What Does it Mean to "Teach" a Novel? (Part 3)

I have finished roughly half the books I have started in my lifetime. Don't judge me. If I had to read one for school, I read it. However, once my time truly became my own, I was more selective. I'm facing a bookshelf in my living room, and I can see at least ten dusty bookmarks sticking out of novels, essay collections, and should reads like books on parenting, marriage, and faith.

When my students have the opportunity to choose a text for independent reading, they very often come to me a chapter or two in and say, "This just isn't doing it for me." No problem. Go find a book that grabs you.

Whole-class reads are a different matter. A senior once told me, "This is the first time I actually read a whole book." Blink, blink. How had she made it that far without a cover-to-cover read? Was business, engagement, laziness, or accountability to blame?

If reading is medicine, no student--engaged or not--will want to swallow it. How do we engage teens and build skills without torturing them? This post is all about the controversial idea of not teaching the entire book. Consider the thoughts of these teacher-authors and comment!

Making Meaning with Melissa
This is sometimes controversial when I bring it up to my department, but I don't always teach the complete novel.  I have an essential question or theme that I focus on, and I like to focus on key passages to discuss/teach in class.  I encourage the students to read the whole novel independently, but I only teach those focus passages.  When I do this, I like to use my close reading units, like this one for To Kill a Mockingbird, focusing on the theme of courage.  This unit has six passages with close reading directions for each, a courage chart with directions, and an essay prompt, plus student and teacher models.  Students like "reading" the novel this way and often end up finishing the novels.

Grit.Grind.Teach.
With my upper middle schoolers,  I have the students read the whole novel in parts outside of class. I assign basic comprehension or skill practice questions with their reading at night, mostly as an accountability check. In class, we spend a lot of time going really deep into a few passages in the novel, and I generally focus all of our close reads around the same skill.

Teacher's Craft
I like to teach novels from start to finish because I like students to have the experience of finishing a novel.  In my classroom, I've seen students pick up a novel, read for the silent reading period, and then pick up a different novel the next day.  I want them to have the pride of finishing a novel.

I hit figurative language hard in my classroom because my ESL students have so much trouble with it; they either take it literally or it's completely lost on them.  It's one thing to teach what a metaphor is, but it takes it to a whole different level when students read it, analyze it, and understand it.  I use my Figurative Language Bell Ringers to introduce and reinforce figurative language before and during a novel. 

I love teaching novels because my biggest reward is hearing "I actually liked that book" when we're finished.  There's always one in the bunch.

What Does it Mean to "Teach" a Novel? (Part 2)

1991. It was the wild west, and I was a twenty-three-year-old gunslinger at Dudley High School in Greensboro, North Carolina. We had state ELA standards, but testing was low stakes, and my interest in aligning my lesson plans was even lower. When I "taught a novel," the novel was itself was the means and the end; I wanted students to love the chosen piece of literature and connect to allusions they would encounter in the future. That was about it.

Fifteen years later, I experienced a profound paradigm shift. No Child Left Behind created a need for curriculum coaches, and I began working at the district level to help teachers come to grips with state standards. I had joined the standards movement, and a novel simply became a means to an end. I advised teachers to think of a novel as a way to teach standards. (I'm sad just typing that sentence.)

I snapped to the middle pretty quickly when I went back to the classroom and remembered why I love teaching Things Fall Apart, why my students really get the angst of Okonkwo's son Nwoye and the fire of second wife Ekwefi. To me, to teach a novel is to ignite a love of language and build skills at the same time.

I asked some friends from TeachersPayTeachers.com to answer this same question, and I love their responses. In fact, I told all of them that I wish I had been their students. Here are a few ideas from them:

Room 213
When I "teach" a novel, I want the students to have the responsibility for analyzing the text.  I avoid chapter questions, because they just tell the kids what they should think. Instead, I expect students to take notes as they read (after they've been shown how) and then, after they have read a section of the book, they meet in groups to discuss their notes.  Each group needs to decide on the five most important events from the section as well as important quotes.  At the end of that class we have a full class discussion where students will defend their choices.  They will also chart character development - again, on their own and without chapter questions to guide them.  Almost always, the kids come up with the same things I would have asked them about, but this way, they've done the thinking themselves.  If they miss something, I will read a section to them and get them to figure out why I'm reading it, what I'm looking for.

