(Crossposted to my junior classes’ blog.)
Each week, for the Student Blogging Challenge, there are four steps:
You’ll be able to read the week’s blog post at this website and follow the instructions for the week. I’ll also post a link to the current task here on our class blog, along with any clarifications I have for you.
In the end, it’s all about connection. Learning is being able to connect with ideas, with people, with new places and new situations, with yourself, with the world around us. Students learn better if their teacher can build a connection with them. We all learn better if we connect socially. Collectively, (connectively?) we are infinitely smarter than any one of us are individually.
Ultimately, that’s what blogging is for. Blogs allow you to connect with a community – sometimes small, sometimes encompassing people all over the world. They allow you to interact with your audience, and allow your audience to interact with you. They allow you to ask questions, to consider different viewpoints, to challenge your thinking.
When you choose a topic on which to post, therefore, you need to think about something that will provoke thought. In a sense, blogs are reflections that are meant to be shared with the entire world. So, in your blog …
Be someone that other people want to listen to. And when you have a post that you think is strong enough, well-written enough and thought-provoking enough to be shared with a wider audience, submit it to our writing blog here.
(Re-posted from November 17, 2016)
Dearest friend,
It’s been ages since we’ve seen each other. I’m headed to Scotland for the winter break, but I wanted to have a chance to catch up before I leave. I’m holding a dinner party on the 22nd at 7:30, just you and a few other close friends. I hope you’ll be able to come – it should be epic! I’ve a few people I’ve wanted to introduce you to anyway.
Hope to see you there!
Sincerely,
Nicholas
Writers’ block is a luxury that career writers (and those in this class) cannot afford. We write every day in order to remind ourselves that writing is not only an act of creation and art (which it is) but also a skill that requires development and practice. Daily Writing, Read Like a Writer and Writers’ Workshop form the core of our course.
But sometimes it is really difficult to come up with ideas.
So I have collected a series of prompt links and ideas for various types of writing. On those days when your pen hovers over the page, making little darting motions like a hummingbird but never landing, find this post, click a link, and just write.
Here’s the caveat, though (you knew there was going to be one, right?): you can’t cherry pick your prompt (at least not during daily writing, though you’re welcome to select it beforehand). Click a link, choose a number or look at the most recent post, and write on whatever comes up. Like the picture prompt at the end of this post.
Hats aren’t allowed at Lord Tweedsmuir and I’m sad. A lot of teachers shun you from wearing hats and make you take it off. I don’t understand why hats are so bad? They are not revealing or too short like shorts or crop tops are. What if you have a terrible hair day or burned your hair? Wouldn’t you want to cover it in some way? I don’t understand how it’s so rude and disruptive? It’s not like it’s a symbol of profanity in front of the teacher and teacher can still see your face. Hats should be seen like another piece of clothing and not as such a bad accessory. It’s part of how you dress and your personality, why should that be taken away from us?
I understand if you’re not a hat wearing person this topic might be unnecessary to you. Except, imagine the school telling you that you couldn’t wear your favourite shirt or do your signature eyeliner.
What do you think about the no hats rule?
There’s a lot of talk in our class about depression, about sorrow, about zombie apocalypses … you get the picture. So I thought perhaps it would be good for us to consider something more on the positive end of the spectrum this week.
Years ago, I kept a gratitude journal. It was my New Year’s resolution that year: I would write down at least three things that I was grateful for each day. They didn’t have to be big things, but I had to think of three things (at least) and commit to putting them on paper.
Like many New Year’s resolutions, it petered out around month three. I think I might resurrect it this year, however. I’ve noticed (in myself; this is not a pointed comment) a tendency to focus on the negative lately. I’ve noted the students who didn’t do their work rather than the multitude that did – and did a great job. I’ve stressed out about the few students I can’t reach, who don’t seem to be willing to participate in the class and I can’t understand why, rather than the amazing conversations I have with all of the ones who are fully engaged. I think of myself as a bad teacher when I make a mistake, instead of acknowledging that I will never be perfect all the time – and that making a mistake, or even a series of them, doesn’t make me a bad person (teacher, student, etc.).
And if gratitude leads to happiness, the way the video above suggests it does, maybe we need to be more grateful for the people and joys in our lives.
Maybe we need to share our gratitude as well. Who and/or what are you grateful for?
