A Letter of Thanks to My Students

I would like to end our semester blogs together by thanking all of you for sharing so much of yourselves during our class.  I thank you for sharing your views, your knowledge, and your life experiences.  Your individual voices have enriched our course curriculum and have made our class discussions Socratic forums for respectful debate and inquiry.  I appreciate your open-mindedness and your willingness to explore new theories and insights.  For this maturity, I thank you.  I believe that it is only when we challenge ourselves that we truly grow as people, and even in one semester of writing methods, I can see true growth in each and every one of you as a teacher and as a writer.  You have ventured into the unknown at times and have succeeded due to your hard work and dedication to this course.  I am proud of the stellar work that you have accomplished thus far and am excited about all of the future successes you are sure to encounter along your teaching journeys. 

         I would like to further thank you for the energy that you bring with you to class every Tuesday.  Your energy is contagious and refreshing.  Your passions, your words, and your interests really do drive this course and make it what it has become. I have enjoyed this time as your teacher and look forward to the years ahead when I will see you all succeed as writers and as teachers.  Thank you for being THE REASON I enjoy coming into work each day.  It is because of YOU that I have become a teacher.  You have all become people in my life that I am truly grateful and honored to know.  Thank you for your willingness to learn, grow, and share with me this semester.  I wish you all much continued success as you continue on in your careers as life-long learners.    

                                             All my best,

                                             Nicole

P.S. A quote to ponder as the semester comes to a close:

“Writing organizes and clarifies our thoughts. Writing is how we think our way into a subject and make it our own. Writing enables us to find out what we know—and what we don’t know—about whatever we’re trying to learn.”

    –William Zinsser, Writing to Learn 

 My wish for you is that whatever you choose to do, make it your own.

Thanks Giving

Writing Prompt:

1. Give thanks for one thing that's easy to be grateful for - something big and obvious that comes to mind quickly.


2. Give thanks for something tiny and obscure - something you normally take for granted.


3. Give thanks for something you aren't grateful for. Find one reason why this thorny thing in your life is actually a blessing.

I’m thankful for rainy days gone sunny, and the windows opening just wide enough to let the breeze in during suffocating heat waves.  I’m thankful for the smell of cookie dough baking when burnt dreams are wafting in the air.  I appreciate the subtle smile of a co-worker or a student who pauses just long enough to show caring but not too long as if to avoid imposing.  I am thankful for the family that I have supporting me every day, to hold me up when harsh winds try to knock me down.  I’m thankful for eyes looking into my soul and understanding my heart without ever having to hear me utter a word.  Sometimes words are too frightful or too intangible to be teetered off the tongue.  So I’m thankful for understanding without speaking.  I’m thankful to be sitting around a table with the people who love me most in the world, and no matter what, will always love me most in the world.  I’m thankful for safekeeping, for personal safeties of my heart and personal safeties of my physical well-being.  I’m thankful for our health, for the good report cards we receive from our doctors and for the precious prayers that are answered.  I am thankful that our prayers are heard and that, so often, they are answered.  I’m thankful for genuine emotion and the ability to feel tears and laughter and exaltation.  And, although the knots that tie and twist inside of us are setbacks, I am thankful for the untying afterwards, for the wonderful days when I can sit back and say: this has been a good day because it has been my day and one that I feel in control of.  I am thankful for feeling powerful.  I am thankful for self-appointed power, for the power to control my actions, my emotions, and my words.  And at the end of the day, if I can truly say that my day was so much more than just “making it through” then I can be thankful that I have chosen to make the most of my moments.  Here’s to making the most of our moments.

NCTE Please... Join, Connect, Grow

For the past five days, I have been attending and presenting workshops at the NCTE convention.  With a masters degree and half of a doctorate completed in education at this point in my life, I still realize that I have much that I can learn from my colleagues in the field of English education.  I think that some people have the perception that a degree makes one an expert.  Some make the assumption that they have learned all there is to know to be successful teachers, but as the common philosophy of education goes: teachers are life-long learners.  After teaching high school and college courses, I continue to revise my curricula to make it more engaging and accessible for my students.  I listen to the suggestions of my students and my colleagues year after year and revise methods and topics as necessary.  The NCTE conference provides me with another avenue for revision.  By participating in workshops created by English and writing teachers around the country, I am able to adapt some of my teaching strategies to better fit the needs of all of my students. 

