Roxanna Elden's Blog, page 15
April 20, 2016
What’s Your School’s Kool-Aid Factor?
As you look for a next teaching job, you might be considering a “no excuses” school. The option can be tempting, especially if you are coming from a school that might be better described as a “pick your battles” school. Who among us hasn’t sighed as we imagined students sitting in S.L.A.N.T. position, tracking their... Read more »
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April 12, 2016
Select Media and Interviews
NPR-ED: Hey, New Teacher, It’s Okay to Cry in Your Car, by Meg Anderson Tell Me More: How Teachers Can Avoid the October Blues, with Celeste Headlee Morning Edition: Hey, New Teacher, Don’t Quit. It Will Get Better, by Cory Turner Tell Me More: On the 60th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, Does It Matter If Schools... Read more »
The post Select Media and Interviews appeared first on Roxanna Elden.
January 6, 2016
RUDY’S NEW HUMAN is officially out! Please help spread the word.
I’d be grateful for your help in spreading the word by posting the link and forwarding this page to friends who might be interested. Amazon reviews are also hugely appreciated. If you’re a teacher using the book with your class, I’m happy to do Skype or FaceTime sessions with classrooms as scheduling and availability allow. (Real-life Rudy will also be in on the live chat.) You can email me if you’d like to discuss details.
Thanks, and best wishes for the year ahead.
December 18, 2015
Is the first-year teacher in your life crying in the car? Here are five things you should know (The Hechinger Report)
Ever since NPR featured the Disillusionment Power Pack in a story about new teachers crying in their cars, I’ve been hearing from new teachers who — you guessed it — have been crying in their cars. But I’ve also heard from another group that I hadn’t anticipated: the slightly freaked-out family members and significant others of new teachers. With that in mind, here’s a guide for those of you who want to help the new teachers in your lives but aren’t sure how, or who keep getting in trouble and aren’t sure why. (Or, if you’re the new teacher in this scenario, you can share this with the people who you know are just trying to help, but… gaaaaahhhh!)
December 16, 2015
Why Complaining About Work is a Lot Like Drinking
Among the many demands of teaching is a tremendous pressure on educators to “stay positive!”
Sometimes, though, after a demoralizing faculty meeting, or shouting directions on three hours of sleep while fourth graders open and close their binders as loudly as they possibly can, a little commiseration can be just what teachers need. Some complaints even lead to productive discussions about how to make things better. On the other hand, complaining can leave you feeling worse. It can also make you look bad if you do it in the wrong place, at the wrong time, or in the wrong company. In other words, complaining about work is a little like drinking. It is best done with certain words of caution in mind.
Do it in moderation. You may feel like you are letting off steam, but if you complain constantly and never quite get it out of your system, you may be dragging yourself down without realizing it. Avoid this by setting limits on the timing and duration of emotionally draining conversations. As with drinking, if you start complaining right after work and keep going until bedtime, or if it’s the first thing you do when you wake up, it’s time to admit you have a problem.
Don’t assume everyone else likes it as much as you do. There are plenty of teachers happy to share an after-work gripe session, but don’t forget there are others who don’t complain at all, or who only do it on rare occasions. Even those who do share stories have limits on how much they want to say – and hear – about work problems. If people start to back out of the room when you begin a sentence with, “These kids…” it may be time to lighten up.
The teachers’ lounge is not the place for it. Sure, teachers are role models who change lives and make a difference and all the other things you read about on teacher mugs. But that doesn’t mean we’re exempt from workplace politics and gossip. It’s safe to assume everyone at your school talks to someone, and someone in the teacher’s lounge talks to everyone. If you’re saying something you wouldn’t want repeated to coworkers or administrators, the teachers’ lounge is not the place to discuss it.
Students shouldn’t know you do it at all. In addition to their well-known tendency to repeat almost everything they hear, kids have their own problems. Teacher-level issues are none of their concern – and none of their business.
