Lanier Elementary - Dallas, Texas

Sara and I did a quick trip to Texas at the end of last week to visit Sidney Lanier Elementary School in Dallas. We visited classrooms and also worked with the teachers in a PD session after school. This was all made possible by the energetic and smart school reading specialist Kia - who I first met last year at a conference I was speaking at in San Antonio - and her principle Mrs. Peraza.

Here's a short video from our visit.

Canadian International School Hong Kong

Like everything in Hong Kong the Canadian International School reaches for the sky.  At ten stories tall the building is an apt metaphor for the high goals set by the students and staff. The campus clings to the edge of one of islands many hills resting atop pylons driven deep into the bedrock and affording quite a picturesque view of the harbor below.

Sara and I started our week off with an assembly and then did classroom workshops with grades five through ten. This school is wired. Every student has  laptop and digital literacy is practiced with a gusto. But, this did not stop the kids from producing some great work the old fashioned paper and pencil way when we got to work in our sessions.

We wrote definition poems, memoirs, worked on imagery, metaphor and editing. I especially liked the eighty minute periods which gave us a bit more time than usual to work a bit deep with the kids.

Deep thinking was definitely something the students here are used to. Primary grades curriculum doesn’t break out into subject areas until sixth grade. Before that all the content areas are taught within an all encompassing theme. I’m not really doing the idea justice here – but it sure looks like it works.

Suffice it to say – we had another wonderful international school experience – extra special thanks to Joanne, Tanya, Myrna, Matt and Stephanie for making us feel so welcomed during our stay. Seeya next time!

Aiken to be in South Carolina again.

Spent a couple days last week in Aiken South Carolina, a town about an hour’s drive from Columbia. This part of the state has become a return location for Sara and me the last three years.  We were there on behest of a couple teachers who caught our shtick at the Midlands Writing Project up in Lexington NC this past summer.

Now the National Writing Project is a really cool program. Basically  the idea behind the program is that if one wants to teach writing one should be a writer. Pretty novel (no pun intended) approach eh? Time after time after being completely blown away by the enthusiasm and rigor of a classroom teacher I am working with I find out that they are Writing Project alum.

Such was the case of the folks who brought us in to work with the kids at a couple of Aiken’s Elementary Schools. Beth and Sue were our hostesses with the mostesses during our two day stay. Here’s an article in the local paper that chronicles our visit.

We sure look forward to our next visit to the Columbia SC area  – especially since we found Little Pigs BBQ . Food that good and abundant can’t be legal north of the Mason-Dixon.

Here are some pics from our visit – they’ve been a bit stylized for use in future PowerPoint presentations.

NCTE Conference 2010

Just back from the National Conference of Teachers of English conference which was held in Orlando at Disneyworld’s Coronado Convention Center. Several thousand teachers, librarians, reading specialists, authors and publishers descended upon the house that Mickey built for a week of keynotes, break out sessions, cocktail parties and side trips to the magic Kingdom.

Sara and I were there to attend sessions and to speak about our new book HIGH DEFINITION. We were good citizens – trying to travel self contained so as not to cost our publisher extra dough for projector and sound equipment rental by bringing our own equipment. We were set for the fifty or so folks we expected in our session. Lucky thing we decided to scope out our room the night before our presentation – seems NCTE had put us into a ballroom that seated over 300 folks!

We quickly became friends with Dave – the grand king daddy of all things audio visual for the conference and lucky for us, a friend of our publisher’s school secretary equivalent (you know, the person who is really in charge of everything) Lori. So the next day ignoring a minor hiccup by an uncooperative word document we gave a pretty good session to a packed ballroom!

We did manage to sneak off one of the days and visit the Magic Kingdom – my first trip back to this particular park in over 35 years where we did the roller coaster Space Mountain, the Splash Mountain ride, some inscrutable thing featuring the cartoon character Stitch which we still don’t really know what it was supposed to be about and the Haunted mansion. I remember how high tech and impressive the mansion was those many years ago and now – sadly it seemed a bit dated. Special effects that were uncanny when i was 12 years old were now, rather humdrum.

Finally, we stayed after the official conference to attend ALAN The Assembly on Literature for Adolescents. Which is like speed dating for authors and educators – two to three authors sit up on a dais for half hour long panels where they talk about their latest books and teachers listen and then cue up in lines in the back of the ballroom to have these books signed by the attending authors. Sara and I along with our poetry pal, Alan Wolfe popped up a couple times in between these panel sessions and performed some of our poems thanks to an invitation from Dr. Jim Blasingame – Pooh-Bah of the organization and a performing cowboy poet himself.

