Using Cognates to Expand English Language Learners' Vocabulary

As part of my RETELL training (see more about this here), we have been discussing different ideas and techniques for making academic content more accessible for English language learners (ELLs). Recently, in response to an assignment, my friend and colleague, Megan from Breaking Grad(School), called attention to the idea of using cognates to help students connect new vocabulary words in English to familiar words in their native languages, which I think is a beautifully simple and genius idea. Whenever a pedagogical strategy honors and relies on students' prior knowledge, I'm always predispositioned to like it. So I decided to do some resource hunting on the topic and, as always, I learned a few things!

Just so we're all on the same page, I'll define cognates as words from two different languages that are derived from a common linguistic root or ancestor, causing them to share similar meanings, spellings, and/or pronunciations. Cognates almost always have the same meanings as one another, although not every time; however, they appear to be extremely similar on paper. The idea here is that, if we can teach ELLs to identify cognates or if we can give them lists of cognates in their primary language, they will more quickly and easily be able to acquire the corresponding cognates in English. For example, when teaching a Spanish-speaking ELL the word "abbreviation," a quick and easy shortcut is to point them to the Spanish cognate of that word, "abreviación," which has the same meaning.

Obviously this strategy is more helpful in some languages than in others. English shares very few cognates with languages like Chinese or Arabic. However, according to research by Colorin Colorado, 30-40% of all words in English have a Spanish cognate. That works out to around 10,000-15,000 English words that a Spanish-speaking ELL most likely has easy access to. This handy Massachusetts Association of Teachers of Speakers of Other Languages (MATSOL) factsheet tells us that over 50% of ELLs in Massachusetts speak Spanish. So, when working with Spanish-speaking ELL students, which, statistically speaking, will be more often than not, the use of cognates to build vocabulary is a useful tool.

Like I mentioned earlier, I love this strategy because it takes advantage of knowledge that students already have in a language that is comfortable for them. It can also be a tool to boost ELL student confidence in an environment where they feel disadvantaged when compared to their English-speaking peers. In a webcast interview, researcher Diane August points out that the many Spanish-English cognate pairs are actually made up of what is a very commonly-known, basic word in Spanish and a fairly high-level, Tier 2 or 3 word in English. This means that a simple, commonly-used word in Spanish might actually have an SAT-level cognate in English, giving Spanish-speaking ELLs an advantage in vocabulary acquisition.

A small catch to this idea is the existence of false cognates, which are words that are spelled and pronounced very similarly to one another, but do not actually share a common meaning. An example of this would be the words "actually" and "actualmente." Relying on the cognate trick, an ELL student might assume these two words share a meaning; however, in Spanish, "actualmente" means "currently" and "actually" best translates into "en realidad." When using cognates to teach ELLs new vocabulary, it's a good idea to make sure they are aware of the possibility of false cognates so they aren't caught off-guard when they meet one. Fortunately, statistics from cognates.org show that only around 5% of cognates in the English language are false; so ELLs will benefit more often than not from assuming a familiar word is a cognate.

Another slightly larger catch to this idea is that the teacher of the class has to actually know which cognate to point to to help build vocabulary. Since my foreign language knowledge is definitely insufficient to meet the diverse needs of Massachusetts ELL students, I found a few great websites that identify some common and helpful cognates in a variety of languages.

• For Spanish
• For Spanish, Portugese, Italian, or French
• For Spanish, Portugese, Italian, French, or Romanian
• Common false cognates in Spanish

Ultimately, as with most things, the usefulness of this strategy can only be determined on a case-by-case basis; however, it's definitely an idea I'll keep in my toolbox just in case.

