Certifiable?

Crushed it.

It’s 11:44 am on Monday, June 4, 2007, and I am done, baby. Flying high. I feel so good after speed-typing through six half hour essays that I’m sitting at my keyboard in the man zone to write a seventh, just to capture the moment. After a year plus of what has at times felt like biblical agony, I planted my flag in the summit this morning. And now I can truly say, I have been to the mountain.

Here’s the blow by blow. Last night I cleansed myself mentally and spiritually by not drinking alcohol (okay, I had a slight hangover from a friend’s 40th the day before), and watching the second to last episode of the Sopranos. Tony and I both fell asleep clutching shotguns to our chests, ready for the final showdown. Oh yeah, before bed a thought struck me, based on good advice from JC on the comment board, so I went down to the computer to look up BICS and CALPs, the stages of English Language Learners’ language acquisition.

Woke up this morning feeling strangely at ease. Instead of reading the morning paper as I normally do when I walk my dog, I studied a single note card on which I’d written the ELL stuff and the six types of questions. For each, I ran down a few talking points: for a comparison to a non-print text, I figured I’d use a Duke Ellington tune or some other piece of music, as I often do in class; for analyzing a kid’s reading, I reminded myself that meaning is constructed by a series of experiences, etc.

The main thing I told myself, as per feedback on the two (I admit, crappy) practice essays I’ve published here: they’re kids, not questions. In other words, I vowed that instead of mechanically paraphrasing the question (for example if asked to “identify and discuss weaknesses, and provide strategies for correction”), I would respond in a genuine fashion, as if I were really addressing a kid in my class. Sounds simple, but I was distracted by the trees.

Guess what? It worked. I found the good in the student responses before pulling out the ugly, just like I would when commenting on a real paper; the million repetitions of “I really like how you.... but this would be stronger if...” finally paid off. This approach felt natural, and let me address the questions from where I really live, as a teacher. To heck with handcuffs, my flying fingers were telling me. Show what you know-- talk about what you do every day in your class, what you’ve been working on for the past fifteen years (did I just say fifteen?). In the immortal words of Bootsy Collins, P-Funk bassist, I freed my ass and my mind followed.

Back to the blow by blow. As I was leaving the house, a remarkable thing happened. A bird’s nest in the hanging flower basket on our front porch had three chicks in it. We’ve been watching with the boys every day, seeing the eggs first, then the eyes-shut chicks, noting comings and goings of the wren mom and dad. Well, this morning as I was leaving, I swear to god, they fledged. We saw two of the three chicks actually fly out from amidst the purple blossoms into the great big world right before our eyes.

That got me to the testing center, where I had a few moments of bureaucratic angst (what would an NBPTS outing be without it?). First was hand copying a paragraph (NOT printing it, the directions insisted) that said I really, really, really won’t cheat on this test or tell anybody what was on it. The low point, though, was once I had settled in front of the screen and began clicking through the tutorial. I reached window six, demonstrating the use of the back arrow, and couldn’t figure out how to get past it. For a few desperate looking glass moments I was stuck clicking back to go forward and forward to go back. (The test attendant came over and moved me along well before I would have begun cackling maniacally.)

From there, I got it on. There were three minutes of anxiety at the end of the first question when I realized there was a second prompt and I had only responded to the first. After that, I understood that I had to click through each prompt and hit the back button (oh, that’s what it was for) to do the whole question. Mechanics under my belt, I could focus on the questions, and that’s what I did.

Foxes were everywhere. One popped up on a writing sample, and another became my non-print text. Actually, I wrote about a fox hat from my travels in rural Alaska. Somehow, it seemed the perfect prop when discussing how I’d get kids interested in a passage written by a Native American author who contemplated her reality versus Hollywood's versions of Indians. (I don’t want to say more for fear of breaking the “I swear I won’t tell what was on this test” clause.)

BICS and CALPs came in handy, and writer’s workshop, and a generous dash of “HOW does it make you FEEL?” During my break I stretched and splashed water on my face, and before I knew it... I was walking out into the sun. A free man. A teacher man.

And so here I am, at the end of a trek I began on February 16, 2006, with these two questions: Am I nuts? Can I do it? I ended that first post by saying I was climbing this NBPTS mountain because it’s there.

It’s still standing, but now I can answer both questions with a resounding yes, whether I get the initials or not. That mountain? Call me crazy, but after all this work, the view from the top isn't what matters most. Turns out, it was all about the journey.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (15)

The big day is Monday. Casting about for ways to prepare the weekend before, I decided to do another one of Patrick Ledesma’s tri-pane practice prompts. My two-year old son, who was supposed to be napping upstairs, woke up when I was six minutes into it. I made it back to the keyboard an hour or two later and forced myself to finish, but had lost my mojo. In reviewing, I realized that the only thing my practice essay presented clear and convincing evidence of was that I could type 370 words in approximately thirty minutes.

