Romeo and Juliet...Still Relevant?

"For never was there a story of more woe, than this of Juliet, and her Romeo"

Teaching Romeo and Juliet to 9th graders is honestly one of my favorite things that  I do.  They are bubbling over with hormones and confusion and just trying to find their place in the world; they are teenagers, just like Romeo and Juliet.  They start with these preconceived notions that Shakespeare is awful, but through melodramas, and acting, and viewing (and let's be honest, watching a young Leonardo DiCaprio as Romeo doesn't hurt), they actually start to appreciate the story.

Today we just started reading.  We "acted" out the first scene, and already, as we talked about how Romeo was feeling (loving someone who didn't love him back), they all jumped in on that conversation.  They could RELATE. To Shakespeare.  This is the first glimpse that they get that something written so long ago can still matter.

In an age where many schools are focused on relevance, and making kids college and career ready, I fear that Shakespeare gets pushed aside.  Romeo and Juliet isn't even in the Iowa Core. I would argue though that Shakespeare IS relevant. We can still teach these kids those skills they need to succeed, but I think Shakespeare can be the tool to get there.  Some of my favorite moments of teaching happen in the real world conversations we have geared around those two crazy kids in love.  Some of my favorite moments of teaching happen when I see struggling readers up front, reading those lines, and making the characters their own.

When kids leave my class, I hope they remember our Romeo and Juliet unit.  I hope that they might hear Shakespeare down the road, and remember, hey, that wasn't all that bad.  And if they can become better readers, writers, and communicators in the process? Even better.

And, let's not forget, during these 6 weeks it is my job to look at this face:

A Letter to My Students

To My Students:

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

There has been so much name calling and hatred spewing from every outlet these past few months, and I'm sorry that this is the America that is your norm.  I'm sorry that in school we try to teach you to be compassionate, and kind, and to respect others, and to not bully, and yet you are surrounded by the exact opposite of that.

We have checks and balances for a reason, you are protected.  No matter your views, no matter what you think of the election, those democratic processes will be protected

I, as you should, will honor the outcome of this election.  I will not however stand for bigotry, and I will stand by my Muslim friends, my same sex family friends, my black friends, my Mexican friends, my female friends, my immigrant friends, my Native friends, my trans friends.  Silence is dangerous, and if you feel something is wrong, speak up.

Live with and love people with conflicting ideas and beliefs.  That is what makes our country great.  Learn to discuss these ideas, learn how to solve conflicts without anger.  Be a responsible civic member of society.  Learn. Ask questions.  Debate.  Because in 4 years it will be YOUR turn to decide what happens next.

On Writing (First Week Musings)

Well the first full week of school has come and gone. Personally, I prefer this second full week to the first few days.  I love just jumping right in and getting to the meat of the classes; I hate the rules, and syllabus, and housekeeping stuff that has to happen at the beginning of the year. I'm not a huge fan of get to know you activities, I would rather just literally get to know them by getting things going!

I do forget though how it does take some time to get procedures and expectations down, especially with the freshman. I come in with memories of how the class was run by May, forgetting that each year my past freshman were once new freshman, and it took some time to establish a routine with them.  Patience Patience Patience is key these first couple of weeks, and I do have to keep reminding myself of that.

I am EXCITED for this year though.  Every year I think it has potential to be the best, and I love that feeling.  I am most looking forward to my electives (Creative Writing and Yearbook) this year.  One of the struggles of teaching at a small school is scheduling.  When required classes are only offered one period a day, it makes it difficult for kids to have a lot of flexibility to take the classes they want to take. On the other hand with that, kids sometimes end up taking electives they really have zero desire for, they just need a class to fill 1st period with etc.  It gets incredibly frustrating! The kids who truly want to take your class can't, and then the kids who don't want to be in there, are.   The past four years I have really worked on developing the curriculum for Creative Writing and the Yearbook business, and I feel like things are finally coming together.  Our Yearbook won A NATIONAL AWARD for last year's book ( I admit, I cried when I found out), and this year's creative writing class is the best I've ever had.  Only 9 students (up from 4 last year), and every single one of them WANTED to be in this class.  I even have HALF of them that truly want to be writers, and I can tell already that they have a passion for the craft.

