Caja de muertos (Coffin Island)

The Legend: A man named José Almeida once fell in love with a woman married to one of the most important men in the Virgin Islands. Since he couldn't conquer the islands, he befriended her husband and became involved with piracy. When Almeida returned a while later, he found that his love's husband had died, so he married her immediately and they set sail. Unfortunately, tragedy struck and Almeida's wife was killed in a pirate attack. He sailed to a small, uninhabited island and buried her in a glass coffin inside a cave. Almeida is rumored to have come back to the island often--and even to have buried some of his treasure there. According to this legend, that is how Caja de muertos (coffin island) was named.

The body is mostly on the left with the feet sticking up on the right.

The Alternate Explanation: When looking at Caja de muertos from afar, the shape of the island resembles a body laid out upon a flat surface.

Taking advantage of the long weekend, I was able to explore this small, now-uninhabited island. A short ferry trip from Ponce gave way to rock formations covered in greenery, bright blue water, and patches of white sand between the rocks. A map of the island marked hiking trails to other beaches and the lighthouse. 

Playa Pelícano

Not knowing any  better, we walked like lemmings with the rest of that day's islanders to Playa Pelícano. Here, the water was rocky for about the first five yards but then it changed to soft sand. Since most of the other tourists were further down the beach, we almost had a private beach. 

Then it was time for a hike. Despite being clad in flip flops, we decided to find the lighthouse, but instead we encountered a series of lost hikers. Aside from the map at the ferry entrance to the island, none of the trails are marked. After a few conversations in English and Spanish, including a little boy who told us "you walk and walk and walk and walk and walk..." we figured out that the upper fork led to the lighthouse and the lower fork to Playa Carrucho. 

The Cactus Forest

The first part of the hike involved walking through what we called the cactus forest. Cacti on both sides of the path towered at heights up to twelve feet. Seeing such a dry climate seemed odd considering the rest of the greenery. The second stage was entirely uphill and turned out to be quite doable in flip flops, though it was made entirely of broken pieces of stone, so some stepping strategy was required. Overall, the entire hike took about 30 minutes (one way). The lighthouse was closed and bore some graffiti, but the view from the top was worth it, spanning over the ocean and hinting at the mountains in the distance.

The view from the lighthouse.

On our way down, we decided to switch beaches and headed to Playa Carrucho. What an upgrade! No rocks, beautiful sand, and crystal clear water. This was the type of beach that could make one throw around the word "pristine". Luckily for us, very few of the lemmings had found out about this beach and we spent the rest of the day there.

The lighthouse is still in use.

Though we never found the cave or any hint of past pirates, Caja de muertos was a perfect day trip. I will definitely be back, just like Almeida.

Dear Diary

The Diary of Anne Frank is often found on eighth grade curriculum-- a nice cross-curricular unit typically nestled under Nonfiction or cozied next to Drama. The book [or play] simultaneously reminds us of the best and worst of humanity, represents a historical era, and dredges up a variety of themes about adolescence, among many other topics. Of course, this play is generally introduced with an important dose of background information on World War II and the Holocaust.

 In my previous classroom experiences in the United States it was not uncommon to receive a flood of facts, dates, and names spit out in quick succession to answer the question, "What do you already know/what have you already heard about WWII?" Here in Puerto Rico, aside from a few responses, what I heard was the sound of crickets.... or more accurately, coquí*. The students explained that they read briefly about it in Social Studies, but it was only a few paragraphs because they had to cover all of Western Europe. With several days to transition from Nonfiction to Drama already built in, I'd planned on delving into WWII and the Holocaust to connect units anyway, but I'd never before had the opportunity to introduce students to a historical period that was, until now, a big question mark for them.

It was fun to play History teacher and see their interest sparked a bit by John Green's Crash Course World History video about WWII and an article giving an overview of how the war began/how other countries became involved. When we read a primary source of German laws for Jewish citizens to follow, their interested transitioned to shock when they realized stripping people of their rights was only one check mark on the Nazi docket. After reading an article about children during the Holocaust that detailed the different types of concentration camps, their shock became disgust. And finally, when we read an article about the Holocaust denial movement, my students got angry. They were ready to meet Anne.