Anyway, here as a helpful reminder are the “Criteria for Scoring” from Patrick’s simulation, which I assume are pretty close to the real thing.

To satisfy the highest level of the scoring rubric, your response must provide clear, consistent, and convincing evidence of the following:
- an in-depth description of patterns of writing and writing conventions; and
- a thorough understanding of the recursive nature of the writing process.

And below are the prompt and my lame response, for all the world to see. The question is on something I am literally in the middle of doing with students right now, Romeo and Juliet. Specifically, a kid has written a comparison of the play and the cool movie version by Baz Luhrman, the one with guns and drugs and Leo DiCaprio.

My response to my response, other than self-flagellation, is that it doesn’t really reflect my teaching. Part of that is the timed format. I structured my answer, under the conditions, by paraphrasing the questions and then filling in the blanks below each to make a paragraph. It’s not organic, in the way that I normally write. (Ironic, isn’t it, that my response is supposed to reflect my knowledge of “the recursive nature of the writing process.”) But I don’t feel safe in doing that on this sort of essay. What else could they possibly take points off for more easily than not addressing the questions?

This also doesn’t feel right because the kids I have now would never write this sort of response, nor would I ever assign it. In other words, unlike the portfolio, which was based on my actual teaching, this is hypothetical to me and bears no resemblance to the circumstances under which I currently teach.

To whit, my own ninth graders have just finished reading the play, and are working on a final assessment we call “group troupe.” Basically, they are creating fifteen-minute long group dramatic essays by stringing together scenes from the play interwoven with their own narrative. It’s a fantastically complex activity, and beats the pants off, “Which did you like better, the movie or the book?”

As a matter of fact, while I skip school on Monday to take the test, my kids will be diligently rehearsing for performances on Thursday. Whether or not their teacher can muster clear and convincing responses on command in the assessment center, I’m confident the skits themselves will show that my students have engaged in a truly meaningful way with some of life’s biggest ideas via a classic piece of literature. May we all break a leg.

Student Prompt
I liked Romeo and Juliet, but I liked the movie much better then the play. When the movie’s setting was changed to today, the meaning becomes much more clearer.

When we read the play, the words are very hard to understand. When Romeo talked to Mercutio and he gives his speech about the queen and everything, it was hard to understand what he’s talking about. In the movie, it was easy to see that Mercutio is really cool and crazy and fun and the party was wild and Juliet’s parents don’t really love themselves.

The guys really like the girl who plays Juliet. She was pretty and enthusiastic and you could tell she really loved Romeo because she fought with her father, her mother fights with her too, Paris is just a creep. So you can see, I liked the movie. We spend so much time on the book and they’re hard to understand. So the movie is so much better. It’s easier to understand when you can see the people talking and hear what they say. I like seeing it in today’s world even if we really don’t know where it is

My Response
There are some significant areas of weakness in the use of conventions by this student. The first is evident in this run-on sentence from the third paragraph: "She was pretty and enthusiastic and you could tell she really loved Romeo because she fought with her father, her mother fights with her too, Paris is just a creep." The sentence expresses several ideas jumbled up together: that Claire Danes (the actress who played Juliet) was appealing, that she is in conflict with both her parents, and that this student didn't like the character of Paris, the suitor favored by Juliet's parents.

A second area of weakness in the use of conventions by this student has to do with agreement. In paragraph one, she says, "When the movie’s setting was changed to today, the meaning becomes much more clearer." Later, in the last paragraph, the student writes, "We spend so much time on the book and they’re hard to understand."

In addition to these mechanics problems, there are weaknesses in organization and content. The most glaring of these is the lack of development. The main idea is that she likes the movie better than the play because she can understand it better. The thesis is vaguely supported throughout the essay. But the last paragraph, especially the first half, refers to a number of supporting details from the plot without elaboration.

If this student were to write a similar piece, I would use two strategies to address the weakness in organization and content. First, before the paper itself was written, I would have the student create a web or outline to more strongly group her ideas. This writing seems to develop as it unfolds, which is fine for a "discovery" writing or journal, but is not adequate for an analytical essay.

A second strategy I would suggest is for the student to read her writing aloud in a revision group, paying careful attention to sentence length and clarity. While I like to review student drafts also and give feedback by conference before the final, I find that often students can help one another find these errors. Simply the act of reading aloud, for example, is often enough to notice overly long sentences or awkwardly worded phrases.

Posted by Emmet Rosenfeld at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)