The Problem of Plagiarism: Asking Why - Part 3 of 5

In my last post, I attempted to investigate and complicate the way in which we commonly define plagiarism.  It is impossible, however, to discuss a more multifaceted understanding of plagiarism without then going on to consider how that understanding complicates our assumptions as to why students plagiarize. When we perceive plagiarism to very simply be cases in which students "steal" the words or ideas of others in order to pass them off as their own, we reduce the list of potential motivations down to laziness and deceitfulness.  Either a student couldn't be bothered to complete her own work or she just wanted to cheat the system and get away with literary theft.  If, however, we are going to consider plagiarism as occurring over a spectrum, as we did in my prior post, then we must be willing to consider the corresponding spectrum of situations and rationales that might prompt students to engage in these different kinds of plagiarism.

In her article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Rebecca Moore Howard captures the danger in a simplistic rationale for why students plagiarize, saying, "by thinking of plagiarism as a unitary act rather than a collection of disparate activities, we risk categorizing all of our students as criminals." It is not only demoralizing and harmful to minimize all our students in this way; it is also inaccurate according to the often-quoted-in-this-blog Keith Hjortshoj and his co-author Katherine Gottschalk.  In their own classroom experiences, Hjortshoj and Gottschalk found that instances of plagiarism did not "correspond with integrity among the students" (Teaching Writing 118).  Drawing from their time teaching, they recount many instances in which an ethical and motivated student committed some form of plagiarism.  When reflecting on the numerous occasions in which they had to respond to plagiarism in their classrooms, Hjortshoj and Gottschalk say, "while all of these cases involve misrepresentation, their motivations and implications can be entirely different" (Teaching Writing 118).

Several recent scholars and organizations have begun theorizing on what exactly some of these different motivations might be.  Based on their research, I have compiled a list of just a few alternative reasons students could have for committing some degree of plagiarism.

• A General Lack of Ability: Jennifer Rabold has said, "I see plagiarism as an issue of students trying to enter the academic conversation unskillfully."  For a motivated student who wants very much to succeed in an assignment, but who does not have the skills to do so, it may be easy to either intentionally or unintentionally rely too heavily or incorrectly on outside sources.  As part of the process of further investigating this idea, the Council of Writing Program Administrators (WPA), Hjortshoj, and The Citation Project have identified a few specific skills-based pitfalls that students may fall into when attempting to incorporate outside information and voices into their writing.
  • Inability to Critically Read and Summarize Complex Sources: Work done by The Citation Project shows that, when citing sources in their papers, students summarized an outside work only 6% of the time, "indicating that they either could not or would not engage with extended passages of text."  The Citation Project's position on this is that plagiarism is unavoidable in situations where students are not able to critically read and interact with complex sources.
  • Lack of Established Personal Voice: When writing within the different academic disciplines, students are developing and exercising the ability to write using different voices and lenses required by the individual disciplines.  Students are being asked to write as experts in particular fields on particular topics, even though writing from that perspective and in that manner is very unfamiliar for them.  (I discuss this in more depth in my post on disciplinary literacy.) This lack of familiarity can cause students to lose track of where their ideas and words are original and where they borrow from outside sources.  Hjortshoj and Gottschalk explain this by saying, "The difficulties novice writers face in establishing an authoritative voice and position can make the task of quoting and citing real authorities very confusing.  Many students therefore drift into minor forms of plagiarism because the approach they have used does not give them a sense of position from which they can easily distinguish their ideas and voices from those of other writers" (Teaching Writing 119).
  • Confusion Surrounding the Technical Mechanics of Citation: It doesn't take much more than a casual thumbing through the most current MLA or APA handbook to establish that the list of rules governing correct documentation of the ideas of others is overwhelming for developing writers.  The WPA's Statement on Best Practices for Defining and Avoiding Plagiarism acknowledges that "students may not know how to integrate the ideas of others and document the sources of those ideas appropriately in their texts."  A student writer may be genuinely overwhelmed or confused when trying to understand the guidelines and, as the WPA reminds us, "error is a natural part of learning."

