My November Obsession

As we move our way into the last inkling of September and the last few hot days pass away to be replaced by a more chilly variety, I find it hard to temper my excitement for one thing in particular that I love about the fall. October is a month of preparation. Brainstorming, Outlining, Free writing, and many other small exercises to get me prepared for what I have dubbed, My November Obsession. Another name for it is this clever little acronym:

NaNoWriMo

 

This is the crest under which I stand. The viking hat is a symbol of glory given only to the strongest of us. We spend the month of November fighting impossible odds, shaking off responsibilities to our social life and general health, skipping unnecessary activities like going to the gym and showering (kidding), all in the pursuit of being able to do something that millions will never even attempt.

The time frame: 30 Days

The Target: 50,000 Words

The Goal: Write A Novel

Na(tional)No(vel)Wri(ting)Mo(nth)

Hopefully everyone reading this has heard of NaNoWriMo. If you haven't how about the movie "Water For Elephants" with  Robert Pattinson andReese Witherspoond 

 

 This little movie is based of a novel of the same title that was written as a NaNoWriMo submission!

NaNoWriMo has been apart of my life for 8 years now. I started my first one as a side project in highschool. I hit 30k by the end of November. I was furious with myself and swore to never do this again. And yet every year since then I am back. Some years go better then others (we wont talk about the 12k 2012....) but all in all thanks to NaNoWriMo I have 3 finished novels sitting on a shelf next to me, and a grand total nearly 250,000 words written.

Why am I talking about this? Because this little competition has driven me to do some amazing things with not just my writing, but my students as well. During my clinical I happened to be teaching during the fall and I, with the administrations permission, started the NaNoWriMo project. I hung up flyers, gave talks in all the English classes, and when time came to have our first club meeting in late October I had nearly 40 student writers ready and raring to go. We meet weekly, talked about our stories, brainstormed ideas, keep a running tally of how many words we'd written. I was even able to coordinate 2 afters chool writing sessions where almost half of the participants stayed after school to simply work on their novels (and eat the pizza I bought them). By the end of November not one, not two, but three of my students had hit the goal. One student wrote 78,000 words. Unbelievable. I delivered them printed and bound copies complete with a cover as a prize for winning.

I did this all on my own, but The Office of Letters and Light, the NP organization behind NaNoWriMo has a program called the Young Writers Program that is geared towards using the contest in schools. They have everything from classroom kits, to lesson plans, to expanding the reach of your classroom by setting up a virtual classroom to help organize your writers.

Using this contest with my students was one of the most rewarding experiences in my short career as an educator. I will absolutely be doing it again, and again, and again. I urge everyone to take a look at the website, the Young Writers Program, and see if this is something you and your students would enjoy.

http://nanowrimo.org/

http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/

  Oh and by the way....

 

 

Responding to NCTE and the Evolution of Education

So perhaps I am missing the actual area in which I should be responding too, perhaps there is none and the weekly screencasts we will be doing are just for us to watch and absorb, but either way Dr. Oldakowski's first screen cast on NCTE got me thinking so I decided to do a quick blog about it. NCTE is a treasure trove of information and one I have been a part of since undergrad. I do admit my membership fell off a year or so ago when I didn't receive a placement, but in honor of this little screencast I have renewed my membership ( Dr. O you may need to verify I'm a student.... so... yeah...)

 One thing I was not aware of however was the depth of the back issues we had access to. I thought it would be a really cool idea to have a look at a journal from today and one of the earliest ones they had. So I have chosen two journals one from 2010 and one from 1963. Looking through a few articles I definitely noticed some differences.

 

This is a screen grab of an article in the 1963 journal. I skimmed through three separate ones and all three without fail followed this same pattern. No figures, no charts or graphs or data. no pictures, just words. Words, Words, Words. Words are nice and all, but I found these articles very hard to get through. Why is that? Is it because I am a of a generation that cannot focus without visual stimuli? I hope that's not the case, and I know its not entirely as I love to read, but it is interesting to compare this to a a screen grab of the an article in 2010.

 

Here we have pictures, just a few lines above this was a diagram and a chart, but here's the best part... still plenty of words! Loads of em! Long ones, short ones, etc.  I enjoyed actually reading this article. Was it because I was engaged by not only the content but the digital and visual aspects of the article? Perhaps. This little experiment is not entirely pure as the writing style and content of are five decades apart making the recent journals much easier to relate too, but I wonder how I would handle the older articles with a few more images or diagrams?

One other observation I had before I wrap this up, is while the format and media within the article is evolving, albeit at an agonizingly slow pace, the content is the same. Educators 50 years ago face the same problems we face today. Student engagement, social class disparity, student proficiency levels, etc. Very interesting indeed if you ask me.