Day 108 - Dr. Emily Hauser Visits BHS - Mrs. Janovitz - BHS English Dept. Head

This post first appeared on the BHS English Dept. Blog

This week, BHS students had the opportunity to hear Dr. Emily Hauser, an award-winning scholar and author, speak about her work to develop fictional retellings of famous classical myths. Hauser studied at Cambridge, England; holds a doctorate in Classics from Yale; and is currently a fellow at Harvard University. Her talk focused on her work as a Classics scholar, her emphasis on gender in her writing, as well as the importance of storytelling.

Mr. Stringer introducing Dr. Hauser (Photo by Principal Sullivan)

The presentation was initiated by World Languages teacher Gregory Stringer, who first discovered Hauser’s work on Twitter. As BHS’s only Latin teacher, Mr. Stringer’s motivation in bringing Hauser to the school was to ensure that his students were exposed to voices other than his own and that they understood the importance of perspective. He also wanted to provide them with an understanding of various professional options for students interested in Classics scholarship. 

BHS Students at Dr. Hauser’s Presentation (Photo by Mr. Stringer)

In the spirit of professional collaboration and with the recognition of a need for more interdisciplinary learning at BHS, Mr. Stringer invited the English Department to get involved. Dr. Hauser’s talk has many connections to the English curriculum. In particular, her use of reinterpretation as a frame for storytelling emphasizes the need for a variety of voices while reinforcing the importance of understanding different viewpoints and hearing the stories of those who are marginalized within our stock stories. Additionally, listening to an author discuss her decisions regarding her craft certainly enriched students’ experience with literature – helping them to consider authorial intent, structure, and style.

Dr. Hauser showcasing her books (Photo by Mr. Stringer)

After Dr. Hauser’s talk, students and faculty were invited to a more casual reception where Hauser signed books, answered students’ questions, and impressed everyone with her quick wit. Hauser clearly made an impression on students. Her books, For the Winner: A Novel of Jason and the Argonauts, and For the Most Beautiful: A Novel of the Women of Troy,  have been flying off the library shelves. In fact, either book would make a great choice for the BHS Diverse Reads Challenge; March’s challenge is to read a book written by a female author (register to participate here).

We are so grateful for Dr. Hauser’s generosity and willingness to speak to our students, and for Mr. Stringer’s efforts to ensure that BHS students are exposed to such enriching learning experiences. We look forward to furthering collaboration.

Day 83 - The BHS Six Word Memoir Project - BHS English Dept.

This post originally appeared on the BHS English Dept. Blog

Everyone experiences life differently. Everybody has moments of triumph, of happiness, of frustration, of loss, and of content. Everyone in our school has experiences and ideas that shape their identity and craft their story. The BHS Six Word Memoir project was designed to help our community understand a little bit about who we all are and what we are all feeling; it was designed to give us some insight into the lives of the people we share our days with.

This year, as we work to integrate the BHS Core Values into our curriculum and school culture, the English Department is taking steps to ensure that students have a real sense of what those values mean. In addition to making changes to our academic curriculum, we have also worked to present those values visibly throughout the school. One small step in this process is our school-wide Six Word Memoir Project. 

All students in the school spent time in their English class talking about Smith Magazine’s Story of Six and the power of crafting a six word memoir. Many English teachers connected this project to the school’s essential questions, specifically those focusing on identity and perspective. Others introduced the project as an effort to build community in the building. Once students completed their six word memoirs, teachers posted them above the lockers in the English hall and invited the school community to read through them. We noted that some will feel familiar,  some will prompt laughter, some are a little heartbreaking; yet, all of the memoirs represent the people in our school and each one of those people has a story worth sharing and worth acknowledging.

BHS School-wide Essential Questions posted in the English hall

Day 82 - Exam Review with Keys to Literacy - Ms. Bularzik - BHS English Dept.

This post first appeared on the Burlington Keys to Literacy Blog

My favorite way to help students study for midyear and final exams is study stations. I set up eight to ten stations around the room, let students choose four to five stations they want to visit and have students switch stations every ten minutes or so. For classes that need more structure, I set up fewer stations and have students rotate through all of them in assigned groups.

Study stations work well because they give students choice and variety. They also require students to decide what they personally need to work on, and students tend to appreciate this independence. My stations are never all KTL (I like including a “locate all your notes” station, for example), but many of them are. Here are a few of my favorites:

Categorizing

Give students a list of some or all of the key terms that will be on the exam. Have students develop categories and sort the terms. Students could also sort terms by how well they know them and then write down the terms they need to study most.


