Kate Conference

Kansas Association of Teachers of English 2017

This was my first time attending KATE or even any kind of professional conference so I walked into the weekend not knowing what to expect. As I review my notes over the weekend, I think what sticks out the most to me is the love for literature that those teachers had. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read and I have my favorite authors, however, when I won a book by Agathe Christie as a door prize and I didn’t know who she was- my fellow Core 3 classmates were shocked. Apparently, I have some reading to catch up on!

On Friday, I was not able to attend very many of the Breakout Sessions due to outside schedules; on Saturday, though, I heard a Breakout Session that really spoke to me. First, a few facts about me: I am a perfectionist, I beat myself up (mentally) when I can’t achieve perfection, especially in my schooling, and I struggle to not put myself in a pre-designed box and then beat myself up when I don’t fit. It’s all very unhealthy in an attempt to look perfect. I get that from my mother so let’s collectively blame her. So, on Saturday, after a small meltdown before 8 am, I decided to go to the Breakout Session by Brooke Johnson called Finding Balance by Letting Go.

In an hour-long session, most of which was spent laughing, Brooke Johnson talked about her meltdown in the classroom, being diagnosed with anxiety and depression, and eventually finding a way to make teaching manageable through slash identities and permission slips. Johnson got these foundations from the author Brene Brown. A slash identity is basically writing down everything that you do to fill time in your life and everything that you want to do (ex. Teacher/student/runner) so that if one area of your life starts to fade, your whole identity doesn’t fade with it. I found this especially important as I look out on my first year of teaching- it seems so easy to give my life away to everything that goes into teaching and very quickly end up burned out and having a meltdown during 7^th hour. Having different parts of your life that you dedicate time to and that fulfill your soul makes balance in your life so much easier- getting up from the desk and leaving the school at a reasonable hour is easier when you have a life outside of the double doors. For the past two days I’ve started writing down everything in my life that I consider a part of my identity as well as other areas I’d like to explore so that I can find ways to fulfill my life outside of teaching; I want teaching to be the icing on the cake of life.

Permission slips, the second part of this session, are going to be a life saver- I can already tell. Basically, you write a permission slip for yourself regarding anything in life: permission to leave the school early, permission to close your classroom door during lunch, permission to decline the invitation to that shower, permission to let yourself off the hook for turning that assignment in late, etc.… As I wrote out a few permission slips for myself, I realized that it rubbed my perfectionist self raw but that was exactly what I need: permission to not be perfect.

I walked out of that Breakout Session feeling motivated to develop healthier mental habits in my life, especially my teaching life. I have had numerous veteran teachers tell me that the turnover rate for new teachers rises every year because of all that is expected of a teacher: the teaching and the paperwork and the planning and the support and anything else that gets added before I graduate. I would like very much to not be included in the turnover rate and I have a great Mentor Teacher who is using this last year of my college to slowly introduce me to all aspects of teaching and letting me try my hand at small chunks of planning/grading/parent meetings/etc. so that when I walk into my own classroom, I am more prepared. However, I want to be prepared to take care of myself mentally and physically as well, so that as each new school year rolls around I am there in my classroom greeting students.

There were so many other great things about the KATE conference and each Breakout Session offered something to feed the mind- I wrote on the Breakout Session affected me most immediately; I felt that I needed to hear that Session on that day and before I melt under the stress of Core 3- I give myself permission to take a break and take a walk.  

Creative Writing and 7th Graders

It’s now October and I’ve had the opportunity to assist and watch my MT teach her first unit of the year: a novel study. As the students are wrapping up this novel study, the final assignment is a writing assignment- each student is to write an epilogue for the novel in which they include themselves in the story line as a character. While the students balked at the idea of reading an entire book (the horror!), they have mostly jumped right into the idea of this writing assignment- probably because they can use the chrome books but whatever works!  While assisting the MT and conferencing with students in the last three class periods as they have been writing this epilogue I have noticed some interesting things about the writing: 

• Some of the students beautifully summarized the novel itself but added nothing to story nor made themselves apart of the story. The distinction between summarizing the novel and creatively adding to the novel had to be made several times using an example of my MT's own epilogue before some students quit trying to write a book report. Imaginative writing of this nature was very laborious for some of the students. Though they quickly breezed through a summary of the book, adding to the book with creativity thought up by themselves stumped quite a few of them.
  


