Commentary Published on Ed News!

Friends and Followers:


Education News Colorado graciously agreed to post my commentary on the importance of teaching public speaking skills and offering students the opportunity to take speech classes in high school.  It was interesting for me to see what decisions the editor made and to think about the decisions editors make every day with respect to every writer's work -- what sentences get cut, revised or truncated and why?  What paragraphing and punctuation changes are made and how do they alter the writer's message or style?  The writing process continues to fascinate and sometimes flabbergast me...


Thanks as always for your support -- and teacher/writer friends: Education News Colorado seems to be a viable publishing opportunity for us and a news service that wants to hear firsthand from Colorado educators...so, if you haven't already -- start capturing all of the powerful teaching and learning going on in your classroom and share it with a larger audience!


Link to my commentary as published: http://www.ednewscolorado.org/2012/01/04/30524-commentary-in-a-virtual-world-speech-still-matters

For more about Education News Colorado visit: http://www.ednewscolorado.org/about-2

Resolutions Revisited

Happy 2012 to my faithful followers and friends!

As I reflect on the past year I can't help but feel old.  Not old in the achy joints, wrinkles and orthopedic shoes way (although a recent Zumba Toning class has awakened muscles I didn't know I had...ouch!), but old in the "where did the last year go?" way.  It was a year ago, January of 2011, that I began this blog as a New Year's Resolution.  And though memory is subject to lapses and faulty recollections, I believe this blog may very well be the first resolution I've ever kept for the duration of a calendar year.  My 2011 writing journey included: 

• 31 blog posts (or an average of 2-3 per month) and 13 official "followers."
• A month spent with other teacher writers over the summer through the Denver Writing Project where I generated 3 "polished" pieces and, more importantly, acquired over a dozen new friends
• A small paid writing gig through the Teacher Leaders Network where I submitted my first "long" piece in December, and signed a contract where I committed to write and participate in this "Writer's Guild" through June of 2012.
• Acceptance as a finalist in a 250 word essay contest through Las Olas Surf Safari where many readers supported me by voting for my blurb.
• An invitation to participate in a professional learning and curriculum writing cohort through the National Writing Project.
• The completion of two Lighthouse Writer's Workshop courses where I sat next in awe, learning beside real authors...

So apparently, it IS possible to keep a resolution.  Especially if your resolution involves doing something you love.  Who knew?

What will this year bring?  Only time will tell.  But in the meantime, thank you for taking the time to read, comment and encourage me.  Thank you for being a part of my writing journey.

And for this year?  I'll resolve...to keep writing.

21st Century Talk: Communication Still Matters

Note: I'm in the process of "shopping" this piece to EdNews and will hopefully get it published somewhere (besides in this space with my faithful 13 followers :).  Regardless, I owe special thanks to Laura Peace, whose classroom provided me with the anecdote to show what public speaking can do for a group of seemingly disengaged 7th graders and to Tara Harris, who graciously allowed me to follow-up our parking lot conversation with an interview on this subject.

21^st Century Talk: Communication Still Matters

            The 21^st Century: an exciting time to be a learner.  And a frantic, high-speed time for educators who are facilitating learning in brick and mortar classrooms by day and via online tools around the clock – grading, evaluating and commenting on student work on Googledocs, posting assignments and updates on social media sites or class blogs and wikis, logging onto professional learning communities to swap ideas, and staying connected and accessible to students through smart phones.  The dismissal bells may signal the end of the school day, but in the 21^st Century the virtual classroom door is always open. 

            Because learning can happen anytime and anywhere, teachers might feel in some ways like on-call doctors.  And yet, amidst all of the texting, tweeting, and typing within and beyond school walls, I was struck this week that it is still face-to-face communication between teachers and students that offers the most powerful examples of authentic learning.  The means of communicating may be limitless, but verbal communication skills matter more than ever before.

