This week I am attending the Tri-Association conference for teachers at international schools in Central America, the Caribbean and Colombia.

I’m looking forward to meeting teachers and comparing experiences. I have a million questions about literacy, ESL, curriculum, technology and transitions. My plan is to do a lot of listening. I’m looking for things that will make me a more effective teacher now, but I am also trying to picture what I am going to do next as a teacher and where I want to do it.

In my first year of teaching, I loved having the freedom to teach how and what I wanted to. I spent time exploring great books with students. I listened to them, encouraged them, provoked them. I enjoyed facilitating discussions and writing that was organic, or of rather than for the students. Even though I did not sleep very much, I looked forward to class encounters and I hope students did too.

I have bits of tangible evidence that show that students learned and grew from the beginning to the end of the year, but I do not have a document stating which standards were met, when, to what extent, or in which ways. Some people think this sort of document is important…ok, a lot of people in the world of standardized testing and in the world of education I studied as a pre-service teacher think it’s important. I’ve never been a person who looks around for standards and benchmarks, but I understand them. I also understand accountability in education and the service that teachers provide students (and society) by having standards.

This year, the high school I work for has decided to adopt some standards and benchmarks for English. So far it seems like they are moving from  “reading and writing” to “reading and writing well.” As a new teacher, it’s still great to have the freedom to explore and listen. As a department chair, democratic citizen and realist, it is hard to comprehend a school that does not have clear standards.

The result of 50 years of  high teacher-turnover, hiring new teachers and a  consistent lack of accountability is students who struggle to work within 8 new sets of reading and writing expectations every year of school. If intelligent students can graduate from our school with the communication skills of a 6th grader, it is the school’s fault.

I was excited when the administration announced that curriculum alignment was a school-wide goal this year. In my naivete, I imagined meetings and conversations about which skills, materials, etc. were appropriate for each grade level. At the very least, I thought the school would use the “copy paste” method from another international school or from a US state (since students receive a US diploma).

Of course, there is no time for meetings and no one was assigned to the task of searching for a curriculum to adopt. Of course (again), aligning curriculum is a huge task that could be a full-time job.

I know that I’m not qualified to develop or choose a set of standards for English at any school (especially not a bilingual school). I do enjoy the research and the email conversations I’ve had on this topic. However, I hope to achieve more than a personal interest in curriculum alignment by the end of the year. Even though I won’t be at this school next year, I would like to leave something for a new teacher to start with. (Some new teachers prefer standards to a blank slate.) I would like to leave the school with something more than another “restart” button.  At the same time, sadly, I find myself wondering if “restart” is just the nature of international schools.

Last week I had to confront the goals of curriculum alignment and  improving student writing. “Kimberly, can the English department provide a writing rubric for teachers to use in all subject areas?” My thought bubble in that moment said, “Nope.” My mouth said, “I’ll try.”

For better or worse, the first thing I did was read the EC Ning discussion of Maja Wilson’s book Rethinking Rubrics. I’ve been meaning to read the discussion for a while, but it only confirmed that a standard rubric for all writing in a school is impossible. Furthermore, it confirmed that high school writers are in a complex rhetorical situation.

After much reading and much thought, I decided that I had a choice between something like a traits of writing rubric and something more holistic. A traits of writing rubric would give teachers the option of emphasizing certain areas of composition that pertain to their discipline or a particular assignment. It would give students a more clear (though not perfect) picture of the different components of their writing. A holistic rubric would take some of the I-am-not-an-English-teacher pressure off and give teachers more flexibility to assign grades that show students whether or not they met the standards of a specific assignment, though maybe not whether they met writing standards. A holistic rubric might mystify students a bit more than a traits of writing rubric.

After talking to as many teachers as possible, I decided that the least-impossible rubric would be something holistic. I looked at holistic rubrics for personal narratives, short stories, research, and analytical writing. Still feeling defeated, I laughed at the criteria that stated “has a plot.” Imagine a plot in a chemistry lab.