On Saturday, I had the good fortune of getting to hear Kelly Gallagher speak.  He is the author of our Teaching Adolescent Writers text.   Just as he writes about in his book, he talked about the fact that we must write beside our students.  We need to write the same assignments that we assign to them whether they are essays, papers, speeches, or in class free writes.  We need to edit in front of them.  He said that when our students see us struggling with writing it can almost be more valuable to them than when they see us write with ease and eloquence.  They need to see that we do not write perfectly all the time, especially in our first drafts.  This shows our students the importance of drafting and being willing to change/ edit/ cut our work.  It also shows our own willingness to experiment with new writing strategies that could create less than perfect writing.  No writer creates perfection in the first draft, and he wants our students to become comfortable with that idea. 

At this conference I had the privilege of hearing notable authors (such as Chris Crutcher), experienced teachers, and insightful researchers speak.  Each year I continue to grow as an educator and as a student at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference, and I strongly encourage any English educators or future ELA teachers to attend to enjoy the same career-changing experience that I have been enjoying over the past five years.  Please feel free to ask me any questions you might have about joining NCTE and about the 2012 NCTE Conference in Las Vegas. 

I'm sorry... I am not going to apologize for keeping my last name...

As Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in his New York Times best seller, The Tipping Point, hairstylists have a unique ability to be connectors and mavens spreading and sharing important information and ideas about life to their clients.  In Gladwell’s example, a hairstylist is able to share information with hundreds of clients at her beauty salon about pertinent health issues that her clients should be aware of and checked for regularly.  As a result of her word-of-mouth epidemic, this hairstylist was able to share an important message with a lot of people in a short amount of time.

Today, my hairstylist shared a message with me too.  When I checked in at the front desk, my hairstylist asked me for my maiden name since I had started going to him before I had gotten married.  I replied that my maiden name is actually still my last name because I did not change my name when I got married.  Therefore, there was no need for him to change the information in the computer. 

To this information he replied, “I do not like that at all.”

I came right back with, “Well, I do not care at all.”  Shocked and perturbed at his comment on my life choice, I wanted him to know that his opinion about my last name really did not matter to me.  It was my choice not his.  “I’m a feminist.  I don’t believe in changing my last name.”  He chuckled, which irritated me further and obviously elicited a longer explanation from me about why I chose to keep my last name when I got married.   I have plenty of educated reasons, so he got more than he bargained for I’m sure.

What I wanted to say was I don’t care at all what you think.  I don’t tell you what decisions to make with your partner, so don’t tell me what decisions to make with mine.  My husband knew who he was marrying years before we said “I do.”  My feminist state was not a newsflash to him.  In fact, I’m pretty sure that one of the reasons my husband loves me is because I never do anything without having a reason for doing it.  And, I stand up for what I believe in.  It’s a good thing I’m married to a man who is not threatened by a strong woman. My husband doesn’t need me to deny my own identity by taking on his. (Not that all people who take their spouse's last name are denying their own identities.  I completely respect a person’s right to choose what s/he does with his/her last name upon marriage.  It is his/her choice and his/ her name.  However, this is just what I wanted to say to him because I was angry. Okay, back to my ranting hypothetical response.)  We are two individuals who share an important common value: each other.  I’m married to a man who appreciates my individuality and my tenacity to stand up for what I believe in. He does not take my lack of traditional practices as a form of disrespect towards him, his family, or our marriage.  He loves me for me.  So I’m sorry that you don’t like it at all that I did not change my name when I got married, but my husband-- the man that I’m married to—does like it because that is what makes me me—the woman that he fell in love with and the woman he is still married to today.

I wanted to say all of those things to this small-minded person who thought he could change my behavior by announcing his disapproval with my life decisions.  But, I didn’t say most of those things for two reasons: (1) I did not want to denounce his lifestyle the way he was denouncing mine and (2) my hair was in his hands.  Instead, I opted for the academic argumentative approach and provided him with all of the historical, research-based reasons for my decision. He did not have to like them, but while I was sitting there he really did not have a choice but to listen to them.  Today, my hairstylist may have set out to send a message to me that he thought people should preserve prehistoric traditions of marriage, but in the end, I think I sent a stronger message: Don’t edit the life choices that people make.  As long as their choices are not physically causing you harm, keep your unasked for opinions to yourself.  If you are planning to share your opinions, be prepared for some refutation.  After all, you started the debate from the moment you said “I do not like…”  

A Place Where Two Rivers Meet-- STAR Applied

A place where two rivers meet—my lungs and my heart—meet quite often to make me work essentially.  I work essentially because I am the joining of two systems—theirs and mine.  I take from them what I find applicable, and I take from me what I feel is right.  I’ve never done something just because someone else said it should be done. I analyze; I improvise.  I work it out in the place where two rivers meet to make me whole.  My lungs who take in and let out and my heart who circulates my passions.  The taking in occurs everywhere—amongst peers, around superiors, alongside students.  The lessons I take in are circulated by my being, filtered by my guards, mixed with my beliefs, and then are let out in the same midst.  Through lungs and heart two worlds collide to fuse lessons that are beyond the grasp of some.  Yet, where two rivers meet, a cycle completes and resolves to start again.