Think twice before you put evidence online. You have probably been warned – and if not, consider this your warning – that you should not share pictures online that you wouldn’t want bosses or students to see. Likewise, be careful before you complain on a blog or website – even if you think it’s anonymous. Some of my favorite teacher-blog posts of all time were by Peter Gwynn, a teacher and online comedian who blogged under the pseudonym Mr. Teachbad, who says, “I told four people at school about my ‘anonymous’ blog and the administration knew about it within a month.” Gwynn was later fired in what he says was a backlash against his writing. He advises would-be bloggers to be honest but careful, and to remember that, “Once it’s out there, it’s out there.”
When you really need to do it… do it. The warnings above don’t mean you have to stay quiet, stay out of the teachers’ lounge, or stay positive at all times. “Teaching can be a depressingly, hilariously absurd job,” says Gwynn, “and it begs to be addressed on these terms.” For his part, Gwynn has replaced his career in teaching with one that helps teachers let off steam. His website attracts up to 20,000 viewers each month and offers magnetic poetry sets for frustrated teachers, including words like “differentiate,” “rubric,” and “IEP.” They’re selling fast – another sign that teachers appreciate a few moments of shared negativity.
Like occasional Friday happy hours, complaining lets us know we’re not alone. Sometimes, we need to break the “stay positive!” code in order to stay sane.
November 12, 2015
Five Habits that Hurt Teacher Motivation (in ASCD)
Teachers know that motivating students and engaging families is part of the job. Sometimes, however, just keeping ourselves motivated can feel like a full-time job. Here are some ways you may be draining your own enthusiasm without realizing it – and some tips for making it through the slump.
November 9, 2015
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
The post Hello world! appeared first on Roxanna Elden.
October 19, 2015
Press Release for New Teacher “Disillusionment Power Pack”
GETTING NEW TEACHERS THROUGH THEIR ROUGHEST MONTH COULD HELP SOLVE TEACHER ATTRITION
Free, New Teacher “Disillusionment Power Pack” aims to provide struggling beginners with realistic, practical advice—and commiseration
According to the US Department of Education, half of all new educators quit within five years. In lower-income schools, half quit within just three years. With teacher shortages growing in many states, it’s more important than ever to help rookies through the October-November low point known as “the Disillusionment Phase.” This term, first coined by New Teacher Center CEO Ellen Moir, describes the period between Mid-October and Thanksgiving break that is traditionally a low point for rookies.
With this in mind, Roxanna Elden, author of See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers, has created a new tool: the “Disillusionment Power Pack.”
Teachers who sign up will receive emails for one month beginning the day they subscribe, with subject lines such as, Don’t you wish people would stop telling you teaching is the most important job in the world? And, A slightly-less-devastating explanation of your most recent screwup. The emails include journal pages from the author’s first year of teaching, stories behind the stories she now tells in speeches, and insights meant to help teachers through the time frame when new teachers’ great ideas are falling apart and kids are no longer on their best behavior, but the end of the school year is nowhere in sight.
New teachers often feel like the weak link, but are too self-conscious to voice their doubts to mentors or colleagues. Even meetings meant to support new teachers can feel competitive, with participants more eager to share successes than confess mistakes. Says Elden, “For better or worse, there is no good way to ‘out’ yourself as a struggling teacher your first year. And yet, what teachers need most is for someone to be straightforward about how tough teaching can be. Especially when you feel like the weak link. Especially when everyone around you is sharing success stories.” Elden has addressed this issue before, including in her TED-style talk on The Myth of the Super Teacher, viewed over 40,000 times internationally, and in an NPR interview on how teachers can survive the October Blues.
She says that in October of her own first year, she needed to hear not from another rookie or award-winning master teacher, but from someone who’d powered through self-doubt and low points to become a successful teacher. In other words, she needed to hear from a future version of herself.
“The Disillusionment Power Pack is the series of emails I’d send to the first-year-version of myself, the teacher crying in a Burger King parking lot wondering if my students would be better off with someone else in front of the room. Teachers need to know they can bounce back from their worst moments and still go on to become successful. And then they need to know the next manageable step to being a better teacher tomorrow morning.”