• Cultural or Language Difference: American school systems and academics have a very specific understanding of what is appropriate and necessary when attributing credit for ideas and words.  This understanding is not objective and it is not shared equally on a global basis.  Hjortshoj and Gottschalk point out that "in some cultures... repeating what authorities say is almost a definition of learning."  It is understandably difficult for students coming from an international or multilingual background to understand what it means or why they would be asked to "take an independent or original perspective, especially when they truly have learned from others everything they know about the subject, including the language required to discuss it" (Teaching Writing 119).

• Time Constraints:  The modern American student has more demands on their time and attention than ever before.  A 2008 New York Times article reported that a high-performing high school had to enforce a lunch period after their students became so entrenched in extra-curricular activities, AP classes, and part-time jobs that they were skipping their midday meals.  The expectations on students to build resumes and accumulate accomplishments at an overwhelming rate have only grown since this article.  The WPA points out that students may make time-management or planning errors and "believe they have no choice but to plagiarize" in order to meet important deadlines.

This list is in no way meant to be comprehensive.  My only goal is to offer some different options to consider when thinking about why students fall into plagiarism.  While I emphatically acknowledge that blatant and intentional literary theft does indeed occur and demands response, I am attempting to advocate for the increasing number of student writers who authentically struggle with the ethics and complexities of citing sources.

In my admittedly limited experience and untested opinion, students are generally trying to learn, create good work, and live up to the expectations that are placed on them. The increasing levels of plagiarism in the academic system are much less an indication of decreasing interest levels and morality among students than they are of a sharp incline in the complexity of navigating outside sources.  The internet's limitless access to an impossible range of sources makes choosing, interacting with, and incorporating those sources a very challenging task.  This challenge is layered onto the already-difficult undertaking of composing a piece of academic writing.  Hjortshoj and Gottschalk identify that this process is, for almost all novice writers, characterized by "helplessness and confusion" (Teaching Writing 120).  Based on some of the research summarized in this post, it appears to be the case that this helplessness and confusion can fairly easily lapse into an incorrect use of the works of others.  I believe it is up to modern educators to remain sensitive to the variety of reasons students engage in different types of plagiarism.  This sensitivity is what leads to effective responses to plagiarism when it does occur, which is what I plan to address in my next post!

Disciplinary Literacy: An UnConference

My aforementioned love for conferences grows with every conference I am able to attend.  Fortunately, just yesterday, I had the opportunity to further convince myself of the importance of conferences in my own personal growth as an educator by attending the truly unique Massachusetts Disciplinary Literacy UnConference held at Brookline High School. This unconference was organized by Salem State University's illustrious Jacy Ippolito and focused, as the title promises, on disciplinary literacy. As an unconference, yesterday's events were designed in order to shift the locus of expertise from the keynote speakers and presenters, as with a traditional conference, to the attendees, making this an unconference.  Working with our collective expertise, the unconference attendees made for a fantastic collaborative and generative environment in which educators, administrators, and even MA state officials were able to share their knowledge, experience, and concerns on how to effectively implement disciplinary literacy in the MA school systems.  We were encouraged to focus on learning from teachers who work in disciplines different than our own in order to broaden and challenge our understandings of literacy education. As you can imagine, the day was a whirlpool of networking, collaboration, creative problem-solving, idea-generation, and sharing of resources.

In addition to the list of contacts, resources, and ideas I left the unconference with, I also left with a new conviction of the critical importance of disciplinary literacy education in the modern classroom.  My goal for this post is to share some of that conviction and explain my own understanding of how teaching reading and writing within the difference academic disciplines can shape and guide our pedagogy.

Traditionally, reading and writing has been understood, according to Timothy Shanahan and Cynthia Shanahan as "a basic set of skills, widely adaptable and applicable to all kinds of texts and reading situations" (40).  This essentially means that, if you learn to read, summarize, paraphrase, and identify main topics in a piece of writing, you should be able to apply those skills generally across any discipline.  The basic skills you learn in middle school need only to be honed and applied across the academic disciplines in order to achieve successful learning. So why are secondary and higher education literacy skills so poor?  Why do universities and colleges from the entire array of academic disciplines bemoan the atrocious literacy skills their scholars bring to the classroom?

