THE CAWP FALL FORUM AND MORE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES

Soon the leaves will redden and begin to fall, the air will chill, and learning will dance into full swing for our students.

We will begin meeting regularly with colleagues and team members to analyze data, determine goals,  plan lessons, create individualized  and learning opportunities for students, develop record-keeping procedures, and all the other things that educators do.

As we engage in all of these activities, we also want to consider and plan for our own learning.

What will we do for ourselves?
How will we continue to grow and develop our best potential?
How will we create individualized  learning opportunities for ourselves?

The Columbus Area Writing Project (CAWP) offers both a comprehensive and localized answer to these questions.

As a local affiliate of the National Writing Project, and through our yearly summer writing institute, CAWP offers entrance into  a  national (and  local) professional development network for educators, the opportunity to become Teacher Consultants, as well as a multitude of  other collaborative learning opportunities.

At the local level, in additional to several summer institutes and other programs, the Columbus Area Writing Project  Fall Forum offers one of the best conferences in our area.

Past keynote speakers have included Sonia Nieto, Troy Hicks, Asma Mobin Uddin, Tom Newkirk, and Jaime Adoff.

With a  new location and new feel, this year's Fall Forum, is promising to be a perfect kickoff to a season of excellent professional development activities and events.

We are excited that JoBeth Allen and J.Patrick Lewis will be with us as keynote speakers for 2013.

In addition, our own CAWP Teacher Consultants will be leading concurrent sessions  related to argumentative writing,  spoken word and slam poetry, flipping classrooms, Google tools and techniques for the classroom, teacher activism and advocacy, LBGTQ  advocacy and support, new nonfiction books,  multimodal literacy across content areas, and much more.

Our conference is large enough to hold the big conversations initiated by our keynote speakers and our session leaders and raise the questions we are all asking , yet small and intimate enough so that every one's voice is heard, and interactions, collaborations, and discussions  are comfortable and productive.

If you are looking for that first fall professional development activity,  I invite you to join us for a day of listening, thinking, talking, sharing, learning, teaching , and writing.

The Columbus Area Writing Project Fall Forum

 Saturday, October 5, 2013

                   Ramseyer Hall @The Ohio State University      29 W. Woodruff Ave.      Columbus, OH 43210

 Click here to Register Today

Additional Professional Development Opportunities and Resources

As you continue to plan for your professional development throughout the year, each of the organizations listed below provides a wealth of resources including: conferences, conventions and other events, books, journals, newsletters, and other publications, as well as online resources.

National

National Council of Teachers of  English (NCTE)
         Annual Convention        November 21-24, 2013 Boston


National Writing Project  (NWP)
        Annual Meeting              November 21, 2013 Boston (Runs concurrent with NCTE)

International Reading Association (IRA)
      Annual Convention            May 9-12, 2014  New Orleans

Ohio

 Ohio Council of the International Reading Association (OCIRA)
         Conference                     October 12, 2013    University of Cincinnati-Blue Ash, Ohio


MAZZA Weekend Conference- November 8-9, 2013 Findlay, Ohio


Ohio Council of Teachers of English Language Arts (OCTELA)
         Conference                       February 28-March 1, 2014 Worthington, Ohio

OHIOANA Book Festival- May 10, 2014

Ohio Resource Center (ORC)
Comprehensive site for of resources for all Ohio teachers which includes support with Common Core, videos, professional development modules,  lesson plans, online journals,  and more.

Year- Long Opportunities

Choice Literacy      
       Online and traditional Workshops   Fall schedule  Beginning October 4

Literacy Connection
       Celebrating Writers with  Ruth Ayres      September 28,2013 and April 5, 2014
       Celebrating Writers Study Group Professional Development Workshops 


What do you want to learn this year?
How will you develop as a teacher?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Regardless of your profession, reflect on the kinds of learning in which you would like to engage both professionally and personally.

What do you need to learn?

What knowledge do you need to gain?

What strategies and techniques do you need to add to your  repertoire?

What is the best way to learn  these things?

