(Poet’s note: This poem comes from the parent in me watching my sons go out the door to school or play. We live in a very safe neighborhood, as far as that goes, but I still worry. And the metaphor here is about me and them and the world, I guess.)
I’m not afraid to say
that every time they walk out that door,
I worry.
If only I could tie a string to their belt,
harnessing them to me
so that I could gently tug them back
when I miss them.
But out they go, tucking my fears into their backpack,
forgotten in the moment of play.
Here is the Voicethread of this week’s poems so far:
Peace (in calming the fears),
Kevin
This morning, we had our huge gathering of teachers at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting come together into one crammed room (more than 1,000 strong). It’s always amazing to look out at that sea of fellow teachers and know we are all connected with our teaching and writing.
NWP Executive Director Sharon Washington told us about her own writing and sharing experience with one of the NWP Summer Institutes (OK, so it was our Western Massachusetts Writing Project) where she sat in with a writing response group in action during a visit to the the site. She shared a children’s story she is writing and admitted to being nervous.
“I took a deep breath and started to read … and I felt accepted,” Washington noted, touching on the community of writers and teachers that comes together during the Summer Institute. “My experience is not unusual. It is reflected … across the network.”
Washington explained the importance of the NWP ideals by sharing out the mission statement and vision statement, which reflects writing in the digital world as well as being grounded in the traditions.
Our Mission
The National Writing Project focuses the knowledge, expertise, and leadership of our nation’s educators on sustained efforts to improve writing and learning for all learners.
Our Vision
Writing in its many forms is the signature means of communication in the 21st century. The NWP envisions a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in a digital, interconnected world.
Former US Poet Laureate Billy Collins was the guest speaker. As expected, he was funny and deep and insightful with his poetry, reading a variety of poems that touched on teaching, writing and kids.
I loved this quote by Billy Collins this morning: “Usually, I don’t know where I’m going (with a poem) when I begin.” The poem creates itself and he follows along with the inspiration, he said.
In response to a quest, Collins explained how different poetry, with its freedom, is from prose, which requires exact meaning.
“Poetry’s a bird. Prose is a potato.” — Billy Collins
Now, I am off to dinner with a large group of Tech Friends.
I just had the pleasure of shaking hands and chatting with the wonderful Billy Collins — who will be speaking to the entire National Writing Project assembly in the next hour. Andrea, Aram and I (thanks to Aram for pointing him out) let Billy Collins know how much we love his poetry and we talked briefly about teaching poetry in schools and whether teachers in the NWP wrote poetry themselves (or, he asked, were we a small minority? We — he called the three of us poets, which we are but still … Billy Collins ackowledged it for us.)
For the record, he was very gracious and did not seem to mind being interrupted by us three writing teachers. I think. Who can tell, really? But it was worth it.
I called my wife to let her know. “I Met Billy Collins,” to which she quickly replied: “Did you tell him that your loving wife bought you a Billy Collins book for Christmas last year?”
Gulp. Nope. Sorry, honey.
But I did once write a poem about Billy Collins, or about being inspired by Billy Collins’ poetry. This was back when I was starting a OnepoemPerMonthforaYear project.
Talking Billy Collins Blues
November 2006
I called on Billy Collins last night And he asked me outright if I was disturbed To which I replied, Yes, slightly, sorry for the intrusion but how do you write a poem
every month for a year And where do I look for lost words
— the ones I have misplaced with time? Billy slipped me a piece of paper when we were done
talking And disappeared leaving me alone with nothing much but that paper. I could just make out some red ink scribbles
and a few doodles when I held that thin skin of a tree up to the light and let the paper become a translucent buffer
between me and the muse. I held Billy Collins in my hand for hours, nursing him
like the last drink of the night when daylight is looming, afraid to even look because if it did hold the key
then my search would be over and why write poems after that? So I crumpled Billy up
and tossed him into the street bin (apologizing profusely for being so impolite) and I chased my own shadow all the way back home in the darkness of memories.
I have heard about Prezi from a few folks and even ventured to the site once or twice, but I could not wrap my head around it. You know how it is: you have a concept of something (ie, presentations use powerpoint, which are a formal sequence of slides moving forward) and it is difficult to shake loose. Just imagine when we are old and senile!