Top-Down Webs

Have students turn a list of key terms and concepts into a top-down web.

Have students use their own notes, handouts, etc. to develop a top-down web for all the material covered throughout the semester.

Rewrite your exam review guide as a partially completed top-down web to help students see the relationships between concepts.


Two-Column Notes

Rewrite your exam review guide as a partially completed two-column notes chart.

Have students condense their notes from the unit into a new set of two-column notes covering the most important ideas.


Summary Writing

Assign different groups of students to summarize different units or key concepts. Share these as a class resource.


Bloom’s Taxonomy

Using all levels of Bloom’s, have students create questions they might expect to see on the exam.

After groups create sets of questions, have them trade their questions with another group and answer them.

Have students create sets of Bloom’s Taxonomy questions and put them in different boxes according to their level. Use these questions for a review game, using different levels of questions for different activities or tasks.

Day 78 - Brandy Sales Presents to BHS Seniors - Mrs. Janovitz - BHS English Dept. Head

This post first appeared on the BHS English Dept. Blog

photo via http://www.wecastproductions.com/

The BHS English Department would like to thank Brandy Sales, video producer and video marketing coach from  WeCast Productions, for spending the day speaking to BHS seniors about interviewing skills. Sales presented a workshop for students designed to teach them how to use the art of interviewing to create engaging and impactful videos and podcasts. BHS English teacher Amanda Lee organized the workshop in an effort to help prepare students for the senior research assignment.

This year, seniors are working on a new research project that requires them to address the following question: How can I impact change in society? They are tasked with identifying a topic of interest to them, developing a path of inquiry that helps them understand that topic, researching that topic, and proposing a way to address a problem related to that topic. Students are exploring a wide range of subjects, from using dance in special education classes to building youth leadership programs. Part of the research component of the assignment requires students to conduct an expert interview. The final component of the project is a digital presentation using a medium of the student’s choice.

At today’s workshop, students had the opportunity to hear from an expert on how to conduct effective interviews that will lead to a deeper understanding of a topic, while also creating engaging content for their digital presentation. Sales introduced BHS seniors to different types of questions that will produce the best results, offered specific examples of interviewing strategies, and gave advice on how to make the most out of an interview designed for video or podcast presentations. In his final thoughts to students as the workshop closed, Sales emphasized that students can have a huge impact on the world by creating something that is generated from a one-hour conversation; they just need to know how to direct that conversation, and they need to believe in their own message.

Thanks again to Brandy Sales, Burlington resident, for generously contributing his time and expertise to help BHS students!

Day 60 - The BHS Reading Challenge is off to a great start - Mrs. Janovitz - BHS English Dept.

This post first appeared on the BHS English Dept. Blog

The BHS Reading Challenge is off to a great start. Students, teachers, guidance counselors, administrators, librarians, parents, and alumni have chosen to make reading diverse texts a priority. 

Over the next few weeks, we will be posting some of our participants’ reflections on the books they chose for the November Reading Challenge: Read a Book Written by a Person of Color. If you’re looking for book recommendations, we have you covered.

Brad Bond (BHS parent):  The book Things Fall Apart describes the imposition of rational legalistic governmental order on a native people. I believe this speaks to the current political unease with the amount of government in people’s lives. DECEMBER BOOK:  Man’s Fateby Andre Malraux about an uprising in China during the late 20’s.

Renee Dacey (World Languages Department Chair): Trevor Noah’s book Born a Crimewas fantastic. I highly recommend it to adults and young adults because of the perspectives and life experiences that Mr. Noah shares chapter by chapter as a child, teenager, and young adult growing up in South Africa. Without a doubt, this book is a page turner that one cannot put down! The part of the book that was most significant to me was his view on why parents name their children after historical heroes or villains. For example, one of his childhood friends was named Hitler. At first, the reader ponders, why would a parent name his or her son, Hitler? Immediately, Mr. Noah gives a profound reason why his friend was named after such a person. Why? Well, I will not share that reason…you just have to read the book to find out! DECEMBER BOOK: TBD

