Detroit Heidleberg Project

If you’ve never taken the trip to see the local art involved in the Heidleberg Project off of Mt. Elliot near Gratiot, you need to see it.  It is a statement on the plight of the inner-city of Detroit.

Here is a quick look. You can find information on google.

There are many photo opportunities and statements made here that hit home with their message.

Shelby Writers Guild

As a member of the Shelby Writers Guild, I can tell you that being involved with professional’s that share your vision and goals is very important.  When we work on our projects we all need a sounding board.  This group of professional writers, producers and script writers are solid with good  ideas and very helpful.

I have learned a great deal about the profession since becoming a member.  Two of my novels have been published and we talk about publishing and the best methods to get your work out.

This group is very supportive and if your looking for a writers group to join, email me, tonyaued@aol.com.

AP testing up 108% in Chicago

The Chicago Sun Times reported that Advanced Placement ( AP ) testing is up 108% for the Public Schools District from 2004 to 2008.  One reason is students are realizing the importance of taking and getting credit for AP classes.  It can help reduce the overall cost of their college education.  It also will help them get ready for college by taking college prep classes and let them get a look at subjects that interest them before college enrollment.

The trend is up nationally for AP testing but the Chicage Public Schools are excited that their students seem to be agressively trying to improve their college entrance opportunities.  This district had seen dropping student grade and performances but now they hope that they are trending upwards.

This trend is seen in other schools districts and as teachers we should be happy that students are looking at additional educational opportunities.  Many students are able to start their freshmen year with as many as 30 to 45 credited hours of college work.

Technology and Today’s Students’

Pat Graft has an article in this months NCTE update that states any technology that you can incorporate into students teaching will help them succeed in todays world.  Her video report, on www.ncte.org , is available on this months NCTE web site.

Her point is clear, as teachers we need to incorporate technology in our classrooms to enhance students progress.  There is also an article by Melissa Slager that questions if students are becoming better writers with the use of technology.  Her article states that because students have computers with spell check and can re-write there papers easily has improved their final work.

Both of these articles address todays issues and I feel are must reads for teachers.

Adolecent Literacy

The NCTE continues to addressed the issue of literacy amoung adolecents.  The problem grows as thousands of teenagers drop out of schools every day.  Literacy is a complex activity that involves deep understanding through reading, writing, speaking, listening, and critical thinking within rhetorical contexts. Literacy Learning is a lifelong enterprise.  Individuals do not learn to read and write, once and for all, but again and again, in contexts of meaningful use.  Adolescents and young adults read and write for multiple purposes and audiences and in a variety of situations, many of which are located in digital, multi-media environments, many of which are located outside of schoolroom walls. As a personal and social process of building comprehension and making and articulating meaning, literacy of adolescents and young adults is integrally linked to academic excellence.
 
NCTE policies and actions in regard to adolescent and young adult literacy recognize that as adolescents’ literacies and needs are highly varied, the kinds of rich, engaging literacy practices needed must also be varied, and therefore must go beyond one-size-fits-all recommendations.  Likewise, while some policies and actions may be focused on specific populations (English Language Learners, struggling readers, young men) or types of literacies (digital, critical, cultural), the ultimate goal is increasing literacy skills for every adolescent.
   
If educators are to provide adolescents and young adults effective literacy instruction in schools, they must use the literacy experiences that students bring with them to school as starting points for instruction that enriches and extends students’ competencies and knowledge.  To do this, teachers must be aware of the variety of literacy experiences that students bring with them to the schoolroom, and they must know how to build upon their students’ prior reading and writing experiences to extend and enrich them.

Tucson recruiting Qualified Minority Teachers

The Tucson, Arizona school district is on a campaign to recruit highly qualified minority teachers.  The article written by Chelse Killebrew, see her web address, starapprentice@azstarnet.com , stated that the hope was if students could identify with their teacher, there was a better chance for their learning success.

They had found that spanish speaking teachers at the first grade level had immediate success with their students, because of the ability to speak the same language that the student was using in the home.  They also went on to state that by seeing teachers that were like themselves could foster a desire to enter the teaching field for secondary level students. 

I agree that seeing teachers that come from your background and speak the same language as you would be helpful to students.  I feel that the most critical aspect of teacher recruiting is in looking for highly qualified teachers regardless of the language they speak.  These students will go out into todays world and need to be able to perform at a level that might not use their home language.  I can see the benefit of having bi-lingual teachers in those areas that have a high level of none traditional english speaking students.

