A New Page

Hello to old and new readers!

This is our new (free) home, and hopefully where we'll stay forever. As you can see, the archives are out of order, but I don't think it matters much. I'd rather build new ideas than revisit the past, anyway.

If you're new to Adventures of an Urban Reading Teacher, here's the scoop:

I teach reading classes for adults through the Adult Basic Education division of Los Angeles Unified School District. Although we're supposed to focus on adults, we have also thrown open the doors to teenagers--sometimes as young as 13 years old--who often have either learning disabilities or behavioral problems. Not only that, but the ABE has thrown out its old reading programs, so we're struggling to find a suitable way of updating our methods to reflect the new research. And, while the new methods are exciting and--if you ask me--effective, it can be overwhelming to overhaul curriculum, juggle different age/background demographics, and find the balance between lesson planning and classroom management all at the same time.

In other words...the sh*t has hit the fan!!

This blog is my way of trying to work through these issues. I hope it becomes a resource for teachers who are struggling with the same issues, as well as a sounding-board for myself. A place to give and get advice.

Please take a look at the past posts. They're really meant more as a way of catching you up with what life in the classroom is like than as true archives. I hope you're inspired to write a few comments and give this new (and often bemused) teacher a little help.

Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire

I happened across a copy of Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56 by chance. In the library, lost amongst the new non-fiction, it popped out at me as I idly looked over the shelf, waiting for some woman to stop screaming at the librarian long enough for me to check out my materials. (Honestly. What kind of a head case screams at a librarian? Only in LA.) The book practically hopped into my hand. And I'm so glad!

Rafe Esquith teaches his fifth-graders one basic principle: "Be nice and work hard." And it works. He teaches them to trust him and to allow him to trust them in return. And it works. He teaches them Shakespeare and Vivaldi and gets them to join bookclubs that meet before school and shows them how to study for tests and how to think about other people before themselves. And it works! And, as Esquith asserts, he isn't particularly special--neither are his students. It's just that he approaches each day as not just an opportunity to turn his pupils into better students--but to help them become better human beings.

Eschewing the fear tactics many desperate teachers resort to, Esquith demonstrates how the teacher should be the nicest, hardest-working person the students know:

"I answer all questions. It does not matter if I have been asked them before. It does not matter if I am tired. The kids must see that I passionately want them to understand, and it never bothers me when they don't...We parents and teachers get mad at our kids all the time, and often for good reason. Yet, we should never become frustrated when a student doesn't understand something. Our positive and patient response to questions builds an immediate and lasting trust that transcends fears."

He also questions the value of presenting students with simplified, "dumbed-down" texts rather than the real thing. Why have students read a selection from The Diary of Anne Frank when they could read the whole thing? Of course, you have to present the material in a way the students find accessible and easy-to-follow, but Esquith believes in bringing materials to the classroom you are truly passionate about. He explains why just letting students read without the proper guidance doesn't always work so well:

"The students were too young to understand anything in the book. They were given no background on World War II and couldn't even find the Netherlands on a map. Seemingly incomprehensible abbreviations and words like BBC and menstruation turned off even this teacher's most diligent students. When they later came to my class, they moaned when I told them Anne Frank was on our reading list."

What I really like about this book is that it's not just a list of lesson plans. (Although he does have some great ideas that work for students of all ages.) Esquith is, essentially, a philosopher. He lays his brain and his heart out on the page, urging readers to believe that respect, honesty, kindness, and compassion are a teacher's greatest tools, even under the most frustrating circumstances. And he's from LAUSD.

Basically, Esquith wants us to follow the same advice he gives his students. Be nice. Work hard. Sounds simple enough, right?

I'm only part-way through the book, but I'm really enjoying it so far. Pick up a copy, and we can talk about it!

Like Reader's Karaoke

Here's something cool you can do for your students if you have a mac computer--make vocabulary CDs. (I'm sure you can do this using a PC, too, but you might have to buy a program and/or a microphone.)

I did this in a matter of about an hour, using mac's Garage Band feature. You record your voice directly onto the computer, without a microphone, by just speaking into the little built-in "microphone holes." (Not a technical term.) Then, you download the track to iTunes and burn it onto a writable CD from there. Today, I handed the CDs out to my students along with vocabulary lists so that they could read-along with my voice and practice at home.

Easy peasy. And my students were really pleased, particularly my ESL adults. I'm sure some of the teenagers will use them for target practice.

Once you get the hang of the Garage Band program, you could use it for all kinds of things. What about reading whole stories so that students can practice fluency over the weekend? Or burning background-building songs--like jazz, if you're studying the 1920s--onto a disc and recording your own intros that explain how the songs are related to their studies? You could even get the students involved and record some of their poems or reader's theatre.

The possibilities are endless!

image of karaoke awesomeness from "Lost In Translation"

LD Links

Here are links to some interesting sites related to learning disabilities:

LD Online has a lot of information that I found especially useful as somebody new to the subject. Yes, they're ultimately shilling a product, but the site is extensive nonetheless.

National Center for Learning Disabilities has fact sheets, a newsletter, and really interesting scholarships and writing competitions for students with LD.

