True confession: I haven’t always been a poetry lover. When I was younger I collected poems, intrigued by the connection I felt with a complete stranger’s expression of my emotions. I copied poem after poem into spiral notebooks, savoring every word. And in college, I fell in love with Blake and Dickinson and Maya Angelou and so many other voices that spoke to me from the pages of their slim, hardbound books. I developed a love for words less linear, less formulaic, and less predictable.

Then I started teaching middle school, and wasn’t sure how to share my love for language with my students – kids who were hesitant to approach text that looked different, and were afraid of getting the meaning ‘wrong’.

So I backed off.

Textbook poetry bored all of us to tears. I couldn’t find a balance between helping them build the scaffolds they needed to understand how and why poets wrote, and where poetry was relevant or even just found in their lives.

This poetry month has been my favorite out of 25 years of trying.

Getting started with poetry:

I decided to just jump in and start writing. I used this Blackout poetry hyperdoc because it seemed to be so accessible and so simple. What kid couldn’t just select words and black out the rest?

Well, it turns out that some kids think WAY too hard. Instead of just relaxing and circling words that were beautiful or powerful or simply stood out, they tried to turn it into a sort or upside down word search. And some kids STRUGGLED.

I found myself flitting around the classroom reminding kids to ‘let their creativity flow’ and not to think too hard. I told them to not pay attention to font size or location of words. I suggested they just circle, and see what happens.

And of course, some came up with their own methods. But whatever they chose, I was happy that they were starting to see the beauty of language, and how words could bring power to a page.

This student was inspired by an image alongside the words and ended up creating a beautiful poem with a combo blackout/sketch effect.

Some kids decided they wanted to combine columns to create a more complex poem.

I’m pretty confident that the finished products shocked them – especially when I read them aloud to the class.

Finished blackout poems.

Using hyperdocs:

Once I had them relaxed and hooked with the blackout poems, I started slipping in mini-lessons using foldables in their interactive notebooks. I LOVE the series from Lovin Lit – her Interactive Poetry Notebooks have really helped me balance the poetic structure practice my 8th graders needed with learning how to annotate and write poetry, too.

My next step is to slip in some instruction about how to read poetry. I’ve been using this poetry hyperdoc as part one of this lesson. I’m a huge fan of hyperdocs, mainly because it allows me to differentiate instruction while giving my students choice and voice about how they learn. It’s ‘hands-free’ for me; I work to create the hyperdoc up front, but during class time I’m free to wander around, talk with students and coach them through the harder parts. Hyperdocs have transformed my teaching.

Writing odes:

We’ve moved through types of rhyme and learning how to annotate, so I threw in writing odes. I got the basic idea from Interactive Poetry Notebooks and created an outline to help them create some of the figurative language components.

This has been hilarious.

You might think middle school students would think odes were silly – I mean, adults usually think of odes as serious declarations of love, right?

So what do you think middle schoolers declare their love for?

Dogs. Water. Waves. Netflix. Flowers. Minecraft. Twenty-One Pilots. Lots of students write odes to their pillows and their beds. One student wrote an ode to his ill grandmother, and another to her mother. Some wrote odes to each other, some wrote about ice cream and tacos and one even wrote about Donald Trump.

I’ve also created a Poetry hyperdoc part 2 to help give students more practice and choice about writing and publishing poetry. I don’t want to drag the unit out too far – just enough to have them feel confident and curious about reading and writing poetry, and have some fun along the way.

One thing I’ve learned is that I actually CAN teach kids to love poetry, and to have confidence that they can read and understand the sometimes abstract messages poets create. For 13 year-olds, I’d say that’s pretty great.

I love to share my favorite poems and poets here, usually once a month. Do you love Mary Oliver? Thich Nhat Hanh? Maya Angelou?

I’ve even written some poetry – and I know first hand it’s harder than it seems.

I’d love it if you’d share some poetry with me in the comments. And if you have fun poetry ideas, share them in the comments, too!

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Wonder what teachers are really searching for online?

I can tell you – it’s not just lesson plans or decoration ideas. It’s not just how to deal with the unruly child, or how to motivate a reluctant reader.

Those searches would be understandable.

What teachers are really searching for online is this:

jobs for retired teachers jobs for ex-teachers jobs for teachers leaving teaching jobs for teachers jobs for former teachers jobs for teachers leaving the profession careers teachers

good jobs for retired teachers new careers for teachers jobs for teachers other than teaching jobs after teaching leaving teaching for a new career careers after teaching

careers for teachers careers for ex teachers careers for retired teachers non teaching jobs for teachers jobs for teachers who leave the profession careers for former teachers

And the search keyword list goes on and on. Sad, isn’t it? Scary, for sure.