I got them started this year reading Stephen King's "On Writing".  I believe King is the best writer of all time, ever.  He is magnificent at what he does, and is a truly gifted storyteller.  I've read
"On Writing" a few times, the first time being back in college.  Each time I read it I get so fired up about writing and just feel the fire burning to put words to pages and create something new.  I wanted my kids to feel that same excitement, especially since I knew a majority of them truly want to become writers.  This week we've been reading his words and blogging about their responses, and I am SO EXCITED for them to start writing next week! They have had some great insights and reflections while reading; I am always amazed at what goes on in their heads, and how they express those thoughts through their writing.

Through our reading and writing this week I have also had them set them goals for themselves.  We've talked about how great readers also need to be readers! I've challenged them to read a certain amount of books this semester, and to give up TV and phone time and actually try to read each day.  So, along with them, I am also challenging myself.  Obviously I love to read, but a lot of times during the school year I find myself reading less and less.  Last spring I set a goal for myself on Goodreads to read 50 in 2016.  I've read about 20. My goal is read those last 30 by the end of the semester.  I need to follow my own advice though (which honestly is tough...I can preach it to the kids..but I need to practice living it!), which means I need to not just turn to Netflix when I get home, and start carrying a book around with me again.

The other goal I had them set was what type of writer they want to be, or what do they hope to accomplish.  King talks about how to be a writer you need to write.  Every. day.  I always tell myself I will write along with the kids, but then as the year gets going I tend to just work on other things while they write.  I am determined this year to get back to my writing roots.  Even before I wanted to be a teacher I was a writer. Writing is a huge part of me that I have really let slip away.  Especially after reading King's book, again, I am ready to get back at it...and I have the greatest class ever to help inspire me and keep me going this year!

I say it every year, but, I think this will be the BEST year yet <3

Peace, Love,
Ms. A :) 

Taking Risks (Can a great lesson get even better?)

Taking risks as a teacher is scary, especially when you feel like you have a pretty good thing going. When you get good at teaching something, it can get easy to just keep going with the same things you have always done.  Why not? It is a good lesson, it always goes great, so why change things up?

I personally believe it is things like that that get great teachers in ruts.  Just because something is great, doesn't mean it can't be improved.  The world around us is constantly changing, our students are constantly changing, and it makes us better at what we do if we take risks and challenges

Social media is huge for our students, and I don't know about other schools, but at my school in particular it is Twitter and Snapchat that students spend most of their time on.  I am a fan of social media.  I don't think we should preach to kids how awful it is, instead we should teach them to have digital citizenship, and how to use social media to their benefit.

In my Advanced English class we have been reading/watching Hamlet for the last few weeks.  The kids always seem to get really into it, and I have some great lesson plans. But, I realized I was starting to get complacent, and comfortable.  With this class especially, they love Twitter.  So I started looking through resources to try to find a way to combine what we were doing with Hamlet, use social media, give the students an authentic audience, and teach digital citizenship.  (I wanted more than just tweet like you were a character, make a Facebook page for a character, etc.  I wanted it to be something more authentic than that)

I came across a lesson, that to be honest, I first read through and thought it was a) too much work, and b) waaaay too different than anything we had done before. I came back to a couple days later though, and decided to give it a try

Basically the kids were divided into 3 groups, the actors, the paparazzi, and the news reports.  The actors were responsible for playing the scene (with props and costumes), the paparazzi's job was to live tweet and snapchat the performance, and then the news team had to put together their report on the scene, just based on the twitter and snapchats

The kids were SO excited, and got so into it.  They had full on costumes, the Tweeters made a new Twitter account and hashtags, and the news team created a whole news network.  I was SO impressed, and it was refreshing to do something new and fun.  I shared the Twitter handle with our administration and some other teachers to give the students a live audience.  Going back through and looking at the feed after the performance, I was impressed with their interpretation of what was going on.

After, we were able to discuss how each group interpreted the scene, and more importantly, we had a great discussion over how ideas can be skewed through a social media lens.

Moral of the story: Don't be afraid of change.  I am lucky I have a great group of kids to have as "guinea pigs", but it really felt so good to go outside of my "teaching comfort zone".   I know not everything will go great like this did, but the attempt alone is enough to not only engage my students and get them excited, but to also get me excited about teaching also

Peace, Love,
Ms. A

Becoming a Better Teacher

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions.  I feel like each year I just try to be better than the year before.  I don't set any specific goals, because if I am being honest, most of the time by March or April I've given myself new things I want to work on, or just have completely forgotten.

I am constantly trying to become a better teacher though.  At the end of the each unit I make notes on what could go better, I don't think I have ever taught the same exact unit twice.  Each year I think to myself, "hey I'm a pretty good teacher, or this was pretty good", but then the next year I look back and think, "no, NOW I'm a good teacher, this is pretty good."

