by Pernille Ripp

Three years ago I started blogging with my 4th grade students on a whim. I knew three things at the start: I wanted to get them connected with each other; I wanted to give them a voice, and I knew I had to change the way they wrote. So I started blogging with them – fumbling my way through the how to and the when to.

What I had no way of knowing was how blogging would change the way I taught, how blogging would give my students a way to speak to the world, and how blogs would make it possible for them to create lasting global connections with other children.

Blogging has since become an integral part of my classroom. It’s a way for me to check the emotional temperature of my kids and a way for them to add their voice to the continuing education debate and reach out to other communities.  We no longer just wonder how things are done in other countries. We blog and ask questions and get our answers.

So when I meet with any teacher who wonders how to lower the walls of their classroom and create more authentic learning opportunities, my first advice is to get students blogging.

If they’re interested, I share these steps. They grow out of my own experience working with upper elementary-aged kids, and I believe they can help any middle grades teacher successfully launch a blogging program and integrate it into the daily learning experience.

10 + 1 Steps to Meaningful Student Blogging

Here’s the checklist I follow myself at the beginning of each year, before I unleash my (now) 5th grade students’ voices to the world:

1. Figure out your why

You have to reflect on why it is you want to have students blog. Is it to make connections, for technology integration, to give your students a voice, or for some other reason? If you know the why it is much easier to get students excited about the blogging experience. I don’t feel that blogging should be just to show off student work; it can be something much bigger than that.  So figure out your reasons why before you move on to the how.

2. Pick your platform

I use Kidblog because of its ease, its wonderful safety features, and the ease with which I can adapt it to fit our purpose. While some feel (as a result of recent changes) that Kidblog is geared more toward early elementary students, I disagree. But it’s not the only safe and easy-to-use option: Edublogs is another popular student blogging platform that also comes highly recommended.

3. Get your permissions

Check with your principal, your tech coordinator, and finally get parent permission. You need to be prepared to explain and justify what you are doing — and be transparent throughout the conversation — to receive ultimate support for this endeavor. Student online safety is a predictable concern, and it’s much easier to be proactive, seek out these conversations, and present evidence that safety is easily assured and the learning rewards are significant.

I’ve created my own permission slip to ensure that parents feel well informed as they make their decision about whether to let their child blog. And I have yet to have a parent say no.

4. Blogging versus writing

I always introduce blogging by discussing how it is similar and different to writing. Students often get what blogs are but not necessarily how they can use one themselves. So I showcase my own professional blog and other students’ blogs to get them excited about the adventure they are about go on. We discuss what we can blog about, how long a post should be (as a minimum), and what to do about spelling and grammar. These discussions lead to heightened awareness of what is appropriate for a blog post and what isn’t and will also lead to the next step.

5. Discuss safety!

Before students ever log into their blog accounts for the first time, you have to discuss safety. I use the analogy of “Why the Internet is Like the Mall” to get students to really think about their online behavior and what they post. This is an in-depth discussion that covers many aspects of internet behavior, not just those that are specific to blogging. This is also not just a beginning-of-the-year conversation, but an all-the-time conversation.

6. Do a paper blog

Starting out on paper is a great way to introduce students to blogging and how they can add their own personal voice and flair. (It’s an idea I got from Karen McMillan.) By creating and personalizing a paper copy of their dream blog, my students have a tangible piece to work with while we learn the ins and outs of style, substance and safety. Once all of the paper blogs are done, students spend a class period leaving post-it comments on each other’s blogs as well as responding to the comments they themselves receive. This is a natural progression toward our next step . . .

7. Discuss commenting

For blogging to be effective, students need to know how to make good comments. Commenting on other blogs is one important way to grow an audience for your own blog. And when people comment on what you have written, you need to be prepared to respond with follow-up comments of your own. So we discuss how to create a dialogue in comments, how to thank people, and also how to give constructive feedback. We set up parameters for our posts and our comments in order to uphold a high standard of writing and we discover how commenting can (and should) become a conversation. We even act out comments from our post-its to see if they work well as conversation starters or act as dead ends.  Students quickly realize the power of a comment.

8. Start small

When students are finally ready to blog, have them introduce themselves.  That way, as your class starts to reach out to others (because ultimately blogging is about connections), students can showcase themselves and thus spark a conversation.

9. Connect with others.

Use quadblogging or a project like The Global Read Aloud to get students connected – or simply reach out to one or two other classes (preferably far away from you) to establish a blogging relationship. Once you get started, teachers can go on Twitter and use the hashtag #comments4kids to get comments for your students. Kidblog also has a wonderful feature called “Blogroll” where you can build a list of links to other blogs you like to follow in the margin of your own blog. My students use this all year as they check in with classes from around the world.

This is what gets the kids excited about blogging — it’s not just that they get to read other posts, they are able to establish a personal connection with other kids in faraway places, maintain that relationship throughout the year, and learn a lot about life in other parts of the globe.

10. Make it their own

Students need to feel genuine ownership of their blogs. I ask them for ideas of what to blog about; I give them free artistic rein over their posts, and I give them time to explore the blog’s tools and capabilities. This is what gives students ownership and has them take pride in their blogging. If it is truly their voice being heard in whatever fashion they want to present it, then they are eager to show it off.

Blogging has to be authentic for it to work. I don’t correct their grammar and spelling. I don’t require editorial changes unless something is likely to lead to hurt feelings or misunderstandings. I will ask them to add more or to explain further, but I give them the time to do so. I also challenge them with a weekly blogging challenge and then find time to do it in school. (Ideas for the challenge come from students or things I wonder about myself.)

11. Give it time

Great blogging and great connections don’t happen overnight, so give it time. Let the students develop as bloggers, celebrate their successes, and map their connections. Truly celebrate the blogging they do and spend time on it class. Encourage blogging but don’t make it an assignment to just get done. Treat it as an integral part of your classroom and watch it become one. Blogging is not just about writing, it is about bringing the world in and making it a little bit smaller.

In the end, blogging should not be a burden in your already full day. Students should love blogging, not see it as a chore (which is also why I never grade my students’ blogs) and they should be eager to express themselves and expand their worlds.

If you are ever in need of someone to connect to or ask questions, please reach out to me @pernilleripp on Twitter. I will gladly help. After all, blogging is about expanding our own comfort zones and creating authentic, global collaboration.

More about Pernille Ripp: I am a passionate 5th grade teacher (I’ve taught 4th grade too) in Middleton, Wisconsin, a proud techy geek, and honest to a fault. I’m also the creator of the Global Read Aloud Project, Co-founder of EdCamp MadWI, and believer in all children. Nominated for Elementary Teacher of the Year by the Bammy Awards 2013. My first book will be published later this year by Powerful Learning Press. Meanwhile I muse on education at my blog “Blogging Through the Fourth Dimension”  and you can follow me on Twitter @PernilleRipp.

Trent E. Kaufman, Ed.D. and Emily Dolci Grimm are principals at Education Direction, a firm focused on improving student outcomes through professional development, school transformation, and strategic planning. The principles they promote and support to help schools and districts are  found their book The Transparent Teacher (Wiley, 2013).

Deprivatizing a Private Practice

By Trent Kaufman & Emily Dolci Grimm

As former teachers, we have decades of combined experience in the classroom. We’ve taught in small schools, large schools, urban schools, rural schools, private schools, public schools, and parochial schools.  You name it, we taught in it. You can imagine that our experiences have been quite diverse.