A very controversial subject recently is the unrealistic body image Barbie has set for young girls. I understand why people are getting mad over it considering Barbie’s are for young girls with the most influential minds. It’s also not just girls who have to deal with these unrealistic body types, every gender has them. Personally when I was younger and played with Barbie’s I never thought ‘why don’t I look like that?’ but I know that doesn’t mean other little girls haven’t. It’s hard to watch people feel ugly when they are just looking for things about themselves to hate instead of looking for the good things. I’m also not sure Barbie is entirely to blame for that.
In recent years more and more unrealistic body standards (mainly for women.) have been popping up everywhere (movies, TV and ads) and its really kind of scary that so many young minds will compare themselves to these models. But it isn’t just in recent years that unhealthy body images have been advertised! I feel that the media should start using realistic women and men for they’re ads to show people beauty doesn’t one body type. Even in schools we could explain this further by not just saying that people in ads have unrealistic body types but also show what can be considered beautiful! It’s not some photo shopped super model or Barbie. We can’t stop everyone from being self-conscious because that’s impossible but we can show them how to feel beautiful and confident and that’s a start. As for Barbie’s I think they are great toys as long as little girls know that they don’t have to look like a Barbie to be beautiful. Whoever and wherever you are I hope you feel beautiful.
-Ireland
This week, I wanted to share a couple of the blog posts our class produced. (We are an incredibly strong group of writers, though, so we also encourage you to check out the rest of our blogs down the right-hand side of the page.)
December 2, 2016
“Everyday Superpowers” by Danielle
“Fantastic Mistakes and Where to Find Them” by Alyra
Some years ago, I decided to go back to university to get a Master of Arts in English Literature. I knew the work was going to be difficult – especially since I was teaching full time even as I was going to school full time at night. But this was something I really wanted to do – not just because of how it might help my teaching but also because I missed university. I missed the challenge of learning something new, of having to stretch my brain in new ways. It’s not like I never learned anything new as a teacher, but it was in a restricted set of topics – math education or literacy, assessment or communication. I missed English.
So I went back to school. I wrote my first paper, and I got an A-. I was ecstatic. I wrote my second – A- again.
And then I wrote my third, and I got a B-.
Not exactly a horrible grade, you might say. It’s above average; in fact, the way such things are calculated, it is above above average. A C is average. A B is a good grade, even with that little minus attached to it.
I cried for an entire afternoon.
See, I’d formed this view of myself as an A- student. I was “good” at literature, I was “strong” when it came to analysis, and I was definitely “excellent” at writing papers. My cohort (the other teachers who were in the program with me; we took classes together) would often come to me for questions about structure or grammar, and I would answer them, secure in my identity as an A- student.
And now that identity had been shattered. By a single letter (and punctuation mark) on a single paper.
It was about five years after this when I read Carol Dweck’s Mindset for the first time, the book about the research that forms the bulk of the video above. It was fascinating not only because I could fully understand what she was suggesting about the damage a fixed mindset could cause but also because if you asked me, I would have said that of course intelligence isn’t a fixed trait. This seemed incredibly self-evident. You aren’t born with a certain amount, like genes – you don’t get just this much and no more. You develop your intelligence by working, by learning, by studying. By putting in the effort to get smarter.
And yet.
When I talk about the danger of labelling yourself an A student or a C student, I speak from experience. We are not our grades. Even more, we are not our grade in a single class. Schooling is wonderful, valuable and important, but in this, I believe quite strongly that we do more harm than good. I agree that it is important to be able to measure ourselves against a standard: this gives us a goal to which to aspire. I don’t believe that the strengths and areas of growth we have as learners in any subject, skill or knowledge base can be distilled down to a single letter (and possibly piece of punctuation).
We are more than our marks.
We are more than what we are good at.
And if we want to become better … all we need to do is work harder, learn more, and ask for help.
From as young as I can remember, I’ve been engrossed in stories. Small ones, grand epics, the stories of men and women that were assailed by conflict but came out on top or failed in the face of it. I always suspected I was of the former group–during my childhood I dreamt of being someone bigger than life, of being a hero and doing the things I wasn’t capable of doing when I was young. I had (and continue to have) a huge amount of pride in the human condition–in the way we handle problems and the ways in which we fail, and more often the ways in which we succeed.
There’s something incredible about it. About how we try–how we fail, how we succeed and persist. It’s the fact of life that allows us, as a species, persist in spite of evidence that might suggest that its improbable that we ever would.
I wouldn’t call myself religious, but if I was, I’d be a huge advocate for some kind of Emperor of Mankind.
Could you imagine that? Someone kind of man god?