So instead of waiting for the new school year to think about ways I want to improve, I thought it would be good to combine new year resolutions with teaching resolutions.  I could feel myself starting to get into a slump this year, and I need to rediscover my joy in teaching (disclaimer: this doesn't mean things have been awful this year. This is actually probably one of my best teaching quality years, and I have some wonderful kids I have had great times with, but just seems to be some tougher classes and some slumps).

I wanted to keep the list short, because these are things that I think are truly important, and I don't want them to fall to the side because they were so detailed or so many.

Here are Ms. Applegate-Brummel's 2016 Teaching Goals:

1. Cell Phone

 In my earlier years of teaching I got in the really bad habit of having my phone out, and even having full on text or messaging conversations during class.  During the worst, I would even check my phone while I was actually teaching.  I haven't gotten much better about this, but I still keep my phone, on my desk, in plain sight, next to my computer.  When I get busy, or when I am actively teaching, I may go long periods of time without checking it, but it is still there.  Now, don't get me wrong, I think it is OK that I send a quick text, or check, during class.  I am an adult, and at any other job I would have use of my cell phone.  What I specifically want to work on is not having my cell phone out.  It is not fair that I take the students' away, even when they are just sitting out, yet mine is in plain sight on my desk.  Which, if my cell phone is my top drawer, I think that will also help with......


2. Staying in the moment

 I get too caught up in always planning for the next class period, the next day, the next week.  Personally I think I give great critical thinking assignments for students.  But I seem to have gotten in a bad habit, where I might be in front for a bit, I give them the assignment, then just let them work, while I work also on other things.  I know it is impossible to think I will never work while kids work, but it is the type of work I need to get better at.  I shouldn't be doing things that totally immerse me (grading longer papers, planning lessons), because then I'm not there with the kids.  Yes they have these great assignments, but if I'm not guiding them, or interacting with them, are they really all that great? I need to get up and walk around more, engage them in conversation while they are working.  I need to be in that specific moment, with that specific class.


3. Laugh

 My goal is laugh, at least multiple times a day, WITH students.  Kids are funny.  Instead of being so caught up in whatever else (see #2), I need to appreciate the humor and wit that my kids have.  Can they be annoying? Yes.  Can they make dumb comments? Yes. Still though, I believe kids will enjoy school a whole lot more if they see the teacher enjoying their job

4. Recommend Books

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I LOVE reading.  I can get so caught up in a book that I want to do nothing but read that book.  Of course as an English teacher I want my kids to also love reading.  I do everything I can in my lessons to not have kids hate reading.  Studies show much kids start having negative association with reading because of high school reading.  So not only do I need to be actively find ways for kids to enjoy reading, but one thing I really need to work on is recommending books to students.  I read for my own personal enjoyment.  For every book I read, I need to read a book that maybe wouldn't be my first pick, but would be for a student.  When I read a book, I need to think of students to recommend that book to.  I also need to be physically putting books in kids' hands.  So if that means I have to go outside of my comfort zone and try to do some fundraising to increase my classroom library, I need to.  If kids see not only passion for reading, but actually get a book put into their hands that I say they will love, maybe I can get a kid who "hated" reading, to actually enjoy it

5.  Better Feedback

I've really gotten into some standards based grading conversations and thoughts. That is something that could be a whole different blog topic.  With that though, I need to start being conscience about WHY I am assigning the work to the students, and then giving them feedback that is not just a score. I get busy, I want to check things fast, so I just fly through and give them a score.  What are they learning from that? If they didn't get 100%, they need to know WHY.  If they did do great, they need to know WHY.  So if that means I give less work, but the work they get is more meaningful, and they get more meaningful feedback, I think that is a good direction to be moving in

6. Relationships

I love my kids, I really do.  And yes, I call them "my" kids.  It does feel like that when you are with them every day, bad days, good days, and all in between. Again, I find myself getting busy though, and not investing in the relationships as much.  Everyday, at least once, I need to ask a student about something that is not school related.  I need to strive for the 1:3 positive reinforcement theory. (for every negative interaction have 3 positives, with the same student). Yes, that seems exhausting, especially in English 9 sometimes, but it is the positive interactions that build relationships.  I'm in this profession because I love the kids, so overall, even when I'm stressed, or feel busy, it needs to come back to the relationships and building those connections

Peace, Love

Ms. A :)

New Year...Kind of? (Finals after Christmas Break)

Last Spring, big controversies surrounded the schools and possible start dates.  It seemed like everything was in upheaval, then compromises were made.