With all the differences we’ve noted in our individual careers, there are some constants. We were underpaid and overworked and we loved every minute of it (well—almost every minute of it). We agree that above all else, there is one thing about teaching that stands out (rather glaringly) as something we didn’t like: the isolation.

Every teacher is an island

In education there is some truth in this statement, and it’s not always a good thing. Sure, there are some positives associated with the independence afforded to those in the teaching profession. Autonomy, individuality, freedom. But there are dangers as well.

The autonomy teachers experience can contribute to the suppression of their professional growth (Eaker, DuFour, & DuFour, 2002). When you find yourself working in a narrow space, it’s easy to get in a rut, always doing what you’ve always done.

That’s not where it ends though. Professional isolation also leads to decreased job satisfaction. In a recent survey of educators conducted by MetLife, teachers who reported being dissatisfied with their jobs were more likely to be located in schools that had declines in time for teacher collaboration. With over 30% of new teachers leaving the profession during their first five years, the role that professional isolation plays in teacher attrition rates is worthy of attention.

Come on in

Because we experienced this isolation ourselves (and felt the same dissatisfaction that so many other teachers feel when faced with going it alone), we became interested in ways to break down the siloed nature of schools.  We recognized that doing so would require teachers to go deeper than the collaborative structures (including common planning time) that have gained traction in the last decade to include opening our doors to our peers and inviting them to come on in.

Opening our classrooms to observation by other professionals presents some genuine challenges. For most of us, our experiences with traditional observation models have been evaluative in nature. Not only do these traditional observation structures serve the observer more than the observed teacher, rarely do they yield data that can immediately inform teaching and improve student learning.

As a result of these kinds of experiences, we’ve grown so accustomed to making observation and evaluation one and the same that we’ve become uncomfortable with the idea of having anyone observe our teaching. In fact, when we ask teachers about peer observations, we typically hear the same response: I don’t feel comfortable having my peers observe my teaching.

A fundamental change in observation structures in necessary if we hope to increase teachers’ comfort level and promote the kinds of collegial observations that can break down professional isolation and promote improvements in teaching and learning.

Introducing Teacher-Driven Observation

Teacher-Driven Observation (TDO) flips the traditional classroom observation on its head, calling for the observed teacher to serve as the leader of the process. He or she—rather than the observers or the system—is the primary beneficiary. TDO equips teachers with a process to take charge of what they want to improve in their teaching, embedding professional learning right into their own classroom.

In TDO, the lead teacher drives the process from start to finish, beginning with the identification of an area of focus, which she articulates through a question. He may ask, “How are the opportunities I create for students to engage in guided practice promoting their ability to cite specific textual evidence?” or “To what extent are the questions I ask students promoting their thinking and reflection, and deepening understanding of content?” She then invites her peers to collect data relevant to this area of focus (which she explains in a pre-observation meeting).

Following the observation, the lead teacher facilitates a structured post-observation “debrief,” during which she thoughtfully considers the data and commits to action steps to improve teaching and learning in her classroom.  At the end of the process, she steps away with data she could not have collected on her own—data that will lead to relevant changes in instruction and student learning.

If this approach to observation seems different from what you’ve experienced in the past, that’s because it is.  Teacher-Driven Observation puts the observed teacher at the center of the learning process, promoting increased clarity about her teaching practice, learners’ specific needs, and what she can do to improve teaching and learning. TDO is different because it is a process that equips a teacher to call on his peers to support him in improving his craft.

Why TDO works

Opening our classroom doors through Teacher-Driven Observation reduces professional isolation because the process provides a context for dialogue about the core of our work: teaching and learning. This authentic collaboration is grounded in what occurs in our classrooms, with our students, and with our content.

Teacher-Driven Observation creates a space for professional learning that incorporates practice and refinement, while at the same time building professional dialogue and collegial collaboration. In doing so, it is particularly effective in reducing professional isolation for the following reasons:

•  TDO is low-threat. Unlike traditional observation processes, TDO does not require a high level of comfort for all participants. It only requires the vulnerability of the lead (observed) teacher, who creates a tone of learning and improvement by grounding the observation in her own classroom.

•  TDO highlights the value of the observers. The observing colleagues are an essential resource in TDO. Their data collection and post-observation conversations provide the lead teacher with valuable data that she could not have collected on her own. In doing so, it builds comfort and familiarity with the process for all involved.

•  TDO keeps the main thing the main thing. The data collected in TDO provides a foundation on which to examine the relationship between teaching and learning—the heart of the profession. Through focused data collection and analysis, attention is on the relationship between teaching and learning—not on evaluation of an individual.

•  TDO engagement happens organically. When observers enter into the lead teacher’s room to collect data, the process is demystified. Once they see how valuable (and non-threatening) the process is, they’re likely to open the doors of their classrooms as well.

Collecting data via the Teacher Driven Observation process breaks down the walls of isolation that exist in schools. Through the reduction in isolation, teachers are better able to focus on the relationship between teaching and learning and to practice and refine their instruction in the context in which they work each day.

By decreasing professional isolation, participating teachers have increased job satisfaction (research tells us again and again that teachers who collaborate with their peers are happier in their positions and more likely to stay in the profession) and the data they need to teach more effectively.  Through this process, TDO improves teaching and student learning—one open classroom at a time.

References

Carroll, T. G. & Foster, E. (2010).  Who will teach?  Experience matters.  Washington, DC: National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future.

Eaker, R., DuFour, R., & DuFour, R. (2002). Getting started: Reculturing schools to become professional learning communities. Bloomington, IN: National Educational Service.

MetLife, Inc. (2013).  The MetLife survey of the American teacher:  Challenges for school leadership.  New York, NY: MetLife.

Elizabeth Varadan is a YA fiction author and a former middle grades teacher in Sacramento, California. While teaching, she integrated her lesson plans across the curriculum as much as possible. Art and reading (novels, mysteries, and biographies) related to class history lessons. Her own love of history began at an early age with historical fiction and mysteries.

Elizabeth now teaches an after-school art class for 8-to-12-year-olds at a local community center, and blogs about the Victorian Era. At her second blog, she writes about her travels with her husband, children’s fiction, and other topics that interest her. She’s currently writing an historical mystery for tweens.

Elizabeth Varadon

Why Middle Grade Teachers Need Historical Mysteries in the Classroom Library 

by Elizabeth Varadan

When I was teaching sixth grade, I stocked my classroom library with historical mysteries students could read for pleasure and use for hands-on projects to make history more meaningful.

While historical fiction helps a reader of any age access the past, a middle grade historical mystery provides an even greater hook.

Why a Historical Mystery?

A historical mystery presents an irresistible question that a reader wants answered. In Avi’s The Cross of Lead, set in 14th century England, a 13-year-old boy known as “Asta’s son” has to flee his village because of a crime he didn’t commit. In the course of his adventures, he learns his true name is Crispin. The mystery of why Crispin has enemies in pursuit and who his father was drives the twists and turns of the story.

In Rebecca Stead’s When You Reach Me, Miranda, a latchkey kid in New York of the 1970s, must figure out who broke into the apartment and stole the spare key and who is sending her mysterious notes, one of which suggests she can prevent a death. But whose?

