I let them know that I expected confusion while we practiced, and I promised that once we learned how to do them, the writing circle sessions would become a valuable part of our writing workshop classroom
I love this modeling of allowing it to be less than perfect and embracing that these are skills to be learned through failing and refining our skills, rather than something that is perfect right away. Tolerance of confusion is such an important skill (for many grown-ups, too!).
namaste
This is fraught for me. I am a white person, and this is not part of my own culture. In order to be responsive and engaging in culturally sustaining pedagogy, I have a standard about cultural appropriation and actively interrogate when and where I am using terms from other cultures in ways that are inappropriate. Here is one article to start to interrogate this term as a white person.
For me, it might not be this term, but definitely a norm of the classroom space in which I find myself to acknowledge explicitly the inherent worthiness of everyone in the community.
Instruction
See Phase 4; this is a repeat of all of the guidance in Phase 4.
Connectivity and Access
How do we ensure this? Especially given that so many free options are discontinued. Increase bandwidth needs have stressed the system. This goes to larger infrastructure issue within society as a whole.
Student Work
Pages 28-29 of Part 1 guidance in the Assessment section
If hybrid, activate plans to monitor and assess the following:
None of this was addressed in Part 1 guidance; METL guidance may be helpful here.
Support schools to communicate regularly with families in their home language about their child’s progress and the targeted plans for students in need of additional support.
Translation resources in Part 1 guidance pg 32.
Determine and activate structures outside of the regular school day, such as summer learning options, extended day, and after-school programming, to potentially be leveraged to support students in need of additional support.
This was in drafted Part 1 language but not reflected in final document.
high quality digital tools
Inventory the technology and create a plan; page 33 in Part 1 guidance.
Procure any additional standards-aligned tools or materials to support differentiation, intervention, and remote learning, based on students’ needs.
Oakland Schools has documentation to support this; not linked in Part 1. This was perhaps in the drafted work but not reflected in the final document for Part 1.
Conduct a review of each students’ IEP in partnership with teachers and parents to reflect each student’s evolving needs based on time away from associated services including OT, PT, and Speech while school buildings were closed
This is not discussed in Part 1 guidance; Special Education support in guidance would be helpful.
Conduct checkpoints with school leaders around curriculum pacing and ongoing monitoring of student progress, specifically honing in on the growth of students who need acceleration.
This is the section on PLCs; not addressed in Part 1 guidance. This might be a questions for MASSP and MEMSPA--this overlaps with grading questions. pg 28-29
Ensure that every student:ɑHas access to standards-aligned, grade-level instruction, including strategies to accelerate student learning;ɑIs assessed to determine student readiness to engage in grade-level content; andɑIs offered scaffolds and supports to meet their diverse academic and social-emotional needs
Assessment section in Part 1: pages 28-29
Build school leaders’ and teachers’ capacity to design and develop blended and remote learning experiences that are equitable and engaging
This is a gap in the guidance; Blended Learning guidance should be a priority.
Offer restorative supports for teachers and learning around equity and implicit bias
page 31; Part 1 of Guidance
Create a plan for professional learning and training
"Create a scope and sequence related to technology" is the closest in Part 1 (pg 34); "secure resources for professional learning" with links in Part 1 (pg 31)
Share knowledge and ideas around the use and effectiveness of digital tools and resources that support remote learning
This is reflected in the Part 1 documentation.
Identify students who did not engage in remote learning and develop a plan to provide additional supports, if needed. Share data and concerns about each student’s growth and needs with students’ assigned teacher(s) for the 2020-2021 school year
This may be a gap in Part 1; Collaborative Inquiry protocols from Oakland Schools might be a resource to support this.
Provide adequate time for schools and educators
Pages 34-38 in Part 1 document;
Provide resources that demonstrate schools value parents as partners in their child’s education. Offer family supports that provide families with: ɑTraining about how to access and use the school’s chosen digital systems and tools;ɑSupports and resources for families to use at home, such as grade-specific activities and strategies for teaching and helping their child;ɑOpportunities to build their digital literacy; andɑStrategies to support their child’s learning at home
This is a gap in the Part 1 guidance; some mentions of this in the MAISA Remote Learning Guidance (April 2020).
home language through multiple modes (e.g., text, all call, email, home visit)
Part 1: page 32--this is listed as a school leader level; mentioned translation services as well.
Develop a continuation of services plan for students needing either occupational, physical, and/or speech and language therapy, including evaluations by school psychologists and social workers
This is a gap in the guidance language; was not addressed in Part 1.