Showing Students How to Consume One Advertisement at a Time

As a culture we are constantly being inundated with signs; some messages more overt than others. These signs are present in many forms, ranging from traffic signals to advertisements, which may seem more subliminal. When we see a stop sign as a culture, we almost always interpret that sign as an instruction to stop. The form, a red octogonal metal road sign, signifies the idea that one should stop driving a car upon reaching that sign. While we as an American culture collectively know the way we are meant to interpret road signs, we do not collectively know how we are meant to interpret the advertisements that we are inundated with every day.  Furthermore, the message intended by the advertiser may not even be the message that we receive as consumers. As an English teacher, I feel that it is my responsibility to teach my students how to read the world of advertising through a more analytical lens so that they may be more educated consumers.

Through the use of semiotics, students can be taught to analyze advertisements through a system of signs that is dyadic in nature.  This dyadic system of signs was developed by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure in order to analyze language and the sign systems present within it. Since words are signs, and many advertisements contain strings of words, then it is important for students to realize that depending on their context, the same words can signify different things. For example, if the word or form “massive” (the “signifier”) is placed on an advertisement of a resort in the Bahamas, consumers can probably assume that the idea or “signified” connected to that word is that the resort is very large and expansive.  This word will attract vacationers who are looking for an elaborate vacation complete with many grounds to explore.  However, if that same word were used on an advertisement for a dieting program, interpretation of meaning would more heavily depend on the placement and context of such a word.  Is the food amount permitted “massive?”  Is the diet center facility “massive?”  Does the diet center host a “massive” amount of clients?  Or will someone become “massive” if s/he does not follow this diet’s plan for healthy eating?  The multiple interpretations of one word or form necessitates an analysis of context as well as content.

 On a larger scale, the same is also true of advertisements. The decision to place an advertisement on television, on the radio, in a magazine, on a billboard, on a bus, or on a park bench can all lead to different interpretations of meaning of the advertisement.  The context of the ad placement will dictate the audience that will see the ad, thus influencing the types of people that will buy the product or service being sold. The trick to understanding the signs within the advertisement and the signs surrounding the advertisement is understanding Saussure’s system of signs first.  Only then can content and context be interpreted at an evaluative level of understanding.

Story Starters: Halloween Theme

Another way to help students generate ideas for creative writing is to provide them with story starters.  The free write may get students to think about certain characters they might want to include and certain settings that they might place their characters in.  Here is a sample of some free writes for Halloween story starters.  Rather than telling students "Write a story about a haunted house," it is often beneficial to give them a specific starting point.  Then they can develop the ideas from the free write or come up with their own Halloween stories.  (Notice that #10 has a connection to the characters that we started to develop in class.  Perhaps there is a story there? If you have not written your story yet, feel free to try out one of these story starters.  Be sure to use the planning page when you are starting to plan out your structured story.  Free writes, however, do not necessarily require a planning page first.  The free write might help students fill out a planning page later when starting to structure the story.)

Activity: Students should write a Halloween Happening (short story) of their choice.  The Halloween Happening should have a beginning, middle, and end.  There should be a plot, setting, and characters.  Here are some story starters:

1.) "What is that AWFUL smell?" I asked. Then I saw the cauldron full of bubbling purple liquid ...


2.) I took off my Halloween costume, washed the paint off my face, put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and went to bed. I was almost asleep when I first heard the sound ...


3.) One dark and rainy Halloween ...


4.) It was the night before Halloween ...


5.) The black cat twitched its tail twice. It hissed. Then ...


6.) Everybody said the old Bosworth mansion was haunted ...


7.) My brother/sister and I were walking through the woods one Halloween day when we saw what appeared to be a short cut. "Let's go that way," my brother said ...


8.) Ugh. I think I've eaten too much Halloween candy ...


9.) Tap. Tap. Tap. The sound came from inside the closet. Quietly, I crept toward the door ...


10.) When Amy met Henrald she was only six and he was 600, but they had more in common than one might have thought.  Halloween was their favorite holiday and....