            In the days before Winter Break seventh graders in a large, diverse Aurora middle school scramble to present speeches they spent the last several weeks crafting.  After drafting and revising, conferring and rehearsing, it is their time, for four or more minutes, to stand before their classmates and deliver a message that is meaningful to them and meant to inspire their audience.  The teacher, apprehensive about the final presentations and disheartened by the number of late and missing assignments and the groans and sighs she heard at the beginning of the term, witnesses the fruits of weeks spent modeling, sharing mentor text and supporting writers through the writing process.  One after one, they present.  The audience respectfully listens.  And they’re good.  Polished, practiced and proud of their work, each presentation rivals or tops the one before.  Their voice matters, and allowing them to use their voice and supporting them with the tools, resources and structures to use it in a powerful way, the teacher sees the first evidence of meaningful learning and passionate engagement in her students, from the prolific to the struggling, nearly every seventh grader in the room has found success.  One of the final presenters reminds his classmates: “"When you look around you and think that you have nothing, tell yourself, 'No, I have a future.'"

            Teaching kids to use their voice in effective and powerful ways, matters.  And for the first time, the new Colorado P-12 Academic Standards honors this by re-naming the content area formerly known as English/Language Arts, “Reading, Writing and Communicating” and by focusing on “oral expression and listening” standards (in addition to reading, writing, research and reasoning) across grade levels.  While educators are apprehensive and skeptical about authentically assessing communication through current standardized testing practices, (and fear if it is not assessed it won’t be taught in-depth) speech and language arts teachers celebrated that the standards finally reflect, with equity, all four domains of literacy: reading, writing, speaking and listening. 

            In light of this it is a disheartening irony that budget cuts have impacted speech courses in Aurora’s comprehensive high schools.  At some sites speech classes are not even offered within the master schedule and the only opportunity for students to work on public speaking is through extracurricular activities like speech and debate teams.  Where speech classes are still offered, they are in danger of being cut.  Beginning as soon as the class of 2015 in APS, high school speech courses will earn elective credit (vs. English credit) a decision speech teachers fear places these courses in precarious territory.

            Tara Harris, Language Arts Assistant Department Chair and Speech and Debate Coach at Hinkley High School in Aurora, shares her worries about moving speech into elective vs. English department territory: “If speech courses become elective courses, my fear is that it will be cast to the side in times where TE is in question.  One of the greatest rewards that many students earn is the knowledge that they do have a talent and can overcome their fears.  They have also learned that public speaking makes their writing better, especially in the areas of organization, ideas, and voice.”  She went on to say that currently her speech students enroll in the course for many reasons: including credit retrieval in English, to improve public speaking skills, to better prepare for the demands of college or the workforce, to overcome fears, prepare for speech competitions, and to gain additional practice in what for many Aurora students, is not their first or native language. 

            Most of us have only begun to dabble in the communication methods available to us as 21^st Century citizens.  But regardless of the tools available to teachers and students, communication matters.  Our students deserve to have their voice heard, and they deserve to have access to courses and extracurricular activities that teach them how to use their voice in powerful, persuasive and provocative ways.  

On Meeting Miguel - Twenty Minutes & True Thanksgiving

This morning I awoke, still sluggish from a gluttonous Thanskgiving break that included way too many calories and way too few treadmill runs.  I groaned when the alarm clock went off, and grumbled groggily to myself during the twenty minute commute from my house to the campus on the plains where my day's work awaited me.  To put it simply, I didn't wake up grateful.  I was bitter that a restful and carefree break was over, and that a full school week stretched out before me.  I thought about all the shopping I have to do between now and the next holiday, the decorating, and the actual day job duties that fund the presents I still need to purchase.  Thinking about all of this made me tired, and it was only 7:20 a.m.


I didn't wake up grateful.  But tonight, as I prepare to go to sleep, I am grateful.  In fact, I am more thankful than I was just a few days ago when I celebrated Thanksgiving with a nation full of other thankful turkey-eaters.  


Why?


Today, I met Miguel.  Cynical, shy, withdrawn.  Jaded.  Negative.  Defeated.  Everything about Miguel made my brow furrow and my heart break.  The scrawny 5th grader slouched in his seat and retreated behind his over-sized hooded sweatshirt.  Using his body language as a repellent, his eyes cried out for an invisibility cloak.  His posture screamed, "Don't bother.  Leave me alone.  Please."  