TeensHealth has an article written for teens who are wondering what LD is and whether or not they have the symptoms.

This is an interesting one from the National Institue for Literacy--a transcript of what appears to be an online discussion about how highschoolers with LD transition into adulthood. Dr. Arlyn Roffman of Cambridge leads the discussion, and it's got all kinds of questions from real teachers and others in the field.

Happy reading!

image from Look Locally

The Dreams of Sparrows

We're studying historical treasures as part of the AMP Program. Last week, we learned about the Civil War and Confederate gold, and this week we're learning about the looting of the Baghdad Museum. I knew this would be a hairy topic, because most of my students don't know which direction the Pacific Ocean is, much less what Baghdad is or how to find Iraq on a map.

Since the beginning of the term, we've been studying maps. Every time we learn about a new place, we mark it with a star sticker on our own personal maps and tuck the maps away in our Reader's Bibles. Then, before the students leave for the night, I make each and every one of them point out the country we've studied on the big world map next to the door. It's a small thing, but this is stuff they should know. (Last week we studied the Civil War, and I couldn't believe how many of them were unable to find the United States.) So, of course, we talked about where Iraq was in relation to ourselves and even talked a little about Mesopotamia and its historical significance.

We looked at the maps. We discussed the concept of the Cradle of Humanity. We talked about what we'd heard about the Iraq War. But my students still didn't have any concept of what Iraq looked or felt like. They only knew what they'd seen on the news--bombs, terrorism, injured Americans. So, I showed them The Dreams of Sparrows, an amazing documentary made by Iraqi film students. I was a little worried about the subtitles, but my students were just fascinated. The film does a great job of explaining the situation there, using interviews from people of all walks of life. My favorite segment is when the interviewer visits a lunatic asylum and then a writer's union, back-to-back; the seemingly different groups say almost the same exact thing.

By the time the movie ended (it runs a short 75 minutes), my students were full of questions and predictions. Frankly, I was a little amazed at how interested they were. Tomorrow, I'm going to show them excerpts from Baghdad Burning, a blog written by a young Iraqi woman. She has an astonishingly frank and witty style, but her voice is edged with anger as she reports on the joys and injustices of everyday life.

It's such a tricky subject to teach, particularly since it changes on an almost daily basis. However, I know they will use this beyond the walls of the school. It's worth the extra effort.

image: still shot from the movie The Dreams of Sparrows

Tangerines

...they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

-"This is Just to Say" William Carlos Williams

Today, one of my students brought me a box of tangerines, and that poem went through my head. As a child, I never understood why some people gave each other oranges for Christmas. But, now that I'm an adult, I crave citrus when the temperature drops. It reminds me of sunshine. I think about the sunlight swelling inside each segment, and I want it to drip down my throat, light up my limbs, heal the bitter cold that seems trapped inside me.

What other job affords you such satisfying luxuries, like little gifts from God?

Hamlet

No Fear Shakespeare is the young, hip division of Sparknotes that translates Shakespeare classics into "the kind of English people actually speak today." If you want to journey even further into the bowels of hip-dom, pick up one of No Fear's Graphic Novels--illustrated by established artists and presented in backpack-friendly paperbacks.

Although I don't expect my students to start spouting soliloquies, I do want them to be at least passingly familiar with Shakespeare and his language. So, this term we're studying Hamlet--just a little taste of it for fifteen to twenty minutes every Thursday. I started off by telling them the story the way I would if we were sitting around a campfire, with lots of jokes and hand gestures to keep them excited. Now I'm showing them the story again, this time accompanied by pictures from the Hamlet graphic novel. Next week, we'll watch scenes from the movie, and then we'll finally start reading parts of the play ourselves. (I meant to bring in an audio CD last week, but it just didn't happen. Boo, me.)

If you think "graphic novel" is the fancy new term for "comic book," think again. This version of Hamlet is surprisingly imaginative and smart, as well as emotionally gripping. I studied Hamlet as part of my playwright training in college, and I still learned new stuff! For example, the scene in which Ophelia cracks up and starts handing out flowers...Ophelia tells us that rosemary is for remembrance, but then she passes out a whole bouquet of buds without much comment. The graphic novel puts little scrolls next to the flowers to let the reader know what they represent. Ophelia gives the queen columbines and fennel--a sign of adultery. She gives the king rue, for repentance. (The illustrator shows Ophelia giving him a knowing little wink here.) She gives herself a daisy, for unhappy love. And she speaks of the violets that whithered when he father was murdered; violets stood for faithfulness.

I especially love the way the prince himself is portrayed--a slim, trenchcoat-wearing, heavy-lidded youth with pale skin and crazed dark eyes. This is no Mel Gibson or Kenneth Branaugh. This is Hamlet as he's always appeared in my own mind's eye: impossibly young and heartbreakingly fragile. When he dies, you feel the tragedy of his wasted life.

Whether you're teaching Shakespeare to others or just enjoy the classics yourself, No Fear Shakespeare's Graphic Novel of Hamlet is a refreshingly accessible resource. And, at about $10, it's easy on the wallet.