Back in the Saddle Again.

Yup, back in the saddle again. When I left teaching in 2008, I was ready for a break from the classroom and to concentrate on my growing family. I still felt a pull to education and teaching, so I started my little tutoring business, and wondered what my teaching career would look like down the line.
I envisioned myself working closely with students and teachers in some capacity, maybe as a coach. Last year, I decided it was time to get my Connecticut teaching license, in order to be able to take advantage of any opportunities that might come my way.
One of those opportunities was a position in a neighboring town as a writing paraprofessional. I wasn't 100% sure what such a role would entail but I had a good idea, plus it was only 20 hours a week. I knew I had to try, so I just went for it.
Getting the call to come in for an interview was a thrill, and getting hired the same day was even more of a thrill. I gave myself a week to get my affairs in order, figure out childcare and get my head in the game.
And here I am, about a month into my new job, and really loving it. I'm experiencing a level of autonomy and independence I never had as a classroom teacher, and I spend a good chunk of my day doing what I love best-- developing materials, coming up with lesson ideas, working with individual and small groups of students, and talking to teachers about how to help kids become confident writers.
It feels good to be here.

See the comments in this post for other SOL posts! 

National Day on Writing #WriteMyCommunity

Today is NCTE's 6th Annual National Day on Writing, and this year's theme is Community. I will return here throughout the day to update the page with links and ideas for writing about community. NCTE invites you to tweet links to your writing using #WriteMyCommunity. You can find me on Twitter at @nbcavillones.  (This post contains affiliate links.)

Need a place to start? Check out 10 Ways to Explore and Express What Makes Your Community Unique from The Learning Network at The New York Times: http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/02/10-ways-to-explore-and-express-what-makes-your-community-unique/

From The Teachers College Reading and Writing Project: Creating a Sense of Community in the 6-8 Writing Workshop

• Storytelling: Share vignettes from your own life, and encourage students to do the same. Do a collaborative re-telling of a shared experience
• Read Aloud: Using texts that foster a sense of community, read aloud to your students to show them that their stories are literature, too. Some recommendations: Popularity by Adam Bagdasarian and Ezekiel Johnson by Walter Dean Myers. 
• Share Artifacts: Invite students to bring in artifacts of their reading and writing lives and share the histories. 
• Establish Values: Foster a sense of mutual respect and support by stressing its importance verbally and modeling positive behaviors. 

Some ideas for getting technical with the National Day on Writing, curated by +Kevin Hodgson: Curated Collection of CLMOOC Tools

An idea from my own vault, that can be used with any grade! Unfurl a long sheet of art paper, either white or kraft and tape to the floor in the hallway (if you are allowed). Hand out crayons and colored pencils, and invite students to draw their neighborhood, depicting the local shops, parks, homes and other buildings they walk past everyday. Students that live on the same block may want to team up. Encourage students to add sidewalks, cars and people. Alternatively, if you are short on space, you can hang smaller sections on the walls around your room and group students by neighborhood/block. 

Colleges Want YOU: Advice Round-Up for College Admissions

Source: http://glbtintherooms.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/OwnSelf.jpg

This advice from MIT Admissions applies to every student, not just those that have their sights set on MIT:

"Choose your activities because they really delight, intrigue and challenge you, not because you think they'll look impressive on your application. Go out of your way to find projects, activities and experiences that stimulate your creativity and leadership, that connect you with peers and adults who bring out your best, that please you so much you don't mind the work involved. Some students find room for many activities; others prefer to concentrate on just a few. Either way, the test for any extracurricular should be whether it makes you happy - whether it feels right for you."

Things admissions officers wish students knew before beginning the application process, including this nugget from an officer at Antioch:

"I wish more students applying to college understood just how important “right-fit” is. Do we want to see people who were successful in high school and had a bunch of extracurricular activates? Yes, absolutely. But you can make an even better case for admission by showing us that you are going to be able to be highly successful and benefit most from the uniqueness of our institution.
Do your research. Don’t only make the case that you’re great, make the case that you’re a great match great for us."

More advice from admissions officers. I like this one from Smith College:

“Admission officers talk about the importance of rigor in a student's high-school program. When students ask, should I take an AP course and get a lower grade or take a lower level course and get an A, the cliché answer is: Students should take the AP course and get an A. Not very helpful! What we should be talking about is appropriate rigor. That is, if the student can take the AP course and get an A or B, then that's appropriate. If the student will get a C or lower, then she should reconsider. Grades of Cs ‘pop’ on a transcript to selective colleges since we don't see them often. That doesn't mean that one C on a transcript will mean a student won't get into college. What is does mean is that students shouldn't over-challenge themselves.”

As someone who went from a 70 average in her freshman and sophomore years of high school to graduating with high honors, I wholeheartedly agree with this advice, found on the Forbes website: 

“If you believe your current GPA is not a good representation of how well you can really do, start improving now. It’s almost certainly not too late. Colleges will look closely at your junior year performance, and many will even take the first semester of your senior year into account. They’ll particularly pay attention to a trend of improvement. Don’t give up. Show them that you are a late bloomer and getting better with age. Even if you’ve only got one semester left to show colleges what you’re capable of doing, show them! Start now.”