A favorite of my sixth graders in Sacramento was Dragonwings by Laurence Yep, one of the many novels in the Golden Mountain Chronicles, coming-of-age stories about a Chinese family who survives the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Hooked on the classroom set of Yep’s Chinatown Mysteries series, my students also read for pleasure The Case of the Goblin Pearls (12-year-old Lily and her Auntie Tiger Lil, a former film star, must discover who stole the pearls in question); The Case of the Lion Dance (they must find out who set off a bomb); and The Case of the Firecrackers (they must puzzle out how a loaded gun got onto the set of a TV show).

Our school had a culturally diverse population. These novels provided rich details about Chinese history and traditions that all students found interesting as well as entertaining mysteries. Since one of our social studies strands was on Ancient China, we followed up with a kite-flying contest using student-made kites, and we made paper and used bamboo brushes to paint pictures.

Luring the reluctant reader

While improving reading comprehension skills, a reluctant reader of historical mystery discovers the pleasure of reading and that history can be interesting, both of which are bound to make a difference in future scholastic endeavors and writing. It might be tempting to point poor readers to easy-to-read novels, but a well-written classic has the power to spark interest.

The Golden Goblet, by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, is a good example. Ranofer discovers his half-brother is robbing tombs—a crime punishable by death. Somehow he has to stop this without endangering or incriminating himself. My students stumbled through the geography and cultural practices of ancient Egypt, as well as complicated names, to find out if Ranofer would succeed, all because the story lured them on. Mara, Daughter of the Nile, also by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, and His Majesty, Queen Hapshetsut, by Dorothy Sharp Carter, provided intrigue and further information for class projects, in which students made pyramids with cut-away sections to reveal hieroglyphic wall paintings, tiny mummies and artifacts for the afterlife.

Victorian mysteries for the middle grades

In the United States, social studies subjects in the early middle grades are typically state and local history for fourth grade, early Americas and their interaction with England and Europe for fifth grade, and ancient world cultures for sixth grade.

But Victorian era fiction — with vivid British characters and stories that fuel young readers’ imaginations — is a wonderful category for upper elementary and middle school classroom libraries. During this era the telegraph, telephone, electricity, indoor plumbing, and motorized vehicles were developed—inventions that transformed the world as dramatically as the space probes and the Internet are transforming our planet today.

Social movements were developing to protect children, procure women’s right to vote, and honor cultural diversity — all rights we take for granted today. As the backdrop to world events of the 20th century, the Victorian era helps frame the lives of our recent ancestors and ourselves.

Marissa Moss’s brilliant new series, Mira’s Diary, featuring time-travel mysteries in various historical periods, begins with Lost In Paris, in which Mira encounters famous painters in 1880s France and finds she has a role to play in the famous Dreyfus Affair.

In Lewis Buzbee’s award-winning Victorian mystery, The Haunting of Charles Dickens, 13-year-old Meg Pickel and her friend, Charles Dickens, go sleuthing for her missing brother and uncover a kidnapping gang—not an unusual occurrence in an era when children had few rights.

In Avi’s The Traitor’s Gate, set in the London of 1849 and illustrating several social issues of the time, the father of 14-year-old John Huffam is threatened with debtors’ prison for owing money to a man he claims he doesn’t know. (For any of these novels, students could, for extra credit, write a story of their own, using details they’ve learned about Victorian England. Or they could be newspaper reporters for one of the newspapers of the era and report on the situation.)

In Laura Amy Schlitz’s Victorian fantasy, Splendors and Glooms, set in 1860 London, 12-year-old Clara disappears the night of her birthday. The two orphans who help the novel’s puppet master learn that other children have mysteriously disappeared after his shows and that it’s up to them to rescue Clara. (A good follow-up project would be to put on a puppet show with scenes from the book.)

All of these books bring to life a world where most travel was horse-drawn, where communication was by post, where electricity was only for the rich, where children could be pressed into work gangs, and where single women could not venture out of their homes alone—a world where even the nobility would envy any one of the things we take for granted today.

Rich in mystery as well as history, they appeal to students’ love of adventure, puzzles, and strange locales — and most of all, to their unending curiosity about what life was like for children their own age long ago.

by Michael Fisher

In the past, I’ve had the very good fortune to work with both Destination Imagination and Odyssey of the Mind. Both of these programs allow kids to explore creativity to the nth degree and offer engaging and learning-filled explorations beyond what is typically offered in school. The guiding philosophies of both programs are:

• In what ways can we be creative?
• How creative can we be?

We often ask our students to be creative, but how often do we ask them to extend that creativity into previously unexplored territory? How often do we invite them to up the WOW Factor?

I often muse about that when I think about Web 2.0 tools that I share in workshops. I’m always trying to brainstorm divergent ways to use these versatile tools at multiple cognitive levels as well as creative extensions beyond what the tool was designed for.

A clipping tool just for us

A free Web 2.0 tool has emerged that has me actively exploring these two essential questions about creativity. It’s called eduClipper. Those of you who love Pinterest will love eduClipper because of its familiar functionality. Those of you who love Pinterest but are blocked from using it at school will love eduClipper because it’s most likely not blocked — it’s an educational website. (Here’s a simple overview.)

Looking beyond the Pinterest comparison, eduClipper is built for both students and teachers. Teachers can have students sign up through the teacher account and everyone can curate information. Not sure what curation is? I wrote about it last year here. In essence, it’s collecting plus critical thinking.

For instance, Pinterest is, by and large, a visual collection of websites around a particular topic. In order for it to be “curated,” a user would have to reveal why a particular site is relevant to the topic and has been identified as an essential and included resource. This is possible in Pinterest, and also possible in eduClipper, though eduClipper has the advantage of organizing and annotating content for each of your classes and/or via collections for in-the-moment learning.

Imagine students collecting resources in eduClipper, sharing and amplifying their self-selected resources, and also articulating why those resources are important to be included. This is the intention of the eduClipper site: collaborative collecting and curating.

The creativity comes from the multiple ways in which students and teachers can collect, access, group, visualize, and explore content. That’s pretty cool and aligns very well with College and Career Ready practices as well as specific Common Core Standards in writing, particularly the research standards 7, 8, and 9.

The innovation zone

But what of innovation? What of moving to the “how creative can we be” zone? There is a definite zone of innovation here.

eduClipper can clip/display both visual and textual information, and it allows users to include uploads (e.g., student-made content) as well as what is found online. So we can move from what is consumed and considered to what is created and evaluated. Let me paint an example of how eduClipper and other tools can upgrade a learning project or task:

Imagine a research project on butterflies. A teacher and his/her students could collect web resources around butterflies: pictures, videos, text, websites, etc. Students could collect, collect, collect and then study their collections for what they want to cut and what they want to keep. If they keep something, they must say why they are choosing this particular item for curation, using the comment box provided with each eduClipper clip.

Moving into the innovation zone, students could create something online such as a wiki, a LiveBinder, an iPad video, a Prezi, an xTraNormal animated video, etc. and save it to an eduClipboard designated for assessment. Here, all of the students could converse (with quality comments!) about each other’s work. This could happen by leveraging online tools or even creating something more traditional, like a hand-drawn picture of a butterfly life cycle or a writing task, each of which could be uploaded as an image or PDF into the system.