We also read every novel with a guiding question in mind, something that will show them how the lessons in the text connect to their lives.  With To Kill a Mockingbird, for example, we try to answer these questions: "Where does intolerance come from?  What can we learn from TKAM about how to be more tolerant?"  In the end, they do a "Mockingbird" project where they have to reach out to a mockingbird in the community and find ways to teach others to be more tolerant of this mockingbird.

OCBeachTeacher
I want my students to take ownership for their reading and learning, so they will build their own understanding. 

Last school year I spent a lot of time developing whole-class reading discussion activities, and I have created strategies that were very successful.  My "novel study" gives students tools and guides them toward more meaningful discussion.  As they read, they use graphic organizers to take notes on their reading: summarizing, paying attention to author's craft and language, and providing text support. 

On discussion days, they follow procedures that take them step-by-step to whole-class discussion.  First, they start with a quick write and set a goal; then they progress to partner rehearsal.  When students have moved into their inner and outer circles, they start with a "whip around."  Students in the outside circle improve their listening skills by taking observation notes, and they can also move to the "hot seat" if they want to comment on discussion from the inner circle.  Finally, after discussion, students write a short reflection.  My Discussion Tools would be a helpful resource.

Spark Creativity
When I teach a novel, it is so different every time. In the same way different people will view an art exhibit, the path of the discussion for each group of students varies hugely. That's what keeps it interesting for me. I use the Harkness method of discussion, developed at Exeter. What it means for me is that I work hard from the start of the year to cultivate listening and risk-taking and responsibility for the discussion amongst my students. We sit in a circle and chew on the text, and I pay almost as much attention to trying to help guide the dynamics day by day (not interrupting, remembering to reference the text, not dominating, not freeloading, staying on topic, asking intriguing questions, etc.) as I do to helping guide the themes for discussion. This way, students learn how to access the deeper material from each other, and at the same time, learn how to have a respectful and balanced conversation, a skill I tell them will be equally important in every job, family reunion, dinner with friends, etc. as it is in my classroom.

I put up a video on YouTube a while back when I was presenting Harkness to some peers, and it gives a nice intro to the method for interested teachers. 

I have found that starting a discussion cold is not a good idea. Students just have too much going on in their lives to rush in from lunch or science class or a huge fight with their best friend and simply begin discussing the text. So we always do a short Discussion Warm-Up Activity to give the kids a chance to remember the reading before we begin discussing it. 

There are more teacher responses to come in Part 3 of this series!

What Does it Mean to "Teach" a Novel? (Part I)

It was a knock-down, drag-out fight, and it lasted for months. We wrestled. We argued.

The issue? To Kill a Mockingbird.

Teachers--one from each middle and high school in our large district--gathered for The Great Debate over who got to teach what pieces of literature. Does eighth grade or ninth grade get Mockingbird? Will Lord of the Flies be at ninth or twelfth? I was criticized for teaching Faulkner. Another teacher was slammed for Shakespeare overkill.

Why do we get so emotionally attached to the novels and plays we teach? Why, when I was a curriculum specialist, did teachers regularly call me because someone at a feeder middle school was teaching--you guessed it--To Kill a Mockingbird? (We had one diehard who refused to play nicely.)

I have my favorites: Things Fall Apart, Great Expectations, The Bluest Eye, Catcher in the Rye. Plays? I could teach Medea, Cyrano de Bergerac, and Julius Caesar all. day. long. Ask me to recite Marc Antony's funeral oration. Just ask. My favorite literature lesson to teach is the background for Oedipus. Their faces!

As this hemisphere gets back to school, my blog will be dedicated (for a week or two) to the teaching of the novel. What does that even mean? What should it look like? What should a novel study (or novel unit) include? Do we focus on skills or content? Reading or writing? What should assessment look like?

Follow along and join the debate.