We also got to hang out with a bunch of really cool teachers who we have got to know over the years – mostly friends Sara made during the years she worked and learned with literacy expert Janet Allen. Christine, Kelli, Anne, Beth, LeeAnn, our poetry slam compatriot Elizabeth, our new buddy Jack Gantos, Orlando native Charles Waters, Boyds Mills Press, Heinemann and a whole slew of folks far too many to mention made this one of our best NCTEs ever.

So to paraphrase an animated insect, “Sometimes wishes really do come true.”

High Definition: Vocabulary-Building Strategies Across Genres and Subjects

Available as of TODAY!

Like, totally Rad(ford)

In Australia a college is not somewhere students go after high school as it is in the United States – the term refers to any school. Thus, Radford College in the Canberra suburb of Bruce (insert Monty Python Australia sketch here) is a K - 12 campus.

This school is the first really foreign school that Sara and I have worked in. When we work overseas we have always been in international schools – places where ex-pats, and locals looking to send their kids to US universities, send their kids in countries where the native language is not English. This time we were in an honest to goodness foreign school – part of the local system. Thanks to our friend Dan Ferri – these Aussies took a chance on a couple of poets from Cleveland Ohio.

You can see they gave us a manageable but busy schedule. As happens quite often our dance card filled up as teachers began talking about our visits into their classrooms and those who were sitting on the fence with a “wait and see” attitude decided they wanted to get in on some of this poetry action. So our schedule became loaded with crisscrossed lines and penciled in times as it evolved during our stay.

Like I said this is fairly common and understandable. Teachers are busy people and have a hard enough time getting to all their lessons and curriculum objectives and sometimes don’t feel there is time for poetry in their schedule. What Sara and I offer is a way that teachers can integrate poetry as a tool in their classroom – so while the finished product may be some sort of verse it still pushes their classroom goals forward and might I add, at a quicker pace than a five paragraph essay, a report, diorama, book report or any other of the myriad text types used for assessment. Ask the teachers at Radford about the narratives we wrote about the water cycle or the definition poems on democracy and you’ll find some recent converts to poetry as a practical classroom addition.

The students and teachers at Radford were engaged and enthusiastic, we visited classrooms of kids from third through 12^th grade and only went to the wrong building one time during our week long residency. Thankfully a breathless fifth grader found us and led us back to the right classroom. It is a whiplash inducing experience to go from a group of eight year olds writing about the toys in their bathtub to a class of 18 year old young men and women studying Plath and Hughes one right after the other but it’s also what makes our job so much fun.

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit and met some really dedicated professionals; including a 7^th grade science teacher who was carting around a pair of orphaned possums in her bag. So thanks to Peggy, Claire, Dylan, Therese, Dan and all the other folks we met during our stay. In the words of the school chaplain, “God bless you mob!”

Lexington South Carolina

Just back from a trip to Lexington South Carolina – a town just outside of Columbia. This is an encore appearance for Sara and me. we were invited to speak to a kid’s writing day camp and a group  of teachers under the auspices of the Midlands Writing Project. The MWP is a branch of the National Writing Project.

Their mission is: The National Writing Project focuses the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of our nation's educators on sustained efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners.

Sara and i have worked with this organization all over the United States and have always found the participants to be eagerly motivated. What makes this branch of the program a little different is that they include students along with the teachers involved. The two programs run side by side for a week – but then the teachers and students come together not as instructor and pupil but as fellow writers for a day of idea sharing and conferencing. This a really cool idea as is the whole Writing Project program.

Of course while we were there we managed to squeeze in a South Carolina style BBQ dinner. Even though the outside temps were in the high 90s with similar humidity, our visit was as refreshing as a tall glass of sweet tea. We look forward to working with our friends Janet and Vicki again in the future.

And now for the news...

Sealed with a KIS

The week long residency at Korea International School couldn’t have gone any better. Every morning the yellow mini van bus picked us up at the Hotel Gallery just a fifteen minute ride up and up the nose bleed inducing hill on which the school is perched. The kids were all well prepared for our visit and every class we walked into were expecting us and were ready to get to work.

We did assemblies for the elementary, middle and high schools and a teacher professional development session our first day there followed by writing and performance workshops throughout the school for the rest of the week. we think this is the best way to start a residency – the kids get to see us before we come in the classrooms, allowing us to be student centered for the whole time we are working with them rather than talking about ourselves the first part of the lesson. Our hosts agreed and set our schedule to do just that.

Our poet wranglers – mine being Colleen, the sharp witted upper school librarian and Sara's -  Kris, the super smart and diplomatic elementary school librarian kept us on track, fed, watered and generally treated like royalty. I would be more than remiss not to mention our third support person – the steady and true Sue, the Korean born elementary librarian who provided translation with taxis, hotel folk, doctors, bus ticket vendors and could make anything we requested happen with a short tilt of her head and a firm nod. This trio made KIS one of our most enjoyable (and tiring) international school visits to date.

