Developing My Question
Since my last post, two classes have passed by un-recorded, but certainly not without reflection. Reflection seems to be most of what I've been doing for what feels like far too long, partly because I don't have a legitimate teaching job, and partly because I'm giving myself time to continue building my knowledge and my own philosophies of the teaching of reading and writing. I also haven't jumped right into creating a cognate project out of my after school writing workshops because I wanted to attend the 826 National 101 Seminar to see what would come from that experience.
In short, after a week of digesting the information from 826, and thinking up ways to apply the 826 ideas and core values to my own aspirations, what has come from my day at 826 was this:
1. The purchasing of an awesome compilation of writing lessons written by 826 teachers and volunteers that has already been twisted into my own style and put into practice with real young writers.
2. A dose of courage to go ahead and spend time thinking and working on the fun parts, which is essentially "thinking while running." This phrase stuck with me because it makes so much sense for how my ideas have always found form both literally and figuratively. My greatest ideas have always come while physically running, so audio recording the presentation given by NÃnive Calegari to listen to in headphones was very helpful. I've listened to her words three times through in order to really absorb the vision, the passion and the mission behind the making of 826 and the 4 basic activities of 826 consisting of:
1. Field Trips- during the school day where kids come to the 826 centers
2. After School Tutoring
3. Workshops
4. In-Schools writer's rooms
Publishing isn't listed as on of the four basic activities, because publishing is infused within each of the 4 basic activities. "I think of publishing as the punctuation that crosses all four of our basic activities" (Calegari, 2010).
"Thinking while running" also means DOING while thinking. Ninive and the creators and staff of 826 make it known 826 is especially committed to supporting teachers, offering services and resources for English language learners, and publishing student work. It is advised to take workshops and tutoring services directly to students in schools and from there, you can build a body of interested young writers, volunteers and community supports to begin building a center elsewhere eventually.
Though so much of my long-term planning goals are very much up in the air, I am already taking steps forward by building relationships with young writers, learning about teaching and teaching about learning, and collaborating with educators and parents to share ideas.
As I move forward in my Masters program, I am reaching the point of collecting both ideas for inspiration, and research based projects and evidence to support my own upcoming cognate project. My greatest challenge at this point is developing a question or argument to present and to narrow down my focus for research.
Since my long term goal is to examine ways to create a generation of children who understand and enjoy the processes of reading and writing and can apply their skills in into any field, I'll need to figure out methods to qualitatively measure interest in reading and writing after participating in literacy based after school programs.
Therefore, my task is to essentially think of creative ways to measure success (alternatives to testing).
From the transcription I typed out from the audio recording of Ninive's presentation on September 10th 2010 at 826 Valencia, she covered a portion on evaluation. At 826, they keep evaluations portfolios on the student participants of their programs based on surveys and then they maintain a database of percentages.
Here's what Ninive had to say about evaluation:
(transcribed from an audio recording of a presentation by Ninive Calgari at the 826 101 seminar in San Francisco on September 10th 2010)
So perhaps my question is this:
How can meaningful literacy building projects be applied in traditional and non-traditional educational settings?
But I don't think it's time quite yet to start collecting data from the kids that I'm working with, because I'm still trying to figure out how to run a smooth and successful inquiry-based writing workshop that's offered only one hour per week with kids ranging in ages from 6 years - 14 years.
In short, after a week of digesting the information from 826, and thinking up ways to apply the 826 ideas and core values to my own aspirations, what has come from my day at 826 was this:
1. The purchasing of an awesome compilation of writing lessons written by 826 teachers and volunteers that has already been twisted into my own style and put into practice with real young writers.
2. A dose of courage to go ahead and spend time thinking and working on the fun parts, which is essentially "thinking while running." This phrase stuck with me because it makes so much sense for how my ideas have always found form both literally and figuratively. My greatest ideas have always come while physically running, so audio recording the presentation given by NÃnive Calegari to listen to in headphones was very helpful. I've listened to her words three times through in order to really absorb the vision, the passion and the mission behind the making of 826 and the 4 basic activities of 826 consisting of:
1. Field Trips- during the school day where kids come to the 826 centers
2. After School Tutoring
3. Workshops
4. In-Schools writer's rooms
Publishing isn't listed as on of the four basic activities, because publishing is infused within each of the 4 basic activities. "I think of publishing as the punctuation that crosses all four of our basic activities" (Calegari, 2010).
"Thinking while running" also means DOING while thinking. Ninive and the creators and staff of 826 make it known 826 is especially committed to supporting teachers, offering services and resources for English language learners, and publishing student work. It is advised to take workshops and tutoring services directly to students in schools and from there, you can build a body of interested young writers, volunteers and community supports to begin building a center elsewhere eventually.
Though so much of my long-term planning goals are very much up in the air, I am already taking steps forward by building relationships with young writers, learning about teaching and teaching about learning, and collaborating with educators and parents to share ideas.
As I move forward in my Masters program, I am reaching the point of collecting both ideas for inspiration, and research based projects and evidence to support my own upcoming cognate project. My greatest challenge at this point is developing a question or argument to present and to narrow down my focus for research.
Since my long term goal is to examine ways to create a generation of children who understand and enjoy the processes of reading and writing and can apply their skills in into any field, I'll need to figure out methods to qualitatively measure interest in reading and writing after participating in literacy based after school programs.
Therefore, my task is to essentially think of creative ways to measure success (alternatives to testing).
From the transcription I typed out from the audio recording of Ninive's presentation on September 10th 2010 at 826 Valencia, she covered a portion on evaluation. At 826, they keep evaluations portfolios on the student participants of their programs based on surveys and then they maintain a database of percentages.
Here's what Ninive had to say about evaluation:
Because of the culture of play and whimsy, sometimes people don't understand that the underlying strengths of what we are doing are fundamentally built upon something so incredibly seriously- hard work, and the fact that sometimes the best learning is joyful."
Possible Qualitative Evaluation Survey Questions for Student Participants:
1. It's really important to ask kids if they see themselves as writers and enjoy writing before these big book projects, and then ask them again after the projects' completion. The results are dramatic.
2. The other thing we ask is if they could imagine themselves using writing as an adult in some sort of a profession. Of course what they don't know is that everyone uses writing in some capacity in just about every profession.
But if you ask students if that would be of interest to them to use writing in a future career, and many if not most students say no. Then once you really do a deep-dive into something really cool and an essentially sexy writing assignment, they say, "well maybe I could use writing." Which is good, because they're going to need it.
(transcribed from an audio recording of a presentation by Ninive Calgari at the 826 101 seminar in San Francisco on September 10th 2010)
So perhaps my question is this:
How can meaningful literacy building projects be applied in traditional and non-traditional educational settings?
But I don't think it's time quite yet to start collecting data from the kids that I'm working with, because I'm still trying to figure out how to run a smooth and successful inquiry-based writing workshop that's offered only one hour per week with kids ranging in ages from 6 years - 14 years.
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