Less IS More

School's starting in a few weeks.

There.  I said it.  School is starting, and summer is slipping away a lot faster than I'd like to admit. 

I made a short stop in my classroom yesterday, just to drop off some boxes of things that had accumulated in my house since May, and as I looked around the semi-empty classroom I started feeling pretty overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done before August 18: nametags, seating charts, locker tags, posters reattached to the walls, safety maps and rules posted, last year's vocab words removed from the word wall, my parent brochure and website updated.....  Sometimes it gets to be too much!

Kind of like those darn My Little Ponies....it's just too much!

Somewhere along the lines, education turned away from the idea of teaching something for mastery and instead began focusing on teaching for exposure - kind of like buying 35 My Little Ponies instead of really enjoying 1 or 2.  So, instead of teaching a few skills all year long until the students can practically complete those tasks in their sleep, we started skimming through things: teaching many, many skills in the course of a year and never actually stopping to consider if the students actually mastered any of them.

I'm definitely guilty of this.  It's so easy to look at a novel or a chapter in the textbook and think about all the millions of activities we could do instead of considering which activities would be best suited to the topics or novel at hand.  Even this summer as I sat down to tweak my Reading curriculum and create a new Language Arts curriculum, things began ballooning wildly out of control until my yearly overview looked more like I was teaching for 12 hours a day instead of just 7. 

Less IS more.  So, I've gone back to my curricula to consider where I could pare things down and teach for mastery instead of exposure.  A few less new texts, a few less huge writing projects, a lot more time for student mastery.  Less is more.

I'm also guilty of saying, "You did this last year, so you don't need me to reteach it, and we'll just breeze over it..."  It's easy to do, and easy to assume that a topic covered in a previous year is already mastered.  But if I just admitted to teaching for exposure rather than mastery.....chances are pretty good that my colleagues are doing the same.  And it's no one's fault - we've been conditioned to believe that we must teach every standard every day, and this means that we are often frantically throwing more and more skills into a single project, leaving little room for mastery of one skill, let alone 10.  And this idea that they're experts because they passed the previous year just makes for trouble...

Yesterday I sliced open a peach that we had picked off the tree in our yard.  I started by peeling the skin off - my kids hate the fuzzy texture - and then started shearing off some of the juicy flesh.  (The pit had a large crack in it, so I wasn't going to just cut it down the middle and separate it like I normally would.)  At first, everything was fine.  I shaved off a few more slivers of yellow peach, just dropping them right into the bowl, when suddenly a long black earwig came wriggling out of the pit.  I gasped - because seriously, earwigs are disgusting - and barely had time to inhale before ANOTHER EARWIG game sliding out of the pit.  AND THEN ANOTHER.

Cue the hyperventilating.

It's not like I'm scared of earwigs.  They can't really hurt me.  But dang there were just so many of them!!!  So, there I am carrying this bowl full of peaches and earwigs to the kitchen sink, screaming, whimpering, gasping...and of course LAUGHING because it's so ridiculous to be completely losing my mind over a few earwigs.  That peach pit was like a clown car - it seemed that with every step I took another earwig was squirming his way out of it to see what the commotion was about.

Thank God for garbage disposals is all I can say.

Anyway, that disgusting clown-car of a peach pit is kind of like what happens in my classroom when I say (either out loud or in my head), "You did this last year, so we won't spend much time on it..."  The small issues and skill gaps start pouring out, and soon I'm covered in itchy little pests that all need my attention before we can move on.  (And the missing skills are way harder to take care of than a bunch of slimy earwigs!)

Less is more, and taking the time to teach for mastery - and to check for prior knowledge before jumping into something! - is going to make my school year a lot better off.  For instance, I'm spending the first 4-5 weeks of my Language curriculum working on complete sentences and summary writing.  You're probably saying, "But Karisa, you each SIXTH grade.  Surely you don't need to review complete sentences and summarizing??"

Remember that peach pit full of earwigs? 

The past few years I thought the same thing: a quick review of complete sentences, a glance at summaries, and we'd be good to go, ready to move onto higher level skills and major essay construction.  And then there I was in mid-November backtracking to review those very same ideas that I had assumed the kids already had mastered.  Not this year, friends. 

Aesop was pretty wise when he wrote that story about the tortoise and the hare: slow and steady will win the race, and starting the year off with a gentle but in-depth review of some basic skills might slow me down, but will surely save me time and headache in the end.