What Shanahan and Shanahan propose is that a student's literacy skills need to develop as the literacy-related tasks become more difficult and more specialized throughout a student's coursework.  Figure 1 below shows the pyramid diagram from Shanahan and Shanahan's article, "Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content-Area Literacy."

Shanahan and Shanahan are making the point that the skills we nebulously think of as "reading and writing skills" actually work very differently within the different disciplines.  A chemist will read differently than a mathematician who will read differently than a historian.  The writing skills that a literary critic uses will be of very little use for someone who is writing a technical report or an article for a scientific journal.  If we are not explicitly teaching students how to read within the respective disciplines they are studying, we are not adequately equipping them to have success with the content we are trying to teach them.

The next step in solving this equation is equipping all teachers to be aware of and teach literacy skills within their discipline.  This means helping math, science, history, and world language teachers to become aware of specific strategies and expectations that characterize reading and writing within their disciplines so that they can model and share those skills with their students.  Students need to learn to read like a historian  when reading a history textbook or to write like a biologist when writing a research paper for biology class in order to successfully access the disciplinary content.

Sometimes problems with implementing this kind of disciplinary literacy education occur when we run up against the common misconception that literacy is an ELA teacher's responsibility.  Traditionally, ELA teachers are supposed to educate students on how to read and write so that they can apply those skills in their other disciplinary classes.  In theory, this means that, if a student hands in a horrifically written lab report to her science teacher, the ELA teacher has failed his job in preparing the student to write in that genre.  If a student is unable to comprehend the word problem in his geometry textbook, the ELA teacher has failed to adequately teach reading comprehension.  The absurdity of this becomes apparent when we realize that many ELA teachers are not equipped with the disciplinary knowledge to teach scientific writing or mathematic reading comprehension.  The literacy skills required in each of these disciplinary tasks are vastly different from the skills required to write analytical essays or read and analyze novels. Doug Buehl says it best by saying, "In other words, students need to be mentored to read, write, and think in ways that are characteristic of discrete academic disciplines" (10).

All these ideas and more were the foundation for much of the discussion in yesterday's unconference.  It was truly inspiring to see educators from all disciplines and districts coming together to work towards a better plan for helping students achieve the literacy skills they need to succeed academically.  Science teachers were learning how to teach reading skills and reading teachers were learning how to help their students prepare for their discipline-specific literacy tasks.  My notes from our time together are fairly extensive and I hope this post is just the starting place for future thoughts and research on interdisciplinary literacy as a part of this blog.

Someone's Getting Cookies

I'm going to pause my mini series on 21st century literacies to dedicate a brief post to the most wonderful senior who found my wallet last Friday after school hours, rescued it, locked it in his locker all weekend, and then came to bring it back to me on Monday. What a guy!

 

An Important Day

Today is my mum's birthday. My mum is a wild and free thing with an eye for adventure. She is a lifelong learner and a subject matter expert on kindheartedness in all situations.  She is a nebulous blend of social butterfly and introvert. She is also an accomplished ping pong player, although it is said that my sister can beat her. 

 

 Above all of these things, however, my mum is a teacher at her core. 

Before my sister and I even came along, she taught first grade at a small private school, where she was unilaterally adored. See below for evidence. 

When my sister and I were born, my mum homeschooled both of us while my family shipped around the world in a 52-foot sailboat. My mum filled our homeschool days with hands-on learning, creativity, and a passion for understanding. Somehow, my sister and I both came back to the states performing above our grade levels.  

When our church was in need of a high school youth leader, my mum shrugged and volunteered. Her young heart and passion for fun drew kids in and, within a year, youth group attendance almost doubled. 