Surprisingly, the AP Literature rubric was the most popular. I sent out the link to Dawn Hogue’s AP Scoring Model, because it is not specific to a particular AP essay. Teachers from all subjects liked “responds fully to the question asked,” “support their points with appropriate textual evidence and examples,” and “writing need not be without flaws.” Administrators liked the attention to style and elements of effective writing. (I wonder what AP Literature students would think if they saw this rubric in their philosophy class or chemistry?)

I was initially confused that teachers saw this as a useful rubric for writing in their subject areas, when it is meant for timed writing. It does not recognize the need for revision or audience. Now it is also obvious that a major problem with this rubric is that we haven’t defined “elements of effective writing” for bilingual students in our current system.

This is a long blog post. Maybe there should be a rubric…

I wish I  could imagine a solution for writing at this school. I can imagine taking on curriculum design and literacy projects in the future.

Janelle and Ruth are two of these reasons. The curfew interfered with the presentations they prepared for AP Literature.

At the beginning of the term, I gave students topics that seemed random to them at the time but apply to texts that we deal with later on: intellectual freedom, plagiarism in colleges, human geography of Italy in 1300, socialism in 1950, Jim Crow Laws, etc. They meet with me two weeks before their presentation to get resources and suggestions. They meet with me again one week before their presentation to tweak and blend their work into the course.

This week Janelle and Ruth were scheduled to present on Old and Middle English (kennings, boasts, forms) and Canterbury Cathedral. This is the beginning of Chaucer. They were prepared and excited to share what they discovered. When school was canceled on Tuesday, I got an email from Janelle: “Ms. I was so ready for today. I didn’t tell you, but I found this recording of some old guy reading Beowulf. Sounds so bad.” When the curfew extended to Wednesday, I got an email from Ruth with no message, just a “:(” and one attachment. The attachment was a map of the Canterbury Cathedral with a class picture from our Ning representing all of us locked inside. I had to laugh.

While I have been literally locked inside my apartment, I have been wondering if there is a solution for Honduras and if I have a future here as a US citizen and teacher at an international school. These student emails made me realize how much I love my job. Just like Ruth and Janelle, I am sad that I don’t get to teach this week. I’m lucky enough to be as ready for and excited about teaching all of my classes as they are about Chaucer. Despite everything that’s going on, I would rather be at school with them than pondering and watching UN speeches all day.

I have three (hopefully not more) days to continue thinking about students’ (and teachers’) right to education. I can’t fathom how a struggling government in a struggling country can close schools and shut down commerce. Honduras cannot wait two months (until the election) to go back to school or even to begin hope for some stability that makes attendance at school feasible for all students.

Not only do we need to get back to school to read Chaucer, we need to get back to school because it is the one thing that gives students in Honduras autonomy from their parents messy lives and the opportunity to leave. While it is important to have educated people here, they have to go abroad to become educated further. Whether or not they return is an entirely different blog post. While Janelle, Ruth and I are eager for school to resume, college essays are filling up my inbox. Other students are using their time at home to assert their right to an education looking forward, by discussing 1984 on our class Ning and getting caught up with other school assignments.

Administration is cutting costs by limiting photocopying, so students are to print out all materials at home and bring them to class. (There goes last-minute planning and the element of surprise.) All materials have to be posted on Edline (user unfriendly school site). I was hoping to just post a link to a wiki I prepared for this year, but that is a no go. Although google documents make it easier, I don’t think I can manage both sites. I’ll still use the wiki for students to upload and share work. I also started  a mini writing center on the same wiki, but I probably need to rethink that.

I have no regrets about jumping in with Ning and with a wiki. Navigating the IT and admistrative aspects of technology in and for classrooms will hopefully prepare me for future attempts.