So, yes, school is starting in a few weeks.  Two, if you want to put a REAL numerical value to it. 

But, I'm actually kind of excited about it.  It's a new school year where I can start off fresh and make changes and try new things.  And this year I have very big new things to try - like my two new mantras:

Less IS more.

Slow and steady.

New school year?  I got this.  

Peach pit full of earwigs?  We're going to  need some help....

Hello, my name is Karisa...and I have an addiction.

I have an addiction.  An addiction to My Little Ponies.

Maybe it's their cute little twinkly eyes, or their wonderfully brushable hair, or those adorable little "cutie marks" on their hips.  Whatever it is that makes me so addicted to these little rainbow colored forms of molded plastic, I can't kick the habit.  Even as an adult, walking through the pony aisle at the toy store is a dangerous thing for me:


MLP Addict Karisa: Look at this one! It's from that Super Hero Pony episode!

Mature Adult Karisa: Yes, yes she is.

MLP Addict Karisa:  She's the bad guy! And!!!! Look at Spike!  He's SOOOOO little and cute...with a super hero mask!!!

Mature Adult Karisa: He is awfully cute.....but NO! We don't need him....

MLP Addict Karisa:  SHE'S ON CLEARANCE!!!!  50% off!

Mature Adult Karisa:  But we have literally a hundred ponies already......  What?!  CLEARANCE??!!!




After spending a few days at my mom's house sorting through my worldly possessions and deciding what childhood memorabilia made the cut to transition to my own home, it's finally started to sink in just how many My Little Ponies I have accumulated over the years.  It's no joke that my room as a kid (and even into my teen years, if I'm being honest...) looked a lot like this:

Ponies on top of ponies, baby ponies and glittery ponies and rainbow ponies and sea ponies and boy ponies and ponies with braids and hats and rhinestones for eyes....  After years at college, the ponies had been delegated to a large blue Rubbermaid tub (and when I say large, I mean LARGE...like the size normal people store winter coats in), and when it was time to trek home from our time at my mom's, we threw them into a bag (a MLP duffle bag....) to bring them back home so Ollie could play with them.

Not all of them fit into the duffle bag.  And the giant pony stable, the hat boutique, the perfume spa, the ice cream shop shoe....these certainly didn't fit either.  Which means there is a huge bag of MLP at my house...and probably 20 more still at my mom's, sitting in the giant blue Rubbermaid along with all of the play sets just waiting for the next trip North so they can be reunited with their MLP friends.

Why couldn't I just give them away you ask? After living 10+ years without these little plastic beauties, why do I need them back?  Because I am a My Little Pony addict, remember?

And it must be genetic because Ollie has it too.

On the three hour drive home, Mature Adult Karisa had time to consider some things, and it occurred to her that we definitely have NO room at our home for a collection of retro ponies, even if they are adorable and glittery.  (Score one for Mature Adult Karisa.)  So when we arrived, I set Ollie to the task of sorting through the ponies to decide which ones she wanted to keep and which ones she knew she wouldn't play with.

She found TWO to give away.

TWO.

Out of probably 35 ponies, she could only part with TWO.  And why?

Because we are MLP junkies, that's why.  Completely, totally addicted, just waiting for our next fix whether it's in the toy aisle at Target or the basement of Nonnie's house...WE NEED PONIES!!!!  MORE PONIES!!!!  ALL THE PONIES!!!!


......Oh. .....My.   .......Gosh.



This week, we went (sans kids) to a Cubs game at Wrigley, my husband's first trip to The Friendly Confines.  Taking the hubs to the game got me thinking about my own trips to Wrigley - the night game during the homerun race between Sosa and McGuire when I missed Sosa's homerun because I was at the concession stand getting a pretzel... the game when we got the Cracker Jack hat at the give away tent... the time we stood outside the players' entrance and got our hats signed by some rookie (who turned out to be pretty unimportant in terms of baseball but made for a great memory)... the time the bird pooped on my head and my friend, Mark, called me "Poopy Head" for the entire rest of the day...

And then I started thinking about the ponies.

That purple one, that unicorn with the yellow hair.....why was she important again?  The glittery one with the rocket on her hip....what was so special about her?  That flutter pony with the bright yellow (and tangled) hair....the one I ruined in the bathtub....why did I keep her all these years?

Out of the probably 35 ponies, could I remember a significant detail about any of them?

Not really.

