SI - Final Reflection: Collaborative Revolution

As I sit at the computer and reflect on the past two weeks of Summer Institute the two words that standout to me are collaboration and revolution.  These two words were touched on and even exemplified throughout institute.  In preperation for the upcoming school year my principal assigned us two books to read as a staff; Teach Like A Champion, and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.  I want to focus on the latter as a resource to describe what I have gained from my institute experience.  In the book The Dysfunctions of a Team Patrick Lencioni uses a leadership fable to address five issues that cause teams to fail.  Lencioni posits that absence of TRUST, fear of CONFLICT, lack of COMMITMENT, avoidance of ACCOUNTABILITY, and inattention to RESULTS are the pitfalls which often result in ineffectiveness in most teams.  Over the course of the last two weeks the UNCCWP staff has been able to bring together fourteen teachers with various differences (i.e., content /subject expertise, place of employment, grade level, school district, race, gender, childhood background, educational experiences, and etc.).  With all of those differences it would not be suprising to think that the Summer Institute would operate like most teacher professional development workshops.  However, that is far from what actually occured!  Let's look at the five dysfunctions that Lencioni addresses in his book and how my peers and I overcame these pitfalls over the past two weeks and formed an amazing team of writers.  In his book Lencioni displays the five dysfunctions in a pyramid starting with the greatest issue at the bottom and the least impactful at the top.  I will approach each issue in that same order and explain how we avioded the aformentioned pitfalls.

1) Absence of TRUST.  In his book Lencioni. writes " Trust is the foundation of real teamwork.  And so the first dysfunction is failure on the part of team members to understand and open up to one another." (pg.44)  From day one of the institute we established a sense of trust amongst us with the warm-up in which we had to come up with a movement to display how we felt.  Immediately I had to let go of my masculine insecurities and open up to my more sensitive side, sine I was the only male in the group.  From there we dipped into our history as writers and developed a timeline to portray events that influenced our identity as writers.  We shared the positive and negative events that played a role in shaping our identites as writers. Later on in the week it was amazing to read about our different experiences through our digital documentaries. This activity helped us to create a community of trust that would be essential for the remainder of the program in order to help each ofus grow as writers and educators. " Great teams do not hold back with one another...They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal." (pg. 44)  As writers and teachers we exposed our shortcommings, inquires, fears, concerns, writing pieces; and that took alot of courage!  We actually practiced vulnerability from day one, even if it was low risk!  That set the tone for the remainder of the institute.

2) Fear of CONFLICT: "If we do not trust one another, then we aren't going to engage in open, constructive, ideological conflict."  Does that sound familiar?  Is that what happens in some of the meetings at your schoosl with other teachers?  If so raise your hands!  Our discussions around our inquires, grammar instruction, grading/evaluating student writing, reflecting on the role of teachers  as writers, inquirers, and professionals pushed us to engage in open discussions that we often don't at work.  Within those discussions we raised questions that challenged each other to dig deeper and to see things from different perspectives.  Constructive conflict leads to enlightening dialogue and gives each person the opportuiity to have their voices heard which further strengthens the trust amongst the group members.  I believe during our short time together we were able to avoid artifical harmony and create a community of respect and transparency.

3) Lack of COMMITMENT:  According to Lencioni the lack of commitment is talking about "committing to a plan or a decision, and getting everyone to clearly buy into it."  The level of engagement that was exhibited this week by all of us through our demos, writing pieces, blogs, and etc. prove that we were fully vested in getting as much as we could from this experience.  I know I came into the week with some ambiguity about the institute because I really did not know what to expect.  However, that was dispelled after the second day when I began to see the method to the writing madness.  I'm sure I was not the only one but by the Friday of the first week it was clear that we all were committed to the process.  I mean some of us spent a Saturday participating in a writing marathon.  If that is not commitment I don't know what else to call it! (I hate I missed it)

