Book Review: The Night Circus

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There are books about magic, and then, there are magical books about magic. The Night Circus, a debut novel by Erin Morgenstern, is one of those novels that has such beauty and mystery and magic of many kinds shifting in and out of the narrative that I had trouble putting it down, and that was a problem because school was starting and my brain was needed elsewhere. Still, I snuck in my reading moments.

I notice a lot of reviews of The Night Circus fluctuate between disappointment and rapture. It seems the disappointment comes from the book jacket overselling the “competition” between two magicians when what this really is is a love story between two students of master magicians whose lives have been put into “play” in mysterious ways. The circus itself — a black-and-white themed, ever-expanding affair that arrives and leaves without notice — is the backdrop for all that unfolds here in this story.

I’m reluctant to give away too much, except that for a new novelist, Morgenstern does a fantastic job of balancing the use of magic in underlying ways (there’s not blasting of wizards from wands or any of that) and building up a real sense of wonder as multiples narrative threads come together. And the ending, where a conversation between two characters about the role that “stories” play in our lives, and how they weave magic for all of us, grabbed me at once and brought me right into why I love novels so much, and how transforming good writing and powerful stories can be. Given what came before in the novel, it was a perfect way to end.

Peace (in the night),
Kevin

 

Six Word Summer Memoirs

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Although my sixth graders won’t start writing in earnest until next week, I wanted to give them a taste of some of the varied writing activities we will be doing this year. So, I introduced the “six word story” concept to them, connecting the writing idea to summer memories. I then gave them each notecards, and had them write at least one six word memoir (many wrote multiple stories) and then we did some sharing out of our stories. You could see they were intrigued — six words? how hard could that be? — until they started writing — six words? That’s too many (or too few)! — and many used their fingers to count words. It was like watching the writing of haiku.

The stories were great, and it gave me another chance to quickly get to know them and to connect with their summer experiences. I also shared a few of my own including:

The band got tighter; rocked out.

and

Agreed to roller-coaster ride; heart-stopping fun.

We talked about how you need to leave out things, and how it could not just be an adjective list, and how you need to capture an idea in a short amount of time. These are all skill we will be developing this year, and the six word summer memoir was a perfect start-of-the-year sharing activity.

Here are some of theirs:

 

Peace (in the six),
Kevin

 

Middleweb Book Review: The Graphic Novel Classroom

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I had the pleasure of reviewing a book — The Graphic Novel Classroom by Maureen Bakis — for the Middleweb website (which is a fantastic resource for middle school teachers). Bakis does an excellent job of showing how graphic novels and comics can have a place in the high school curriculum. (The comic above was my addition to my review. I figured it made sense to have a companion piece to the writing, given the subject matter.)

Read my review here.

Peace (in the review),
Kevin

Sometimes, Things Fall Apart With Technology

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incomplete class_picture
If you are a regular reader of my blog, you probably think: Man, everything in technology works for that dude. It’s all so seamless.

Trust me, it doesn’t. Often — more often than I write about — things fall apart and my head starts to hurt.

Yesterday, our first day of school, I had this vision of bringing my homeroom class of sixth graders into our webcomic site to create avatars and begin an introductory comic. It’s a great opening activity on many levels because it opens up conversations on many fronts: how you represent yourself, how an avatar can be used, what a webcomic is, and how we will be using technology through the year.

What I didn’t count on was that an upgrade to the comic site over the summer requires the most recent version of Flash, and only about half of our laptops were ready with the new flash player. (And I had not double checked the working of the comic site — an oversight I quickly regretted). It was scramble time, as I quickly tried to come up with workaround plans.

First, we tried to download the flash player update, but they were all in student accounts which doesn’t allow users to download and install software.

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Second, I had them shift over from Firefox to Google Chrome. Some computers still do not have Chrome. And, for whatever reason, some of them refuse to download Chrome.

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Third, I had them share computers, as I worked to log in as an administrator and fix things as best as I could. But that meant a lot of waiting time for some kids, and about half the class never even got to really start the activity during the 45 minutes period.

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Meanwhile, in the background of the laptops’ operating system, the downloading of updates from a variety of programs that had been waiting all summer long to begin now started to run, causing a wireless logjam and freezing up some computers.

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Sigh.

The good news was that while some of my new students were frustrated (no doubt, thinking: is this how the year is going go?), most adapted nicely to the situation, helping each other out. And this morning, when I checked the comic site, it seemed like all but four of my students have finished their avatars on the site. A handful must have gone on last night and worked at it at home.

The reality is that we have old laptops (I realized that the cart of PCs in my room were bought when my current class was in preschool) that require a lot of updating and vigilance on my part, and while I am grateful that we do have technology, I know it doesn’t always work the way I want it to work. And when I am delivering professional development with a technology component, I remember days like yesterday — days when it would have been easy to throw my hands up and say “enough already.”

But I kept at it, and I keep at it, because I do believe in technology and media as important elements of the literary lives of my students. And while it may not be prominent in the Common Core or other curriculum documents, the ability to persevere and create workarounds when something goes awry are important skills. Too bad they often come with headaches, too.

