What I did on my summer vacation

Teachers are often on different schedules than other people, treating end of year and before school reflections like others treat New Year's resolutions. We often spend the last days of school, or those first days of summer vacation making notes while they are fresh in our minds, corrections, things to aim for next year. I try to keep a "bug" list all year, so I don't have to try and remember that horrible disaster of a lesson from August in May. I also rough-sketch plan the upcoming year at the end of school using these notes. This way, there is no rush right before school to write the syllabus or calendar. It also allows me to ask students when they're right in front of me, what they wished the calendar or syllabus said or did, what they liked, and what was missing that they wanted. Then all summer, as I find a cool thing, I add it to my hyperlinked calendars (English 9, AP Language).

This summer, I had a lot of personal professional development I wanted to do. For me, this always starts with reading. The top four I'm in the middle of. The rest I read this summer. Some were more helpful than others. I'm not a big fan of educators who monetize their work for platitudes without any real plans or help, so those weren't super helpful. Neither was one that wrote only representing super privileged schools, with no explanation of how others could transfer.

In May, I was thinking about reading Lord of the Flies with my freshmen, focusing on the aspects of bullying and privilege. The #DisruptTexts focus seemed like it would really work with my students.
Then, as news evolved, I decided to change the novel to Farewell to Manzanar. I was looking for something students would engage in and that I could make real world connections to.

Then I read A Novel Approach which really helped me solidify wholesale changes I wanted to make to my classroom this year.

This summer I got to know  ProjectLit and was inspired by their work.

I decided to use these books as a stepping off point. Rather than a book club, I would use these books, in sets of 4-5, as literature circles in my English 9 classroom. The students would choose from these texts and Speak (which I already have copies of). They will read their books in groups, discussing them.
At first, I just thought I'd do this in place of our novel unit. But then I got to thinking. I wanted my students to be engaged. I wanted them to read. I wanted them to be able to transfer skills. Last year, I started every class with students reading in their independent reading books. Anything they wanted, no judgement, just 20 minutes at the start every day, reading, with me reading along with them. No work, no project, just read. I was really happy with the results. My students were totally laser focused, and really liked it. But the stuff we read as a class was really hit or miss with engagement. And I kept noticing that there was no transfer of skills from marking period to marking period, I was having to reteach things all over again.

So, instead of waiting until 3rd marking period to do these literature circles with the students, I decided to start our 1st marking period like this, bump the non-fiction unit I usually start with. This marking period will focus on youth culture and personal narratives. Students will read these books, of their choosing, and I will use a mentor text to teach skills, that they will then apply to their own books. I really wanted to use Rebecca Roanhorse's Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™.
Levar Burton read it for his podcast, she's a Native author, and I thought it'd be cool for my students, to set the tone. I really love it, but I know the language would give me trouble with freshmen, so I'm casting around for something else. I want something relatively short to start, something accessible for all my students, that will make a good mentor text.

The first hurdle I faced though, with this idea, was getting the books. I made am Amazon Wishlist, and shared it on social media, explaining my rationale, and what I wanted to do in my classroom- have my students, 85% Chican@ and 5-10% Native, read texts they were represented in and could relate to.
I was overwhelmed by the response. People I did not know donating books. I bought a couple of class sets using First Book, another great resource.


As the summer progressed, and I started to thing through how I wanted to make this shift, I started to think of other things. I figured after 1st marking period, these books would then be up for grabs for students to read as independent reading books when we moved onto non-fiction, fiction short stories, fiction novel, drama, poetry. And I like that idea. But too, if I follow the research to its logical conclusion, in addition to this, I need to apply the same thing to our fiction novel unit. So students will again choose from these groups of books, read in groups, and I'll use a mentor text to teach skills.

I'm not sure what mentor text to use. The standard in my school is To Kill a Mockingbird. But since Go Set a Watchman came out, I've had serious misgivings about teaching this book. The #DisruptTexts has softened my view somewhat, but I'm still not sure.

I did drag out my copy and pulled all my old Post-It flags out of it. I relooked at it through the lens of using it as a mentor text, examples of setting, characterization, focusing on how Tom is the invisible man through the entire novel, themes, symbolism.

I'm still not sure. It's not a book I could teach without interrogating it. I don't think I want to submit my black students to the language. I wonder if I could teach the excerpt for these mini-lessons, and not the whole book, still problematizing it, disrupting it, but...I don't know.

I am not concerned about mentor texts for the non-fiction, short story, drama, or poetry units but I'm going to have to think more for the novel one.

I plan on disrupting my drama unit in a couple of ways. The first is to center our background on what New Mexico and Albuquerque was like in the early modern period.

We will watch Romeo and Juliet, the Baz Luhrmann version. I have a background in theatre, so I teach it very differently. First, too often we teach Shakespeare, and other plays, with no consideration of the genre. Plays are meant to be SEEN. So we'll do the background, then we'll spend a week watching it. Then we do close readings and choral performances of the Act I prologue, how it functions. Then we'll close read and analyze the balcony scene, comparing several different versions. Next, we work on 3:1, the scene where Juliet lists and imagines her fears, and we illustrate them. Then the final monologue. We talk about bigger themes, and ideas. 

In addition to reading for my PD, and reading through the Project Lit list, I've also been reading others, and these are some of my favs. I don't have lit circle sets for all these, but they'll go on the shelf for independent reading. I've also written short reviews in them, which I will encourage my students to do too this year.