Write a professional or personal development plan, including the desired learning or strategies, resources and methods to support the learning, as well as specific classes, books, or other publications that will assist you as you learn.

YOU DO NOT DEFINE ME: TELLING OUR OWN STORIES

From now on you do not define me.

Through tears of pain and relief
determination and survival
celebration and liberation
with quiet dignity
Michelle Knight took back her story
from Ariel Castro

From now on you do not define me.

She boldly faced the man
who attempted to kidnap her story
--a second time.

I am not a monster he said.  I am not violent.
You know that home was full of harmony.

You may not,
she said, tell my story anymore.

It was never yours to tell.

From now on you do not define me.



Who owns our stories?

Who has the right to navigate the bloodlines of our identity?
Who is entitled to narrate the flesh and bones of our being?

Who controls the power of our stories?

According to Amy Shuman, and most professional storytellers, you are the only one who can authentically and legitimately tell your story.




 For several summers now, Amy Shuman has talked with the participants in the Columbus Area Writing Project summer institute about the power of telling stories and the ownership of those stories.

Three important  principles she presents regarding story include:

 1. Entitlement
You own your own story/experiences and no one can talk about them or tell them but you.
One of my standard responses is It is not my story to tell, when asked why I didn't tell a story, share juicy gossip, or rat on someone. Although, until hearing Amy, I was not aware of the notion of entitlement, I was unconsciously recognizing the authority of story ownership. Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus own their stories--- exclusively.

We heard Michelle Knight in court at the sentencing of Arial Castro invoke the rule of entitlement:  From now on you do not define me she told him. In essence, she was saying You are not entitled to tell my story. Ever!

2. Tellability
What makes a story tellable and what bears telling?
We usually expect a story to have certain components.  On our state standardized test the students are expected, even in the lower elementary grades, to know the following basic components of story: characters, setting, events, conflict, and resolution.

For many years I, along many other teachers, have taught students to use the following words as a simplified key to summarizing a story: Somebody-Wanted-But-So-Then.  These words lead students through a simple summary or expanded retelling, and have been around so long that, regretfully, I am not able to cite an original source.

However simple these key words, they loosely coincide with the more complex Narrative Theory of William Labov and his components of story, which include the following:

• The Abstract- Where does this story begin?
• The Orienting Information- What do you need to know to understand this story?
• The Complicating Action-What happened?
• The Evaluation- What are the motivations in telling this story? How do I comment on or evaluate the events?
• The Resolution- How does it end?
• The Coda- What does this story mean?

To read more about William Labov and his Narrative Theory click here to go to his homepage or here to view his latest book, The Language of Life and Death: The Transformation of Experience in Oral Narrative .

3. Storyability
What is the appropriateness of telling a story on a particular occasion? Is this the time and the place to tell my story?  Is this the appropriate audience? 
In the courtroom and before the entire television world-- during the sentencing trial for Castro where the world could see the monster in all his inglorious horror-- this was the appropriate place for Michelle Knight to tell her story, to make her statement.  This was the time.  This was the audience.


As I watched Knight speak, I was reminded of  the movie Precious , based on Push: A Novel by Sapphire.  It tells of a young girl raped, abused, and degraded unmercifully by her parents. In the telling, finally came her power. As she learned to read and write she became more empowered.  As she wrote her own story, with the encouragement of her teacher, she became present to her own body, her circumstances, and her possibilities. Her silence until this point had imprisoned her and stripped her of her present and her personhood.

As Michelle Knight took back her story, the chains were unlocked and broken, the darkness dispelled, and her body and life her own.

She faced her worst nightmare-- the devil himself --and took back her story.

From now on you do not define me.
You do not own me
You may not tell my story
It was never yours to tell.

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Reflect on the power of story.
Remember a time when telling your story or a portion of your story empowered you.
When has hearing someone else's story inspired you or allowed you to recognize or connect to your own story in a new way?

Write about the power of story in your life. 

SCHOOL DAZE

I have always loved the first day of school.