What is happening to our teachers? And is anyone noticing?

As a 25-year teaching veteran, I can completely understand. In the 1990s, when I entered teaching, we were in a whole language curve. Middle school ELA teachers like myself were trusted to create curriculum and address the needs of the whole child. I was part of a five-person interdisciplinary teaching team that was responsible for teaching only reading – my partner took care of the writing instruction, and we carefully aligned with each other to ensure  cohesive instruction for each of our 100 students. As a beginning teacher, I was making a decent salary, had 100% of my health benefits paid for, and was offered compensation for professional development.

Forward to 2016: I’m still teaching ELA in middle school, but have navigated through NCLB and am now entering the uncharted territory of CCSS. I’ve been given the standards, but little training, and no materials whatsoever that match what my students are being tested on. I’ve spent money out of my own pocket to purchase lesson ideas from teachers in other states who are one step ahead. I’ve pursued grants, my own training, and read everything I can get my hands on. I’m teaching classes of 36, responsible for all ELA standards. I’m making a higher salary, but pay nearly 27% out of pocket for my share of my health benefits. I make less money this year than I did last year, and am looking at 12 more years of teaching before I can take full retirement. And I’m trying to pay for my own child’s college tuition, all the while I’m educating other people’s kids so they can enroll in college, too.

So I get it.

Jobs for teachers

Teachers today are under more scrutiny than ever before. Their jobs are becoming more and more aligned with test scores and performance tasks. We are expected to do more with less, seek our own education, and somehow grade those papers AFTER our paid work day is done.

Teachers are tired. Veteran teachers are wondering how they can maintain. New teachers are quitting after a year or two.

I believe in public education, and I believe that I am impacting the lives of the students I see every day. I believe all children have the right to education, and I believe there are thousands of teachers who, like me, don’t want to leave their job. But I also believe that teachers ARE searching for something else – something where they can find the balance between doing what the love, and having a life outside the classroom.

And please don’t say we knew it wasn’t about the money.

And please don’t tell me we get summers off.

And please don’t tell me we’re making a difference, we have the hardest job in the world, and that you appreciate us.

We hear that. We hear you. And look what’s happening – we’re leaving.

Something has to change before it’s too late. Aren’t our children worth it?

I originally wrote this post for The Educator’s Room.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Imagine this: You’re a beginning teacher, fresh out of college. You’ve done a few weeks (maybe a semester) of teaching on your own. You’re thrilled to be hired to teach in your own classroom. The teachers you’ve idolized your entire life flash through your mind. You can disregard the low starting pay and the multiple subjects you need to prepare to teach every day. This is what you’ve been waiting for! You walk into your classroom and begin to prepare for the first day…

Me, heading out for my first day of teaching in 1991.

Sounds exciting, right? It’s what every kid who played ‘school’ dreamed of- the day they would officially be a teacher and have their own classroom. For me, that was 25 years ago. I was young and excited and energetic and ready to teach English. Little did I know that I would really be expected to be excellent at everything.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m a type-A, first-born, driven perfectionist type. I went to a well-respected college, studied hard and threw myself into every mediocre-minimum-wage job I had. I’m not afraid to put everything into my job. I just didn’t know that when I finally started my career, I would need to be excellent at things other than teaching English.

Here’s what I mean: in the last 25 years, I have taught 5th grade (including Family Life), 7th grade English, 7th grade History, Reading, English for English Learners, 8th grade English, 8th grade History, Intervention (that’s the class where they put all the kids no one else can teach in one room and say, ‘teach’), French, Yearbook, Skills (how to ‘do’ school) AVID 8, AVID 9, and Honors English. I think I got everything.

But those are just the course titles – that’s not really what I’ve been expected to teach. Because in today’s education system, teachers are expected to do it all – be counselors, nurses, parents, cheerleaders and curriculum leaders, all under the job title of ‘teacher’. I’m wondering if that’s really what most people think this job is about when they dream of being a teacher. I know for sure that I had no idea.

An article in US News and World Report by Andrew J. Rotherham titled, “Let School Districts Focus On Instruction” caught my eye, mainly because of the ‘school districts’ part of the title. The article states that in preparation for the 2017 school year,  “Officials are thinking about transporting students to school, what they’ll feed them, health services for them, sports teams and schedules, and all the other things we call on school districts to do. Meanwhile, if you’re lucky, someone might also be focused on who is going to teach your child and what they’re going to teach.”

Wow. Really? Someone might be focused on who is going to teach your child?

Can Teachers Really Be Excellent At Everything?