My mum also teaches Sunday School at our church and has done so on and off for most of her life. Wrangling preschoolers anytime before noon on a weekend morning is a task I'm not well-suited for, but my mum is magic. She corrals them with laughs and smiles; they all learn and have a grand time together while most of the world is still fumbling for their morning coffees.

Outside the classroom is actually where most of my mum's teaching takes place. Her patient, humble, and silly heart naturally shares and encourages learning in those around her. She teaches forgiveness, goodnaturedness, and optimism to anyone lucky enough to spend time with her.

Every year at Christmas, my sister and I unwrap and hang countless ornaments addressed to 'Miss Oien' or 'Mrs. Hashem' from a small sampling of the innumerable students whose lives she brightened. And I think how lucky I am to have learned most everything I know from a teacher like her. 

Who needs hair salons?

But really. Who needs them when you have students that can do this!

Magic.

The Genre of Hip-Hop Literature

I work in an urban, ethnically diverse school system.  My students have a more difficult time than most connecting with canonical classics such as The Scarlet Letter, A Tale of Two Cities, and 1984 for a wide variety of completely legitimate reasons. It is no big secret that I harbor something of a grudge against the exclusive use of canonical texts in the American classroom; more on this in a prior blog post.  I am a massive supporter of bringing non-traditional, non-Western, non-canonical texts into the high school curriculum whenever possible; I think it is an extremely important issue.  In general, this is why I am so excited by and impressed with Lauren Leigh Kelly's 2013 article, "Hip-Hop Literature: The Politics, Poetics, and Power of Hip-Hop in the English Classroom." Kelly's article explores the merits of using hip-hop texts in a high-school English classroom not just as a gateway into more canonical literature, but as a "genre worthy of independent study" (51).  In Kelly's opinion, using hip-hop texts as nothing more than a stepping stone to bridge the gap between student knowledge and canonical texts only further isolates many students from accepted canonical texts while privileging the predominantly white, Western culture of the canonical texts over the diverse, multicultural nature of hip-hop music.  In order to teach literature students, particularly urban and low-income students, to recognize the power behind their own individuality, personal experiences, and cultures, Kelly holds that it is necessary to teach hip-hop texts as a literary form in their own rights without juxtapositioning them against the traditional, Western canonical works.  Kelly argues that to deprive modern students of the opportunity to analyze and study literature from this genre not only deprives some students of the opportunity for identification and creation of ownership in a text, but it robs all students of the opportunity to learn about a relevant and culturally diverse art form that plays a major role in modern pop culture.

I am a big believer in using genre awareness to teach literature and composition; I also believe that it is important for students to explore genres outside of those seen as traditionally literary.  In order to understand the social and cultural nature of genre development, it is critical to analyze both academic and well-known literary genres as well as modern, more recent genres that play a larger role in pop culture.  Kelly's assertion that hip-hop literature is a genre in its own right fits well with the definition of genre that I hope to incorporate into my classroom curriculum.

Kelly stresses at several points that non-white students often feel disrespected and isolated in classrooms that focus exclusively on texts from a white, Western literary tradition.  Hip-hop literature finds its roots in a much more culturally diverse tradition that has the potential to appeal to a swath of students that may otherwise disengage from classroom activities based on their cultural heritage and feelings of underrepresentation.  In my future classroom, I would like to incorporate texts that offer students of non-white backgrounds the opportunity to see their own images and cultures portrayed in a literary work while also offering white students a chance to broaden their expectations for and experiences with literature and cultural traditions.  Hip-hop literature provides a culturally relevant and accessible way to do this.

Finally, hip-hop texts encourage students to exercise and develop fairly complex literary skills while engaging with material that appeals to their authentic, non-academic interest areas.  I believe that it is imperative to construct unit plans in a way that helps students take what they learn in the classroom with them once they leave the classroom.  An essential goal in teaching genre theory as a gateway to literary skill is to help students understand the social and developmental nature of genres and be able to apply that understanding to genres they see in their day-to-day lives.  Analyzing the genre of hip-hop literature provides a way for students to practice literary analysis on a literary art form that they are already familiar with, have a respect for, and interact with in their nonacademic lives.

