Two blogs=too much!

It may appear that I have completely abandoned my attempt to keep a blog... Not true! Instead, I decided to share the blogging experience with my teacher candidate students at the University of St. Thomas. In doing so, I created a new blog to serve as a kind of 'home base' and then linked all of my students' blogs to that site.

So, rather than posting on my personal site, I've been posting ideas and finds on our class blog. You can see them at:

 www.doliteracy.blogspot.com

Party in my office!

I'm having a little party in my office today while eating my favorite school lunch (chicken nuggets and fake mashed potatoes!).

Okay, back to the party...

Today is World Read Aloud Day and it also happens to be Wednesday, the day all of the students and teachers in our school read silently for enjoyment for 20 minutes. Earlier this week, I invited teachers to take a few minutes today to celebrate World Read Aloud Day. Let me repeat-INVITED, not required, not demanded, not requested. 

Here's what happened:

• a choir teacher had his students each read aloud one line from their own books
• a science teacher asked students to read one paragraph from their own books
• a health/P.E. teacher read a picture book aloud to her class
• a guidance counselor viewed a video of someone reading Oh, the Places You'll Go!
• striving junior high readers Skyped with elementary students down the block and read Shel Silverstein poems to them (one young man even got a surprise Skype visit from his little sister!)

I work with awesome people. 

Tweeta-be: Wannabe Twitter User

TWEETA-BE: I looked it up and it's not on Urban Dictionary... yet. However, I did learn a new word that is also fitting for this discussion: twitterate-someone literate in Twitter. For example, "Until a brief email exchange this morning with my hipster colleague, Jack, I was struggling to become twitterate."

I originally joined Twitter strictly for professional growth. Unfortunately, since I am not twitterate, it has not done much for me in the way of professional development. Believe it or not, a pivotal moment happened last night during an episode of The Bachelor (#guiltypleasures).

My colleague, Jack, tweeted about me-Is @jesscrooker screaming at her television right now?! And it became clear, that Jack was to be my Tweacher.

So for any of you who are striving to become twitterate, I'm posting Jack's email tutorial. And for those of you studying literacy, consider the nuances of learning to become twitterate and then think about the unique features of your content area texts which need to be explicitly taught.

Totally different from Facebook. The hashtag (#) is a way of trending your thoughts. For instance, if you were tweeting about the Superbowl this year, everyone was using a hashtag like #superbowl2012. If you were to click on that hashtag, you can see everyone else who used that same hashtag on Twitter, or in other words, everyone else who was talking about the Superbowl. Sometimes you want to do hashtags just to be funny like #killmenow or something like that. The key to hashtags is there are no spaces in between words.

The @ symbol is just used for referencing other people.

Sometimes tweets have RT in front of them. That lets others know you are re-tweeting someone else’s tweet. Standard protocol says you need to say who said the original tweet after you put in RT, though. So, if you re-tweeted something I said, it would look like this: “RT @jacknilles I need chocolate cake #midnightcravings” or something like that.

You may even want to comment back to that person while letting your own followers see what you’re talking about. In which case, you put your reply before the RT. It might look like this: “Me too! RT @jacknilles I need chocolate cake #midnightcravings”

Crazy, eh?!

Vulnerability: friend or foe?

A colleague shared this link with our staff after we spent last Friday morning discussing virtuosity and vulnerability. I received it this morning when I logged on to my computer. As is typical for my Mondays, the loose, relaxed feeling of the weekend sheds itself about 30 minutes into my work day. I saw the link to the video in my inbox and the note that it is about 16 minutes long and immediately determined I did not have 16 minutes to watch this--too much work to be done! Then, I reconsidered my hasty decision and forced myself to focus and really LISTEN to Brene Brown. It was the best 16 minutes of my day.

And yes, you DO have 16 minutes to watch this.

You know you have spent too much time at your desk when...

...you haven't posted on your blog in ages! I've got several ideas brewing, but in the meantime, I'd like to pass on the blog site of a colleague I highly respect. Not only does she motivate me to get blogging, she has so much to share about her passion for helping children learn to read and write! 

http://cvliteracy.blogspot.com/

Ambition.

There are too many kids in my school who are not proficient readers-too many for the number of reading teachers and sections of reading intervention we have available to possibly help them all. In fact, I've had to make some decisions this year about who receives help and who does not. You have no idea how much that eats away at me. 

Sometimes my friends tease me about what an easy job I have now that I'm not in the classroom. And yes, in some ways being a literacy coach is easier. It's true, I don't have the day to day stress of preparing lessons, calling parents, or grading student work. However, having to make choices about which students do not get the help they need is what wakes me up in the middle of the night and makes me nauseous just thinking about it. 

My wise colleague and good friend, Dr. Jennifer McCarty Plucker, consoled me this past Sunday when I called her to get a second opinion on how to prioritize the students in need of a double-dose. She told me the research she has been exploring indicates that when the students with severe reading needs exceed 20% of the school's population, the school should transition into a 'stop everything and do literacy' emergency. 

So, I spent the following 48 hours in a state of high stress-emergency mode. When I shared my state of emergency with my principal, he looked at me kind of puzzled and asked what had brought on this feeling. It's not like it is new information to me that about 50% of our students are not proficient readers. 

And that's when I realized there was a part of me that truly thought the reading teachers and I could do it alone. 

Don't get me wrong. I have the privilege of working with some DARN good reading teachers, but we need about 3-4 more on our team to actually provide service to half of the student body. 

Thus, I'm left struggling with where to begin... again.

"Ambition has one heel nailed in well, though she stretch her fingers to touch the heavens."
-Lao Tzu, Philosopher 

Not yet flipped, but slightly tipped

Thanks to my friend Tom Brandt, Instructional Technology Specialist and teacher extraordinaire, I've spent the last 24 hours or so contemplating the concept of the flipped classroom. (If this is a brand new concept to you, check out his blog here.)

So, after doing some much needed cleaning of the clutter from my desk today, I rewarded myself by playing around with Screencast-O-Matic and creating my first lesson! Check it out!

Why cold reading is a bad idea!