Students could also invite global perspectives on learning by connecting and sharing their work on butterflies with audiences beyond the classroom — perhaps in parts of the world with very different butterfly populations.

Looking beyond the tool for a moment, the task I’ve described is also upgradeable:

What does a traditional butterfly project look like? A paragraph about life cycles? A picture/visualization of butterflies? Think about the objective– the big ideas, and how you might assess it. What’s the point? Is it to get a bunch of pretty pictures for the classroom wall? Or is it to learn how life cycles perpetuate niches in habitats to maintain the flow and stability of the ecosystem? What would the visualization of that look like? How can we extend the butterfly’s life cycle to include multiple organisms, looking for similarities and differences? How can we extend the research questions to something more authentic and perhaps self-selected by the student?

When we consider these upgrades to the task, then we can plan for how the tool, eduClipper, is an appropriate tool for the collection, curation, reflection, articulation, and presentation of deeper learning.

This use of eduClipper puts the teacher squarely into the role of coach, asking questions to help students determine what to cut, keep, comment on, etc. This effort puts student tasks and efforts at the forefront and allows opportunities for more peer-directed learning versus teacher-directed work.

Upgrade to more student-driven learning

In our new ASCD book Upgrade Your Curriculum, Janet Hale and I advocate for more student-centered opportunities that have both high levels of engagement and high levels of learning. You can see an excerpt of our book here and explore our Transformation Matrix.

In Chapter 12 of the book, we write specifically about Pinterest and how one teacher used it as a tool for an upgrade to a previous version of her project. Her students created digital artwork, shared it to a Pinterest board, and interacted with each other around art principles. They were guided by a  rubric that focused on the artwork itself, the critique of the artwork, and the quality of the comments about the artwork and the critique. The tool (Pinterest, in this case) enhanced the task but did not override it. The planning of the art critique lesson was done with the task in mind rather than the tool. The critiquing and subsequent discussion allowed students to improve their abilities to objectively critique others, an upgrade from the past when students felt that comments were more subjective and not useful.

I’m featuring eduClipper specifically in this post because it’s a safe, school-friendly tool and less likely to be blocked in school districts. It also has teacher-friendly functionality, making it easy to establish class and student logins so that all students can potentially use it. Additionally, it was created by one of us, an educator and thought leader named Adam Bellow, who some of you know as EduTecher. Adam has been sharing unbelievable resources to help teachers help students for years. EduClipper is his newest free tool for educators and students.

As you read this, I hope you’re thinking of your own creative ways to engage web tools. Upgrading your curriculum and professional practice is about being creative, but also innovating into a zone that expands your creativity into previously unrealized opportunities.

Think of some of the tools you’re probably already using: YouTube, Wordle, Slideshare, Prezi, anything! How can you be more creative with those tools? How can you stay task-focused and tool-enhanced? How can we move curriculum practice into more student-centered opportunities for learning and engagement? How can we up the WOW Factor through clever uses of apps and web services?

This is the beginning of a conversation. As you think of new ways to approach tools you already use, please consider sharing your ideas in the comments below.

Michael Fisher, former middle grades teacher, is now a full-time author, educational consultant, and instructional coach. He works with schools and districts around the country, helping to sustain curriculum upgrades and be immersive with technology. He specializes in 21st Century Fluencies, Common Core integration, and all that modern learning entails. His latest book, Upgrade Your Curriculum: Practical Ways to Transform Units and Engage Students (ASCD, 2013), is co-authored with Janet Hale. Find Mike on Twitter @fisher1000 and visit his website, The Digigogy Collaborative.

Dear Visitors,

Since we began our MiddleWeb book review program in July 2012, we’ve posted 100+ reviews of professional books of interest to middle grades teachers and school leaders. Who’s writing the reviews? Middle grades educators themselves. Who knows better what colleagues want to hear?

Read on to learn how you can become a MiddleWeb book reviewer. If you enjoy the experience and our readers respond to your reviews, we hope you’ll become a regular here. If you’re a publisher, contact us about submitting books for review. (Of course, the opinions of reviewers are their own.)

Read a professional book this summer!

Our Book Review Guidelines

Our books are provided by interested publishers at no cost to us. We don’t endorse the books, just offer them for review. We pay the postage to send them to you ourselves, so please ask for books only if you intend to review them! You may keep a book or give it away to a colleague.

How to Obtain Books to Read & Review

1. Visit our current list of books available (Google Doc). This list is updated daily, so we recommend you get in touch quickly if you see something you’d like to review. (If you have difficulty accessing the Google Docs list, let us know.)

2. In our current list, click on titles to find out more about the books. (Please make sure the book is one you are likely to review.)

4. Select one book you’d like to request. You can include an alternate choice if you like (our review books are claimed quickly!). Once you’ve reviewed your selected book, you’ll be welcome to select again!

5. Email us. Include: the title of each book, a reason why each book interests you, a target deadline for each review, and your postal mailing address. (We recommend a deadline of 3-6 weeks.) Janice, our Outreach Coordinator, will let you know about availability. If we don’t have your first choice, we’ll invite you to revisit the current list. Again, the email address for book requests is: middleweb.review@gmail.com

We cannot send you books unless you include your complete postal mailing address! (Sorry for shouting, but some folks forget this essential piece of information.)

Reviewing the Book (important guidelines)

1. Include book information at the top of your review, in this format:

Title/Subtitle:
Author/s:
Publisher:
Year published:

2. Include a 50-75 word bio about yourself and a photo or avatar image, suitable for a small headshot (200 dpi or less preferred). Here’s a sample bio (55 wds) — feel free to write yours using your own style and voice. Be sure to mention your professional work. Honors and accomplishments are encouraged. Embedded links are welcome.

3. We’re often asked how long the review should be. We recommend 500-1000 words. If you don’t like a book and can say why succinctly, fewer than 500 words is okay. Please use a block paragraph style (no indents) with a space between paragraphs. Our #1 tip for a good review: tell readers what’s in the book. Good example.

4. Send us an email with My MW Book Review as the subject line. Attach the book review as an MS Word or RTF document. Be sure to include your short bio and attach your photo. If you prefer to post your draft review in Google Drive/Docs, be sure to invite our editor John Norton to the draft using THIS address: johnnort@gmail.com. (Why? This way all the reviews end up in the same GDocs table of contents. Big help!)

5. Please give us 1-2 weeks to acknowledge your submission and provide feedback. Unless major changes are necessary, we may just make minor edits, add subheads, and post your review. Depending on the # of reviews in our queue, it could take up to a month for the review to appear. We’ll publicize your review via Twitter, Facebook and in MiddleWeb SmartBrief (so be sure to subscribe: http://bit.ly/mw-sb-sub). We’ll also send you the page link when your review is posted.

Some Writing Tips

1. Look at some reviews on our site or in other publications you respect.

2. Don’t obsess about length — we suggest 500-1000 wds but if we feel you’ve written too much or too little, we’ll suggest ways to expand or contract.

3. Write in a relaxed, personal voice. Be professional but don’t feel compelled to write your review as formally as you might in a grad school class or for journal publication. Humor is good. Multimedia might be appropriate. Even an emoticon (limit of one per review – smile).

