Five Things We've Noticed Mid-District-Norming

Five Things We've Noticed Mid-District-Norming

This is one of our favorite professional development days because we love the energy of having all of the different sites present in one room to discuss, norm, and grade essays. It's an exhausting process, but one that holds so much value for all of us, especially our students. Here are five things we've noticed after norming grades 7-9 and 12:

1. Students have a lot to write about. Some have too much to write about. What a great problem to have in October! Students are grappling with high level texts, weaving fiction and non-fiction pieces, and are showing evidence of collaboration. Teachers are empowering their students by providing the outcome (prompt) first, and then purposefully preparing them for the task of marrying content and skills.

2. Read-A-Rounds have been helpful. Having tables of grade-level groups of teachers discuss and rank student essays in order to come to consensus has proven to be a solid strategy in accomplishing our goal of obtaining equity and rigor across the district.

3. The purpose of a district assessment has changed and therefore the processes both before and after grading the essays have also shifted. We are no longer simply assessing reading and writing skills with isolated content in a limited time setting. We are now using purposeful content to assess our students' ability to read and write in relation to the content, still within a time frame, but one that is less rigid, and more authentic. This initial essay is not merely a snapshot, but rather a picture taken with a wide angle lens.  

4. Teachers play an integral role in professional development by sharing their own voices with each other; all students will benefit from this meaningful collaboration.  

5. RUSD students and teachers are rising to the challenge of higher expectations.

 

 
 

Let us shine like stars

I do most of my planning for school in three places: in my car to and from school, in the shower at home, and when I am walking in my neighborhood.  If you will notice, none of these places are conducive to taking notes.  But every once in a while, I hit on an idea that makes me stop and write it down, right then and there, and that’s what happened with Bookmarked: Teen Essays on Life and Literature. Bookmarked is a compilation of my students’ essays that morphed out of an assignment I created after reading This I Believe, a book based on the CBS Radio Network program hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow.

I was shopping with my close friends at TJ Maxx, and I was telling them about this idea that kept swirling in my head.  After reading This I Believe for my book club one night, it occurred to me that my Honors American Literature students could do the same thing; they could write about what they believed in, from their 16 or so short years of life experience. However, I needed an angle that tied into my curriculum, so I said aloud to my friend while holding up a cool shirt, “What if I had my students anchor their life philosophy in a quote from literature, from anything they’d read, from kindergarten until high school?” My friends loved the idea, so much so, that one even had me record the idea into her Blackberry to remember the idea.

As soon as I could weave it into my lessons, I assigned my students the essay prompt, not having any idea what they would turn in or use as anchor quotes. A week later, as I read through the essays, I was absolutely shocked: the stories, wisdom, and insights these young adults shared were absolutely amazing! So amazing, in fact, that I went outside of the proverbial “box” and contacted my former students in college.  I asked THEM to write to the same prompt, and brazenly suggested we create a compilation of essays to collect into a book, having NO idea that only 3 in 10,000 manuscripts ever get published.  There I was, weeks later, receiving email after email, each with an essay attached; for months, I poured over more and more stories and learned things about my students I hadn’t even known about them when they were in my classroom! Not a single essay repeated the same anchor quote and the book they had chosen were as varied as their demographics.

Fast forward: After working with two amazing student editors who have since graduated from college, I sent out a single query letter to Free Spirit Publishing.  Bookmarked was published in the spring of 2012, with 50 student essays about life and literature. It is now being used in the AVID 11^th grade curriculum for Personal Statements and I use it in my AVID and English classroom to aid juniors in writing their college and scholarship essays. 

It’s almost surreal that my students’ voices are out there, nationally, sharing their experience, strength and hope with other young people.  I am grateful for the IB program at North, which allows me the freedom to work under a fairly large umbrella of curriculum and grateful for the mindset of innovation that my administration and District supports in our classrooms. 

A short note here: throughout this project, I had to face some fairly challenging aspects about the profession I dearly loved. I figured I put in about 600 hours outside of my class over a period of 2 years. I was riddled with doubt at times, wondering if I was going to look like an idiot to my students, essentially promising this was going to be a big deal and fearing it would fall flat on its face. Except for a few pats on the back from close friends, it has taken years to get my colleagues or others in education to even read it, let alone grant any accolades about the book or the writing project…despite the fact that many of them shared the same students, which was probably the hardest thing to bear.   So often, I felt like celebrating and doing a victory dance when the book would meet the next goal or benchmark; and though there were those close to me who acknowledged the beauty of this project coming into fruition, overall, it felt like a hollow victory.   I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I have come to terms with it these days, because I finally realized that it wasn’t about me.  In fact, it wasn’t even about my student essayists. It was about believing that there is more to education than just what is in the pacing guide, or what the state curriculum dictates we do in our classrooms. 

Teaching, at its finest, is an art form, organic and alive.  My ability to take what is current in my life and build a connection for my students to cross over the “bridge” into the real world is what true education is all about.  Bringing all of our voices into being was exciting, but even more exhilarating was seeing this project come to life beyond the classroom into a real-world existence. My students will always have this evidence that what we did in my class was not just busywork.  It was a transformation of their willingness to take a chance with their writing, the courage to be vulnerable and the ability to follow through with their commitment to write regardless of the outcome or reward. To my students’ credit, when I suggested we put all proceeds from Bookmarked into a scholarship fund, all 50 essayists readily agreed, once again, reflecting how incredible these young people were and still are today.

There are so many stories that go along with this enormous undertaking I started years ago, too many to share here, but so worth telling.  Yet it is clear to me, today, what the biggest gift from this writing project has been, even more than knowing my kids’ voices are out there.  It has been the relationships and connections I have built with so many of them, as they have grown up and gone on to college, graduate school, careers and even marriages.  It has been a gift for me to be a part of sharing their successes, their challenges, and their life lessons as they’ve continued on from my classroom. As one of my students, who is now a teacher and has students of his own, wrote in Bookmarked,  “Let us shine like stars in the universe, each more brilliant than the next” and know that each one of us can make a difference.

Guest post by Ann Camacho,

North High School