Reflections on a New Teaching Experience

     On Monday, July 31, I started my new job at Mount Vernon Presbyterian School as a 7th Grade Writing teacher. The transition between a full-time PhD student steeped in dissertation research and a now full-time teacher who is also trying to keep up with her own writing has caused me to do a lot of reflection. Therefore, I've decided to transition this blog into focusing on teaching, since my other blog focuses on book and media recommendations focused on empowered, diverse female protagonists.
     Based on my summer readings to prepare for this job, my early days of teaching middle school again, and the connections I see to my research and graduate school experiences, these are the main themes I see emerging so far:

1. Community: Community was imperative for me during my PhD program, particularly during my last two years, during which more of my time was spent researching and writing on my own and I had less structure that taking numerous classes offered during my first two years. I also think about community in context to writing because of my National Writing Project background and strive to create a community of writers in my own classroom.
     When I was working with the students this week to create classroom community, we collaborated to create norms that would help the classroom to function most effectively. I emphasized the idea that all of us play an important role in the classroom community, as well as the school community. Our norms, therefore, were a dialogue between them and me rather than me dictating all of the rules, and they did an impressive job of identifying norms. I helped them to wordsmith their suggestions, but they had all of the right ideas about respecting people, the classroom space, and the conditions needed for effective work. My hope is that this activity helped them to feel ownership over our classroom norms and expectations.
     In terms of a class assignment, I asked the students to think about which communities are important to them. Each student is working on creating the community visually, oftentimes through a map or detailed drawing. The follow-up writing assignment is to write a detailed narrative about the community, either nonfiction or through a creative story with dialogue. I'm excited to see the finished results.  My hope is that by asking students to think about the communities of which they are a part, they will become productive members of communities now and in the future. I also think this dialogue will help them with their Fandom Multigenre Research Projects at the end of the semester.

2. Technology and Social Media: During these early days in the classroom, I'm having the students play Literary Bingo with their classroom. My initial intent behind this activity was to help them to get to know each other better and to start to discuss the notion of what "literacy" really is, which is why I included such questions as "plays video games" and "has a Snapchat account." Yet the way they responded to the game told me much more about them than I thought it would.
     First of all, I learned quickly how well they tended to communicate with each other: who was able to patiently wait for responses, who was not afraid to approach others, etc. Even more so, I realized that I was not quite as in touch with today's youth as I thought I was. I have been teaching middle school camp every summer for the past four years and have spent a fair amount of time in classrooms observing Teacher Candidates/Student Teachers and providing feedback in public schools. Yet I have much to learn about how young people engage with technology and social media.
     One of the questions on my bingo page was "has a Facebook account." Since I am only slightly older than Mark Zuckerberg and have a close friend who was at Harvard at the same time he was inventing the forum, I have been steeped in Facebook for many years. I am growing to prefer Twitter and have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Facebook these days, yet nonetheless, I rely on it to keep in touch with friends and upcoming events.
     I therefore assumed that most of the students would have Facebook accounts. They quickly proved me wrong: the vast majority have Snapchat, many have Instagram, about half have Twitter, yet less than half of my students currently have a Facebook account. A few kindly informed me that Facebook is for "older people" and that their parents have Facebook accounts, but not them. I guess it's a good thing that filling out Dr. Robbins's name was an option for the Facebook square, or many would have not been able to have an answer for that block.
     Now, I'm wondering why Snapchat and Instagram appeal to them more. Is it the images, or the instant gratification aspect of both forums? I definitely think there's room for them to teach me more here, especially since I am not very adept at Snapchat. It's interesting that most of my recent college graduates who I taught engage with Facebook, but most of my current middle school students do not. It might be that Facebook is the social media forum for Millennials that eventually caught on for Baby Boomers and Gen-X people, yet another platform will eventually emerge. Who knows, I might have the next Mark Zuckerberg sitting in my class.
     I am already finding that my professional Twitter page, @writermar, is helping me to form community with my colleagues. Many of us tweet about what is going on in our classrooms, and it's a way to provide encouragement and support through "likes" and comments. My professional Twitter page also helps me to feel community with my school as a whole. I'm finding it to be a much more supportive and healthy environment than my Facebook newsfeed, at least at the moment. Perhaps a conversation in my class this year could be the healthy and less beneficial ways to engage with social media.

Upcoming topics for the blog: the benefits of professional reading, project-based learning, the connections between fandom and classroom community, and more!

Review: Light Years

Light Years by Emily Ziff Griffin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

4.5 Stars, and I was lucky enough to receive an ARC. :)

This amazing, lyrical science fiction YA novel tells the story of a brilliant, sensitive, and creative teenage girl named Luisa, who has just been accepted into a high profile internship program as a result of her computer coding skills. But Luisa’s plans change abruptly when a mysterious virus erupts that affects thousands of people, including her best friend and her father. Luisa, her brother Ben, and their friends Kamal and Phoebe go on a cross-country journey to try to find a cure and to save the world, before it’s too late. Luisa gets hints in the form of mysterious poems, and she has to learn to trust faith and intuition that go beyond science and logic. Along the way, she better understands the positive side of her condition, which is seeing waves of color when her emotions run high. This book has depth, suspense, intriguing characters, and an engaging plot that moves along like a gripping action film. Highly recommended for older adolescents.

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