Halloween Weekend in Oak Park

Sara and I spent Halloween with our friends Henry and Maria in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park. Here’s a dozen pics.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Measure twice – cut once…

Just back from Chicago where Sara and I spent three days visiting and working with the students at Deerpath Middle School. Our first day was the day after Halloween so I think there was a bit of a blood sugar spike that we were contending with during our assembly and subsequent workshops – but we still got some great work done and I think the kids came away with some ideas to improve their public speaking and to make their writing more concise and precise.

The teachers had our book Outspoken (which we learned upon arriving home has gone into its fourth printing) and we worked from this and our new one High Definition. Sara and I took the divide and conquer approach – here seeing students in a lecture hall and me seeing the other half for workshops in the library where we wrote definition poems.

Between sessions the technology teacher grabbed me and asked if I had any ideas on how he could incorporate poetry into his classes. How cool is that? Coming from a manufacturing and engineering background myself I was happy to talk to him about how to do just that, writing vocabulary poems, infomercials, obituaries and other text types to teach the terms behind the physics of making a two liter bottle powered rocket or a gravity powered Lego car.

While chatting with this teacher I learned that he once had taught woodshop. Now the community of Lake Forest is a more than fairly upscale suburb north of Chicago proper. It seems that the woodshop class was discontinued because as one parent had explained to this teacher, “We hire people to do work like this.”

This teacher wasn’t complaining to me – we were just shooting the breeze but I’m afraid that perhaps this parent had missed the point and coming from a family that has never been afraid to get their hands dirty, bends or cut metal, dig a ditch, or do their own brake jobs I was a bit worried by the inference.

Would this parent ever walk into a board, court-room or onto the trading floor without a plan, a blueprint perhaps? Would he or she not make sure she had all the tools necessary to complete whatever project they were working on readily at hand? Would they not measure twice and cut once? It seems one of alums of this school, a Mr. Dave Eggers, understands the lessons he learned back in the day when woodworking class was still offered. Returning recently for a classmate’s 40^th birthday party also attended by the tech teacher – he let said teacher know that the lessons of working from an outline, understanding the need to sequence steps to conserve materials and to work toward a finished project even when the end was still far off in the distance all lessons learned or made practical by the now defunct woodworking class had helped construct the writer/person into which Eggers had grown up .

Now I know there are no ovals on the standardized tests that ask the difference between a crosscut saw and a bastard file, just as there are no essay questions about how to make a reed for a bassoon. But aren’t these talents transferrable into the “real world” of finance and law? I’ve heard parents defend their schools athletic departments because of the life lessons learned by the participants – don’t hands on trade classes offer at least as many experience points as a lacrosse field?

By the way – one of the best woodworkers I have ever met, a hobbyist who made beautiful grandfather clocks, tables, chairs, and china hutches was a guy I used to house sit for. Of course his day job did require him to work with his hands so maybe he already had a proclivity for manual labor – he was the chief surgeon and head of cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic.

Eastlake Middle School

As promised – here are a couple vocabulary word infomercials written today by 8th graders in Eastlake Ohio.

The Sweetest Town on Earth

Just back from attending the Keystone State Reading Association conference in Hershey, PA. Where one actually can smell chocolate in the air.

I made the six hour drive through hill and dale to sign some books and do a session on my and Sara’s new vocabulary book. Here’s a short video of some Big Word poems created by some Pennsylvanian teachers who attended my workshop.

Now when we work on big words we are not talkin’ necessarily about long or hard to understand words – rather we mean words that carry a lot or meaning. Tier two words according to Beck (don’t worry if you don’t know the reference – it’s pedagogy stuff.)

I like to introduce this method of vocabulary acquisition with some words that are packed with meaning that the students already have some ideas about and once we have our lesson process established then we start introducing  content area vocabulary into the mix.

I'm headed to Eastlake Middle School tomorrow to work with my friend Libby Royko’s 8th graders where we will be writing some vocabulary word infomercials using words from their science class geology unit. So you can expect some rock star videos in the near future. in the meantime here’s a quick one from PA.

Another Satisfied Customer

 

One of the the thank you notes from St. Gabes. Kids have a way of keeping you humble.

High Definition Book Talk

The English Companion Ning is a really cool online community dedicated to English teachers.  Well, later this month their book club will be discussing my and Sara’s new book: High Definition. How excited are we about this?

We’re THIS excited

 

Click on the NING link above for more info.

St. Gabriel’s

 

 

So I returned to the grade school I graduated from almost 35 years ago for a visit and to talk with the kids about and work on public speaking skills with the kids. Amazingly, my fourth grade teacher is STILL there!

 

Thanks for having me guys!

Morocco

High Definition: Vocabulary-Building Strategies Across Genres and Subjects

Available as of TODAY!

Don’t forget to look in the basement…

This Summer had been a crazy busy one – New Zealand and Australia took up almost the whole month of July. Then as soon as we got back I had three days to try and adjust my body clock and I was off to San Antonio to present at an Institute headed up by Colorado comprehension strategy guru Ellin Keene.  Also there were Debbie Miller and Bruce Morgan. This is the second year I have participated in this event and once again I came away with a bunch of new ideas and had a really good session with some quick to laugh teachers.

  Debbie Miller and Bruce Morgan

Unfortunately my body had not yet  acclimated to the 14 hour time difference between Australia and home so  I survived on a couple two hour naps each day.  Add on to the sleep deprivation a series of unfortunate logistical events and things could have got ugly. But, in the end it all worked out, I stayed calm, carried on and was able leave Texas a little bit better teacher than when I arrived thanks to Ellin, Debbie and Bruce.

Directly from disembarking my plane when it landed in Cleveland I drove to Dayton where I keynoted the ending of a teacher workshop series put on by The Muse Machine of Dayton.  What a great organization consisting of teachers who integrate the arts into their curriculum. We had a swell time writing definition poems and memoir, plus I did a twenty minute reading of my own stuff. I hung around and went on a architectural walking tour and attended the awards luncheon at the swanky Dayton Racquet Club.

I was so busy I forgot to take some pictures.

So Now I am home for almost a month – there’s weeding to be done, bicycles to be ridden and just plain old relaxing on my calendar until September when Max and I set off for Morocco to do a little father and son mountain biking in the Atlas Mountains.

Speaking of bicycles – who knows what the title of this post is referring to?