Miguel was already on my radar before I entered the classroom.  His concerned teacher asked me to watch him - a red flag in her gradebook, one of many struggling writers in the room.  Assessments show Miguel reading at a "first grade level."  He hadn't turned in a written assignment in a month.  He was prompted multiple times to join the other students on the carpet for the demonstration, where he tapped his foot impatiently, willing the second hand to tick faster, so that he could return to his desk, slump further in his seat, tighten his hood around his head, and busy himself with a toy car quietly while everyone else around him engaged in independent reading or writing.


Instead, today, I forced him to confer with me.  It took 5 minutes of soft coaxing, gentle questioning and hushed tones for him to pull his hood far enough back on his head so that I could hear his one word responses to my questions.  A 10-year-old body encasing a troubled, hardened soul that felt more like that of a 17 or even 47-year-old.  


So, first I talked.  I spoke about how exciting it sounded to write a fictional narrative.  To create a story where characters could do anything and problems could be resolved (or not) based on my decisions.  That, I explained, is what everyone was working on today as writers.  Revising fictional narratives.


"Miguel.  I wonder...when you're not here at school, what do you like to do?" 


"Play video games."  Three words.  The longest response to a question I had posed so far.  


"Ah...video games.  Hmm...I don't know much about them.  Tell me, which ones are your favorites and why?  When you play them are you a character?"


Slowly, the head lifted.  The gaze met my own.  The hood slipped off the head and onto the back of his shoulders.  Life breathed into the small body and the hands set the toy car down to gesture.  Skeptical at first, but quickly gaining momentum, Miguel told me stories.  Stories of his video game world and the stories of his real world.  Stories about a pet bird who smothered her baby bird to death (accidentally) because she was trapped in a cage that was too small.  Stories about a favorite dog that ran away.  Stories about a house he used to live in but has since "lost" - a casualty of foreclosure.  Stories about his uncle's haunted basement and the fights he and his four siblings engage in when chores are assigned.  And back to more stories of the gadgets, dreams and adventures he enjoys in the video game world. 


Twenty minutes of storytelling.  He talked.  I jotted notes.  And as the writing block drew to a close I simply said, "Wow.  You are one of the most interesting 5th graders I've ever met.  Look at all of the stories you told me."  


A small smile quickly covered by concern.  "I have thousands of stories in my head," he said.  "I just can't write them."  


"I can see that you do have stories to tell.  So tomorrow, we'll write one together?" I suggested.


"You'll be back tomorrow?"


I nodded.


"So I can think of more ideas tonight.  I can play my game and figure out what characters and story I want to tell..." he trailed off.


"Great idea."  


"Video games as writing homework!" he giggled.  A real chuckle that bubbled up and burst from his lips.


So, today I am grateful for twenty minutes with Miguel.  For the opportunity to watch a dark, shadowed figure begin to see himself as a writer with stories worth telling.  Stories that someone wants to hear.  Tomorrow we'll write together and maybe, just maybe, Miguel will begin to see 5th grade as a place worth being visible.  


There are so many Miguels, of various shapes and sizes, who would blossom with twenty minutes just for them on a regular basis.  I've also seen what Miguel might become -- glimpses of his future where he thrives as a writer or becomes a more jaded, more cynical 7th grader, or sophomore, or...?


But tomorrow, I will write with Miguel.  One word, one story at a time.

Everything I Need To Know I Learned From Harper Lee....

It's true, I'm an English teacher at heart and therefore biased when it comes to literature.  But I believe all good teachers teach readers, not texts, and there's few (if any) books that I believe should be mandated curriculum.  But if I were going to argue for a text, the text, that every adolescent or adult reader should have on their reading "bucket list" I could definitely make a case for To Kill A Mockingbird.


Why?  


Harper Lee's one and only novel, set in the early-mid 1930's, is as relevant today as it was in 1960, the original date of publication.  The Southern gothic tale's hero, Atticus Finch, represents the ideal parent, a model of integrity and human decency during a time and circumstances that were anything but decent.  In 2003, the AFI (American Film Institute) proclaimed the character of Atticus Finch (portrayed memorably by Gregory Peck in the 1962 film) the #1 Greatest Hero of the 20th Century in it's "100 Years, 100 Heroes & Villains in Film" special.  