Inventory all intervention programs and services available to students on the district and school level and identify any gaps
Named in Part 1 Guidance on pages 28-29; Perhaps it exists elsewhere but we can't find.
31MI Return To School RoadmapGovernor Gretchen Whitmerand learning environments, especially special education, birth to five services, and CTE. ɑEstablish structures for general and special education teachers to collaborate on delivery methods for assessments and instruction as outlined in IEPs. Consider students’ needs around accessibility and provide assistive technologies, where possible
This is a gap in the Continuity of Learning guidance in Part 1; Part 1 guidance referenced interventions, but this is a gap in the guidance.
Revise students’ IEPs, IFSPs, and 504 plans in coordination with general and special education teachers to reflect the child’s evolving needs based on assessment data and parent feedback, and design accommodations and match services accordingly.
Special Education Group Guidance might be addressing this. This was not included in the instruction section of the Part 1 Guidance.
Support schools to implement grade-level curricula that is aligned to Michigan preK-12 standards. ɑSupport teachers to utilize power standards that identify the major work of the grade in order to focus, prioritize, and accelerate instruction
Page 30-31 in Part 1 Documentation; Instructional Planning
Secure supports for students who are transitioning to postsecondary.
We have questions about this? Does this mean that we support 2020 graduates? How do we do this? Or is this about Early College/Dual Enrollment students?
Set an instructional vision that ensures that:ɑEvery student will start the year with access to grade-level instruction and high quality, standards-aligned instructional materials in every subject.ɑEvery student will be assessed on their understanding of prerequisite skills and grade-level proficiencies using formative assessments, screeners, or diagnostics.ɑEvery students’ academic and social-emotional needs will be addressed with the integration of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) and strengthening connections with students
This was addressed in Part 1 on Pages 28-29
Guidance around daily instructional time and workload per different grade bands to ensure consistency for students
This should be created in Part 2 or 3 of documentation.This was discussed for Remote in the March guidance but not touched again.
Modes of student assessment and feedback
"Set assessment goals and feedback" page 28 of Part 1.
Best practices for blended or remote learning
Remote learning resources in Task Force Guidance: Part 1, page 28 (lists three resources).
A description of the manner in which district administrators, board members, teachers, and any representatives of teachers collaborated in development of the Plan
Note that multiple stakeholders are involved in the building of local plans
deliver content in multiple ways
This includes packets, etc. Provisions for districts to ready packets and other low-technology options are in a later section. The buildings can be opened for these purposes provided that social distancing provisions are met.
A description of the methods a district will use to keep pupils at the center of educational activities, including outreach to continue building relationships and maintain connections, and to help pupils feel safe and valued
Focus on relationships and SEL here.
Black males already have voice, so English educators cannot give them voice
YES.
Metaphors We Live By
I loved reading this book. I read this book during my Red Cedar Writing Project Summer Institute, in 2005. It is not a stretch to say that it absolutely changed the way I saw the world. It was the lens through which I considered everything.
He at-tended all 20 hours of the video-recorded classroom sessions. Plus, he and I had three intensive interviews (193 minutes) across Phases I and II. Each interview was audio-recorded, and later transcribed and coded for themes. In Phase II, I spent an academic year working with Shawn beyond We Choose to Learn (his senior year in high school) to trace the consequences of his metaphor. I visited Shawn’s school, Urbantown High School, which afforded me opportu-nities to meet some of Shawn’s teachers, administrators, and friends, as well as students he mentored. I also collected data in the form of a follow-up interview, observations, field notes, and reflective memos. Informed by multiple sources of data acrossacademic spaces (We Choose to Learn and Urbantown High School), over time(July 2013 to June 2014), I triangulated the data to enhance its rigor and complexity. Triangulation allowed me to authentically center Shawn as a writer and focus on his writing development with metaphor.
This is SO. MUCH. DATA. Incredible research described here!
I realized he helped me to see differently
This is the best when it happens <3
Appendix B
Should we crowdsource links to the readings included in Appendix B?
Researching and teaching metaphor
I am connecting to this due to my background in Educational Technology teaching and research: the metaphors we use when discussing technology can be really instructive and fruitful, and there is a whole thread of Ed Tech research that involves metaphor.
All of that to say: metaphors aren't just an "English" thing and I completely agree they are much more than a literary device.
Consequential writing is writing that is intentionally developed by, for, and with communities. It concurrently cultivates both academic and critical literacies of historically marginalized communities in a way that encourages justice-oriented action, which ensures that community members actively shape community goals.