Link to signup form:
Link to blog post describing the Disillusionment Power Pack: http://seemeafterclass.net/2015/09/announcing-the-new-teacher-disillusionment-power-pack/#more-1880
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Roxanna Elden is a National Board Certified teacher and the author of See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers. The book is a funny, honest, practical guide that shares tips and stories from teachers around the country. Since 2009, the book – now in its second edition – has helped thousands of new teachers transition from their training to the classroom. Visit www.seemeafterclass.net for more information.
October 9, 2015
Writers: What Does “Show Don’t Tell” Really Mean? Narration, Description, and Scene
Note: This is an online version of a writing workshop currently in progress: Learning, Then Burning (Or at Least Overturning) the Writing Rule Book. You can sign up here to receive notes from this class as they become available.
What Does “Show Don’t Tell” Actually Mean?
“Show don’t tell” is one of those tidbits passed from writer to writer, and – I’ll admit it – heavily encouraged by the English teachers of the world with our “magnified moment” exercises.
Yet, when you ask people to elaborate, you usually get a similarly vague, often-repeated answer. Add more detail. But, you know, the right details. Sensory details. Not too many adverbs. But also, get to the point and don’t be too wordy.
So, we’re back to the question above. What does “Show Don’t Tell Mean?”
In an attempt partly inspired by a Great Courses Series, The Art of Storytelling, by Professor Hannah B. Harvey, I’m going to give this a try.
Then, we’ll revise something you’ve written. (If you’re taking this mini-course in order, I recommend using your Point of View piece from the last lesson.)
Let’s start by asking, is it really better to show than tell?
The answer, according to Professor Harvey, and me, and probably you, too, if we’re all being honest, is “sometimes.”
Sometimes, we do want to hear all about the inside of the new car you were driving, how the seats smelled, how the steering wheel vibrated in your hand as you went over the bumps in the half-paved road, a light rain falling on the windshield as you searched the unfamiliar dashboard for whichever tiny switch might turn on the wipers, the radio turned up louder than you normally would have to impress the curly-haired brunette in the seat next to you, who had no idea you were about to drive to the edge of a lake, stop the car, and ask her to prom. Maybe we want to know that the girl had a ring on her thumb, which she was turning unconsciously with her other hand as she looked out the window. Maybe we want to know that the ring was inlaid with tiny, blue stones.
Other times, your story is better served by telling us that senior year you got a girlfriend and a car.
Professor Harvey gives the best advice I’ve found on this, which is that it depends on how fast you want to cover this particular part of the story.
-If you want to cover lots of ground, faster than it happened in real life, you use narration. With narration, you can tell us in one sentence what happened over the course of a year, or even ten years. Narration is telling, not showing.
-If you want the speed of your story to roughly match the real-time unfolding of events, you switch to scene. A scene happens in one particular place and time. It contains dialogue and action. Scene is showing.
-If you want the speed of your story to be slower than events unfolded, you use description. This is showing, also, but you are taking time, usually in the middle of a scene, to slow down and show the audience something you want them to see. This might be something that they need to understand other parts of the story, or something that has symbolic value in the story. For example, that ring on the finger of the girl in the story above? Maybe the narrator gave that to her. Or maybe he will later find out that her ex-boyfriend gave it to her, in which case, why is she still wearing it?
Here’s another way to think of it:
Narration = Fast forward
Scene = Play
Description = Pause
Each of these have a place in your story. As a writer (or storyteller), you have to mix these up to get the pacing and effect you want.
Here’s today’s exercise:
Revise a piece you’ve already written, paying attention to the following:
1. Where you want to fast forward with narration.
2. Where you want to play the story in real time with scene, dialogue, and action.
3. Where you want to pause the story with description to emphasize certain details.
Good luck!
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This is an online version of a writing workshop by Roxanna Elden, author of See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers. (And hopefully some other books soon.)
You can sign up here to receive notes from this class as they become available.
October 8, 2015
Should I Use First or Third Person? How About Second Person? And What Does “Omniscient” Mean, Anyway?