This afternoon, in an intimate matinee performance, on the same day the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was dedicated on the National Mall before a throng that waited too long for this day, I watched the Denver Center Theater Company bring Harper Lee's story to the stage.  The theatrical adaptation captured the essence of the book in two hours and fifteen minutes, and reminded me of all of the reasons why I fell in love with To Kill A Mockingbird more than twenty years ago.


I first read the book as a child.  Recommended to me by my mother as her favorite coming of age story, I reluctantly picked it up as a sixth grader, but quickly became lost in the world of Maycomb, Alabama and in the thoughts and life of Scout, whose narration sounded like the voice of a familiar friend or kindred spirit from a time and place far away.  The time period, dialect, and complex issues raised in the text were foreign to me as an eleven-year-old, but the pages turned quickly as I anticipated alongside the Finch children, Boo Radley's appearance or the next finding in the knothole of the old tree.  When I re-read the book as an adult, it was Atticus, not Scout that I found myself falling in love with, his goodness, his kindness, his courage.  The courtroom scenes seemed to jump off the page and onto my own mind's movie screen.  His words more memorable than scripture: "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view....until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." 


Harper Lee's one and only book.  Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.  Translated into more than 40 languages.  Sold more than 30 million copies worldwide.  Adapted for the silver screen and stage.  Voted by librarians across the country as the best novel of the 20th Century.  Required reading in many a high school English class.  Really, really good required reading.  If its been a while (or you skipped the novel and opted for Cliffnotes in high school), take a trip to the 1930's South and feel the heat of an Alabama summer the way only Harper Lee can write it.  You'll discover that it's a trip worth taking, a lesson worth re-learning, and many pages worth turning.  

What I Learned While Waiting for A Latte...

My husband often refers to Starbucks as "five bucks," and indeed, it is ridiculous what the masses (including me) will pay for a latte -- especially when facing facilitating a professional development session at 7 a.m on a crisp, cool Tuesday morning.  Today, as I waited impatiently for a non-fat/no-whip pumpkin spice venti, the only thing that had kept me from hitting the snooze button on the alarm clock one last time, I took a deep breath and mentally walked through the morning's agenda.  Shaking my head, sighing deeply, I began to wonder if the three hours I had devoted to planning this PD over the weekend really mattered.


The promise of a new school year is beginning to dull.  The days are getting shorter, stress is running high as the first grading window draws to a close, Fall Break still feels like a fantasy on a calendar far, far away, and it's getting harder and harder not to question my effectiveness as a lone TOSA shared between two turn-around schools in need of far more resources than I could ever hope to offer.  And just then, in the middle of daydreaming about switching name badges with the barista, sending her into the middle school in my place so that I could hide behind a counter and smell coffee grounds all day, an amazing thing happened.  A sign?  Divine intervention?  Something like that...my whole outlook on the day and my choice of career path was clarified...all before I had my first sip of caffeine.


A tentative tap on the shoulder.  "Um...Mrs. Cuthbertson?"  Turning, a near 6' broad-shouldered, deep voiced, filled in high schooler stood, smiling sheepishly.  A foggy nod and small smile from me was all it took to be wrapped in a bear hug by this grown human being, whose face reminded me of a less-chiseled, softer version that sat used to sit in the second pod of my 6th grade literacy classroom at Columbia Middle School, in what felt like moments, but had in actuality been years, ago.  


"Look at you!  All grown up and at Rangeview....sophomore, right?"


The deep laugh.  "Nope.  Junior!"  Before I could ask a follow-up question he pressed on.  "You'll never believe it.  I've got a 4.3 GPA, marching band is awesome this year, planning a great show, and oh yeah, I love my English class by the way...but I want to be an engineer.  Thinking about School of Mines...or maybe BYU Hawaii..."


"Wow.  That's great," I marveled.


"Well, anyway...it was good to see you.  And by the way, thank you, "he added pointedly, before handing me a sleeve for my steaming drink.


As he rushed out the door tray of drinks in hand for what I could only assume were fellow marching band or first period friends, I took a sip, exhaled in satisfaction and thought, no...thank you...

Home Owning, Home Improving and Just Plain Homely

home·lyAdjective/ˈhōmlē/

1. (of a person) Unattractive in appearance.