It used to coincide with a change in the weather-- an increased nip in the air, a morning chill forcing us to wear jackets or sweaters, and a slight tinge of red or orange on  the leaves.

Now we return to school with the sun blazing high in the sky and schools considering just how little clothing is too little, and little league teams still going-- as summer has eased into an earlier opening of school.


What will we find as we return?

What new responsibilities will be introduced?

What new materials, what new schedules and procedures--- and more importantly, what shifts in thinking are expected and what new reform efforts are being implemented?

See related  post, The Joy (and Burden) of Teaching, which includes more on our increased responsibilities and features several picture books related to school reform approaches.

As we return to school, what is important for us to know?
What do we want folks to know about our roles as educators?

What would people learn about us if they spent the year in our classrooms?
Everyday, all day long. Every child, every lesson.  Every worry, every joy.

Tracy Kidder spent an entire year in Christine Zagac's fifth grade classroom.  The result of that memorable experience was his poignant book, Among Schoolchildren. We watch through Kidder's eyes and listen through his telling prose, as Mrs. Zagac moves through her daily routines, celebrates her victories, worries over her students, supports their growth, and bemoans her own frailties.

What would an observer write if they spent a year in our classrooms?

I am a product of public schools (Columbus City and Westerville City in Ohio) and I am a staunch public school proponent.

I am for having excellent public schools to support our children within strong, supportive communities.

Yet, having said that, I also recognize gross inequalities between and within school systems. I acknowledge that there are some issues that must be addressed to create excellent schools for every child..

Jonathan Kozol was one of the first to bring to public attention the disparities that existed in the past, and still in our public school systems.  In Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools, he opened windows and doors on school situations that were beyond belief.   He laid bare the horrors (and desperate souls) trapped in inadequate schools --school that were failing our children miserably.

Kozol has written almost a dozen other books about the lives of children in poverty, their teachers, and their schools in our nation. Click here to read more about him and his books.

As Kozol points out the differences and deficiencies in many of our schools and school systems, we must also think about how we teach children who are not like us.  This is the subject of Lisa Delpit's landmark book, Other People's Children: Cultural Conflict in the Classroom.   Children of color, children in poverty, and children from other lands-- other people's children-- are often the victims of cultural miscommunication, lowered expectations, and a disproportionate probability of being labeled for academic and/or behavioral issues.

Chris Lehman in his response to CNN's Inside Man fosters more reflection and adds information on this issue in his blog post, Should We Teach "Other People's Children" Differently?

How do we teach other people's children?

What do you, as a parent, want your child's teacher to know?

And finally, in this nation, we tend to continuously  compare ourselves to other countries and their respective school systems. It used to be Japan.   Today it is Finland.

Bonnie Kaplan guest blogs on the Two Writing Teachers blog about her travels to Finland with Christine McCartney. She details her observations about the schools and includes an excellent video by McCartney which clearly outlines the complex and different paths that the United States and Finland have taken since the 1950's in efforts to improve their respective school systems.

Finland is widely reported to treat teachers in an exemplary manner. Perhaps this is the biggest  lesson for us.

One thing that struck me in Kaplan's blog is the notion that elementary teachers are the most  revered and early education  training highly sought  in Finland.  As a former elementary teacher this warms my heart.

Students choose their paths  after ninth grade- moving toward college or vocational school--both free. Perhaps this is another lesson.

Pasi Sahlberg, Finland's leading expert on school reform and author of Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?, questions  whether the current U.S. focus on teacher effectiveness is really the best reform strategy for American schools, What if Finland's great teachers taught in U.S. schools?

What is the best way to reform our schools?
What do we need to know and do?


Where do we turn for information and inspiration as school opens again?

Today's Deeper Writing Possibilities

Reflect on what the first day of school means to you. Do you remember a particular first day or a particularly memorable year? 

Write a narrative about that memorable first day or year.

What reforms do you feel  need to be implemented in your school or school system?

Write an essay detailing  your ideas.

Write a poem or song capturing first day emotions, anticipations and anxieties.

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