• The way the students spoke and the way they talked were almost completely parallel. There was almost no formal English in the writing- distinct speech patterns became distinct writing patterns and I think that if names were removed from the individual epilogues, I could still make a pretty good guess on whose was whose.
  
  
• Myself being a very strong reader and a strong writer, I was amazed at the difference that the students went about creating an epilogue out of their imagination and the way I did. I very quickly wrote myself into the story by creating a new role and new interactions between the main characters and myself that tied back to the story line. It took a matter of minutes and I didn’t pull from any direct source around me to come up with my modified storyline. However, a large portion of the students pulled directly from other sources of literacy in their lives and I could read it in their stories. One student basically rewrote a story that had been on the news but instead made herself and the characters the focus of the story; another kid took the theme and details of a popular video game and put himself and the characters into the game. I also noticed that some of the students wrote the epilogue around the drama of going on in their lives: boyfriends breaking up with them or 'cheating' on them, friendships broke up, and other issues along that thread.

 

When reading the epilogues of various students during class time and conferences I tried very hard not to get caught up in surface editing. Instead of spending time correcting punctuation and sentence structure, I tried to instead complement each student on their storyline and suggest ways to make it stronger or suggest a different turn the story could take. Of course, I did remind them to include punctuation at the end of a sentence, capitalize the first letter of the sentence, and capitalize names and other minor details such as that I tried to not to overly focus on grammar. I think that if I had made a big deal of the grammar aspect of the writing process a lot of the kids would have shut down and accomplished nothing on the assignment.

As I begin planning my unit to teach in the classroom, and the one I will turn in for a grade, I have made creative writing a large part of them both. I think the thing most students struggled with the most was putting their own opinion onto paper- even though I told all of them numerous times that they had great and interesting things to say, a lot of students struggled to convince themselves that their stories were 'good enough'. They were engaged and they were struggling. As I have been making the plans for my unit, I have weaved creative writing into every single day; when the class gets to the last project (writing of course) I want them to be much more comfortable with the idea of using their own ideas to create an essay.


Overall, I am really enjoying getting to know my students writing styles and I can't wait to see if my unit works well with them! I love all the students in that class and I was amazed that I was thinking of all of them while I was planning.

Dear Students

Dear Students

• Dear Alex: please sit down; forget distracting the class, you’re distracting me!
• Dear Leo: I’m so sorry you got kicked in the stomach on the bus to school. It’s 7^th hour so the pain has faded but now you are distracted thinking about your bus ride home.
• Dear Grady: the sub was wrong when she said you were a terrible person- you are bright and funny and I love having you in my class.
• Dear Lucy: nobody ever returns phone calls or emails, is anyone home taking care of you?
• Dear Carson: I see you trying so hard even with your broken glasses; I wish I could take you to the eye doctor.
• Dear Kale: thank you for the three-minute basketball lessons during passing period; I’m so glad you have something you love.
• Dear Alexis: you are SO SMART! You don’t need me to hold your hand during the entire assignment, trust me.
• Dear Randi: no matter how many times I talk to you- you still have outbursts in class. What am I missing?
• Dear Darby: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD QUIT BRINGING SLIME TO SCHOOL. THANK YOU.
• Dear Emily: I take it personally when you sing and dance while I am talking; if you are going to ignore me, please do it discreetly.
• Dear Isaiah: thank you for telling me that I was the best teacher’s assistant you’ve ever had. Even if I’m really the teacher.
• Dear Danny: the first time I lead class alone your behavior was so bad that I cried in the shower that night. 
• Dear Lilly: every time marriage comes up in a class discussion you warn everyone that when you get married then your husband might start beating you. You're only thirteen- I guess fairy tales died young for you. 
• Dear Eli: you have so much energy! Seriously, I want to make you go run laps before you come into class. At least you are smiling while you’re bouncing off the walls.
• Dear Students: I’m trying so hard- thank you for coming to school today.

-Teacher

-All names are pseudonyms that represent real students walking into the classroom every day.