College Enrollment spikes as Economy turns down

The New York Times reports a surge in 2 year college enrollment 2008 versus 2007.  They attribute this to the slower economy and job losses.  Their November 11th article reported that all the city colleges were reporting increases of 30% to 50% over last year.

The article went on to say that many of the applicants were recent graduates that couldnot find employment.  The field that had the greatest interest is that of health care workers.  It is hoped that the 2 year colleges can help train and educate people for better paying futures.

Even though our economy is going through a rough time, maybe we can see a brighter future with a better  educated and trianed population.

You can find this article in www.newyorktimes.com

Open-ended Sentence ideas from NCTE

I have copied the below article from the NCTE web site that deals with teachers helping student writers.  This might be of assistance when we are grading and reviewing student writing project.

An Excerpt from “Sentence Combining: Building Skills through Reading and Writing” (Classroom Notes Plus, August 2008) One of the marks of a skilled writer is the ability to use sentence structure to enhance meaning, explains Deborah Dean. Teachers can help students develop that ability with sentence combining exercises like those Dean presents in the August 2008 Classroom Notes Plus. Here’s an excerpt, in which she introduces one type of sentence combining to try with students:  How to Create Open-ended Sentence Combining Activities To create open-ended activities, first find one or two sentences, in the reading for the class, that you think are particularly effective or that contain structures you want your students to learn. Use those as the basis for your kernel sentences. When my class was going to be reading a short biography of Nat King Cole, I selected this sentence from that reading to be the basis of that day’s SC activity: “He settled on the West Coast, playing in clubs and bars and eventually on his own radio show, with a trio of piano, guitar, and bass that featured a beautifully blended sound” (Jazz: My Music, My People, by Morgan Monceaux. Knopf, 1994. p. 48). From that sentence, I created the following set of kernel sentences: He settled on the West Coast. He played in clubs and bars. Eventually he played on his own radio show. He played with a trio of piano, guitar, and bass. His trio featured a beautifully blended sound.   When I used this particular sentence exercise in class, my students already had experience with sentence combining and de-combining. Travis, one of my students, declared in class that he could have created several more kernel sentences than I did—and he went on to prove it on the chalkboard. I was very pleased to see that he could break the sentences down as small as he did. It didn’t hurt my feelings; instead, I was glad that he could see what I had been trying to teach. So, if you aren’t as good as your students at creating the exercises, don’t worry. They’ll help. Deborah Dean, a former junior and high school teacher, is associate professor of English education at Brigham Young University, Salt Lake City, Utah. She is author of Strategic Writing: The Writing Process and Beyond in the Secondary English Classroom (NCTE, 2006) and Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being (NCTE, 2008).

I Love to write

I know that seems crazy to some, but really, I love to write.  I find myself engrossed in writing projects for hours, and enjoy it more than almost anything else that I do.  The abilit to express your thoughts and ideas are exciting to me.  I’ve spent hours researching something and writing about it without paying attention to the time.

Television is a waste and other than a good book, writing is my real passion.  I figure if I continue to write eventually I might actually get better.  Writing helps me explore my inner thoughts and through writing fiction novels, I have been able to create exciting sequences of events and interesting plots.

One day I hope I can teach this love to my students, and have them get the satisfaction that I have from seeing their written words in print.

Ideas from Classroom Notes Plus (NCTE)

I was surfing through some old National Council of Teachers of English, Classroom Notes plus and found an interesting quarterly issue dated January 2005.  It deals with many writing issues including a focus on having the students do more writing but the teaching doing less grading. 

It states that we all want our students to write more, for the more they write, the better they become.  It gives us strategies to increase students’ writing and decrease teacher grading time.  There are some great thoughts that should help all of us as we consider our teaching philosophy and how to approach students writing more to improve their skills.

You can check, www.ncte.org or you can go through the Wayne State Library system for these issues to help you formulate ideas.  Once you are on the NCTE web site, you can surf through journals by month and year.  The journal page gives you sample front pages of monthly journals from various years, or you can select a particular journal in the top right corner to review. 

Some of the hints I got from it are having students work in groups.  Collaborative essays might help them formulate ideas and the process of developing characters plus reviewing their combined work to improve their skills.  Students get a chance to practice their own writing while gaining experience from other students in forming characters and story line.  You are not out of the classroom grading papers but there helping the groups grow in their knowledge and idea formulation.  The grading process comes at the end of the writing not during ever step.