Pop Sonnets: What Happens when Katy Perry Meets Shakespeare

My classmate, fellow teacher, and blogger friend from Inside the Gradebook opened my eyes to this hidden Internet gem recently and I have not been able to look away. There exists a Tumblr account that publishes Top 40 radio hits rewritten as Shakespearean sonnets; every Thursday a new "pop sonnet" is published.  Expect to see such classics as "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper and "I Kissed a Girl" by Katy Perry adapted into 14 lines and iambic pentameter.  Time Magazine even thinks this whole thing is worth noting.

Not only is this an incredible way to investigate literary interpretation and adaptation in the high school classroom, it is also a great addition to any study into the affordances and constraints of the Shakespearean sonnet as a genre.  The pop sonnets follow the genre norms flawlessly: three quatrains and a couplet following the abab, cdcd, efef, gg rhyme scheme, 14 lines, and iambic pentameter.  The author uses Shakespearean vocabulary, turns of phrase, and register, making these pop sonnets a fun and creative way to get students who are new to Shakespeare used to his style and language.  The practical classroom applications for these creative and funny poems are extensive.

We'll never know for sure, but I think Shakespeare would be a huge fan of pop sonnets.  He looks like the kind of guy who would have gotten a real kick out of all this.

Shelfie Time

I swiped this idea from my good friend's blog, Breaking Grad(School), which just featured a super fun shelfie post for World Book Day.  I loved it so much that I figured I'd keep the shelfie love coming. Seeing as how my computer's spelling autocorrect programming clearly has no idea what a shelfie is, let's turn to an age old source of cultural wisdom and insight for further information:

Shelfie: A picture or portrait of your bookshelf. Showcasing literature IN ALL IT'S GLORY! (This term was originally defined by author Rick Riordan).

Thank you, Urban Dictionary.  

I love this idea for a blog post primarily because my bookshelf is my favorite thing about my apartment.  My husband, sister, and sister's boyfriend built it for me from Home Depot supplies using a series of pictures I found on Pinterest.  It was a birthday present and I take every opportunity to share its glory with the world.

My bookshelf is full of things I love dearly, most of which are books.  I do have small stashes of books on smaller bookshelves scattered throughout the house, but this baby is my main library station. Most books are organized topically.

• We have my academic and critical theory books by Barthes, Judith Butler, Austin, and Foucault.  This isn't necessarily where I go for beach reading, but these guys are lifesavers when I need them.  That carved wooden cup was a wedding gift from a dear friend; her father carved it before passing away and I consider it one of my treasures.  

• My husband and I have no shame in regards to this shelf of nerd books.  We actually have two different shelves of nerd books.  These are the books that are presentable enough to be out in our living room.  The other shelf is too embarrassingly nerdy to be out in public, so you can only imagine the percentage of dragon/wizard content in the ones we are too ashamed of to have out where they might be seen.  There's a pretty good Tolkien showing here accompanied by some Game of Thrones novels and Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, masters of fantasy fiction lore.  As for the coral, when I was 7, I spotted it on the bottom of the ocean floor while snorkeling. My mum, in a moment of badassery, free-dove down to the depths of what my 7-year-old mind understood to be at least 200 feet to retrieve it for me.  This was when I knew that girls could be just as wild and fearless as boys.

• This is a bit of a miscellaneous shelf with a bobblehead Martin Luther keeping things cool down on the end.  My little army of C.S. Lewis books lives next to Martin, because I think Martin Luther and C.S. Lewis would have been friends in real life.  One of my many books on the Palestinian/Israeli conflicts is tucked in there alongside some gems I have read in my grad classes (Zadie Smith, Toni Morrison, Lynn Nottage, Wole Soyinka).