4) Avoidance of ACCOUNTABILITY: Lil, Lacy and Sally did a great job of facilitating the institute and maintaining the level of accountability amongst us by reminding us about our demos, blogging, posting to e-anthology, revising our personal writing, and responding to each others feedbaclk.  In addition shoutout to all of my peers for your level of commitment throughout the week because it definitely inspired me to maintain high standards and to show up daily ready to contribute.  Often in workshops like these teachers serve as receptacles while the worshop leaders dump strategies and information down our throat only for us to go back to our classrooms and operate as usual.  The fact that we had to share with each other throughout the weeks created a sense of buy-in that I have not experienced in most professional developments.  In true community people hold each other accountable because the groups is only as good as each individual.  We all brought something to the group that was essential to our experience (i.e., foldables, Storify, Glogster, Worldmapper, writing workshops development, Museum Box, Hashbrown casserole, sweet rools with cream cheese frosting, and on and on!)

5) Inattention to RESULTS: Lencioni points out that no one person is above the team!  At times, more oftern then not, individuals in a group allow their ego and status to try and outshine others in the group.  (I wonder if we can think of any people that operate like that at our school or in any other organizations we are apart of?)  While we did focus on our individual inquiries throughout the instituite our collaboration was geared towards the goal of ensuring that everyone got something out of this experience.  As we explored our inquiries aloud through our demos, writing, and blogging we provided each with valuable information that could be used to inform our personal inquiries.  I have more tools in my teacher toolbox to engage my students in writing than I know what to do with now.  In addition, I have ways to incorporate technology and promote social awareness at the same time!

I know you may be saying Rashid I can see the collaboration component throughout the blog so far but were does the revolution piece come in?  The collaboration is the revolution!  Teachers often operate in autonomy and focus on their own little world in their classroom.  However, high performing schools and effective teachers recognize that teamwork is the only way real education can occur.  With that being said, our mission after this week is to continue our collaboration through UNCCWP and to carry our collaborative spirit to our schools and build a community of leaders that seek to change the system within our schools, districts, and eventually nationally!

"All that and a bag of chips" Teacher Campaign

Dorry, a teacher and fellow UNCCWP Summer Institute group memmber, has giving us an inititative to change the negative perception of teachers in the media by sharing personal testimonies of how we have made a positive impact on our students.  As I listen to my peers I hear stories of courage, care, empathy, sacrifice, dedication, modesty, and passion!  My peers have shared stories of how they reached out to specific students and caused them to believe in themselves and to raise above their own expectations.  They are speaking about how students have given them credit for impacting their lives in ways that they could not have imagined.  I see tears of joy, sorrow, compassion, and fortitude despite budget cuts, regaredless of bureacracy and political positioniong by school boards.  I hear teachers who are pushing beyond their limitations, insecurities, and imperfections to educate their students wholistically: mind, body, and soul.  For those who read this blog my request is that you leave a comment about a teacher that had a positive impact upon you in some way.
I will start the chain by sharing about two teachers that changed my life and I am forever grateful to them.  My 5th grade teacher Mr. Alexander was the first male teacher I had and he stands out in my mind because he would wear a suit and tie to school everyday.  He handled himself like a true professional and he held us to high expectations academically and behaviorally.  That is why he was "All that and a bag of chips" to me!
The other person that stood out to me is Dr. Riggins Earl my "Ethics in Society" professor in grad school.  He showed me what it means to be a scholar and continous learner that is willing to wrestle with concepts and be okay with not having answers.  That is why he is "All that and a bag of chips" to me!

What teacher is "All that and a bag of chips" to you?