Kris had worked for two years behind the scenes to get us into the school. we had met her a few years back when we visited Kazakhstan and we are so very grateful for her confidence in our work.

We even ended the week with a staff party  and wine tasting in downtown Seoul ending with an open mic poetry reading which Sara and I emceed.

Oh yeah, a special note to Rich the headmaster i mentioned in my last post. I did try the boiled silkworm larva – you’re right it doesn’t taste like it smells!

Asking questions during assembly.

Writing away!

Teacher poetry reading.

Colleen and Kris.

Do you know LeBron James?

So asked the smiling six foot two eight grade boy in my public speaking class when I opened the floor to questions after the lesson. Sara and I have just spent two days with the eighth through twelfth grade classes at the Seoul International School here in chilly Korea.

 

We shook off our jet lag and talked with the kids about our lives as poets and globetrotting educators, did some writing exercises and even had some extra curricular discussions concerning  the Cavs trading away Z. As per usual in the international school system the students were attentive and hard working. A bit shy to start but brave enough to try anything they were called upon to do. In the end I think we were all writing and talking with a bit more conviction.

Seoul International was a great way to begin our two week tour of South Korean schools and I am really looking forward to the coming days here in this hospitable country.

 

Today we head out to explore the city a bit more with our librarian/hostess Kris – the epitome of hospitality herself having given up her apartment for our use while we visit in her school. In fact all the teachers and staff we encountered couldn’t have been more accommodating from writing cabbie directions in Korean making sure we got home with no surprises, sharing literary journals they have edited, to helping us order our barbeque chicken (even though the sweet sauce was every bit as fiery as the spicy sauce) we have been made to feel welcome in every way.

 

As for my future shooting forward’s question. Although I may not be a regular on the guest list at gatherings in Mr. James’ household it does seem the superstar and I hold some of the same ideals as important.

American Community School – Abu Dhabi

Speaking no evil is a pretty easy thing to do when you’re talking about the students and the staff at the American Community School in Abu Dhabi. I’ve just finished a week working with the middle school kids and I cannot remember a residency that went smoother. Dianne and Steve, the two librarians responsible for the visit, had a schedule set for me that clicked on every cylinder like the high tech sports cars that prowl the streets of this busy bustling and growing city.

We talked metaphor, we talked memoir, we talked vocabulary and editing and in one class we even talked about zombies! In the meantime Sara and I were well fed and  watered enjoying a traditional Arab dinner sans table or chairs, marched up and down the Corniche, visited “The Club” and became intimate friends with a rather kooky cat named Slushie.

Everywhere you look in this town there are buildings going up, cranes erecting another and another across the skyline. The place wafts the aroma of investment and dividends. My first day in the school (Sunday – the school week runs Sunday through Thursday here) I should have had a premonition that this was going to be a fruitful visit. I put a Dirham coin into a vending machine to buy a bottle of water and not only received my selection, but FIVE more Dirhams. That’s how the whole week went – no matter how much I gave to the kids and their teachers I always ended up ahead of the game.

St. Francis Xavier (or you say Madeena and I say Madina)

Last school visit before we shake off the coil of this winter chill and escape like migrating Canadian Geese to the warmer climes' of Morocco. I’m pretty sure Canadian geese don’t fly across the Atlantic but you get my drift.

Met with the Middle School Scholars of St. Francis Xavier in beautiful Medina  (pronounced Ma- dine - a) Ohio yesterday. The arctic blast was playing with school schedules all around but we were right on time. My intrepid Honda Element scooted down the snow covered roads like nobodies business while I listened to my Arabic survival phrases podcast through the auxiliary jack of its stereo.

I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned how much I have loved this car – bought it in 2004 when it was the ugliest thing on the road and have enjoyed it ever since. in the meantime copycat models have sprung up from all the automakers. I almost think of the thing as a pet more than transportation. During his last visit home from college my oldest casually asked me when I would be getting a new car – and what would I be doing with the Element when I do – hint hint hint.

Anyway – the kids at St. Francis were prepared and enthusiastic for my visit, the visiting artist wrangler Judy was nothing but sunshine on this blustery January day and we had a very successful round of public speaking workshops.  Even though we were constrained to forty minute sessions we still got a lot of good work done. I don’t get a chance to take an extra breath during these crammed periods, but the kids were so focused and ready to go that the day flew by. We got some quality instruction accomplished and still had a few laughs.

So, thanks St. Francis for a great day, you try and keep warm now – I'll raise a glass of hot mint tea in your honor in the Marrakesh Medina (pronounced Ma deen a.)