• The Nortons and the anthologies.  I'm a grad student studying English; this shouldn't come as a real surprise to anyone.

• Mostly classics (Jane Austen, Dickens, Bram Stoker, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky) with a few modern winners in there.  Let me take a second to stress how amazing John Darnielle's Wolf in White Van is. John Darnielle is the lead singer/songwriter for the band, The Mountain Goats, and to say he has a way with words is putting it lightly.

• These are a sampling of my old leather bounds.  My uncle and aunt collected old leather bound volumes from bookstores around the country; my younger self obsessed over them.  Once in awhile they would let me have one and I always hoarded them jealously, awarding them a place of great honor in my room.  Once I reached the age at which I could obtain them for myself, I began my quest in earnest.  Over the years, I have accumulated several vintage leather bounds like the ones shown here.  This shelf carries Maupassant, Ibsen, Longfellow, Tolstoy, Marlowe, Dumas, and Poe.  It also carries my tiny wooden elephant from a trip to a pharma conference in India.

• This is the science shelf!  These handbooks all saw heavy use when my husband and I were engineering undergrads together; he still pulls one down from time to time.  That's an award my husband won for being a genius, a butterfly from our honeymoon in Costa Rica, and a Crooke's Radiometer that I stole from a closet at Lawrence High.  No one was using it...

• These are most of my cookbooks.  Because I am good enough at cooking to love doing it and bad enough to 110% require very clear recipes to follow.

I'll stop here, but only because I can't imagine you're still reading this.  Also because I believe my dog is chewing on something that I want to keep.  Thanks, Breaking Grad(School), for the fun idea.  And I hope to see what's on all of your bookshelves as well!

Bonus bookshelf: Photo Books in Apple Crates

Pay Me in Mangu

I don't think anyone goes into teaching for the cash. For those of you who were considering it, let me save you some hassle; it's not a particularly lucrative field.  While it has been daunting to watch my engineering paycheck dwindle into a high school teacher's salary, I can honestly say that, what my job lacks in financial incentive, it makes up for in a host of other ways. I am not entirely sure that it is possible to itemize or quantify the kinds of benefits that come packaged with this line of work.  They range from a kind note from a supportive coworker to snow day glee that rivals that of my own high school years.  Personally, I find my happiest compensation comes from my smart and hilarious students.  Sometimes they give me the best nicknames (O.G. Kelley - the Original Gangster, Elsa, Miss Frozen, D-Money, Miss K-Swag.  It's an embarrassingly long list).  Sometimes they abruptly understand something I say and ignite with possibility. Sometimes they stop by their local bodega on the way to school, pick me up some mangu for breakfast, and bring it to my first period class so I can try the breakfast they love.

One of my major goals is to stay sensitive to the small, non-monetary ways in which I am compensated for my work.  My paycheck is minimal, but the love, fun, and community I enjoy with my fellow teachers and students would dwarf any paycheck anyways.  The list of ways in which my work is quietly and warmly rewarded is endless, but, in a way, I think the mangu says it all.

The Cool Kids

Every school has them as far as I can tell.  They are the super popular, sharply dressed social butterflies who stroll down the school halls like they own them.  And, in a way, they kind of do. I go back and forth on my feelings about the cool kids.  Sometimes they can use their power for good.  Sometimes they're a real pain.  It's just a mixed bag when it comes to adolescents endowed with an unmediated ability to influence the lives of their surrounding adolescents.  What I can say, though, is that I have my own, internal list of cool kids.

These are the kids that I get to know over time, during the quiet moments of the school day.  They are smart, funny, mature, and just really cool.  We can talk about books, movies, life, school, politics etc.  They understand things.  In a deeply ridiculous classroom moment of chaos or disorder, I can often meet their gaze across a room and share a "this is absurd" eye roll.  They are cool.