But here in Philly, I noticed a few people using Prezi and I thought: what the heck is that! And, that spurred me to want to spend a bit more time figuring it out. So I did.
Prezi is a free presentation tool (you can upgrade for a free) that shifts away from slides and moves content onto a large virtual canvas, where you layer in text and images and other media and then create a path through the material. The picture I am including here is a simple Prezi I did for my Day in a Sentence, showing the grid and the paths between my words. You can choose different themes, although the choices are limited (I wonder if more choices come when you pay for an upgraded account?).
Once I “got it,” I became hooked, and I decided that since life is all about learning and trying new things, I would delve right in. So, I took my somewhat-boring (I can admit it) powerpoint of a presentation I am giving on Saturday at NCTE around assigning and assessing digital work by students (ie, my digital science picture book project) and created a Prezi of it instead. And I will use that on Saturday and hopefully, I’ll weave this adventure into that talk, too.
What if there is no internet connection, you ask? Good question. Prezi allows you to download a copy as a flash file and share your presentation that way. You can also embed your prezi in blogs. Here is my Day in a Sentence (which is hosted this week over at Lynn’s blog — Reduction Physics — so come join us).
My larger question: How could students use this format to create a different kind of narrative, never mind a presentation. What would it mean to be shifting through a story over a large canvas of information? How would you plan that out and then do it? (if you have examples of students doing this, please share).
Yesterday was the official start of the National Writing Project Annual Meeting, with long sessions in the morning and shorter ones in the afternoon. Many of the workshops were centered on developing and supporting the work at our writing project sites.
I attended an always-interesting session called Writing in the Digital Age: Learning Environments and Student Writing (which I led a few years ago myself). Here, four different teachers presented various pieces of student work — podcasting, video storytelling, voicethreaded poems, and blogging connections. We broke off into smaller groups to examine the work and have a discussion around what we saw and what we could take out of it.
The first group that I was part of was a project from Hawaii in which teacher Cathy Ikeda brought us through how her students used voicethread to publish a version of the “I am” poems that connected students to their sense of place and culture through metaphors. I loved the students that used their voice, not just typed writing, but Cathy said there are technical issues at her district (too many computers accessing the net, and not enough wireless room — making audio difficult at times). What I really liked is how she published the threads to her school website and then invited family members not only to view and listen, but also to comment and give feedback. When we talk about the affordances of the media, this is a great example. How else would you have grandma leave a message for you? (as was the case with at least one of the young poets.)
Next, I sat in with Dawn Reed, who did an amazing podcast project with her speech class around the “This I Believe” concept from NPR. We listened to a student from Germany use his voice to encourage Americans to be open to new ideas. They also published to a blog (to the world!) and expanded their ideas of audience. (Note: Dawn and I are presenting together on Saturday at NCTE and she wrote about this project — with Troy Hicks — in our Teaching the New Writing book.)
Later that day, I ventured into a workshop called 21st Century Literacy and the Graphic Novel. This was a fascinating look at how the use of comics and graphic novels can open the doors for some of our students. Presenters Bee Foster and Anastasia Betts gave us a lot to think about. Bee, in particular, did a fantastic job of showing us examples she uses in her classroom to support the deBois’ theme of “twoness” in character and adversity, race and self.
Anastasia also gave out a top ten reason list for using graphic novels in the classroom (which you can find at her website, along with the slideshow presentation and various handouts) which include:
It’s visual
It’s relevant
It’s manageable
It’s rigorous
It’s engaging
It’s positive
It’s 21st Century
It’s communicative
It’s brain-based
It’s cross-curricular
This morning, we have the general assembly — more than a 1,000 teachers and educators who cherish writing and students in one room, together — and BILLY COLLINS is the guest speaker. I can’t wait. (Gosh, he better not disappoint me, right?)
(Poet’s note: We have more legos than I care to count. Lego heads, lego legs, lego bodies, lego … stuff. This poem was inspired by the pain of stepping on one a few days ago. They may be small but they sure do hurt.)
