Technology as a motivational tool: May 3 Crumble

The entire month of February I spent talking about motivating our reluctant middle schoolers to take responsibility for their learning.  Intrinsic motivation is not something that instantly appears in a twelve or thirteen-year-old student - it takes years to build this desire for academic success, and most of our strugglers lost that desire years ago when they found themselves failing more than succeeding.  Why try if I'm not going to succeed?  That is an excellent question.

So by middle school, the job of the teacher becomes much more than a deliverer of instruction and nurturer of curiousity.  If you are an educator who is responsible for our struggling middle school students, your job is to somehow re-light that fire that is natural in our young ones and then you can nurture that curiousity and deliver instruction.  You're working with wet wood though.  Wood that has been soaked for years in a downpour of frustration, humiliation, and embarassment and has become a soggy mess of anger, hyperactivity, apathy, and super-social behavior that no longer cares about reading, math, and science.  Pair that up with video games until midnight and Hot Cheetos for breakfast, and you have a pocket full of a hot mess walking your hallways on a daily basis!

These are the kids who make their way into my heart, and it is because of these kiddos that I get up and come to work every morning.  They are the ones that I seek out in the hallway because I want them to know that it isn't too late.  And this is why I continue to dig for answers, motivators, and hooks.  How can I get them to start caring again?  What can we do to motivate them to want to read and write?

Well, one answer that we have found is the use of technology as a learning tool.  I once went to a session where John Orech spoke on the use of technology in lesson development.  In this session, one of his messages was that technology should be our "vehicle to a destination", and we should consider how we are going to get kids places and not "how should I use this technology?"  This message has stuck with me this year because, in my case, technology is one key to getting my kids where they need to be.

Recently, during a collaborative conversation, I spoke with our seventh grade intervention teacher.  She desperately wanted to give these kids one last shot at getting them hooked onto reading.  For three years, now, we have used Neal Shusterman's Unwind at the end of the year as a read-aloud or novel study.  This year, CCSS requires students to be reading at or above grade level before the end of the year, and what better way to continue to support this than by dousing them with a creepy and engaging novel about kids who are just like them.  Most of our kiddos are reading right around the level of the novel or below, and the language of the novel is fun - and so are the ethical discussions!

But the issue with the book always is the kids who flat-out refuse to participate - they sit with their books closed or heads down and they get up for Kleenex or to throw away something every three minutes.  At this point in the game, no number of discipline referrals for behavior like that is going to motivate these kids to open their books and love reading.  Period.

Until we let them crack open the 8-year-old computers we have been "storing" in her room off an on this year . . .

The day that we opened the kidblog site for the class and got the kids logged in, we gave them the anticipation guide and a list of possible prompts for writing. It took about 24 hours for 100% of our kiddos to get engaged in the book! Yesterday we even had one interrupt three times and ask if he could blog!

The first blog topic was written before we even started reading.  It was more of a "let's try this blogging thing out" blog than an actual blog.  The kids did pretty well with it, and they were able to get around the site very easily, so that wasn't a problem at all. 

We knew we had to read and write, and we knew we didn't have much time to get them going, so we gave them the option of using the computers to write down their thoughts in a word document before they wrote their second blog, which was to make a connection with one of the three main characters.  Kids who I have watched drag their feet on the way in the door were thinking and typing about Connor, Risa, and Lev yesterday!  It was reported to me this morning that first period sat silently as they typed and clicked for a half hour on the blog site.  We are actually considering the possibility of opening the classroom during lunch for "beautification" and commenting on the blogs as well.

Now, did we do an amazing job at forseeing the problems we would encounter?  Well, we sent a note home to parents inviting them to join us on the blog site, and we emphasized the idea that if the site is misused in any way (and we gave examples) that the misuser would be permanently removed from the site class.  So in that respect, I think we covered our bases.  But one thing I'm already seeing is the attention that is being paid to the way the blog looks vs. the content.  We have a lot of very pretty blogs.  Now that we have established the idea of the blog and motivated even our most unmotivated student to participate, our next battle will be to up our expectations on the content of the blogs.  I'm a writer, and I love to teach writing, so my expectations are going to get higher and higher for the next fourteen days, and I can't wait to see what these kids can produce! 

So how can you, a content area teacher, use this blog idea to enhance and motivate your kiddos?  Well, first off, edublog and kidblog are two websites that I would consider investigating.  We also have gifted students using edmodo in a "paperless classroom" situation that is truly fascinating!  All of these sites are private and can only be accessed by the members of the group.  They are all set up by the teacher and are accessible from home - some of them even have apps for devices other than computers!  Then establish a use for these fantastic writing tools!  Science logs, social studies journals, music journals, health journals or fitness tracking, favorite recipes, responses to art or music, even extended response questions in math can be adapted to blogging!  Kids can respond to books they're reading - even over the summer - and teachers can still see what they're reading!  You can give students specifications on their writing or have them write freely - just remind them that what they write will be seen by you, their parents, and the entire class!

If you're considering setting up a blog for your kids, let me know if you need help!  Once you get into it and get the hang of it, it is really easy.  And it's such a neat way to get the kids writing without telling them they're writing. 