4. If you don’t like the book, or don’t like parts of the book, or think the book is pretty good but could be better with some changes/additions, please say so. Avoid sarcasm, personal attacks, etc. but feel absolutely free to criticize ideas or delivery. If you totally love the book, gush if that’s your style. Or just be cool, collected and complimentary.

5. Feel free to tell stories from your own experience as an educator (or learner or parent, etc.) and relate those stories to the author’s messages and the book content. This will engage readers!

6. Tell our readers what YOU would want to know if you were reading the review. Think about who this book might benefit, and why and how, and address those points. It’s not much fun to read a review in which the reviewer is mostly swimming in his or her own fishbowl and isn’t tuned in to the audience.

Writing questions? Send them to editor John Norton at johnnort@gmail.com

Editors’ note: Sarah Tantillo is the author of The Literacy Cookbook and writes frequently at her blog and elsewhere about practical strategies to weave Common Core ELA standards into instruction. She also maintains a fee-based membership website offering many ELA resources she has developed. As our readers follow links in her articles here, you may eventually encounter supporting resources that are found in the members-only area of her website. We think what Sarah shares here for free is valuable and we hope you find it helpful. If you want to take full advantage of her large resource collection, you can become a TLC member for $25 a year (provided you buy her book, reviewed here.)

by Sarah Tantillo

No matter what level or subject, teachers working with the Common Core need to know the standards for more than just the grade they teach.

Here’s why: the Common Core lays out standards across a “trajectory” of learning. Each year’s knowledge and skills should build on the year before and prepare students for the year to come. As a teacher, you need to know how prepared your students are supposed to be when they enter your classroom, as well as what your responsibilities will be during the time they’ll spend with you.

Moreover, by closely examining a standard’s entire trajectory, you can determine where your students actually are in terms of their development. Here’s what one teacher said to me when we looked at the grade-by-grade path of Reading for Informational Text (RIT) Standard #1 (see below):

“I can tell you where each of my students are on this chart. They’re all in seventh grade, but looking at the descriptions, I can see that three of my students are on the fifth-grade level, about five are on the sixth-grade level, and the rest are where they should be. And now I need to think about how I’m going to get them all up to speed, not just on the seventh-grade level but to also be ready for eighth grade.”

To get a sense of what it means to analyze a standard’s trajectory, let’s consider the trajectory of RIT Standard #1.

A CCSS trajectory PD exercise

I have modeled how to analyze these standards with the first few grades (underlining key word differences and jotting notes in the right-hand column) and left the rest blank for teachers to use as a PD exercise.  You can find a FREE digital version of this chart, called “RIT Standard 1 Trajectory Analysis Chart,” at my Literacy Cookbook standards page (or you can download it here).

This analysis process works best if participants pair up to discuss their interpretations, then share out with the whole group.  Partnering generates more ideas (and useful questions) than solo independent work.

If you go to the Common Core State Standards website, you’ll find some useful PDF files (and don’t forget to read the Appendices!). But if you’re actually writing curriculum, you’ll need tools that are even more useful, which is why I’ve created a K-12 ELA Common Core Standards Tracking Spreadsheet, available to members in the TLC Download Zone. To see just how useful this kind of tracking tool can be, check out this free sample of the 4th-grade ELA Common Core Standards Tracking Spreadsheet.

In her next article for MiddleWeb, Sarah will write about using Socratic Seminars to help students develop effective habits of discussion, explain their ideas, and support them with evidence. Also see her MW article on Teaching Argument vs Evidence.

Sarah Tantillo is a literacy consultant who taught high school English and Humanities in both suburban and urban public schools for fourteen years, including seven years at the high-performing North Star Academy Charter School of Newark. She’s the author of The Literacy Cookbook.

by Amanda Wall

“Ooh, I see a Doric column!!”

“Look, look! An obelisk!!”

Eighth graders made these happy comments one time while driving in to Washington, DC, for an end-of-year overnight field trip. They were keenly attuned to these (and other) architectural elements because I’d given them an assignment to research while visiting our Nation’s Capital.

Even though the students were initially nonplussed at having an assignment to complete during the trip, they ended up commenting that having “fieldwork” pushed them to pay more attention. And that’s one reason why I gave that assignment, in varying forms, every year after that.

Field trips are worth the effort

Field trips are a great way to extend and apply classroom knowledge and to provide out-of-the ordinary learning opportunities and real-world exposure for students.

I have been fortunate to teach in a range of schools where leaders placed a high value on field trips and other off-campus experiences. It’s certainly true that planning field trips can be challenging, detail-intensive and time-consuming, but there is always a reward in student learning.

If you find your leaders aren’t necessarily convinced that field trips are worthwhile, why not focus your proposal very specifically on student learning by incorporating an academic task into the field trip experience? Two examples from my own teaching may provide you with some ideas to add to your own field-trip successes, during the last weeks of school or anytime throughout the year. At the end, I also share six of my own lessons learned.

Field trip to Washington

First, I’ll elaborate on the architecture assignment I designed around the field trip to Washington. Even though I taught for many years in an area that is a half-day’s drive from Washington, many students each year had never been in the District of Columbia. That was one reason I added an assignment: to structure part of the students’ experience while there. Another reason was curricular: I taught Latin, and many buildings in Washington incorporate Classical architecture.

For the assignment, students were grouped in teams. Each team was given a list of about 15 elements from Classical architecture ranging from types of columns to a building that echoed the Pantheon in Rome. While in Washington, each team had to collect examples of 8-12 elements. Their own photos or brochures from the sites were acceptable evidence; pictures sourced from the internet or other advance preparation were not. I wanted to make sure they collected their information “in the field.”

They also needed to think about why so many of the federal buildings deliberately incorporated and reflected Classical architecture and present their findings in an essay. Once we returned to school, students had a day in class to amass and organize their images and to collaborate on their statement. They presented their projects in a format that featured both text and pictures.

While this project worked best when I was able to chaperone the Washington trip and check in with students along the way, I also assigned this project when I was not a chaperone. In that circumstance, I sent a copy of the assignment to a teacher who did chaperone the trip so at least one adult on the trip would know about the students’ assignment.

Visiting a museum exhibit

On another occasion, I designed a field trip to a special exhibit about Pompeii that focused on the volcanology of Vesuvius in addition to the artifacts from Pompeii and its environs. I previewed the exhibit in the summer before our early fall field trip so I could get a more specific sense of the exhibit after researching it on the museum’s website.

After my own visit, I decided that I needed to give my students a better background on volcanology related to Mt. Vesuvius because the exhibit put the eruption of Pompeii in the context of other natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina. My search for readings yielded an excellent but complex article on a BBC site. I designed a reading guide for students and gave them class time to read and discuss the article.

My students also had an assignment to locate one item of interest at the exhibit and to make notes about it. After the field trip, they recreated the item in various materials and wrote a museum card to go along with it. The museum card was a interesting form of short writing that called on students to synthesize their research in a few catchy sentences. When students presented and displayed their projects and museum cards in the classroom, many noted that they had not even noticed a classmate’s item while on the field trip.

For museum field trips especially, I have learned that less is more. Years ago, another teacher and I took seventh- and eighth-graders to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We had designed the schedule for students to have focused time in the Greek and Roman galleries, and then some time to explore other galleries. I commented to a curator who had helped us arrange the field trip that I knew there was no way the students would be able to see everything the Met had to offer, even with our advance research and planning. She said that was completely fine, and went on to explain that it is better for a student to be captivated by one item than to give a quick (and meaningless) glance to scores of items.