Peace (along the wires),
Kevin

 

Social Media Counter

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I’ve shared this “social media counter” by Gary Hayes before, but it caught my eye again this morning, and it’s difficult not to look at the numbers rolling by and think: wow. (If you are curious about the data, check out Gary Hayes’ post, in which he explains his sources.) There is also an iPad version (99cents)
Notice how there are four main buttons: Social, Mobile, Games and Heritage. And you can change the time sequence, too. I just find this fascinating.

Peace (in the media use),
Kevin

Cleaning the Classroom, Cleaning the Websites

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I feel like we are getting started so much later than everyone else, but our school year with students starts today. I’m pretty excited and antsy about the start of school, about getting to know our students and setting a good, positive routine to start of the year. I think my classroom is pretty well set (although I seem to have lost or misplaced a few posters that I usually hang on the wall, and it is irking me to no end right now).

I also began the task of cleaning up the online spaces that we call “home” with our sixth graders. Yesterday, I went through the process of removing a lot of old content from our classroom weblog (keeping some things up there so it doesn’t feel like an empty space and so incoming students have an idea of what’s ahead of them). I also went into our daily homework/project blog, and scraped it pretty much clean.

The other day, I worked in Bitstrips, the webcomic site, which I will be using today with my homeroom kids, and now I need to shift into Glogster.edu and Gamestar Mechanic, opening up spaces for this year’s students by “retiring” my former students. I usually make room to keep a few past-year stragglers, if they are active in a site. I like having some connections remain.

But it seems odd to have some empty shells of sites that I know, soon enough, will become hubs of activity for us.

Peace (in the start of the year),
Kevin

 

A Summer of Video, part one

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This summer, my wife and I decided to buy a couple of cheap video cameras for our boys, and let them get creative with the devices. My older son has a real talent for video and our younger son is getting there, although mostly he likes to perform in front of a camera on a tripod. I’ll share out some videos of my older son tomorrow, but look at this one from my youngest. What I like about it is that he actually took an idea from his brother (using video to create “magic”) and vamped on it himself.

Right now, I am helping my youngest son to complete a documentary movie (of sorts) about our neighborhood. He has been interviewing neighbors and family about life here in our neck of the woods. I am helping him with the editing, since using iMovie is still a bit tricky for him.
Peace (in the vid),
Kevin

Anxiety about Common Core is “Universal”

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ELA Guiding Principles
I led the first of three sessions in my own school district around the Common Core and our new Massachusetts ELA Curriculum Frameworks yesterday. It was a group of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade teachers from our elementary schools and our regional middle school, and for many of them, this is the first opportunity they have had to really dive into the standards and see what is there.

I began the session by using a new tool called ThingLink, which allows you to layer text on an image. I created a time-line of sorts, asking them to situate where they are with knowledge of the CommonCore on the line, with a little note. There were a few glitches (maybe a limit on number of folks editing at the same time? I’m not sure) but in the end, it worked nicely to show me (the presenter) where everyone was, began sparking informal conversations among the participants, and introduced them to a technology tool they could now consider for their classroom.

After a number of activities, including looking through our state’s guiding principles for key words and ideas and creating a word cloud (see above), we read a few articles and watched a video about the Common Core. What resonated with the teachers was the feeling that change is underway … and they are not quite ready for it. They also noted that many of the teachers in the video, from another state, were expressing the same anxieties.

“I guess that’s a universal feeling,” one teacher noted, and we all agreed.

They articulated the need for:

  • More time to work the standards
  • More time to meet with content-area colleagues to consider the expanded scope of literacy
  • More time to begin revamping lesson plans and curriculum to tie into the Common Core
  • More informational/non-fiction resources to draw upon

As we ended our session up in Edmodo to reflect on something learned and a question still looming (and showing them how to use an online space for collaborative writing), the feeling in the room was our inquiry was helpful and that if they were to redraw themselves on the “line” from the start of the session, most of them would shift left quite a bit further. I consider that a good start.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

Slice of Life: The Saxophone Didn’t Break

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Last Tuesday night, as my band was practicing to get ready for our gig over the weekend at the local regional fair, I was in the middle of a solo (on Love Potion #9) when the neck of my saxophone snapped off and fell to the ground with a sickening “thud.” I was stunned, and the rest of the band just stopped and stared. I have an old saxophone, but still … that certainly had never happened. And the gig was just days away!

The next day, I took a long ride to a music store, and pleaded with the repair dude to see what he could do. He did, and he was able to put the pieces that came apart back together.

But throughout the gig, I was tight, thinking that any moment the saxophone was going to fall apart on me, in front of all those people. It sort of felt like those before-first-day-of-school dreams we get (I’m having them this week) in which all of your careful planning goes for naught. But my saxophone held, and I am sure my first days with students will be fine. Sometimes, things fall apart, but we can find ways to get them back together again.

Peace (in the fix),
Kevin