And as I look around at my own house right now, I'm starting to realize something.  Of all these toys the kids have - the dolls and ponies and dragons and hot wheels and DVDs and puzzles - what kinds of memories have we been making?  Will they look back at their piles of things twenty years from now and feel like me......overwhelmed......nostalgic.....and slightly guilty about not wanting to keep everything my parents so kindly bought for me in my youth?

Spending time in the gridlock traffic after the Cubs game (which they won 12-1, btw...), Jonathan and I started talking about all the things that we still wanted to do: see the Grand Canyon, take the kids to Wrigley, visit both oceans, own a giant, furry dog named Captain Frederick Pabst (who, Jonathan claims, will probably eat the cat...), spend a week at Disney World...

There are so many things that we want to do, so many memories that we want to make, and my addiction to small plastic ponies (and his addiction to random DVDs!) isn't helping us get there.  No matter how cute they are and how fun they seem on Christmas morning or after a long morning grocery shopping, tiny trinkets aren't making lasting memories that any of us will look back on fondly.  ("Oh hey!!Remember when you bought me this Hot Wheels car?  It must have been Saturday July 23 and we were shopping for groceries at Meijer... Man, mom, that was an AWESOME day....")

So, I'm sorry, My Little Pony.  Our days together are over.  Instead of dropping another $8.50 on some fantastic rainbow-colored pony pack, I'm going to sock that cash away and save it for something more memorable.

The kids and I discussed it, and they're on board for less toys and more trips.....at least, they say that today, with Christmas morning a solid 5 months away!  But I'm really hoping that we can all subscribe to the idea that less is more - less toys, less movies, less stuff....and more time (and space!) to enjoy the things that are really important.

Like Sunny riding on a giant furry dog named Captain Frederick Pabst as he chases poor Tug all through the house....

Twice Baked Pie, Socrates, and Ice Cream

So, I invented something last week.  Something new, something innovative, something no one else has ever tried before.

How do I know it's never been tried before?

Because I searched for it on Pinterest and nothing existed, so clearly, it's never been done before!

What IS this incredible new invention?

Twice Baked Pie.

They make twice baked potatoes, and twice baked fries, so why not twice baked pie??!

Many, many reasons why not twice baked pie.....

In my head, twice baked pie was going to be a genius way to use my slightly too soupy Bumbleberry Crumble-Thing that I had frozen so it wouldn't spoil while we were on vacation.  In my head, this twice baked pie would be superior to ALL pies because it would have TWICE the crust, some of it even INSIDE the gooey center of the pie, acting like little surprise crunch bombs in your mouth as you ate it.  In my head, this all made perfect sense, so I went along with my half-baked plan for twice baked pie.  I threw together a crust (the no-roll kind from my Grandma Fluegel, because who has the time or counter space to roll pie crust?), mixed up the old (now thawed) pie, tossed it in the shell, slid it into the oven, and waited for this genius invention to come to fruition.

...Let's just say that you won't be seeing my recipe for Twice Baked Bumbleberry Pie on Pinterest any time soon.

Earlier this spring, I was pretty sure that I'd invented something else new, something innovative, something no one else had ever tried before.

I called it.....

Discussion Based Reading Class!!!  (cue Medieval Fanfare...)

Discussion Based Reading Class was developed on the same idea that the rest of reading class was centered around: We do whatever makes Mrs. Yeagle happy (right 2015-16 6th graders??), and what makes Mrs. Yeagle happy is when we get to talk about what we are reading instead of having a giant group read-aloud time where no one pays attention.

Don't get me wrong, I used to teach reading that way - we'd all find comfy places around the room (or sit in our desks if Mean Mrs. Yeagle was there that day...), pull out our novels, and read 5-10 pages together, sometimes playing popcorn, sometimes reading entire pages before passing the read-aloud baton, and sometimes the class would just sit and listen while I amazed them with my theatrical read aloud skills.  This was all well and good, and I justified it that the kids DID need to work on their fluency.....but I was never quite satisfied with it for several reasons...

It did no justice for my advanced reading kids who were forced to sit and follow along as their slower-reading peers stumbled through a novel that was maybe just a reading level a touch too high.

It did no justice for my struggling readers who probably spent the class living in fear that their friend may call on them to read and they'd have to stumble over pronouncing "Hermione Granger" one more time.

It certainly did no justice for my desire to teach the kids deeper thinking skills - how could I foster deep conversation about the book when we were barely getting the book read?!