She was right, and her advice has been a guiding light to my view on field trips. The Latin saying multum in parvo means “much in little” and relates to the idea that much knowledge and understanding can be gained from focused learning and attention on even a few items.

Six Tips for Successful Academic Field Trips

I’ve learned some other things worth sharing, along the road with my students. Here are six points to keep in mind if you are newer to pairing academic tasks with field trips:

1. Start small. Even a very straightforward assignment will help students learn more on the field trip and have better retention and understanding. Scavenger hunts, like the one I deigned for Washington, provide a great way to give students structure and flexibility, as long as students can leave some items off their final list.

2. Spend time in class talking about the assignment before and after the field trip. Use class time to preview the trip and to state clearly to students what they will see and how that relates to the curriculum.

3. Think about group work. Oftentimes on a field trip, allowing students to work in groups can increase the conversations students have about the academic content while they’re on the road.

4. Research the sites so you know whether pencils, papers, cameras, or other supplies students may need are allowed. When you find out what is and is not allowed, share that information with students. If students can’t take pencil and paper into a site, give them time after a site—even on the bus—to jot down notes. Also remind them to make quick notes for later reference.

5. Talk with curators, docents, and other personnel at the sites in advance. If you plan far enough in advance, tell a curator that you are planning an assignment. Ask for input, anticipate constraints, and ask for the site’s help in facilitating the students’ work.

6. On multi-day field trips, check in with students each day to assess their progress. If you do not chaperone the field trip, discuss time management in advance and consider giving students a checklist.

So if you have a field trip planned for the last weeks of school, or any time of year, make sure to connect that field trip to your curriculum. Academic tasks and assignments can focus students’ experience and give them a frame through which they can explore and wonder.

Amanda Wall taught Latin and Writing in high school and middle school. She is now a doctoral candidate in teacher education at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, where she particularly enjoys studying motivation and working with the next generation of fantastic middle school teachers.

Elena Aguilar is a school transformation coach in the Oakland CA schools, where she taught for 13 years, including eight years in the middle grades. She writes about coaching for Education Week, and her first book, The Art of Coaching: Effective Strategies for School Transformation, was published by Jossey-Bass/Wiley in March.

by Elena Aguilar

It’s all about the relationships. I know this intellectually, and from experience, and yet there’s nothing like the visceral reminder when an 8th grader stares you down that middle school kids are reluctant to learn with those they don’t know or trust. Jefferson reminds me with his stare. He challenges me: who are you, lady, to tell me what to do?

It had been four years since I’d stood in front of a class of kids as their teacher. I decided to return to that position, only for a week, for many reasons: to model skillful teaching for the first year teacher, to “walk the walk,” to build my credibility amongst a group of teachers I work with, and to remind myself again what it’s like to teach middle schoolers—an empathy tune-up.

I had taught middle school for eight years (after teaching high school and elementary for five years). I loved my passionate, whacky, thirsty students, but I saw so many other teachers struggling. “How do you get your kids to do what they do?” teachers would ask me. So I became an instructional coach.

This opened up another set of questions: What are the conditions necessary for teachers to be effective with middle school students? What role does the principal play? What kind of support does the principal need in order for his teachers to be effective with their students? Which systems need to be in place in order for high quality learning to happen?

These wonderings led me to become a leadership coach. Currently I lead a team of instructional and leadership coaches who work in four middle schools in Oakland, California, providing an unprecedented level of support to teachers and administrators.

This is so hard

I’ve been missing the art and craft of teaching, the thrill of working with students. So I asked Alison, the new eighth grade history teacher, if I could teach her class for a week. She was thrilled. I got really nervous. I spent weeks planning (wow! I’d forgotten how long planning took!) I had anxiety dreams and first-day-of-school jitters.

And then, there was Jefferson, staring me down.

Alison had warned me: “All of the eighth grade teachers struggle with Jefferson. He refuses to do anything. He’s defiant. I’m sure he’ll call you a bitch before the end of the period—he never makes it through class without getting a referral.” I did some research on Jefferson. He reads at a second grade level, he missed 25 days of school last year, and he attended four different elementary schools. “What does he like to do?,” I asked Alison. “What are his strengths?” Drawing, she said.

So I brought a few cool drawing pencils for Jefferson. Just a token, a nod of acknowledgment. I stood at the door as kids arrived and greeted them, shaking their hands. Jefferson arrived just after the bell rings. Looked at me warily. Took his seat.

I started my introduction which I’d mentally rehearsed for weeks. I wanted to ask students to engage in some challenging learning during the week I’d be with them—analyzing primary sources, developing arguments, reading complicated text—but before I could do that I needed to quickly hook them into me and what I would offer.

Their flat stares and expressionless faces reminded me that it’s all about the relationship. Between me and them. Between the students. Within just five minutes, I was humbled. Who did I think I was that I could incur their trust that fast? I wanted to bow down to the teacher—Oh, yes, this is so hard, I remembered.

This kid had been hurt before

I asked them to do a simple task. Jefferson got up and wandered across the room, bumping other kids’ desks, commenting on a girl’s hair. Alison, the teacher, watched him and me, her eyes darting back and forth. How’s she going to handle this? I could almost hear her thinking. I reacted slowly, intentionally. This part came back to me quickly, instinctively. I meandered over to where Jefferson stood at a window. His heavy five feet and ten inches towered over me. I’m five foot one.

“Hey, Jefferson. Come on back to your seat,” I said in a soft, solid voice. He just looked at me. “I’d like you to make a choice,” I said. “I’ll give you a minute or two to do so.” I walked away, talked to another student. Moved the lesson along. Three minutes later he wandered back to his seat, one eye on me at all times it seemed. But then he shouted across the room to another student. One eye watching me to see how I’d react.

Again, I reacted slowly, deliberately. No urgency, no panic. I know he’s used to getting a quick reaction from teachers. I moved through the clusters of desks to his. I crouched down, way down, so that I was looking up at him. This was intentional. I tried to communicate non-verbally: I’m not going to hurt you, kid. I’m not going to play power games.

This kid had been hurt before—I knew this immediately—I felt it in some teacher-organ that’s not yet discovered. Given that he reads at a second grade level, his learning needs clearly have not been attended to. There was no reason for him to trust teachers or school or me.

I let him tower over me, but in my soft, solid voice I said this: “Jefferson, it’s okay with me if you make choices about today. If you want to engage in this lesson, that’s great. If you choose not to, that’s also fine. However, you can’t detract from anyone else’s learning. You can’t bother those who are choosing to engage. Okay?”

He just stared at me. “I heard that you like art,” I continued. “I brought you some pencils to use if you’d like. We are going to be doing some sketches later. Can I give them to you?” He shook his head. “Okay,” I responded, getting up, “Let me know if you want them.” I very quickly, very lightly touched his forearm. Before he could react, my hand was gone and I’d moved away.

What I really wanted to do was hug him and apologize for whatever has happened that made him be so hard and distrusting.

The need for deep levels of trust and learning

Most of the students did what they were asked on this first day. My lesson was well-structured, within their zone of proximal development, and the content was compelling. They complied, but they were wary—I felt it. Jefferson tested me a few times and got a couple of warnings, but he didn’t get a referral and didn’t call me a bitch. On day five he accepted the art supplies I’d brought him.