Consequential Writing:
(I had to slow this down for myself to get a sense of it before I could go on. This term is new to me.)
transferability (Bhattacharya, 2017; Steinberg & Cannella, 2012)
For more on this notion, this website had a good overview:[(https://socialresearchmethods.net/kb/qualitative-validity/)] "Transferability refers to the degree to which the results of qualitative research can be generalized or transferred to other contexts or settings. From a qualitative perspective transferability is primarily the responsibility of the one doing the generalizing. The qualitative researcher can enhance transferability by doing a thorough job of describing the research context and the assumptions that were central to the research. The person who wishes to “transfer” the results to a different context is then responsible for making the judgment of how sensible the transfer is."
Literacies are so dynamic, and they are difficult to capture on standardized exams.
YES.
Tuck called for research that reimagines how findings might be used by, for, and with communities.
This reminds me of the shift from discussing the 'achievement gap' to the 'opportunity gap.' I wonder how this phrase meets the standards that Tuck is laying out for us here? For more: click here [(https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2019/09/09/achievement-gap-opportunity-education-schools-students-teachers)]
It felt as if the school put more money into our security system than into our educa-tion.
This resonates with me. I remember feeling this way about the school in which I taught as an early career teacher.
he group collaboratively agreed to establish a “safety protocol” in which we immediately pause a discussion and play a lighthearted team-building game. Anyone in the class could initiate the safety protocol if they felt overwhelmed with the content of the course
Back to design ideas (per my last annotation); what occurs to me here is that because the author focused on procedures first, there was room for the students to ideate as well on the procedures that served them and their needs. This goes hand in hand with designing for developing a community of curiosity and care (and also makes me connect back to Nonviolent Communication)
began the course with a series of procedures.
I love this. It might be that the idea here is rather than start with the curriculum/assessment (via UbD); you are rather designing using a Design Thinking frame which emphasizes observation and empathy as the first step. After all, we are a community of learners, not teachers of standards. 
A major value of the National Writing Project is writing in community. Throughout the institute, Jen and Priscilla emphasized the importance of active listening. When our colleagues shared their writing, we would lean in and focus on every word. After each person presented, the community would respond, “Thank you for sharing.” Our constructive feedback always centered on areas specified by the authors themselves. Over the two weeks, I realized that listening is a cornerstone of pedagogical justice.
This idea of listening helps me connect to my learning on Nonviolent communication, which privileges presence and listening. I see these principles at work in the NWP (whether by design or by just an innate sense of awesomeness, I don't know).
White people need to be honest now, and honest in a way that doesn’t erase the work of scholars of color who have led in this area. I fear the silence of white people represses the real, complex weight of whiteness.
This connects back to the comment I added earlier: this is an incredibly fine line to walk and we must be careful of decentering whiteness while also making room for the honesty of white people.
I’m complicit and will never be absolved. So what else can we white people do?
Yes. I am also complicit and I will never be absolved. This is the work of a lifetime.
Here I was in a predominantly white school district, being assured that it was committed to antiracism. Still, nobody seemed to actu-ally want to talk about whiteness.
While I never have taught in a predominantly white context, this echoes my own experiences in educational spaces, especially with my fellow white teachers and educators.
187Tanner > Whiteness Is a White Problemnary) stereotypes of people of color mediate white people’s understanding of race is helpful here. It might be easier for white people to see race in people of color because doing so—that is, mediating whiteness through people of color—gives white people a way out of confronting race and racism. To explore some of the ways that white people mediate race through people of color, I now turn to moments of my own racial story. These mo-ments, or stories, focus on experiences from my time as a high school English teacher and now as an English education scholar.A Story about Our White ProblemMy first teaching job forced me to grapple with my whiteness.I was hired to teach English and drama at a large, urban high school in a major city in the Midwest. It was 2003, and I was 23 years old. Cardinal’s3students were predominantly Black—Black students made up 65 percent of the overall school’s population.My experience as a teacher at Cardinal forced me to account for my whiteness. In my first year of teaching, students constantly reminded me that I was, in fact, white.
My early teaching career also forced me to grapple with my whiteness. For the first time in my life, I had sustained, daily experiences of being the only white person in the room. I had already explored my whiteness through a mentor who encouraged me to name and grapple with my own internalized racism. I believe this allowed me to approach my students with a humility and awareness of my own racism.