Students will also personalize bookmarks- I made a bunch, printed them on colored cardstock and they'll put names on back/blank, and any notes they want.

I also bought a bunch of colorful magnets that can go on the whiteboard of literary elements that I can use teaching mini-lessons, for learning targets, and helping students identify them in texts.

For a decade, I've used Interactive Notebooks with my students. I taught mostly freshman, in AVID schools, and it did a lot of what I wanted- set good models, had an easy to follow template, and was interactive. Grouchy students complain my English classes are so arts and crafty.
Last year, I discovered Daybooks, and shifted my classes to this, and it addressed a lot of the issues I was having with my class- students not always engaged, copying my notes rather than doing the work.
So part of my prep for the upcoming school year is prepping my own Daybooks and notebooks. I used Don Murray's Daybook idea, but also Lynda Barry's Syllabus which is a continuous joy and goal.
This year, I want to build on my success from last semester, and focus more on doing the work with my students, and conferencing about reading.

If you know me, you know I have a massively impressive t-shirt collection, and like to wear my activism. I've decided to report back to work 6 August for our week of PD signalling where I stand. A lot of the conversations I've listened and learned from this summer on Twitter, especially from the #EDUColor community has pointed out how much more I should be doing. I need to stand up for my colleagues who are women, and women and men of color, I need to use my privilege for good, and I need to stand up for my students.
It may seem silly, but for me, wearing these, and signalling to my department and school is a good start. And maybe, just maybe, it sparks questions and conversations.

Next week is the last week of summer vacation, although it is also now chock full of appointments, things to get done before returning to work, so it'll be a busy week. It's always this time of summer that I start to get really excited and eager to get into my classroom, rearrange the space, make copies, set the tone, email parents...start WORKING. 

• I am excited about my students seeing themselves in the books we read, although there's room to grow there. So, one of the things I've realized, teaching high school here the last few years, and especially with my new move to use more representative books, is that there are few books for Chican@/Natives that reflect my students New Mexican experiences. Hispanic and Latinx texts are situated in NYC or LA, and that is not my students' experience. I asked Twitter/NCTE for suggestions. I said I knew Jimmy Santiago Baca and Rudy Anaya because they were local. I got recommendations for Sherman Alexie, which I explained I won't teach because he's an abuser. So, if you know of any texts that my NM students could relate to, I appreciate the recommendations!
• I am excited about refocusing my class around reading conferences and writing workshops, diving deeper on things, and doing more with less. 
• I am excited about the idea of using mentor texts.

I still have more PD books to read. I'd like to focus on one a month. But I also want to stay focused on the above things, and really focus on them and not get overwhelmed, and the above are already really big changes.
I am a little concerned about pushback on the topics some of these books cover, especially I think, The Hate U Give, All-American Boys, and Ghost Boys.  I feel like I can justify it and back it up, but I also know that doesn't always mean anything. So I've prepped a document to defend representative texts.

So that's been my high school teaching summer. But that's not been all my summer months have focused on. In addition to all of this, I spent the summer tackling revising my dissertation into a book. I did not put in for summer school or do anything else, because I wanted all my time to do this. I also, despite loving my classroom and students, really prefer to be alone, so my summer hermitage helps me recharge for the year.
I tackled the pamphlet chapter first, it was the "new" chapter that didn't exist in the diss, although the idea was in the original diss. I am glad I did it first, as it was a lot of mental wrangling- figuring out the one thing I wanted the chapter to say, but also envisioning what the book looked like.
I then moved onto chapter 1, the first revised/reorganized chapter using material from the diss. This was hard in similar ways to the pamphlet chapter, as things I thought I would argue didn't work with the texts. But again, I'm really happy with where it ended up.
Next, I moved onto chapter 2, and this went easier, because of the previous work. I have reorganized it, and a couple of weeks ahead of my schedule, am ready to start reading through and revising/rewriting. 

I am really glad I focused on this all summer, because I needed the dedicated time to work through things, set it aside and let things percolate, and just DO the work.

I have budgeted one month per chapter, like I did this summer, for the remaining two chapters, and the intro/conclusion. That should then leave me a month to go through the whole thing, and make throughline revisions before the January deadline. Having done the heavy lifting this summer, I feel good about where I am and meeting this deadline. It will be a bit tricky once I go back to work, but except for teaching Saturday school, I've pulled out of all other responsibilities so I can focus on this, and frankly, I've done more work with less time, so I feel good.

I have also prepped my job market materials for the higher ed job season starting in September, but frankly, I'm not confident. I did decide I only wanted to apply to SLACs and community colleges, because this last year I realized I really wanted to be somewhere I could focus on my teaching. I'm not getting any help, which I'm not surprised by, but it also means I'm not super enthused about what this does for my chances.

Part of this summer (and finally being on medication for my anxiety, which has devastated me the last few years), has been making peace with where I am. I hope this means that going back to school, starting the year, and being happy, is easier.

Anyway, that was what I did on my summer vacation.

I'm not sure where the last two months went exactly, but I'm excited about the upcoming year!

Postscript:

I've also ordered Teaching for Black Lives and Rethinking Schools' Planning to Change the World Planner to help me stay focused this year, and try and make my minority black students, in a mostly Chican@ school, feel seen.