This experience propelled me into reflecting on how I formed relationships with students and to how long that took. As a classroom teacher, I’d had the opportunity several times to loop with my students. The months of relationship building paid off and in year two we reached deep levels of trust and learning. Other structures such as advisory, student-led conferences, and “fieldwork” (an extension of field trips) also facilitated the building of trusting relationships.

There is a set of skills that teachers can develop which lead to strong relationships with students, there’s no doubt about that. But there are also structures and systems which need to be in place in a school in order to facilitate that.

Without supportive structures, we won’t improve schools

In the school where I “guest taught” recently, teachers see 140 students per day. Class periods are 50 minutes long. There are few structures that enable relationships to develop between adults and children, or between the kids themselves. I realized that I would never teach in a school like this—the foundation for developing relationships doesn’t exist, and I can’t teach without relationships. I did it for five days—Jefferson was only one of a dozen who continuously tested me—and it was exhausting.

I remembered that as a teacher, once I’d established boundaries, trust, and respect with my students, the constant testing ceased. My energy wasn’t being sucked into classroom management. But given the structures at this school, I’m not sure that would ever happen. How can a teacher possibly develop deep, meaningful connections with 140 eighth graders? Especially when she sees them in groups of 32, for 50 minutes at a time?

And yet, I know this is the reality for so many teachers. My empathy has definitely been tuned up and I’m reminded, again, that real school transformation must address, and perhaps start with, the systems and structures in which we work. And I’d argue that those must be designed and implemented with the primary goal of facilitating relationships between teachers and students, and between students themselves.

Also see Elena Aguilar’s 2012 article, “The ASCEND Saga,” here at MiddleWeb.

Politicians Are Manipulating What You See in the News

By Frank W. Baker

“We have a far more sophisticated audience today than in the past, one that sees more clearly behind the manipulations and stagecraft of its political leaders.” ~ Alissa Quart, media watcher, quoted in The Sarcastic Times

Watch out: you’re about to be manipulated—if you aren’t careful.

The political arena has borrowed the words “stagecraft” and “choreography” from the world of theatre. Stagecraft refers to the work of directors who arrange the elements of what is seen so that a coherent message is communicated and understood by the audience. Nowhere is stagecraft more at play than in today’s image-driven world of politics.

At the highest levels of politics, hundreds of people are routinely employed to manage everything from what a candidate wears, to what colors and symbols participants see, to what music they hear, to what people appear in the background.

Stagecraft is in play not only during election seasons, but also every day, especially when the President goes out on the road during a speaking engagement.

The manipulators know that to be in charge of the image is to control what the audience sees, hears and understands: show them the good stuff and make it look both upbeat and appealing. It’s a lot like commercial advertising, which puts carefully groomed products under the lights so they look polished and bright.

Ronald Reagan famously stuck his head into a room where admen were crafting one of his re-election commercials and reportedly declared: “Since you’re the ones who are selling the soap, I thought you’d like to see the bar.” (Source)

Yes, candidates are like products: today they are packaged and sold just like cars and trucks, via television commercials with high production values. Everybody does it. it’s a far cry from 1956, when Adlai Stevenson thought such marketing was undignified and refused the adman’s treatment. Of course, he lost the election to Dwight Eisenhower.

Josh King, a former White House image manipulator, takes credit for creating the word “polioptics” to describe how important it is to control the image in today’s media world. Polioptics comes into play in almost every presidential event, from giving a speech at a podium to kissing the baby at an election rally. (King now co-hosts a talk show about political image persuasion on the SiriusXM Satellite radio POTUS channel.)

Visual literacy is a critical 21st century skill

In a book I authored about the role of mass media in politics, I made note of the various ways presidents have used the media, and how media organizations cover elections. Standards for visual literacy emphasize the need for all of us to become more aware of how media messages are created, and sometimes staged, and how important it is to “read” what is happening (and what is not) in an image or video production.

Here is an example: President Obama is surrounded by what appear to be doctors at a Rose Garden ceremony concerning passage of the Health Care Act.

How do we know they are doctors? They’re wearing those white lab coats. Did they arrive at the White House wearing those coats, or did the White House distribute them? We don’t know; we weren’t there to witness this event and few members of the media reported on the white coats. News consumers depend upon journalists, including photojournalists, to document and report on news events. All too often they just snap the picture. (In this particular case, the White House invitation to the physicians requested they wear a white lab coat. But, in one news story critical of this photo-op, a New York newspaper published a photo of a White House staffer handing a coat to a doctor who neglected to bring his own.)

So, we might ask our students, what do you think the White House was trying to communicate via this image?

The Roots of Political Stagecraft: Some brief history

Photography was a new invention when Abraham Lincoln ran for president. Yet, the Man from Illinois posed in Mathew Brady’s photographic studio several times.  Brady knew how to make Lincoln look good: he raised Lincoln’s shirt collar in order to de-emphasize the candidate’s neck. That early photo shoot produced several Brady images of “Honest Abe” that some say helped get him elected.

When Franklin Roosevelt was President of the United States (1933-1945), photographers agreed not to show the chief executive in a wheelchair or with crutches (he had polio.) If you think about the various photos of FDR, often he was seated or standing: none showed his disability. Of the more than 35 thousand photos taken during his presidency, only a handful showed his disability. Controlling how the public, and the world, saw the president was paramount—and the White House did not want to give the impression that he was weak. FDR’s condition accelerated the sometimes cozy relationship between the White House and the Fifth Estate.

It was Richard Nixon who created the White House Office of Communications. His first hire was Roger Ailes, who now heads Fox News. Today that office is occupied by former advertising, news and television experts—all of whom know how to craft a message and use the media to their advantage.

But it was during Ronald Reagan’s time in office that presidential-level political stagecraft began to be noticed. Reagan’s chief image-maker was Michael Deaver whose mantra was “image trumps words.” Nancy Reagan said Deaver’s greatest skill was “arranging what were known as good visuals — televised events or scenes that would leave a powerful symbolic image in people’s minds.”  (Source: “Longtime Reagan Adviser Michael Deaver Dies From Cancer”. Fox News. August 19,  2007)

Deaver recalled the time Reagan campaigned in California at a B-1 Bomber assembly plant facing huge layoffs. Deaver, wanting to counter the idea that Reagan was a hawk, managed to have the plane, strategically placed behind the president’s podium, draped with a banner that declared “Prepared for Peace.” With the White House dictating where all of  the cameras would be positioned, the media all got the same shot: Reagan in the foreground, with the word “Peace” clearly visible in the background.

Frame grab from American Photography: A Century of Images (video series)

When President Bush declared (prematurely) that major combat operations in Iraq had ended, with the huge  “Mission Accomplished” banner hanging behind him, it was decided that the president should speak just as the sun was setting—creating what photographers call the “golden hour” just before sunset. Thus no TV lights had to be used—Mother Nature would provide the best lighting.

Today, when President Obama goes out on the road to speak, the background most often includes an audience especially selected by the White House Office of Communications to represent an ethnically and gender diverse group.