I get it. I know that districts are asked to do many things for many children for many reasons. This takes teaching the ‘whole child’ to a new level, though.

The author continues to state, “Larger school districts operate food services rivaling restaurant chains and transportation programs on par with large bus companies. We wouldn’t ask Greyhound to also get really good at introducing students to algebraic concepts in the early grades or call on Five Guys to teach Shakespeare, so why we do expect school districts to be great at complicated work like transportation and food as well as teaching?”

Agreed, Andrew. Makes sense – but when have school districts ever been given the ability to run like everyone else runs their companies? School districts are, in my opinion, left to ‘figure it out’ with what we’re given. Depending on the policy of your state, how that flushes out for the students and teachers can vary greatly.

The article continues, “We ask school districts to do all manner of things before they even get to their core function of instruction. Even then we ask many of them to manage instruction from kindergarten through high school rather than focus on certain grade levels. It’s not by coincidence that some of the very best charter schools to open over the past two decades focused on bands of grades rather than trying to cover the entire spectrum.” Now I agree with you here. Charter schools have been given some huge leeway to operate in a selective and exclusive manner, leaving the ‘discards’ to the public school system, all while claiming that they are operating in the ‘right’ way.

When the author suggests, “Why not, then, unbundle school districts so they can focus on teaching and learning rather than a range of activities they do now for which other entities might be better suited?” I gave a simultaneous shudder and cheer. I agree the focus needs to change to teaching and learning, but will that trickle down to the teaching level? If we ‘unbundle’ the transportation and food and health and sports services, will we just be putting more cooks in the kitchen rather than solving the issues in a bigger, more permanent way? And where do the teachers fit in this ‘unbundle’? Will we still be expected to identify the social, emotional and physical needs of our students, providing band-aids and breakfast and pencils and paper? Will we still be expected to give parental advice about how to motivate their kids to do homework, and arrange for the bus and carpools for our field trips? Will we be freed from the daily lunch count and excusing tardies for those needing to get their free breakfast? When kids come to cry in the classroom at lunch because their stress level is over the top and their parents just don’t understand, will a mental health professional be just a phone call away?

I spend hundreds of hours of unpaid time learning new teaching techniques – like using hyperdocs.

Can teachers really be excellent at everything? Or can we expect them to be excellently supported so they can focus on teaching and learning? This question becomes even more timely given the scare tactics of our new administration, willing to offer leadership to someone who has demonstrated no excellence whatsoever as it relates to education.

The article concludes by stating: “As a rule the highest quality institutions we see, in all sectors, are ones that focus on being excellent at something. It’s just hard to be outstanding at a lot of things at once. Yet that’s what we ask of school districts year after year even as they struggle, mediocrity is the norm, and high-quality instruction is often an afterthought. So maybe we shouldn’t?”

Yes, it is hard to be outstanding at a lot of things at once, and yes, we ask school districts and TEACHERS to be excellent at everything. But mediocrity the norm? I invite you to my classroom, and to the rooms across the hall and around the corner. Mediocrity is nowhere to be found in my school – but it won’t be hard to find tired, overworked and underpaid educators trying to be excellent at everything for everyone in their classroom, every day.

This post appeared first here on The Educator’s Room. Check out the site for great writing about teachers, students and education.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own home. 

Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor…

Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.

Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.

~ Mother Teresa

Every morning, right after my first cup of coffee, I struggle with checking my Facebook feed. Lately all it does is make my heart catch in my throat, speed my pulse into triple digits and leave me feeling….well, a bit helpless.

I hate feeling helpless. It goes against everything I profess about ‘walking the talk’ and teaching audaciously. Feeling helpless is like taking no steps forward and ten steps back.

That’s simply something I’m not willing to do at this point in my life.

In my classroom, I see a microcosm of our world; children from different backgrounds, races and religions. College interns come to my classroom every day,  struggling with student debt and affordable housing, all while trying to work and study and figure out what they want – or will be able to – do when they graduate.

I feel it all around me – the tension, the fear in the eyes of those afraid of what is to come, and the rising sense of a societal acceptance to speak out unkindly, to group together and cast sideways glances at each other. I don’t like it. It scares me, it worries me and wakes me up from a deep sleep.

Last week, I created a ‘hope’ wall for my students. I wanted them to feel safe sharing what they hope for in their life, and I wanted to be able to make it visible.

From the hope wall:

“to make new friends”

“to do better each day”

“to make my parents proud”

“to be nicer to everyone”

“to help others to the best of my abilities”

Every day a new anonymous ‘hope’ appears. Hope for good grades, for friendship, for acceptance. Someone is hoping for a tattoo….one to be a pilot, and another to meet Alex Morgan.