My intention is that this article be a signal to our field that white folks ought to more deliberately wrestle with whiteness, without making race always and only about people of color. In this way, white people might begin to better shoulder some of the work of disrupting white supremacy.
I agree that this important work for white people to take up in educational spaces. However, I feel the danger of taking up all the air in the room as white people grapple with their own biases, behavior, and supremacy. In conversations about diversity, justice, equity, inclusion white people can eat up all the time with our feelings of white guilt. How do we allow for space for white educators to take on this work without taking up all the space for discussion? How do we do this work without silencing our peers of color who aren't as privileged as we are?
sociocultural privileges
I have found Robin DiAngelo's work to be helpful in my own racial identity work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwIx3KQer54
I’m white and it feels like my responsibility to grapple with the prob-lem of my race
I'm also white and will be annotating from this white identity.
We unapol-ogetically state that schools not only are prison for Black girls but that schools are actively reproduc-ing slavery in its afterlife in English language arts. When Black girls’ identities, ways of learning, and leadership capacities are symbolically bonded by chains through a White-only curriculum, cultur-ally biased literary texts, and pedagogical standards, Black female students are in fact experiencing nor-malized racial violence.
As a White educator, I am constantly reflecting on the ways I am complicit in normalizing racial violence. By naming it, I hope to dismantle it. I have to assume that my Whiteness will make me blind and I have to actively move myself into uncomfortable questions about my complicity and stay there so that I don't continue this cycle of violence.
To minimize the lived experiences of Black girls demonstrates what Nigerian writer Chima-manda Ngozi Adichie called the danger of a single story: the complexity of Black girls’ lives reduced to a single, often stereotypical narrative weakens their humanity
Here is another way this harms Black girls: there are very few children's books that focus on the relationship with Nature that feature children of color. https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/05/the-lack-of-diversity-in-childrens-books-about-nature/590152/
Many of these stories include or suggest that the protagonist is both White and female. This practice often prevents many Black female learners from en-visioning themselves as queens or princesses.
As a white person teaching in a classroom with predominantly Black students, I was struck early in my career with the way my own racial identity and my students' racial identities were part of the readers experience--reading To Kill A Mockingbird together we had a collective moment of confusion when I realized that they were reading Scout, Jem, and Atticus as Black characters while I understood them to be White. It was my first realization that so many white authors describe white characters without mention of race and every other ethnicity is named. My White privilege had blinded me to this fact for my whole life.
Our narrative process of listening to, documenting, and analyzing their stories allowed us to access rich layers of data about how they voiced and storied their experiences in the world.
I wonder again how we might bring in these methods of data collection into teacher/school data analysis practices...rather than allowing the standardized testing data reign supreme.
“understanding of the purpose of school, particularly the personal, social, and work preparation benefits”
One thing that occurs to me is the way school can sometimes be more interested in other purposes of school: socialization (follow these rules or else) rather than on the purposes listed here.
mphasizing physical space, we believe space plays a crucial role in understanding adolescent literacies.
Is it emphasizing space as much as networks? Social network analysis conceptualizes schools as a "network in a box." It is by nature a closed network. This matters in terms of conceptualizing what is happening in the learning of our students.
street, B. V. (1984). Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture: Vol. 9.Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press
Google Books: Literacy in theory and Practice
We rely on Street (1984), who distinguishes between two dominant, competing models of literacy—the autonomous and ideological. The autonomous model, which views literacy as a set of discrete skills, “disguises the cultural and ideological assumptions that underpin it so that it can then be presented as though they are neutral and universal and that literacy as such will have ... benign effects” (Street, 2003, p. 77). On the other hand, the ideological model understands literacy not as neutral, but as “always embedded in socially constructed epistemological principles. It is about knowledge: the ways in which people address reading and writing are themselves rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity, and being” (Street, 2003, pp. 77–78).
I really appreciate this framing of the definitions of literacy: wondering how I can personally make this more visible in my work with teachers around literacy.
They used literacy to: (1) interrogate their racial-ized experiences inside and outside school, and (2) produce counternarratives to popular assumptions about Black youth from low-income urban communities.