President Barack Obama at West Wilkes High School in Millers Creek, N.C. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Sometimes, the stagecraft backfires. When presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney delivered a major economic speech in Detroit in February 2012, the location was Detroit’s Ford Field, home of the pro football Lions.

But some in the media observed that the stadium was empty and the 1200 people in attendance actually appeared smaller when seen from the perspective of the 80-thousand seat arena.

Was Romney’s message lost due to poor stagecraft? Perhaps. One interesting exercise is to search for this photo using the Google Images search tool and examine the many ways the photo was presented, how it was cropped, and who chose to use which versions with what text. This popular second photo showing the vast empty arena is attributed to “Twitter” — suggesting someone might have captured the image with a cellphone and spread it via social media.

Ideas for the Classroom

The opportunities to teach about political and visual stagecraft are abundant, to say the least.

• Ask students to locate and select a photo from the website of a candidate running for local, regional or national office. For example, a Romney tumblr page or Obama’s current page. (If students cannot locate photos there, they should look for images on the web sites of local newspapers or political blogs that cover candidates and elections. If they use Google Images, be sure to have them follow the image to its source.) Students can work in groups, with each group analyzing one photo, or students can choose a photo to analyze individually.

• Since many students won’t have had any prior experience in “reading” a photo, print out and distribute this “Photo Analysis Worksheet” created by the National Archives. Give students time to complete the worksheet and then have them present their findings and observations to the entire class.

• Have students compare examples of commercial product placement and political candidate/message placement.

• If possible, invite a photojournalist into your class (live or via Skype) to discuss the challenges of covering a candidate on a daily basis.

For more about visual literacy, see the resources collected on the Media Literacy Clearinghouse website. Find more about the role of media in politics at my website.

Images: For image source, click on the image.

Frank W. Baker is a much sought-after media literacy education consultant. He is the author of three books; his most recent is Media Literacy In The K-12 Classroom (ISTE, 2012). He maintains the nationally recognized Media Literacy Clearinghouse website and he conducts media literacy workshops at schools and districts across the US. He is a consultant to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). He can be reached at fbaker1346@aol.com.

by Bill Ivey

As Middle Level Education Month draws to a close, we’re pleased to share this reflection by MiddleWeb friend and contributor Bill Ivey, acknowledging the debt private schools owe to the thousands of public educators who helped forge the “middle school model” that serves many of today’s young adolescents in both public and independent school settings. Bill is Middle School Dean at the all-girls Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Massachusetts.

Peter Gow, a college counselor at Beaver Country Day School and longtime virtual friend of mine, has recently been invited to write a regular blog for EdWeek.org with an intriguing theme. Called “Independent Schools, Common Perspectives,” it is designed to explore the worlds of independent and public education and how they can strengthen each other. A refreshing concept and worthy goal.

Peter Gow

In an entry entitled “Middle Schools: A Gift From the Public Education System,” he looks back to his own years in what those of us in independent education used to call “Junior Schools.” Those were the days when “independent schools were falling all over each other to turn their middle grades–five through eight, roughly–into middle schools.” Peter shares his own warm memories of working in middle schools, and, as the title implies, he explores the role of public schools in developing and promoting what has come to be known as the middle school model.

Deep public roots

The middle school model has its deepest roots in the junior high movement way back around the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. At that point in time, the idea took hold that young adolescents had unique developmental needs distinct from high school students.

Charles Eliot proposed specific reforms in 1888, though it wasn’t until 1909 that the Indiana Junior High School in Columbus OH became the first school to formally use the term. Most often, the junior high model is thought of as being essentially “a little high school” with discipline-specific courses offered by different teachers from different departments, delivered at a pace and level of intellectual challenge deemed appropriate for younger students.

John Lounsbury

John Lounsbury, who wrote the paper from which I just paraphrased, is often considered as one of the godfathers of the middle school movement in the United States. Lounsbury had already begun working to reform the junior high model when William Alexander, in a speech in 1963, first used the term “middle school.”

Soon after Alexander’s speech, Dr. Lounsbury has commented, the term “was picked up and became the focus, and so my renaissance of the junior high school was no longer needed, because now we had the middle school as the rallying point—as the talking point. It gave us this fresh start, because we weren’t going to change the junior high, so long as it was stuck with that label.” (Lounsbury, quoted in Gloer)

John Lounsbury was one of the earliest leaders of the National Middle School Association, now called the Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) and few educators (if any) have played as great a role in defining and refining a bold and unequivocal vision for what middle schools could and should be.

The middle school vision

What defines the middle school model? Essentially, the middle school model comprises a holistic focus on the developmental needs of young adolescents, seeking out connections both among different disciplines and among different members of what is often described as “a learning community” – students and teachers, of course, but also parents and the larger community.

Our Stoneleigh-Burnham Middle School used the principles of the AMLE’s “This We Believe” (co-authored by Dr. Lounsbury and first published in 1982 with periodic revisions since) in designing our program, and we continue to use that document as a touchstone. The Carnegie Corporation funded their own look at middle school research and outlined a kindred model in the 1989 work Turning Points, updated in Turning Points 2000. The National Association of Secondary School Principals has published their own research-based work, Breaking Ranks in the Middle (2006). The three models differ more in terminology than anything else, and together offer compelling proof that the middle school model is the best way to educate young adolescents.

As Peter Gow notes in his blog, we independent middle school educators have found that “Our models came overwhelmingly from public schools” and thus that “one of the great developments in American education, one that thankfully changed the lives of tweens permanently, was, at least in my experience, a window into the amazing work that public schools and their teachers were doing to change kids’ lives.”

He goes on to point out that “this makes all the sadder the distractions that now seem to keep so many of our brothers and sisters in public schools from evangelizing even more transformative programs for their (and potentially our) students. It makes me respect all the more the passion and creativity of teachers who continue to come up with new and better ways to help kids learn and grow, even in the face of corrosive factors over which they have little control.”

Forging forward in corrosive times

Among those corrosive factors is the current push to close schools. The well-known and well-respected blogger Jersey Jazzman recently published a piece entitled “School Closings: The New Apartheid” which lists in depressing detail many examples of systems that are closing schools in a manner that disproportionately affects children of color. Chicago, setting a new record with plans to close no less than 61 schools (9% of the current total) leads the list. He quotes Karen Lewis, the head of the Chicago Teachers Union, as pointing out that “88% of the students impacted by CPS School Actions are African-American.” Though school closings were perhaps an inevitable and tragic result of NCLB, the deeper tragedy of the racist patterns of these closings was not.

That said, public schools are indeed forging forward. A former Arkansas state teacher of the year, Justin Minkel, recently published a guest blog post at Edweek.org entitled “What’s Right with Our Schools?” The short answer: a lot.

And so, while independent schools certainly have much to offer public schools as we continue to combine research-based practice with what our instinct and the students before us tell us to do, we are thankful that public schools played such a large part in forging the middle school model and continue to have much to offer independent schools as well.

As Peter Gow put it, “brothers and sisters, we’re still ready to learn from you.”

Bill Ivey is Middle School Dean at all-girl Stoneleigh-Burnham School in Greenfield MA, where he also teaches Humanities 7, French, and the Middle and Upper School Rock Bands. Bill is the advisor for MOCA, the middle school student government, and he coordinates and participates in the middle school service program. Bill’s other MiddleWeb posts include Hungering for a Better World and Actually, You ARE Special.