5 Reasons Not to Give Zeros

Here's how the conversation goes:
Me: I don't have your essay, Trevor (Insert name of any disengaged male student)
Trevor: I didn't do it.
Me: The last day to turn it in was yesterday.
Trevor: I know.
Me: Why didn't you do it?
Trevor: I didn't want to.
Me: Are you going to do it?
Trevor: No.
Me: You know that means a zero.
Trevor: Yeah.
Me: That will kill your average.
Trevor: I know.
Me: I'm going to call your mom.
Trevor: Whatever.

If you've had that conversation with a student, here's your belief system:
1. All students care about grades.
2. The threat of a low grade will motivate a student.
3. An actual low grade will turn a student around and change his or her behavior.
4. If I do not give a zero for a missing assignment, a student will get away with something.
5. It is my job to teach responsibility by giving steep consequences for not turning in work.

Maybe you believe those five ideas because they were true for YOU. Consider these five reasons not to give zeros:

#1  By giving a zero for a missing assignment, a teacher is grading behavior, not skills or content knowledge. Is the zero a grade for rebellion? Non-compliance? If so, it should be a 100, right? The student has that skill set down.
#2  A zero skews a student's average and gives an inaccurate picture of student understanding. If five standards-based assignments are given by the teacher, and the student scores 100 on four of them and 80 on the fifth, the student's average is 96. If the student fails to do the fifth assignment and gets a zero, the average is 80. This student is demonstrating mastery on four of the five assignments, yet the average would indicate borderline proficiency.
#3  It is almost impossible to recover from a zero. If a student cannot redeem the score on one assignment, he or she will be playing catch up for the remainder of the grading period. The last thing you want in your classroom is a student who feels doomed.
#4  The teacher never gets to assess the skill. A zero means It's over. I've had MANY students over the years take a zero instead of speaking in front of the class. Instead of challenging that student, modifying the assignment, offering a different audience, or providing a different opportunity to face a major fear, I gave a zero.
#5  A zero hurts the relationship. We all know that getting a teenager to do anything is an intricate, complex dance that involves subtle moves, gentle challenges, a little sweat, and a lot of heavy lifting. A zero throws your partner off the dance floor.

So now what? It's simple: Require the work. My last four years in the classroom, I spent the first few weeks of school eating lunch in my room with students who did not have their homework. It wasn't fun; it was work time. They brought their lunch or went to the cafeteria first, and I provided a note for them to get back up to my classroom. Nobody wanted to be stuck eating lunch with me. They had to watch me eat tofu and asparagus while they say beside me at my desk and worked on the task. It didn't involve after-school time, so parents didn't squawk. Teachers who had lunch duty got a heads up to let students come upstairs. Kids HATED it. At my school, students were allowed to use their cell phones at lunch. Lunch was the time they did their homework for afternoon classes. It was social time. Oh, and the upperclassmen who got to leave campus for lunch! The pain of it all!

Instead of giving zeros, I took away what they loved most: time with friends. The first month of school was torture for them and for me. I needed the down time as much as they did. However, once students realized what I was doing, they started turning in more work. By second semester, students had passed the word to my next group of students: Just do it the first time she assigns it.

It wasn't a perfect plan. I had social misfits who chose not to turn in assignments just so they could avoid the cafeteria. There were some students who wouldn't do homework no matter what. There were many, however, who saw the light and got the message. The message was this: I need to know what you know.

Ten Tips for the New High School Teacher

They are coming. You are about to put into practice what you learned about instructional strategies, Bloom's taxonomy, and wait time for questions. Here are a few tips your college instructors might have skipped.