This morning the AP Spanish teacher, who has been teaching at our school for 30 years, asked me to help her create an account on turnitin.com.  After the morning’s PD, we met in the computer lab for what I thought would be a brief signing up and signing in. I must have forgotten that I was in Honduras, because, before we even turned on a computer, we spent 20 minutes sharing thoughts on last year’s AP scores, updates from college-bound students, goals for our respective AP classes this year.  I realized that we really only knew each other through students’ in our own classes: “Ms. Escobar told us that romanticismo was 100 years later in Spanish literature.”  “We already read a Borges story in AP Lit.” Learning from students is power.

At some point we created a TurnItIn account, and  I forgot about my ‘para hacer’ list. An hour and a half later we were leaving the lab, and I thanked my AP Spanish counterpart for inviting me to the computer lab to help her. She isn’t afraid to try new things, to share her convictions, to admit her faults. Somehow our time together today closed gaps (real or imagined) between experienced and new teachers, local and foreign teachers, English and Spanish teachers. Communication is power.

At the end of the day, I was going to do yoga in one of my colleague’s classrooms. Instead learned that we lost another student to kidnapping, so we cried and questioned. Support and fear are power.

Tonight  Hondurans all over the world are celebrating a soccer victory over Costa Rica. Soccer is one thing that everyone can agree on. Soccer is power.

Finally, a member of my English Ed cohort posted a suggestion to the rest of us on Facebook: Let’s take on a hearty enjoyment of life and care a great deal about many things. We can teach anything we care a great deal about. Small things that reconnect and revitalize us are power.

Even though I didn’t understand the presentations or the etiquette for Flag Day, it reminded me of raising the flag at Camp Anokijig. It was always a meditation on unity and responsibility. The flag ceremony at Anokijig made me feel like part of camp and this assembly made me feel like part of Honduras. It was also nice to see my students in a different way.

The international flags outside of the administration building:

Yes, it’s upside down!

This is one of the high school courtyards.

Soon it will be filled with 400 students in blue uniforms.

Today there were no meetings or trainings. The staffs, “new foreign hires,” the “returning hires” and the “local hires,” were given the day to prepare our classrooms and materials for the first day of school.

Preparing the classroom was easy…wait, what? This sort of ambiguous task is not supposed to be easy for new teachers. After I rearranged the desks (out of standard rows and into the somewhat standard U shape), I looked around for other things to do. It didn’t take me long to remember that I had never had a classroom before and realize that I didn’t travel with any inspirational posters or colorful books.  Some of my colleagues had a similar experience, and they stopped in to ask “now what?”

Rob, a colleague from Wisconsin, would remind us to ask more than “now what?” He would encourage us to ask “what do we need to know in order to do what needs to be done?” We didn’t get that far. The air conditioning started to drip, pour. So I took some time to practice Spanish with the maintenance crew.  And we know that the students and teachers constitute a classroom, not posters and books.

The process of preparing materials has/had a familiar kind of ease. The first day of school should be very interesting without a handbook of school policies or class lists.

The only information I have about the student body has come from teachers returning to the chaos of school after their relaxing summers on the beach. Even though I don’t believe that all students will “be spoiled rotten,” will “steal tests,” will “hack my computer to change their grades,” will “refuse to speak English in English class”…this is all I have. I also have some advice on how to be “more credible” : dye my hair black. I’m not sure what to do with that.

Please Note: Sharing minor annoyances in the form of generalizations that begin with “All of our students (insert negative character trait or extreme one-time occurrence here)…” and end with “…and there is nothing we can to do change it. That’s how it has always been.” is distracting and scary for this new teacher. I think you are trying to be helpful. I appreciate that. I just wish you would also tell me why you are sharing these fascinating tips. Now that I know some things that might be true for some students, what should I do?

• We watched “Shift Happens” in an assembly.
• We use three-ply carbon paper forms to check out books and requisition pens.
• The science department is going paperless this year.
• The English department is buying classroom dictionaries.
• A scanner has to recognize my fingerprint to get into school every morning.
• Our guards play cards in the shade and lean their homemade armory against the gate.