And it definitely did no justice for my daily teaching which was minimal if I wanted to actually finish the novel.  Simply put, reading a novel aloud in class left ZERO time for discussion about what made the novel great: themes, style, word choice, plot points....  We were doing good just to read 10 pages in class and complete the novel before we all forgot chapter 1.

And then it happened.

We were running short on time, as we always were because we spent all of our spare class time plugging through the novel, and in a moment of craziness, I assigned the students to read the last two chapters of The Lightning Thief on their own as homework.  It was a wild, dangerous assignment, and I knew that only half the kids would actually finish, but I had to take the risk because, darn it, we were going to finish this book before spring break if it killed us!  The kids returned to class the next day, some of them armed with the ending of the book, some of them armed with the ending of the movie (which of course is nothing like the book), and some of them armed with....well, nothing, because they'd watched YouTube all night instead of reading the book.

But as we sat down together and I began the class with, "So, how about that ending?!" and a handful of students' eyes got wide and they all started excitedly talking about the betrayal of the main character, I knew that the wild act of assigning the reading had been a good one.  Heads were turning as the non-readers listened to the readers explain what had happened and soon a handful of them had snuck their books under their desks and were trying to read the last two chapters they'd skipped.

That day we talked about themes of the novel, plot twists, tone and mood.  We reviewed connotation and denotation and looked for foreshadowing that should have tipped us off about who the betrayal was coming from.  We considered the name of the kids sword and why Rick Riordan may have chosen that name - what IS the deeper meaning of a sword called "Backbiter"?  We had a deep discussion about the last two chapters of the novel, and we hit on all of the CCSS Reading Literary standards while we did it.

As the kids frantically packed up that day - because of course we had lost track of time and the other classes were already waiting for us in the hall - I announced, "Guys, I had SO MUCH FUN today!"  And most of the kids agreed:  "Me too!"  "That was awesome!"  "I never thought about the book that way!"  "Can we do this again?!"

And this crazy idea of Discussion Based Reading was born.  I spent my spring break working on guiding discussion questions for The Westing Game, dividing the book into reasonably sized chunks to read, and considering grading and comprehension assignments.  It was going to be the best thing ever.

And - unlike twice baked pie - it was!  It is!  Discussion Based Reading is so fun, thought-provoking, and a way better use of my time than taking turns reading aloud!  Moving my class in this direction is maybe the best thing I have ever done.

And then it occurred to me that I'd really just hijacked Socrates' concept of student-led discussions and my new "invention" of Discussion Based Reading was really the Socratic Seminar/Circle Method.  (Thanks Pinterest!)

Regardless of who invented it, this is the approach that I've decided to take with all of my novels this year.  I'm going to take the first 6-7 weeks of school and do a lot of direct instruction - front loading all the material the kids are going to need to know and use as we do Socratic Seminars for the novels.  After we learn the basics - definitions of theme, foreshadowing, connotation/denotation, plot maps... - we will be able to apply that knowledge to our novels all year as we read (independently at home) and discuss them during class.

Of course, I'm not seeing the world through rose-colored glasses: I know that not every student is going to read.  And how can I help my struggling readers muddle through a text that is still too complicated for them?  I struggled with both of these issues when I first decided to plunge into this independent reading-class discussion format.  I decided to commit myself to giving them 10-15 minutes of class time a day to read the assigned pages, and I agreed to let them do this in whatever way they liked best.  This meant that I had some kids reading independently, hiding under their desks so no one could pester them.  I had some kids reading with a buddy, and some kids reading in trios.  I had a small group reading with me ("Please Mrs. Yeagle, you read it best! Read it TO us!", and I had some students tuned into my YouTube channel listening to the day's reading there.  Giving them time to read during class meant that even if they didn't finish, they were far enough into the reading that they wanted to finish it, and offering so many ways to complete the reading helped me differentiate and reach the many types of learners I had in my classroom.  Did some of them still not read?  Absolutely - this isn't a fairy tale world, after all! But the majority of students did, and that's a win in my book.

At any rate, some inventions don't work out - like twice baked pie.  But some inventions (that turn out not really to be inventions at all...) DO work out.  The most important thing here is that we are never afraid to try something new, even if it may turn out to be the most terrifying, bone dry piece of pie anyone has ever consumed.  Trying new things and testing the waters is never a bad thing, and happily, bad pie and bad school days can both be solved by the same thing: a healthy dose of ice cream!

(For more info on Socratic Method in classrooms, try this article from Scholastic !)