Book Review: The Perfect Score Project

Though I used to teach SAT prep for Kaplan, it was many, many moons ago. And of course, it was even longer ago that I actually TOOK the SAT. Have I ever told you that I took the test twice and got the same score both times? The second time, I went up in verbal and down in math! (This was back before the verbal was renamed Critical Reading.)   My memory is spotty but I am PRETTY SURE I did next to no test prep. I think I got some flash cards from someone I knew--maybe one of my sisters or a friend. The internet back then was not what it is now, so it is unlikely that I did any test prep on the College Board website. In any case, I went in there, took the test and passed muster. NYU took the best of my scores--the best math and the best verbal, and combined into one score. Thanks to Debbie's book, The Perfect Score Project: One Mother's Journey to Uncover the Secrets of the SAT I now know this is called superscoring.  Thanks to Debbie's book, I now know a lot of things that I didn't know before! The poor woman sat down for seven SAT exams, on a personal mission to help her son do his best on his own SAT exam. Actually, she had fun doing this so maybe I shouldn't feel so sorry for her! I actually kind of, sort of, wish I could take the SAT again, using the wisdom Debbie gleaned over the course of her project.
The book may be about the SAT but the story that unfolds is about one mother's struggle and triumph to hold her family together.  While stress is not an inherent part of SAT prep (at least, I don't think it is for everyone), in cases where there is a lot riding on SAT performance, relationships will be impacted.  Debbie was particularly obsessed with the test because she saw it as her son's best opportunity to pay for college. She felt sure that a high score would improve his chances of earning merit scholarships.  We, the reader, reap the benefits of her intensive experiment on locking down SAT success. Whether you are a tutor or a parent, this book is well worth reading--it is a font of information and knowledge that can be found across the internet and in every test prep center brought together into one humorous, uplifting volume.

Find Debbie at The Perfect Score Project. She is also on Twitter: https://twitter.com/debbiestier 


I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review. This post contains affiliate links. 

Book Review: Give Yourself a Brain Boost!

The idea that there are multiple forms of intelligence is not a new one, but students are not often encouraged to tap into these other forms, especially in environments where art and music are being shunted aside in favor of rote drills and testing. This book helps to fill that void. I recommend this to anyone who suffers from a lack of confidence in their own skills and abilities, or someone like me, who "cruised" through school. Sundem's tone is friendly and approachable, which keeps the book from feeling dry, an important factor in recommending this book to students. I do think this book would work better if it came in a workbook format with a spiral binding. 




{I received this book from Blogging For Books, in exchange for my honest review. This post contains affiliate links.}

Book Review: Tackling the Admissions Essay.

Having a private writing coach to hold your hand through the college application process is incredibly beneficial, but for a lot of students, it can be cost-prohibitive. There are a plethora of books out there on how to write the college admissions essay and some of them are good enough to be the second-best thing to having your own writing coach. Admissions Essay Boot Camp by Ashley Wellington is one of those books.

Wellington is the owner of Mint Tutors, and is a graduate of Princeton University and St. Andrew's University in Scotland. Her Ivy League training and her experience working for high-end tutoring services come together in this great book that packs a ton of useful information in a slim volume that is easy to read. 

As I always tell my students, the college essay is the thing that will make you stand out. Admissions counsellors read hundreds of essays from students that have nearly identical transcripts, so the essays themselves help admissions counsellors separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. All other things being equal, a strong essay can make or break an admissions decision. An good essay is even more important when your academic history is not stellar. I was not the strongest student, my SAT scores were respectable and I was not a high achiever by any means but  my essay was good enough to overcome those shortcomings and get me into my first choice school. (By the way, all this advice holds even if you aren't aiming for an elite college!) 

What students will find useful in this book: 

1. Wellington describes general student archetypes, and identifies the challenges of each when it comes to the essay. It is important to remember that these are general descriptions. Many students will find overlap in which archetype best describes them, so don't be discouraged if you don't fit perfectly into one or the other. 
2. A good writing coach will have a battery of questions for students to answer about themselves, to kick off the brainstorming process and the questions presented here will get students off to a good start. 
3. Wellington offers a concrete example of a real student she tutored, and walks readers through the free write process, the outline and the draft. She also shares different types of essays that best fit the student archetypes described in the first chapter. The analysis of what makes each essay work (and not work) is particularly useful. 

{I recieved a copy of this book for review from Blogging For Books. All links are affiliate links.}

Be The Writer.

I kind of aspire to be a runner. I want to be a runner. The thing is, to be a runner, I have to run. And I do run. Sort of. Half-heartedly. Okay, quarter-heartedly. It's really not surprising that I suck at running and I don't really like to do it. But, I always feel great when I'm done and that makes me want to run some more. In fact, I ran today for the first time in awhile. It was easy at first, then my energy lagged and I wanted to stop but I pushed through, and fell into a rhythm. A slow one but rhythm all the same. 

Writing is the same way. If you want to be a writer, you have to be a writer. Just pick up a pen and put a word down on paper. Then another word, then another and before you know it, you'll have written something. It might be substantial. It might not be. It might be total crap, and that's okay.  Being a writer is the easy part. Being a good writer? That's harder. Producing writing that you're proud of is hard, too but like running, it gets easier and better with time. This, I promise you. 

Part of being a writer is being a reader.  It goes hand in hand. When you read, you pick up on different styles of writing, you absorb the rules of grammar, you get a sense of what makes a story well-written. For this same reason, I read running blogs and magazines. I'm inspired by other runners, I learn different tips for running.  Okay, I'm done with this extended metaphor....promise. 

Here's a tip I learned a long time ago: when you come across something in your reading that you really like, copy it word for word into a notebook. Use it as inspiration. Use it to train your writing muscles. The last thing I copied was Thoughts by Walt Whitman. It takes up two back-to-back pages in my journal. I was forced to focus on a word at a time, and to think about how each word was connected to the next and the one before it. It's a great exercise and I highly recommend it, especially during bouts of writer's block. 

Another tip: read poetry. Like no other genre of writing, poetry really gets at the heart of words and what they can do. The best poetry is stripped bare, simple yet evocative. Williams Carlos William's The Red Wheelbarrow is a classic example; so much imagery in just a few words.

so much depends 
upon 

a red wheel 
barrow 

glazed with rain 
water 

beside the white 
chickens

But really, just be the writer.  

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