UNCCWP SI Day 6 Reflection

Today began with some posing and freezing in one position around the topic of "Assessment."  We had to touch somebody in some way to signify our connection to each other in this community.  Prior to that we wrote into the day by looking at three inter-related concepts: teach as writer, teacher as inquirer, and teacher as professional.  I chose the strand of teacher and professional because I wanted to write about how teachers are often not considered professionals by the larger society. 
From the warm-up activitie we wnt into my demo presentation which focused on "Revolution: The Tipping Point."  In the demo I used Malcolm Gladwell's book The Tipping Point and specifically the concept of "The Power of Context."  Gladwell suggest that "The Power of context infers that epidemics are sensitive to the conditions and circumstances of the times and places in which they occur."  From this concept my demo looked at the revolutions that have and are occuring in the Middle East and North Africa over the last seven months.  To include technology in my presentation I used a great interactive website called Museum Box, which is a site that allows teachers and students to create a "box of artifacts, images, video clips, texts, songs" about an event, famous person, or etc.  I created a Museum Box aabout the "2011 Egyptian Revolution" as a model and allowed my peers to create their own Museum Box about the revolutions occuring in other countries in the the Middle East and North Africa.  I really appreciated all of the great feedback from my colleagues about my demo!
The rest of the day included Ashley and Megan's demos.  Both of them were great and led into inquiring about "Critical Literacy" as a way to inspire social advocacy and our identities as writers.  The presentations were great because they allowed us to work collaboratively with our peers to think, write, reflect, and dialogue about these very interesting topics.  Today I actually feel like I can see how all of the demos are giving great ideas of how I can incorporate writing, technology, and social change in my class.  I am excited to integrate some of tis wonderful stuff in my class!  Stay tuned for day 7 tomorrow!   

UNCCWP SI - Day 5 Reflection

Today began with some "Ranting" about things that really "grinds our gears" about education right now.  I learned about the "Ranting" activity earlier this year at another UNCCWP event in which Youth Roots, a group of young writers from Oakland, presented about writing as a vehicle for self identification, social advocacy, and reframing. I enjoyed the rant because it allowed me to hear the different perspectives of my peers as they shared some of their issues with public education.  It is amazing that we had different issues that pissed us off but we also had some issues in common.  That got the descriptive language juices flowing for the group and was a great transition into Aileen's demon on "Image Grammar".  I enjoyed looking at how we can use the "5 Brush Strokes" that Harry Noden suggests as a way to make our writing more descriptive and "popping".  The activity of using a topic and then thinking of verbs and noouns associated with that topic would be a great way of having students brainstorm before they write to help them have some descriptive ways to write about a topic.  I also enjoyed Tara's demo about writing circles as a way to have students come to a consensus about a topic and attack it from different categories and perspectives.  The discussion we had today about grading and evaluating student writing still has left me with some gray area in regards to how do I allow students to be creative while pursuing mastery using rubrics.  I wonder if the use of rubrics is constraining and limiting and leading students down a road to what I want them to write?  Well it is time to leave for the day and time for me to finish working on my demo presentation for tomorrow.  I playing with the title of "Revolution: What is the Tipping Point?"  Tune in tomorrow for a reflection of day 6!

UNCCWP SI Fourth Day Reflection

Today has been a real free flowing day at the UNCCWP SI.  We started the day writing about breathing in and making space, which for me was definitely necessary after the last three days.  It helped me to think about taking the time to breathe in the information we receive daily and breathing out the stuff we do not necessarily need.  As we breathe in and out we actually will find ourselves making space to take in more information. The we can repeat the process of retaining and releasing what we need and what we don't need.  It is essential that we continuously engage in this process as educators and writers! 
Then one of our peers, Jessie, presented her demo on ARS Poetica and it continued the laid back refreshing feel of creative writing.  I personally tend to shy away from poetry as a writer, reader, and teacher but her demo made me feel inspired to actually use poetry in my Social Studies class and as a form of personal writing.  One of the poems she used was Billy Collins piece entitled Introduction to Poetry and it really helped me to demystify my perceptions of poetry as an exercise in reading lofty thoughts of creative musing.  I look forward to her helping me to implement some ARS Poetica in my class in the Fall. 
After Jessie's demo we engaged in some flexible workshops presented by Lil, Sally, and Lacy around the topics of Inquiry, Socratic Seminars, and Writing Workshops.  This format allowed participants to attend the workshops that interested them or engage in some independent work.  I attended Lil's workshop on" Inquiry" and she focused on how inquiry is a means to become apart of the discussion that is going on amongst scholarly writers around a topic related to writing.  It can serve as a way for us as writers to get into a dialog with that community. 
After Lil's workshop I attended Sally's workshop on Socratic Seminars and it was very engaging.  We actually used the Declaration of Independence as our document to analyze.  I have wanted to try Socratic Seminars in my class for a while but have been fearful due to concerns about classroom management and student investment.  However, after engaging in the activity with the group I am no longer afraid but I am ready to jump in feet first!  It is a tool in my teacher toolbox now!
We ended the day with a gallery crawl in which we viewed each others digital projects about our live's as writers.  Let me just say that I am amazed at what writers can do with technology! We had Glogsters, Movies, Cartoons, Wobooks, links to personal writing, pictures, video narratives, and etc.  I hope that some of my colleagues post their work to e-anthology so that you all can see this great presentations that speak to our personal evolutions as writers!  Well the day has come to an end and the weekend is here but we will be joining into the UNCCWP Writing Marathon tomorrow.  So our time of writing will continue through until we meet again on Monday!