I felt like this was one thing I could do to overcome feeling hopeless: I could grow hope and simultaneously, I could spread love.

For me, teaching is a service job as well as a profession where I utilize my creativity to first connect, then instruct. I’m constantly striving to creatively connect with my students, to get them to trust me – and themselves. I want to teach my students how I want my own children to be taught – I want to use this platform, this opportunity, to spread love in whatever small (and hopefully large) ways I can.

These small steps, this little bit of teaching audaciously, helps me feel less hopeless. I imagine all of us just doing a little bit, every day, to help our country move forward in love and kindness. If you’re feeling like I am, I urge you to just find one thing you love to do – take one small step forward each day to spread love wherever you go, however you can.

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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I cannot deny it any longer – I’m in love with Chromebooks.

Chromebooks have transformed my teaching. All those times in the last 25 years when I used to say, “Well, that would be easy if I had a class set of computers” has turned into my reality.

Chromebooks have become a wonderful tool for teachers in the 21st century.

A recent article in Education World tells us that “For the first time, Chromebook sales surpassed 51% in the K-12 market nationwide in the third quarter, according to a recent report by market researcher Futuresource Consulting,” according to USA Today. Now, why doesn’t that surprise me?

Because when schools embrace Chromebooks, and teachers step out of their comfort zone to use them in their classrooms on a regular basis, students are happy. And happy students means more learning. And more learning means higher test scores…

Now, I’m certainly not a digital native. In college, I typed my thesis and remember the woes of correcting ribbon. According to Education World, “Getting teachers and students to adopt (sic) to new devices in the classroom isn’t always easy. This is where the Chromebook shines. Simplicity always makes for easier transitions into blended learning and these devices are tailored towards doing so.”

I have to agree. In my classroom, I’ve stepped up and bear-hugged those 34 Chromebook machines that reside in the front of my room. I’ve seen more experienced teachers light up after their first successful foray into Google-land. It’s taken some effort, to be sure, but here are the top four reasons why I’m in love with Chromebooks in the classroom:

1. Student access to information.

Every Monday my AVID students use a Chromebook to log into their School Loop account. They check their letter grades, view their grade trend and record the number of ‘0’ marks they have. Just like adults monitor their checkbook, having easy access to their performance information allows my students to analyze their success and plan the week. When my English students ask about missing work, or what they need to make up from an absence, they can take control by using a Chromebook. My students routinely use Chromebooks to turn in digital assignments to their School Loop account, too.

2. Improved communication.

With Chromebooks being Google based, students have the easy capability to collaborate – with each other and with their teachers. We regularly utilize Google Drive for assignments, including presentations with Google Slides, collecting data and assessing students with Google Forms, editing with Google Translate, and analyzing data with Google Sheets. When absent, I can share a document with a student and chat through the comments feature.

3. Easy ability to create projects and study tools.

Before, I was lucky to get my students into a computer lab with desktops chained to study carrels. Now with Chromebooks, my students routinely use technology as their first ‘go-to’ point for projects and study tools. They love creating study flashcards and playing review games using Quizlet. When we wrote narratives, after drafting using Google Docs, students used their Chromebooks to create professional looking books on Storybird.com. To introduce the novel The Pearl, my students used Chromebooks to create Prezis about different research topics. Chromebooks make activities like web quests easy and fun, not to mention the ease of delivering lessons through sites like TedEd and the Khan Academy.

4. Enhanced inquiry options.

Years ago I decided not to be a walking answering device. I was tired of spelling words and being asked to provide answers to factual questions. With Chromebooks, my students have learned not to even ask (“She won’t tell you, you know” they are fond of saying). Instead, they’re learning how to figure out the answers to their questions, how to be independent thinkers and learners, how to analyze information and evaluate sources. And best of all? They’re satisfying their curiosity and developing skills to take with them into all aspects of their lives.

And best of all? With increased use of Chromebooks, my students not only are feeling like school is fun and time flies in the classroom, but they are also satisfying their curiosity and developing skills to take with them into all aspects of their lives.

That’s Chromebooks for the win!

I’d love to hear your favorite ways for using Chromebooks in the classroom – drop me a comment and let me know!

I wrote this article first for  The Educator’s Room. 

Jennifer Wolfe

Jennifer Wolfe, a writer-teacher-mom, is dedicated to finding the extraordinary in the ordinary moments of life by thinking deeply, loving fiercely, and teaching audaciously. Jennifer is a Google Certified Educator, Hyperdoc fanatic, and a voracious reader. Read her stories on her blog, mamawolfe, and grab free copies of her teaching and parenting resources.

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