The crazy thing about these very cool kids from my internal list is that, more often than not, they fly well below the radar.  You probably won't find them center-stage.  I often see them reading alone at lunch or sitting quietly in the back of the classroom.  They aren't usually candidates for homecoming king or queen.  In fact, unless you seek them out or allow yourself to be available in a quiet moment, you probably won't even really get a chance to connect with them.  I don't know why this is.  I have some ideas, but I don't know.

What I do know is that the kind of cool that they have is made of something strong and rare.  High school is bizarre, but they have somehow found a way to carve out honest, creative, and unapologetic identities for themselves.  They just rock who they are and they mean business.  They pursue their interests and they don't try to change anything about themselves in order to fit societal or peer expectations.  They take school seriously, engaging in real learning, asking challenging questions, and pushing themselves intellectually.  They are kind, bold, and courageous.  They are also easy to overlook sometimes in the disorienting squall that is the high school social system.  In an environment where their brand of coolness isn't necessarily a high-value commodity, they are often lost in the shuffle, silently looking around for some reassurance of their coolness from someone outside the system.  I'm learning that I have to keep my eyes open for the quiet opportunities to pull up a chair, ask a question, and spend some time getting to know the cool kids.

Pros and Cons

I work in a public school district, making this my February break.  I don't have to go to work this week!  This is a pro. I am a grad student taking 3 classes while working full time.  My vacations are spent entirely on homework.  This is a con.

I get to work on my homework in this coziest of spots with the most delicious of chai teas.  This is a pro.  Possibly two pros if you count the chai as its own pro.

Overall, the situation nets at least one pro.  Life is good :)

What's In My Bag: The Teacher Edition

This is my teacher/tutor/paraprofessional/grad student bag.

It's seen some things.  It also doubles as a pillow in dire circumstances.

I was reading Blu Chicken Ninja's 'What's In My Bag' post and I thought it looked like fun.  So I went ahead and emptied out the contents of my own bag before leaving for work on a standard school day last week:

I confess that the daffodil in the glass bottle is not something I store in my bag.  It's just there for aesthetic purposes. 

Tazo Tea Mug: because a day without tea is most likely going to be the worst and this mug is one of the few that I own that can be trusted not to leak all over my things.

Apple: because I love apples and stereotypes of teachers who like apples.  Also because our lunch period isn't until 1:10pm, so I am generally in mighty need of a snack by the time noon rolls around.

Eos Lip Balm: I am a lip balm addict.  I will use this at least 15 times before the school day ends.

Pencil and Pen: I like the old fashioned, yellow school pencil.  It does the job.  Same goes for my plain old black Bic pen.

Moleskine: because I have a terrible memory and this is where I store my lists, schedules, and spontaneous thoughts.

Wallet: because my teacher bag is my surrogate purse.

Library Passes and Schedules: I always have a small stack of papers relating to that particular school day.  They are usually sub plans, passes to the library, or my schedule for tutoring that day.  This bag has a small file pocket that I can slide papers in for safe keeping.

Chocolate Bar: because you never know when you're going to need a solid bribe.

Post-its: of different colors and sizes.  I won't even bother telling you what I use these for because there isn't enough time in the world to compile that list.

Multi-colored Tiny Highlighters Shaped Like Pill Capsules: this is a throwback to my days in the pharmaceutical industry.  A vendor handed these out at one of their training session lunches and I think they are probably one of the more valuable things I took away from my time in the biopharma sphere.

USB: Most of my students email me their work for correction or feedback, so I store most of it on this USB for when I get small stretches of free time to sneak in some review.  This keeps me from having to tote around huge binders full of work.

Books: my Robert Frost poems for short down times, my super soft leather Bible, and a textbook for my Salem State methods class.  You never know when you'll get a free period :)

Overall, I'd say this is a pretty representative sampling of my bag contents on any given school day.  I'm sure that when I become a real live teacher with my own classroom and classes, this teacher bag will need to prepare itself to be carrying much more in the way of binders and lesson plans, but, until then, this little buddy does the trick just fine.