Summer Institute Day #3 Reflection

So we started the day with a little bit of enemy-protector to get the writing juices flowing and to remember how we need to cognizant of each other as we populate this space.  This morning's demos where great!  Stephanie introduced me to two new forms of technology that I definitely plan to use in my classroom.  I knew about Glogster but I had never seen it used as an instructional tool, so I can see how I can use it to teach as help my students use it as a performance task for a lesson or unit project.  Also, the Storify website was amazing and I can think of a number of ways to use it with my students to understand how history is a story that can be told from many different perspectives.  Melissa's demo on creating student social advocates was very insightful and helped me to began brainstorming a end of the year project around social advocacy.  I love how she used student writing as master texts to model the type of work students can do to create awareness and change.  After lunch we tackled writing groups as a concept and activity. I think that it is intresting and intinmidating to bring other people into the writing process with you.  I think it is like blogging but an activity that takes place in real-time!  As I watched Lil, Lacy, and Sally model how writing groups work I couldn't help but feel intimidated by the thought of engaging in writing groups with my groupmembers.  I kept wondering how authentic are the responses and the feedback going to be?  However, I liked the fact that there are some norms established up front to organize how the group should function as we give feedback to each other.   Working with my writing group on Aileen's poem from the Murray Cards activity was safe and felt easy-going.  I would be interested to know how she felt since it was her work being reviewed.  Using the writing group through google docs was fascinating as well because it gave the group a chance to dialogue about Aileen's work without conferencing face to face.  I could see it being a great tool to use with my students to have writing groups to discuss a paper they may be working on for class.  For the second half of the writing group activity my group members gave me some feedback about my Murray Card narrative and it was actually inspiring and reaffirming to hear their feedback about my work in progress.  Now I feel like I have some things to help expand my work and make it more organized for future publication.  Day #3 is over and I am looking forward to tomorrow and the exciting workshops, especially the socratic seminar workshop

Inquiry - SI Day #1

So day 1 of the UNCCWP Summer Institute was quite interesting!  There was a lot of great energy in the room, which was full of educators, writers, enthusiast, belly dance students, college professors, and etc.  As the only male I was victim to some very interesting moments during our warm-up activity but hey I just dove right in and went with the flow.  I really feel like that is the over-arching motto or mindset for the next eight days of institute.  As educators we are encouraged to plan, plan, plan , and plan some more!  However, as a writer our most transparent, relevant, and creative work comes from a place of freewriting inwhich we just go with the flow of what is being developed within us.  I believe all forms of writing are "living documents" that can be altered, held sacred, diseccted and interprated in various ways.  As I go with the flow of this writing journey the lens with which I will be examining the SI landscape will be:

What are some creative ways I can incorporate writing in my class that will give my students the opportunity to write from their own perspective, encourage and support moral agency, while utilizing technology (i.e., social media, websites, google sites, etc.)?

I welcome feedback from my SI community as a inquire daily about this question.