That being said, our administration looked at our start and end dates, and told us that if we ended the semester before Winter Break, like usual, there would be about at 15 day difference between 1st and 2nd semester.

To me, it didn't matter.  All my classes, even electives, are year long.  Since that is not the case for many teachers, the decision was made to move the last week of 1st semester, and finals, after Christmas.

Again, I didn't really care.  To me it was all the same.  Kids complained.  Other members of faculty thought it was inconvenient.  Whenever I told friends, family, etc over break that we hadn't taken finals yet, their responses were usually the same

"That sounds awful!"
"That sucks for those kids!"
"It would be so nice to be done and be able to start new!"
Etc.

And my responses were usually the same

"Ugh.  I don't think it will be a big deal"

I really didn't.  Yes, it would have been nice to end it all with a nice bow and come back and start new, but to me, I didn't think it would really matter.  I don't give any cumulative tests (that's an issue for a whole different post on how I feel about that), so really all it was doing was giving my kids MORE time to work on their projects and papers.  I used that last "extra" week to my advantage and stretched some things out.

Not a big deal.

But now that I have experienced it... my whole opinion has COMPLETELY CHANGED

It's not the taking finals that is awful, it is the mind set.  There is a certain attitude around the end of the year.  Kids are restless.  Things are wrapping up.  Many teachers give work days to get things done for finals, etc.  Kids can feel that a break is coming.  When you come back from break, kids and teachers are refreshed, and new things are started.  Kids are engaged right away (well most of them) because they are ready to start something new.

When we came back yesterday, my 9th graders were CRAZY! (And I mean that in a good way, I really do.  I was so happy to see them.  They were just a little nuts) We were finishing up Hunger Games discussions, and getting ready to write our papers for our final.  But it's the same thing we were doing before break! There was nothing new! It was almost like break hadn't even happened!

So.  I am now NOT a fan of finals after break.  Luckily for me, with my year long classes I can really end my "semester" before break if I want to. I will just have to be much more on top of planning, especially now that I know!

In the grand scheme of things, I didn't think it affected learning all that much having 1st semester end after break.  Now living it, I definitely think it is much more beneficial to students and their learning to be able to start fresh when they come back

Which leads me to wonder what year long school would look like? I know there are schools around that have already implemented it, but I would be curious to see how.  Do they end "units" or "terms" before each break? How to they manage to have continuity? I never thought I would be pro year long school years, but would that actually be better for the kids to have learning chunked like that?

One thing I do know for sure though is that I love my kids, and I really did miss them, but next year, we're definitely ending our English semester before break!

Peace, Love,
Ms. A :)

Vent-Teacher Slumps

There really is no purpose for this blog update except to have word throw up.
You've been warned.


Being a teacher is HARD. (Again, I am not putting down other jobs, or saying mine is tougher than anyone else's, etc, just. venting.)  There is no instant gratification in being a teacher.  I feel that if you care about making a difference, and truly want to help kids, it is HARD.  I constantly second guess myself if what I am doing is the right thing, or if I am doing everything I can to help these kids. I love these kids.  I care about these kids.  I think about these kids all the time.  I lose sleep over these kids. I just don't know if it is actually making any difference.  Some days I just wonder if it is all for nothing.  It would be so much easier to go to a job everyday where you don't have to take it home with you.  You just do your thing, go home, and not ever worry about it.  Would the kids even notice or care if I didn't?

We as educators try so hard to make our lessons relevant and engaging, and are constantly changing our classrooms and methods to keep up with the "flavor of the week" ideas that come across.  Sometimes I just wish we got some instant gratification from teaching.  I just wish I knew that all this hard work was making a difference.  I want my kids to leave my classroom better people.  Smarter.  More educated about the world around them.  Critical thinkers.  GOOD people. I hope that someday when they are asked about a teacher that made a difference in their lives, they remember their English class.

Okay. Enough self pity.  I do want to focus on positives.

While in the process of writing this post I had my English 9 students, who are currently reading Hunger Games.  I had a freshman boy, who has seen the movies, tell me that he is enjoying the book MORE than the movies, and asked if he could read ahead.  Game changer.  I'm hoping I can also get some of the kids to keep reading the books, and then maybe even similar books after that.  I really do believe that Hunger Games is the gateway drug to enjoying books

Peace, Love
Ms. A