1, PUT OUT YOUR HAND. Introduce yourself to the treasurer, secretary, and custodians on the first day. These folks wield some awesome power, and you want them on your side.
2. CLOSE YOUR MOUTH. At meetings, sit, listen, and take notes. You are going to be tempted to make a name for yourself right off the bat. Resist it. Since you're 22 and a recent college graduate, you surely know all the latest pedagogical research and the best way to reach teenagers. Tuck away all that brilliance for later.
3. AVOID THE LOUNGE. Cynics and pessimists will see you as a blank canvas to be slimed. Eat lunch in your room. Students will find you, and some of the best relationship building will happen during that little chunk of time.
4. LEAVE WORK AT WORK. Others will tell you this task is impossible, but that's a lie. Get to work early, work efficiently while there, stay late if you can, and leave the papers on your desk. Your main planning time should be on the weekends. Adapt and tweak as needed during the week, but save your "planning period" for grading. In fact, go hide in a corner of the media center so you won't be asked to cover a class.
5. PLAN IN CHUNKS. Use the weekend to sketch out a three-week plan. When you walk in the door on Monday morning, have a detailed set of lesson plans for every class. You'll always know what comes next, thus reducing stress.
6. YOU MAKE THE SEATING CHART. You may think the cool teachers let students sit where they want. This is classroom management suicide. Have a penciled-in seating chart on the first day with students in alphabetical order (for passing out papers and learning names quickly). Watch the interactions and move students as needed. Fill the front row with students who are easily distracted, have vision trouble, or need more monitoring. Taking attendance is a breeze when you're only looking for empty desks.
7. SLEEP. You're no good to anyone if you do not have rest. When the bell rings in the morning, you will begin multiple interactions with 100 to 150 hormone-driven, ambitious, ladder-climbing, exhausted, troubled people; and then the students come in. You cannot pour out what you do not have in reserve. Rest.
8. MAKE THE CALLS. Over the course of the first week, call every parent who did not come to Open House. Introduce yourself, offer a reminder of some event, and ask if there are any questions. You could even get a jump on this by calling to remind each parent about Open House. Your relationship with parents is crucial; they have to trust you.
9. KEEP CONTROL. As much as possible, keep your discipline in your room. If you send students out or write them up for not having supplies, using profanity among friends, having gum, or being loud, you're sending the message that someone else has to handle what happens in your room. Lunch detention is a fabulous thing. They hate it, and it's a good deterrent. Get creative. Have a cursing jar and collect cash for supplies
, require collateral (like a shoe or car keys) for a pencil, etc.
10. TRY ON SHOES. Remember that the teenagers walking in your room are under stress, and they want to trust you and like you. Walk in Karla's shoes for a minute; her parents are undocumented, and she lives in fear that they will be deported. Walk in Jonathan's shoes for a minute; he has had three weak English teachers in a row and dreads your class. Walk in Katrina's shoes for a minute; she had a fight with her mother over breakfast this morning. Walk in Devon's shoes for a minute; he may be the first person in his family to graduate high school and longs for structure so that he can learn.

Five Ways to Help a Cancer Patient

A cancer patient, particularly someone whose treatment includes both chemotherapy and radiation, may need a different kind of support than a friend or family member might expect. I am two months in to a year of treatment for aggressive Her2-positive breast cancer, and I have a toddler and two businesses to run. The struggle is real.

1. Avoid "Let me know what I can do to help."
 Equivalent to "How are you?" when passing a co-worker, "Let me know" has no teeth. A better
 offer is, "I'd like to do something for you, so give me a task." Both chemo and radiation sap the body of strength, and the last thing a patient wants to do is mop the kitchen, wash the car, go to the grocery store, or take charge of the carpool. Last week, a friend drove 30 minutes to bring a meal, and she brought her son with her. Our boys played while we caught up. As she was leaving, she said, "When's your next treatment? I'd like to do something." I responded, "Let's figure out something right now. Would you give us an afternoon just to come play with Samuel so I can rest?" Her response? "Great idea. I can even take him to the park or something. Send me some dates." Perfect.

2. Look for gaps.
One friend brings me a meal on the Monday after each chemo treatment. In fact, she brings me two or three and sticks them in my freezer. While she's here, she picks a task and just does it. A couple of weeks ago, she and another friend came together, served my family a meal, and cleaned the kitchen while we sat and ate. It was humbling, beautiful, and needed. One of my best buddies lives an hour away, but she meets us halfway once a month and takes Samuel for a day and night so that my husband and I can have some time to ourselves.