Walking Trees

Good morning fellow UNCWP writers!  So as a pre-requisite to help us dive into our writing journey this summer we were asked to complete a book review of a book we chose during the SI Orientation. The book I was drawn to was Ralph Fletcher's Walking Trees: Portraits of Teachers and Children in the Cultures of Schools.  In the book Ralph Fletcher writes about his experience as a teacher trainer with the Teachers College Writing Project at Columbia University in New York City (NYC).  The chapters consist of stories about his encounters with principals, teachers, students, and other writng projects participants.  Fletcher gives a very candid and transparent account of his days working in K-12 classrooms in NYC Public Schools.  The title of the book is interesting in that he uses the notion of "Walking Trees" as a form of symbolism to describe how change occurs in public education.  We all know that trees do not walk! Once they are planted they remain where they are because their roots take hold beneath the ground.   Flethcher gained this title from the writing of a NYC student who told a story about a tree she learned about while on a family trip to Florida.  Suppossedly, every hundred years the tree takes one step.  His belief is that change occurs in education at the same slow pace.  Throughout the book Fletcher writes about his challenges trying to teach teachers the writing process so in turn they could teach their students how the writing process should be approached.  The writing process that he is trying to get them to adopt is the process that we are familiar with: prewriting, drafting, revising, and editiing. As a trainer Fletcher encounters a mixed bag of reactions from administrators, teachers, and students to engage in the writing process.  As a Social Studies teacher I partnered with the UNCWP to incorporate writing in my classroom so I know all to well the resistance that students can exhibit to writing.  The majority of them view it as a chore versus as a way to speak their mind and create a living document.  However, I also know how rewarding it is to see students who were once reluctant to write ask for more time to share their thoughts through a pen or pencil.  In his book Fletcher highlights the same type of experience with students. His personal stories confim my believe that at the end of the day they all have something to say but they just dont believe they can write; I've been there before.  Interesitingly, Fletcher's most poignant moments in the book arise when he begins to question the significance of his job and its relevance in the life of the students he encounters.  Majority of the schools he worked in were low-performing schools in impoverished urban communities.  Thus, majority of the students were African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Asian and recipients of free or reduced luch.  Throughout the book he struggles with the relevance of teaching "these type of students" how to write when their future opportunites realistically may not include going to college, let alone graduating from an institution of higher education.  His honesty definitely pushed me to reflect on my on biases and archetypes after my first month in the classroom last year.  As a Teach for America (TFA) teacher I came in to my first year ready to take on the achievement gap that exists in our country.  I had high expectations, grand ideas and projects in store for my students, and relentless determination only to be smacked in the face by the harsh hand of reality once I began to recieve work from them.  I had spent the previous summer in Chicago going through TFA teacher boot camp in preparation for the school year.  I did some student teaching and endured hours of professional development geared towards giving me a clear understanding of the achievemnt gap and how to teach struggling students.  However, no training could prepare me for the real thing!  I found myself questioning my significance daily just like Fletcher and wondering was I really making a difference.  In retrospect I can emphatically say yes!!! Fletcher writes about how at different schools the students would light up, clap, and become energetic on the days he showed up to their class to teach writing.  He would refer to the students as authors, and he would allow them to write from their own personal experiences, which often perplexed the teachers who felt they had to provide them a topic to write about.  For the students he gave them a different perspective...he changed their mindset about writing!  The root latin word for education is educare, which means "to bring forth out of."  Fletcher was able to bring the writer out of them by allowing them to write their own stories...isn't that what an author is? A creator of his or her own story!  As a Social Studies teacher my desire is that my students leave my class viewing history as a story that is still unfolding and that it is my story, their story, and essentially our stories!  They need to be writers so that they can tell their story because at the end of the day no one can tell their story like they can!  Often history has only been told from the perspective of the victor or the dominant group.  It is imperative that the disenfranchised, oppressed, and voiceless write their own story so that we can hear different perspectives.  My students writing allowed me to see the world from their perspective and the opportunity to get to know them better. I would recommend any teacher to read Walking Trees because it gives a candid look at the education system and the task we have to challenge the status quo and be the best educators we can possibly be.  Not for recognition but because our students need it and they deserve it!  I would like to end with this qoute by Fletcher around the concept of being an "incubated spy" as a teacher:

"The nature of my job, I quickly realized, was to function as a catalyst, a change agent myslef.  But, by design, the change would happen slowly, surreptitiously."

Be the change!!!!