Picking Up Where I Left Off

I have learned over the years that nothing we do is wasted. Yet, I'm always surprised when it happens once again, when something from the past shows up with more meaning in the present.

Such a thing happened this week.

REWIND

During my first year of teaching, I was still taking classes for the Teacher Immersion Program, one of them being teaching in my content area. I recall I wrote a paper answering the question: How do we teach creative writing yet still provide structure? I wrote about various ways to approach writing in the classroom, in which I included something called The Town Project I read about in Teachers and Writers Collaborative magazine.  That same semester I attended a Saturday workshop put together by the National Writing Project at Florida Gulf Coast University, and decided I would definitely apply for the NWP Summer Institute. This came with some additional commitment, as the Institute required I do a presentation on a way I engage students in writing in my classroom, and it would also give me college credit, motivating me to take the MAT and apply to grad school.

Yeah.  I was busy.

And I knew that I didn’t actually have anything solid to present.  After all, I was just a first year teacher. So with the time left, I decided to implement the Town Project in my classroom.

The Town Project, as written about by Robin Behn in a project called Capitol County, created towns in each classroom, and generated writing ideas based around a simulated real world community.  At the time I taught three double blocked classes (sounds like such an easy schedule now!), and I had each class name their town.  Each student created their persona – who they were in the town, preferably an adult so they could write from a different perspective. We had doctors, cookie factory owners, lawyers, dance studio operators, fashion designers, restaurant owners, and yes, one year I even had a hit man for the mob.  Students had the opportunity to run for mayor, write to people in other towns (never knowing who exactly they were writing to – names were secret outside the town), newspapers, brochures, magazines, and writing persuasive pieces about town issues. They also put on talk shows, news shows (complete with hilarious commercial breaks), Jerry Springer type shows, and even an American Idol knockoff. I had a parent who was a court judge, and she helped us set up a small claims court, and even volunteered her time to come in and hear the cases. I recorded many of these with my video camera so the kids could watch themselves afterward.

In other words – we had a blast.

Artifacts from my capstone project

The summer of 2005, I presented The Town Project to my NWP Summer Institute colleagues, and had other opportunities to present as well. The plan all along, put together with help from Dr. Patricia Wachholz, was to present at Florida Council of Teachers of English, which I did in the fall of 2006 as my capstone project for my masters.  I was supposed to write an article for professional publication, but somehow that never happened.

Fast forward to switching to high school teaching, where The Town Project didn’t really fit.  When I came back to middle school, I tried it with a 7^th grade class of intensive readers, but I was struggling that first year, and I don’t think I gave it a fair chance. Then I pretty much forgot about it.

THIS WEEK

This semester I’m teaching a speech and debate class that meets first thing in the day. I have twenty smart and motivated 7^th and 8^th graders, who progressed through the debate cycle quite well, debating violence in video games, school uniforms, standardized testing, and the need for homework. I knew we were entering the speech/storytelling portion of the semester, but I felt I had little time to think about exactly how to approach it.  My thoughts, when I had time to think, were all over the place.

Then on Monday we had the final speaker in the final debate. She did something I had not witnessed before: I knew she was nervous, because she had said so many times. When she got up, she was doing fine, but then started repeating lines. Then she went into this stuttering thing, and gave up. I had never heard anyone do that before, in all my years of being involved in public speaking.

This caused me to set aside some space and time in my life to really THINK about what to do with the speech class.  I did not want to put her through this again.  I know from experience that focusing on the needs of one student can open up possibilities for all students. So I concentrated my thoughts on how to approach things so to lessen her anxiety.

And I came back to The Town Project.

Interviews. News programs. Town Hall meetings. School Board meetings. Proposals for the community to consider and debate. The ideas flooded in.  All ways a student could practice a variety of speaking skills without necessarily having to be put on the spot.  Plus, she would be speaking from the perspective of a make believe person – hopefully making it easier.

I brought The Town Project idea to the class on Wednesday (not telling them why I came up with it), and they wholeheartedly embraced it.  We now have a town: Little Harbor. We have a mayor: Rachael Parks (elections were Friday, after all the candidates spoke). This week there will be interviews of the various town members, speaking their inspiring life stories or talking about something important they are promoting for the town. I have many more ideas up my sleeve, which I hope to share as we go along.

One of the things I like about this is that I will be teaching this course again next semester, and it will be meeting the last period of the day.  I know the motivation and the focus is not going to be as strong.  This means we will be doing The Town Project during fourth quarter – the best way to use end of the year energy. This is a win-win all around. I cannot wait to see what comes out of it.

And who knows?  Maybe I’ll finally write that professional piece!

Pictured below are some of the students who participated in The Town Project my final year at Gateway.