3. Avoid Making Comparisons
There are around 50 different chemotherapy drugs, each of which has its own special set of side effects. There are some, like Herceptin, which have almost no side effects. Adriamycin, aka the "Red Devil," has a long list. When listening to a cancer patient talk about chemo, keep in mind that she is undergoing a treatment regimen unlike any other; timing, dosage, and her body's response to the medications will not be the same as your sister's, your mother's, or yours. When I receive chemo infusions, there are four drugs, each of which is given separately for a specific amount of time. The day after, I get a shot of Neulasta, which forces my bone marrow to produce a particular type of white blood cell. It takes a few days for the side effects of these five medications to hit, but when they do, they pile on and include intense leg pain, mouth and esophogeal sores, acne cysts on my face and neck, insomnia, intense fatigue, diarrhea, and hair loss. I have about ten days of that and then start getting back to normal. Those ten days are HARD, especially with a young child. It's hard to walk, focus, and eat. Someone is with us around the clock. Then again, I know of several people who miss just one day of work and then are back on the job. Different cancer. Different meds. Different body.

4. Love the Caregiver
Because my husband has his own business and I'm having treatment during busy season, my mother bears the weight of running my household. I signed up on Meal Train so that she would have one less thing to worry about in the course of a day. Her friends text her every day, call to check in, and even give her breaks. I have three aunts, and all of them have come for short periods of time (3-4 days) just so that she can go home and sleep in her own bed.

5. Celebrate and Encourage Self Advocacy
It may seem selfish or demanding for a patient to be specific about what she needs, but it's absolutely necessary. She can set up her own meal schedule, ask people to come over, and take advantage of the fact that people want to help but don't know how. I have fantastic neighbors whom I can call and ask, "Can I send Samuel over for a couple of hours? I didn't sleep last night, and I have to lie down."

Crazy Love

Three women--Kathy Clayton, Lynn Tester, and Cindy Holt--just drove to my house from Greensboro, cleaned said house, and filled its fridge with meals. THAT'S sacrificial love. They loved on me, made me sit, and prayed with me before leaving. My love cup is again overflowing.

We got the pathology report back yesterday from the surgery I had last week. The surgeon removed a 2.1 cm malignant tumor and surrounding tissue, and the "margin" was negative. He took a second suspicious tumor, and it was benign. Last, he took three sentinel lymph nodes, and they all came back negative. Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah.

Love that Percocet

Cancer is officially hijacking my blog, so check here for updates from now on.

On Thursday morning, I went to The Breast Center (what my husband calls Hooters) to have wires placed to help the surgeon find his mark. One was placed during a mammogram and the other during an ultrasound. I headed over to Cone with those filament-like wires taped to me.

In pre-op I got to spend a bit of time with an OR nurse, former student, who was with me in the operating room. My last thought before the nurse anesthetist knocked me out was, This is more weird than comforting. She's going to see me completely nak . . .

During the four-hour surgery, I had six incisions, one for a 2.8 cm cancerous tumor, one for a suspicious lymph node and cyst, and a large one for a biopsy of three sentinel lymph nodes. The other three were to place the portacath through which my chemotherapy and Herceptin will be injected next year.

As of this morning, all the anesthesia has worn off, and I'm hurting. I can take Percocet every four hours, and that knocks me out enough to keep me from reaching, lifting, and doing other such forbidden things. Samuel keeps trying to climb up on me, and it's so hard to explain why we can't cuddle! He has been a little trooper, and my Aunt Beverly--whom he calls "Nana Bev"--has kept him busy.

One of the best decisions I made before surgery was setting up a Meal Train so that my mom would not have to worry about meals while taking care of this clan. I have two slots left for December if anyone wants to jump on.

I will probably start chemotherapy the first or second week of January, but I don't have an exact schedule yet. Once I do, there will be a meal schedule for the days following each treatment, with more days near the end of the 18-week duration when the cumulative effects of the chemo will be worse.

I love having visitors! Friends with kids kept us entertained yesterday, and I went to sleep last night feeling encouraged and loved. Thank you all for praying; God hears you and loves you.

Testing Fatigue

The kind of emotional fatigue I'm experiencing today is almost debilitating. I released some anger this morning in the form of hurling one of my son's toys across the living room, and we ended up in a puddle together, sobbing.

My sweet boy has to walk through cancer with me. This morning when I was changing him, he asked, "Doctor today, Mommy?"

No, son. Not today.

It is as if I'm already in treatment, but I'm only in the testing stage. On occasion, some poor health care professional gets the brunt of my frustration, and yesterday it was the tech who told me my weight exceeded the limit for the MRI table. This would be the closed MRI I asked not to be scheduled for. Either way, it was not going to be a good afternoon for the crew at Wesley Long. They were going to get Panic Attack Angie or Find-Me-A-Supervisor Angie, and they got the latter. All hail to the three women who had to deal with my rage yesterday after another teach had already spent 45 minutes trying to find a good vein for the IV.