IRC Conference, March 14-16, 2013, Neal Shusterman

Breakfast with Neal Shusterman
Blood Kills Vampires and Good Riddance

7 am came pretty early this morning, but the anticipation of hearing Neal Shusterman speak made the 6:35 shuttle ride and brisk walk worth while. The Lincoln Inn served their "vegetarian" breakfast of orange juice, cheese-covered eggs, browned potatoes and pastries, which were actually pretty tasty. I had been dreading the vegetarian meal I had ordered weeks before, and I was grateful that they had an interesting interpretation of vegetarian.

After breakfast, Shusterman was introduced, and he took the podium.  The authors at this conference amaze me with their audience-friendly manners.  One would figure if you were THAT gifted with words, that perhaps one would just hide behind the word processor, but so many of these authors are just as dynamic in front of an audience as they are in their writing.  Shusterman is one such man.  He explained that this year has been tough for him, being diagnosed with a disease known as TTP, which would not allow him to interact heavily with his audience because he had to maintain his distance.  I was glad that I had met him at the IRA conference last year and got my picture taken with him then because this year we were not able to get close to him.  My heart broke for him as he talked about losing both of his parents this year within four months.  He said that this year has been a year of firsts, and that he was surprised that there were still so many firsts he could have! 

After this Shusterman went on to talk about when he first became a reader and then later a writer.  I was able to connect with him because his educational experience was not roses and butterflies - in fact, he was a highly energetic kid, and was regularly removed from his third grade classroom and into the library.  I believe that if I had been teaching when he was in school, he would have been one of my students, and I would have loved him.  This was the beginning of his reading, and he said that as the year went on (and he went more and more frequently to the library) he read more and more and increasingly challenging material.  Eventually he went on to increase his reading level so much that he received an award for the highest reading achievement by sixth grade. 

Shusterman's writing interest started with poetry in sixth grade, and he was gracious enough to read us a copy of his first poem, which made the audience laugh, as so many of our sixth grade poetry often does.  But it wasn't until he reached ninth grade that he discovered how much he really enjoyed writing.  It was his ninth grade teacher who saw a fire in him and used that to push him.  Shusterman admitted that he was not great with deadlines, and actually called himself a self-sabbotaging overachiever - one who goes above and beyond, ultimately missing the deadline for whatever it was that he was supposed to turn in.  His ninth grade English teacher saw an opportunity and challenged him to write a story a month, due on the first of every month.  If he met this deadline, the story would be used as extra credit (which he desperately needed).  This was just the push he needed to practice meeting those deadlines, and he began to produce stories on a monthly basis.

In college, he met another challenge.  He had a college professor who told him he had to stop writing science fiction.  His professor told Shusterman that he had to write stories in every genre in which he felt most uncomfortable.  So he did.  In the process, he found that he could write in these genres - and his science fiction stories were no longer centered around the science fiction, but around real people with real problems, usually with some science fiction sprinkled in for the Shusterman flaire.

After sharing all of this with his audience, he began the stories of where the inspiration came from for several of his books.  He started with Everlost, which I have not read.  Unwind is the only series I have read by Shusterman.  The books creeped me out so much that I was afraid to read anything else by him.  His stories hit me at my threshold of tolerance for science fiction in their creep-factor, but my intervention kids love them, so I read them.  Shusterman shared with us that he wrote the first few pages of Everlost  and then shelved the book for ten years before 9/11 when he was inspired by the New York skyline and the missing twin towers.  After 9/11, he said, the story began to take shape, and he wrote the Everlost series.

After that, Shusterman shared the inspiration for the Unwind series.  I'm not sure where I had read or heard this, but this morning was not the first I had heard him talk about his inspiration for the books.  A British article about rogue teenagers in England was the first piece of news that made an impression on him.  He recalls, from the article, the implication that these teenagers should just be rounded up and put out of their misery.  The second, completely unrelated, article to which he credits the inspiration of Unwind was an article that reported the American public's preferences during elections.  The article reported that 80% of the country would be swayed one way or another on a particular candidate on the abortion issue alone.  Finally, an article on body part transplants - in particular a face transplant of a woman in France.  It was stated in the article that in a matter of just a few years, 100% of a body would be able to be used in a transplant.  Shusterman's big question, and one that is reflected in his trilogy . . . if 100% of you is alive, does that make you alive or dead?  Unwholly was supposed to be the last book, but it got to be so long that he broke it up and created his current book - due out in October - Unsouled.

All-in-all, the chance to see Neal Shusterman speak this morning was the highlight of my day (although I still had to make a Starbucks run afterward).  To hear him speak of his experiences and inspiration for each of his books, of how he was able to perfect his craft, makes me think that perhaps my writing might still have a chance.  His words also allowed me to take back some key ideas:

• Find a child's strength and challenge that child individually.
• Challenge yourself and push yourself outside of your comfort zone to perfect your craft.
• Use life experiences to inspire your story telling.
• Start writing.  Stop, if you need to, but come back to it sometime in the future.