class

I wanna be all like:

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Whether supporting at-risk youth or global causes, these YA authors have a lot to contribute in addition to their writing.

My latest article for School Library Journal.

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Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.

Confucius  (via psych-facts)

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Wherever you stand, be the soul of that place.

Rumi (via creatingaquietmind)

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A writer is a world trapped in a person.

Victor Hugo (via uh-huh-shes-alive)

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Some great life advice for everyone.

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A picture is worth a thousand words. When you see this you'll know why.

This is so powerful.  I just ordered this book.  It would be a create a powerful discussion with my students!

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Dude. Why has it taken me four years to discover that grading with stickers is so much more fun?

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Important words from a wise man.

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Here we see web culture leaking into a worksheet. Circle ALL the pronouns! :)

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I’ve been rounding up short reviews of books we picked for this year’s Outstanding Books for the College Bound list. Today, fitting in with Women’s History Month, I talked about a pile of books featuring girls across borders. Some are set abroad, some are set in the US, but all in some way hit on girls who face head on the social, political, and physical borders around them. These are a mix of books, including fiction and non-fiction, adult and young adult. 

Earlier topics I looked at within the Outstanding Books list include Music and Musicality, Spirituality and Religion, and Football and Football Culture. 

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do not make homes out of people. this will leave you homesick and sad, missing arms that cannot hold roofs, hearts with shaky foundations.

Home (Michelle K)

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How my students see me

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Found this gem in the MX (train newspaper in Melbourne)

[josieology-blog]

Small Miracles

I just finished William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker with my last class today, and I must say, I am really glad we chose to read this book with the kids as an eighth grade team.  We were kind of creating this unit on-the-fly, and it wasn’t everything I hoped it would be, but I still feel my class and I have had a valuable experience.  

In the past, we showed the film (the 1962 version) and did character analysis because my district wasn’t big on reading “whole texts” together.  This year was the first year we actually read the play (and my first time teaching a “whole text”), and I am so, so glad we did.  What an excellently written piece of literature!  I am so excited to have finished this piece with my students today that I feel like compiling a list of five reasons why I’m glad I read it with them.  

1.  They got to read a play.  

My students, at least, had never read one.  They didn’t know what stage directions were - and they didn’t understand the different style of reading.  Exposing them to this for the first time was a blast!  I have the benefit of having a boyfriend who is a theater/film major, and he helped us out by creating an informational video about stage directions and how to read a play as a text.  We got to illustrate the stage and pretend my reading area was a stage to learn “up stage,” “down stage,” etc.  But most of all--we got to use our imaginations.  For everything.  It was powerful.  

2.  They got the chance to act.

Do I teach an acting class?  No.  Do I help kids fall in love with words?  I hope so.  Allowing the students to act out the play really gave a lot of them a voice.  Every one of my students acted out the opening scene, and every one of them did a great job.  Even the shy kids really surprised me (that would have been me in middle school)!  They found the characters’ voices and made them their own.  Was it a little weird that some of them did Annie’s voice with a Southern accent although she was Irish?  Yes.  But they had fun with it, and they really got into their roles.  They fought over who wanted to read out loud--even kids I never would have expected wanted to read anything, let alone out loud.  WHAT?

3.  They became curious.  

Did Helen ever learn to speak?  Why does Annie act so “unladylike?”  Where did Annie come from?  What does all this Civil War stuff mean?  Why did she take the key?

Their curiosity exploded out of their minds like confetti.  And like confetti, it was beautiful.  We constantly stopped to research so we could get more background knowledge for the text.  We looked up customs and the atmosphere of the 1880s.  We talked about civil rights.  We talked about women’s rights. We talked a LOT about the Civil War (Keller was a Confederate).  AHHHHH!  It was great!  Do I teach a history class? No.  However, practicing the skill of researching something you don’t understand and want to learn more about in a text is vital.

4.  They experienced empathy.  

At the beginning of the unit, we discussed the rights of people with disabilities.  We closed our eyes and plugged our ears and sat in silence, journaling about how it felt afterwards.  We connected to Helen by reading what she was like in the play compared to how she described her life in her autobiography, The Story of My Life.  They had deep, philosophical discussions without realizing that’s what they were doing.  It was great.  I love when they do something awesome and educational and they don’t even realize it.  

5.   They read, watched, and analyzed a whole text together.  

This is the most important one to me.  Since I hadn’t taught a whole text before since Romeo and Juliet during student teaching, it was a learning experience for me AND for my students.  We got to experience it all together.  Yes, I know that sounds cheesy, but teachers are totally made up of 87% cheese.  We might as well admit it to ourselves.  

Anyway,  aside from reading the play (mostly out loud together in parts), we also analyzed the film compared to the text.  Although the film mostly went hand in hand with the text, my students picked up on the few (and major) changes, and we discussed them.  Again, they were doing really smart stuff without realizing it.  It was fabulous.  

I am aware this post seems a bit cheesy and feel-goody, but that’s the feeling I got after finishing the play.  Since today was St. Patrick’s Day, we celebrated with mini-green cookies (You know, since Annie Sullivan was Irish and all), and we discussed the symbolism in the end.  *Sigh*  I love words and what they can create.  

If you haven’t read the play or watched the 1962 version of The Miracle Worker, go grab it and watch it!  It’s truly wonderful.  

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."  - Helen Keller