Amanda McCombs (BHS Senior): The book I chose for the November challenge was When Dimple Met Rishi by Indian-American author Sandhya Menon. This contemporary romance book follows the protagonists Dimple and Rishi, whose parents set them up in an arranged marriage and they meet at a web developing summer program. I appreciated how Dimple is an empowered and independent female who rejects her mother’s traditional beauty values and is one of the only girls at the web developing program. Rishi is more sensitive, proud of his Indian culture, and talented at drawing comics. One of my favorite aspects of the novel was the inclusion of Indian culture, language, food, etc., which in my opinion is an underrepresented ethnicity in young adult literature. Although the novel could be very cheesy and predictable at times and the writing was not outstanding, I still enjoyed it and breezed through it. DECEMBER BOOK: The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

Katie Whitcomb (Math Department Chair): I loved Homegoing. I loved learning about life in both Africa and the US through the eyes of Yaa Gyasi’s vibrant characters. The book really keeps you on your toes, moving quickly between characters and generations. It could be confusing at times, but there is a family tree at the beginning of the book that helped me to navigate. Despite feeling a bit disoriented, every time it switched characters, I was quickly hooked and invested in this new person’s life and perspective and experiences. It was a great read! DECEMBER BOOK: The Girl from Everywhere  by Heidi Heillig

TO REGISTER FOR THE DECEMBER CHALLENGE AND READ A BOOK WITH A NON-WESTERN SETTING, PLEASE COMPETE THIS FORM. 

Day 47 - BHS Reading Challenge - BHS English Dept.

This post first appeared on the BHS English Dept. Blog

Here in the English department, we LOVE reading! We love it so much that we want everyone to get in on the fun. So, we developed the first ever BHS Reading Challenge!

We created a list of categories that we hope will encourage members of the BHS community to read books by diverse authors and about diverse subject matter. Throughout the year, participants will have opportunities to share their thoughts on what they are reading, make book recommendations, and even win prizes.

If you’d like to participate in the challenge, please complete this registration form.

Happy reading!

Day 40 - BHS Student Day of Poetry - Mrs. Janovitz - BHS English Dept. Head

The post first appeared on the BHS English Dept. Blog

BHS students are poets! They are writers who tell stories about themselves, about the world they live in, and about what is most important to them. Today, at the Third Annual BHS Student Day of Poetry, they had the opportunity to develop their writing and to share their words and thoughts with their peers.

By partnering with Mass Poetry, we were able to bring two acclaimed poets to BHS to facilitate writing workshops. Each poet ran two sessions – guiding students through various exercises to help them jumpstart their own work.

Identity Through Storytelling, facilitated by Rage Hezekiah

Rage Hezekiah is a Cave Canem and MacDowell Fellow who earned her MFA from Emerson College. She is the recipient of the Saint Botolph Emerging Artist Award in Literature and was nominated for Best New Poets, 2017. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fifth Wednesday, Columbia Poetry Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Cape Rock, and Tampa Review, as well as other journals. Her writing is featured in various anthologies including Other Tongues:Mixed Race Women Speak Out and Nasty Women Poets: An Anthology of Subversive Verse. 

In this workshop students discussed LGBTQIA+ voice and how identity informs poetic storytelling. They explored poetry by contemporary poets and talked about bringing their own stories to the page. Language is a powerful tool, central in how we identify ourselves, and through poetry we can embrace that power to talk about who we are. This workshop emphasized how to incorporate our holistic, intersectional identities into our poems.

Tupac, Hip Hop, and Love Poems, facilitated by Neiel Israel

Neiel Israel is an internationally acclaimed poet, vocalist, and arts educator. Emerging from the Boston spoken-word scene, she quickly distinguished herself as a powerful, and lyrical poetic force.  She is a member of the 2017 Boston Poetry Slam Team, and represented the 2016 Boston Poetry Slam at both the National Poetry Slam and the Individual World Poetry Slam as the World Qualifier winner.  She has previously represented the Lizard Lounge at Nationals (2011-2015) and the Women of the World Poetry Slam (2011). As an international teaching artist, Neiel leads workshops, seminars and classes in creative writing for colleges/universities, schools, community, and art programs.

This workshop helped students to draw connections between poetry, hip hop and oral-traditions related to hip-hop culture, while also exploring hip hop’s intersection of love, family, and community. The workshop was a fun, safe and supportive environment for students to read, write, recite, and listen to one another’s work.

Following the workshops, the students attended an open mic where both Rage and Neiel performed their work, and students had an opportunity to share what they wrote throughout the day.