I stub my toe on a Lego
and rue the day we ever brought them into this house -
these tiny creatures that come alive at night
while we sleep,
only to freeze in motion when my foot hits the floor.
I wish they’d at least have the courtesy of moving
to the corner.
This week, Lynn is hosting Day in a Sentence. She is here, with me and a few others, in Philadelphia — the City of Brotherly Love — so she asks that we try to include Love in our response this wee.
(Poet’s note: Last week, our school (like most schools) held a ceremony for Veteran’s Day and I noticed how the number of veterans in attendance continues to shrink each year. I listened to one of my students play Taps on his trumpet with our music teacher, and heard another teacher explain to our entire school the meaning of Taps in ceremony. I thought of silence.)
This is the keynote address by Danielle Nicole DeVoss that got us thinking and then moving yesterday at the National Writing Project’s Digital Is Conference.
It was a pretty amazing day here in Philly with the National Writing Project’s Digital Is Conference — we spent the entire day discussing, debating and considering the emerging digital literacy movement that we are seeing reflected in the lives of our children and students.
The morning began with an overview of why we were here — the rationale behind talking about the influx of digital media in our classrooms and why it is part of the writing focus. We then broke off into smaller groups. I took part in a discussion called Change Writers, which focused on a project that connected eighth graders with fourth graders in California to research social injustice, discuss the issues via blogs and then move into positive social action as a result. Much of our talk focused in on what the students did, with the teacher putting on emphasis on the fact that it was not the technological tools, but the ways those tools were used. In this case, the technology of blogs and voicethreads opened up a large audience for students who are often left out of the conversation because of socio-economic issues.
Here are a few things I heard:
“The technology is a piece of it. But it is not all about technology … Technology allowed us to take down the walls of the classroom. They were not just writing for me. They were writing for peers, for others, and getting feedback. The got to write without that ‘red pen’ slashing through everything. They could have conversations.” — Lesley McKillop, Prairie Elementary School.
“It’s not about the technology. It’s about using technology to help students join communities. They were no longer confined (to their classroom).” — Gail Desler, Area 3 Writing Project.
Later, I presented some student digital work — a digital science picture book — to a group and due to our protocols for discussion, I had to sit silently while the room talked about what they saw in the project, what “worked,” and what questions they had. Only then could I, the presenting teacher, grab the floor and put the project into context. It was a bit nerve-wracking, particularly when I saw former NWP Executive Director Richard Sterling sitting right in front of me with colleagues Charlie Moran and Anne Herrington. And across the room was Gail Hawisher. These folks are HUGE in the land of composition. But it was intriguing to “experience” the book through their eyes and lens.
A second afternoon session brought different folks together to talk about what they had learned and observed after viewing difference pieces of student work. I took a bunch of notes, but they would not make much sense to anyone (not even me at this point). But this Wordle nicely captures the main ideas from our discussion, which focused a lot on what we view as the new definition of Writing (not everyone agrees that this is new).
But we did have some important questions that we were left with from our table discussions:
• How do adults tackle issues affecting young people that the adults have not experienced themselves?
• What is relationship between traditional forms of writing and the new forms of writing?
• Keep an eye on the haves and have-nots – Will it exasperate the difference or equalize it?
• What is “writing” these days?
• What is missing from our conversations around digital literacy: questions about rhetoric and how it works and what you need to do it well.
• Are traditional composition classes the training ground for the new media literacy?
• Are new genres developing within new literacies that are irrelevant to the traditional writing classroom?
• How does the new design – non-linear text and media – affect our views of literacy?
• Do we even know what we should be teaching when it comes to new literacies?
• How does firewall affect teaching new literacies if every step in any direction is blocked?
• Some teachers are learning along with their students – they are learning by doing it.
Finally, I attended a session down the street at the Museum of Natural History, where various kiosks of student digital work — podcasts, movies, digital stories, etc. — were on display for viewing, and then I attended an interesting forum discussion about how young people are using digital media in their lives and how are educators meeting this shift (Mostly, we are not, to be honest).
So, long day with a lot to think about and ponder.
This week, Lynn is hosting Day in a Sentence. She is here, with me and a few others, in Philadelphia — the City of Brotherly Love — so she asks that we try to include Love in our response this wee.
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