I wonder about how adoption of CCSS support and/or undermine the need for this type of soul-affirming literacy work.
bombarded with standardized tests
It is not only this bombardment but the attendant stress and depersonalization that comes with these standardized tests.
dealing with Souls and not with Dollars”
One way Michigan has been addressing this idea is by trying to get at equity in school funding. Hopeful our new legislators in all our branches will help make this happen: https://www.fundmischools.org/
high-quality research has a logic of inquiry
One thing I wonder about this is if we spend enough time as practioners and learners ourselves in inquiry spaces.
propaganda tool for those trying to push a particular approach to read-ing and writing instruction
I have definitely had this experience as a teacher in an ELA department trying to decide on materials and curricular changes. I can vividly remember a teacher telling me as a second-year teacher that "you can find research to support anything." This article is such a great articulation of the counterargument to that type of thinking.
research
Connections: What connection do you draw between the text and your own life or your other learning?
Challenge: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue with the text?
Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are important and worth holding on to from the text?
Changes: What changes in attitudes, thinking, or action are suggested by the text, either for you or others?
Connections: What connection do you draw between the text and your own life or your other learning?
Challenge: What ideas, positions, or assumptions do you want to challenge or argue with the text?
Concepts: What key concepts or ideas do you think are important and worth holding on to from the text?
Changes: What changes in attitudes, thinking, or action are suggested by the text, either for you or others?
Finally, it is important for educators to implement these same tools with White students who benefit from white supremacy and the damaging narratives that mainstream media produce about Black youth and other youth of color.
YES! It's time for white folks to dismantle white supremacy.
In the July 2016 English Education themed issue, “Why Black Girls’ Litera-cies Matter: New Literacies for a New Era,” Sealey-Ruiz argues, “instruction must be urgent and purposeful in responding to and anticipating the social context of our times” (p. 295). In the wake of racial violence, we argue that it is important for educators to engage in revolutionary praxis by reimagining their classroomsas spaces for triage, self-care, healing, and social transfor-mation.
I love the image of classrooms as spaces for "triage, self-care, healing, and social transformation." This also means that those of us who are white teachers need to also do our work to make sure we aren't enacting our own white privelege (and thus anti-blackness) in our own practices.
As illustrated during the Ferguson6 and Baltimore7
I keep reading this and thinking about how differently the Parkland activists have been received as opposed to BLM activitists. It has also been heartening to see the way they have combined movements in response to critical readings (rooted in the lens presented here) of their movments: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/parkland-race-and-the-gun-violence-that-goes-overlooked
“he suffered from mental illness”
This is something that folks have critiqed in the #WalkUpNotOut hashtag and ideas: both in keeping with the strategy of protraying white criminals as mentally ill and also the idea that victims themselves are responsible for the violence they experience. https://www.salon.com/2018/03/25/the-sexist-racist-implications-of-the-walk-up-not-out-movement_partner/
Hoping I can get some friends in here to annotate the live annotation with me!
n To Kill a Mockingbird, Atticus explains to Scout that “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it” (36). Make this advice more literal by inviting students to imagine spending a day in someone else’s shoes in this writing activity. Students examine a variety of shoes and envision what the owner would look like, such as their appearance, actions, etc. They then write a narrative, telling the story of a day in the shoe owner’s life. While this lesson plan uses the quotation from To Kill a Mockingbird as a springboard and ties nicely to discussions of the novel, it can be completed even if students are not currently reading the book
I also keyed in on this little teaching suggestion here: to invite students to imagine themselves in another's shoes when this particular text is so problematic. How are teachers scaffolding discussions of the ways this text reinforces some pretty stereotypical and racist narratives? How do we find space to make room for counternarratives when the cannon stands so firmly uncontested in our classroom spaces? Just something I'm thinking about these days...
I taught “disadvantaged” students.
This reminds me of the first reading we did about youth activists: our students become activists when they are empowered to tell their own story, rather that the story of their "disadvantage." There is danger, as we know, in a single story. 
The danger of a single story: TED TALK
unleash their beauty on the page
This is an incredible way to describe the opposite of a deficit stance towards students. Beauty unleashed is what I want for all our students.
They can choose to speak up or remain silent, but political meanings are going to be made of their lives either way
How do we support learners who find themselves, and the narratives and assumptions about their lives, ascribed political meanings in this way?
Speaking directly to the camera
One thing I noticed is in the video is not only the powerful way she connects with her listeners by beginning with her own intimate discussion of faith, but the way she sets that next to the negative examples from social media. It is a powerful argument. It struck me when she even corrected her error in an edit as well regarding the inaccurate citation of a Trump tweet. So much going on here.
political correctness.
He's using the exact language that Trump uses.
Each time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change; who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears. We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the “dogmas of the quiet past.” Instead we thought anew, and acted anew.
This is a beautiful reminder.
Seems like the proofreader needs a little help with writing computer code, too ;)