Note: This is an online version of a writing workshop currently in progress: Learning, Then Burning (Or at Least Overturning) the Writing Rule Book. You can sign up here to receive notes from this class as they become available.
Standard Narrator Points of View: First Person and Third Person
First person: Narrator is part of the story and uses the pronouns I, we, etc.
What you gain by using first person narration:
Immediacy – since the narrator was right there, it’s clear whose experience is filtering the events for the reader. It’s worth noting here that only first person testimony is acceptable in court.
Personality – First person narrators tend to show personality and make it easier to form a bond with the reader.
Access – You can share all the inner thoughts and memories of the narrator, who is often also the main character.
What you lose by using first person narration:
Reliability – because readers knows the narrator has his or her own take on events, they will judge the reliability of the narrator before they believe his or her account of the story.
Access – A first person narrator does not know the inner thoughts and memories of any of the other characters.
Third person: Narrator is not part of the story and only uses pronouns like he, she, they, etc.
Objectivity – Third person narrators seem more reliable and less susceptible to human error.
The ability to move the camera – A narrator who describes the perspective of more than one character is known as an omniscient narrator. This allows you to show readers what’s going on when your main character is in the other room, or show the inner thoughts and memories of more than one character. A narrator that is not omniscient is known as a limited narrator. This means the narrator mostly describes the thoughts and feelings of one main character.
What you lose by using third person:
All the advantages described above for first person.
Clarity – the line between limited and omniscient narrators can be blurry.
A note about omniscient vs. limited narrators.
People often have a hard time giving a good definition of omniscient. That’s because really, it’s helpful to think of this as a spectrum rather than two separate categories separated by a thick dividing line. On one end are books that truly follow only one character the whole time. In the middle are books that follow a few characters, or stick with the limited perspective of one character per chapter, such as The Slap, by Christos Tsiolkas. On the most omniscient end of the spectrum are books that switch between many different characters and switch often, such as On Beauty, by Zadie Smith, where the perspective can switch between two different people within one phone conversation. As a writer, the most important thing is to be conscious of how omniscient your narrator is so you don’t confuse the reader. Always ask yourself how much the narrator knows that the main character does not and keep this consistent throughout the story. If you do shift perspective, make it extremely clear when the shift happens. Some authors do this by alternating different perspectives in different chapters and even naming the chapters after the person who they follow. But as Zadie Smith proves in her work, there are ways to show that the camera has moved.
Breaking the “Rules” of Narrator Point of View:
Using second person: Narrator talks directly to the reader and or directly addresses a character offstage using the pronoun you.
Examples: Used successfully by Junot Diaz in certain chapters of The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, where the main character is talking to his ex-girlfriend as he tells her story. You’ll also find it in Choose Your Own Adventure books, where the narrator speaks directly to the reader.
Using an unreliable first-person narrator: The author purposely makes the narrator crazy, or a liar, or some other type of person who we don’t completely believe when they tell us a story. Reader then have to piece together what they think the story is after accounting for the narrator’s perspective.
Getting around the traditional rules of narration by having a narrator who can read minds, or who listens through a door or reads someone’s diary, etc.
Examples: Harry Potter
Having a narrator who is technically a first-person narrator but mainly watches someone else. These characters may use first person pronouns, such as I and me, but they are mostly telling the third-person story of the character they are observing, who is usually the more interesting character.
Examples: Watson from the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, or Morgan Freeman’s character, Red, in Shawshank Redemption.
Switching between first person narrators. This gives you kind of a first-person omniscient narrator.
Examples: The Dirty Girl’s Social Club, by Alicia Valdes-Rodriguez
Writing Assignment for Narrator Point of View
Pick one of the narration styles above and use it to tell a story from the following prompt: Two people sit down at a table. One of them doesn’t want to be there. You decide everything else.
Extension assignment
Write the same story using a different narration style.
(Not a different narrator. A whole different narration style. In fact, if you haven’t done so already, try one of the rule breaking styles.)
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This is an online version of a writing workshop by Roxanna Elden, author of See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers. (And hopefully some other books, soon.)
You can sign up here to receive notes from this class as they become available.