Here are the tests and appointments I've had so far since October. I held some off until we moved so that I could find new docs, so the first ones are pre-cancer.

Pre-Cancer;
1. optometrist exam
2. opthamologist exam
3. new GP appointment
4. blood drawn for broad panel during checkup
5. pulmonologist appt
6. blood drawn to check for vitamin D deficiency
7. overnight sleep study
8. pulmonologist follow up
9. respiratory therapist appt

Cancer Related
10. initial annual mammogram
11. second mammogram to look at two abnormal spots
12. two needle biopsies (one without numbing meds)
13. third mammogram to make sure the tech could see the markers placed during biopsy
14. manual exam by my gyn
15. blood drawn for BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene tests
16. blood drawn for kidney function test
17. MRI, before which my blood was drawn. When I asked what it was being drawn for, the nurse said, "kidney function." I said, "My blood was drawn yesterday to check for kidney function." She looked at her computer and said, "Huh. So it was."
18. third needle biopsy (for naught---the radiologist found it impossible to get the tiny lymph node)
19. oncologist appt
20. surgeon appt
21. physical therapist appt
21. radiation oncologist appt
22. genetic counseling appt
23. blood drawn for more genetic tests
24. follow up appt with GP
25. echocardiogram (baseline because the treatment could damage my heart)
26. PET scan

coming up

27. Saturday--a second MRI
28. Tuesday--cardiologist appt
29. Wednesday--oncologist
30. Thursday--surgery

Interrupted by Cancer

Stage. Grade. Markers. Genes. Generous. Ample. Fatty. Aggressive. Angry. Options. Chemo. Radiation. Support. Drains. Sentinel. Walk. Risks. Metastatic. Spread. Sugar. Caffeine. Stretch. Nodes. Survival. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink. Pink.

The volume of information in my brain is exhausting me. I heard from my oncologist on Wednesday that my breast cancer is not "sleepy" as we had hoped. After a basic screening mammogram three weeks ago detected two abnormalities, I had a second mammogram, then a sonogram, two biopsies, another mammogram, confirmation of Stage I cancer, an MRI, another sonogram, another biopsy, and then an official diagnosis:

I have a 2.5 cm invasive ductal carcinoma labeled Stage II with an "aggressiveness" rating of Grade 3. These cells are growing RAPIDLY at a rate of 98% within a given time frame. Cells have left the milk duct in which they started growing out of control, and I now have some lymph nodes that look suspicious. Lymph nodes carry cells to other parts of the body, so there is a pretty good chance this cancer has gone hunting elsewhere.

The pathology report on my lesion indicates that it does not have estrogen or progesterone receptors, but it does have the HER2 receptor, a protein that likes to eat and feed the cell so that it can grow. So here's the plan:

I will have a lumpectomy within the next couple of weeks. The surgeon will take the cancer and a suspicious lesion above it and then do a test to see if my sentinel lymph nodes have the cancer. If they do, all the lymph nodes under my left arm will be removed. Chemotherapy will start in January, followed by radiation in the spring.

There is also a spot on my liver, and I'll have a PET scan to look at that next week.

I have a toddler to raise and two businesses to run, but I DO NOT HAVE LESSON PLANS TO DO, A SUBSTITUTE TO FIND, OR THE ANGST OF DECIDING WHETHER OR NOT TO GO TO SCHOOL ON A ROUGH DAY. I am so very, very thankful that I work from home now.

Close friends who follow my blog, if  you ask how you can help, I'm giving you a task. I will need support, and I'm going to be proactive about setting up a schedule so that my family is not exhausted. I'm asking for two-hour chunks of time, meals, shopping, cleaning, and babysitting. Once the surgery date is set, I'll need bits of help from a lot of friends and family so that my husband and parents are not worn down.

I'm not a simpering victim who will curl up and die. I am His beloved, and I am surrounded by family and friends who will let me get away with only brief pity parties. I welcome any and all love an encouragement. Bring it on.