2. (of a place or surroundings) Simple but cozy and comfortable, as in one's own home.

(Dictionary.com)

I'm wondering if the first definition might also apply to a "place or surroundings" in certain cases?  If so, these two seemingly distinct definitions seem to be working in tandem to form a perfectly complete and accurate description of our current situation.  Homely: the current state of life on Genoa Court.  

We are homeowners.  We became homeowners in the late spring of 2007, closing on our first ranch-style residence in Southeast Aurora while the ground around us was thawing, and final  preparations for our upcoming nuptials were coming together in what would be the perfect mid-June wedding -- and the beginning of the rest of our lives.

Since then, we've settled in and pieced together furniture over time to create a flow from room to room; we've gradually used all of our wedding gifts and appliances and watched our hardwood floors dull from the daily traffic of two humans and three four-legged canines traveling the path from study to master bedroom to kitchen and back again (lots of muddy paws and dusty feet).  We've had our sprinkler system winterized and brought back to life, and we've watched our front and backyard lawns brown and green and brown and green again with each turning season. 

Indeed, we've settled in.  We've lived in our home long enough to know it's quirks and creaks, the things we love about it and the things we want to change someday...someday far away when we're not hopelessly upside down on our mortgage and our property value and savings both resemble something recognizable and respectable.  Yes...we own a home in zip code 80013 - the highest foreclosed zip code area in the state of Colorado since the dismal turn of the economy.  Heavy sigh.  

But, for the most part, we love our home and we love being homeowners.  Some days we romanticize about life in a loft downtown or in a cabin in the mountains, but truth be told if we had to do it over again, we probably would pick something very much like our current house in size and shape and location.  And we have no intention of moving anytime soon...moving is perhaps the only thing worse than living in a home improvement messy pile of rubble and dust.

You see, we've lived in our house just long enough that we thought it time to tackle a home improvement project.  You know, something small and manageable, something we could "do ourselves" in a couple of weekends.  And from this optimistic and naive notion sprang our current homeliness: a garage full of brick pavers, bags of gravel and sand and retaining wall rock, and a backyard pit - a pile of dirt and broken up concrete where previously stood a small, dilapidated wooden deck.  Our vision: a sunken patio big enough for entertaining -- summer book club barbecues, fall wine tastings, and spring "we're not having a baby" showers.  And perhaps, by spring, we will indeed have a patio...and a party to christen it.  But right now...we have a mess.  And a lot of materials occupying our garage.  The days are getting shorter and crisper and we're left wondering -- what will come first -- our initial frost or our first completed home improvement project?

We've learned that simple projects are never simple -- they're complicated and costly.  And the satisfaction of "doing it yourself" doesn't quite counter the back pain, blood blisters and stress.  My husband is looking thinner these days -- nearly a week of manual labor, dehydration and skipped meals is proving to be a heck of a crash diet.    

Everything is dusty.  The outside, the inside, the "clean" laundry folded on the kitchen table.  The windowsills, the dishes in the sink.  Dusty, cluttered, messy, stressful, over-budget, back-breaking work.  Tomorrow, the day laborers come to (hopefully) help us finish the job by Sunday.  The grand total for the "simple" project is still being calculated.  Oh, it's a homely state all right.

And yet, as the evenings get cooler and the turning of the season begins to whisper in doorways, dawns and dusks, I can't help but think -- no matter how dusty, dirty, messy, pricey, inconvenient, and stressful our current situation is...it's still ours.  Our home.  A roof over our heads, bare essentials in the refrigerator, a place where we're greeted by stubby tails wagging vigorously, lolling tongues and chirpy barks every time the garage door signals our homecoming.  Our home.  

This morning I drove by another home two blocks from our own.  There were multiple notices duct taped to the door and a pile of belongings heaped in the doorway.  Another foreclosure.  A family's life unclaimed in an unkempt pile sitting in what used to be their driveway.  Their home.  Now...they are home-less.  What rented or borrowed space do they call their own?  

And just like that....the film of dust lining every surface of our interior, the patchy soil and roped off pit that sits in our backyard...is beautiful.  Is perfect.  Is ours.  Is homely as in definition #2 - "simple, but cozy and comfortable."