The play (by Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett) was entertaining for them to read and I was surprised how much they got into it-- one student bringing a long wig to "help" him read his lines better as a female character, even.  Thanks to the popularity of the book and film "The Fault in Our Stars", many of my students were familiar with the fact that the secret annex is now a museum in Amsterdam. Naturally, I heard a chorus of:

"Miss! Let's go on a field trip to the museum!"
"It wouldn't be that hard to organize!"
"Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease! But Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiss!"

3D Secret Annex Tour.

While taking over 60 kids on a field trip to a foreign country from Puerto Rico was nowhere near within my power (not to mention budget!), I was pleased to find that the museum offers a 3D tour of the secret annex on their website. It's a mixture of computer graphics and recreated/computerized photos of the rooms, but you can navigate throughout the entire building and even meander around each room. Videos and sound clips are located throughout to give additional information about the characters and the building itself. My students certainly enjoyed pretending they were "walking" through the annex.

Another still from the 3D tour.

The next exciting internet find I came across is the Anne Frank Tree, a digital representation of the tree Anne could see from the annex window. The tree is now filled with virtual leaves containing the name, location, age, and message of those influenced and inspired by Anne's diary. A quick scroll through some of the leaves shows a wide variety of countries and people have written their messages in multiple languages. Which is pretty cool, considering Anne never knew her diary would be published and so widely read.

It was fun to play History teacher and then teach a play that made students say, "Miss, that hit me in the feels!" Hopefully you will be seeing some leaves from Puerto Rico added to Anne's tree soon.

*Coquí are very small tree frogs that live in Puerto Rico. Whenever it gets quiet at night you can hear them very clearly and it sounds like they are saying "coquí".

A coquí

Wheel of Progress

This is an update relating to the previous post about the PBIS classroom management system I've been trying out this school year. The mixed-and-matched method I've been using involving the clipboard and "The Wheel" (as my students call it) to select students to win prizes for their good behavior has been in effect for six weeks now. It's easy to tell that the students love seeing their name projected on the board in a color wheel and they get quite excited when the wheel slows near their name. Likewise, the prizes have also been going over quite well-- the "Listen to Music for a Day" coupon being the most coveted. Until last week, however, there wasn't much to suggest the level of impact this method has on students. And then it became exceptionally evident.

A crude picture, but this is what The Wheel looks like. You can find this resource at http://www.classtools.net/random-name-picker/

The largest of my classes has emerged as the most talkative. It's collective talking, so the sources are difficult to pinpoint. Since I know I will never win a shouting match against 26 7th graders, I'd been giving them both verbal and nonverbal cues to stop talking. Though this has saved my voice and somewhat works, the wait time was too long and we were not accomplishing everything on our daily docket. Last week the students were especially talkative every time there was even a second to spare. I announced that we were not going to spin The Wheel because they had not earned it. The students seemed disappointed and apologized, but I expected no lasting effect.

The next time I saw them for class, the first student walked into the room, said hello, and went to put their backpack down next to their desk. Nothing out of the ordinary. But as the second student walked into the room, the first student turned and immediately whispered "Shhhh!" At first I thought this was a joke between the two of them, so I continued getting the projector ready. But when the third student stepped across the threshold into my classroom and the second student wasted no time in whispering "Shhh!", I started to get the idea that something was up. Amusingly, this cycle went on with students reminding each other to be quiet before they had even entered the room until the entire class was seated and silently doing their bell work before the bell had even rung.

This unusual behavior continued during the lesson, producing silence when normally there would have been conversing. Occasionally, when a student did talk out of turn, they had to answer to the wrath of their classmates and quickly learned not to repeat the mistake. Suddenly, I did not need to remind them to stop talking and the wait time whittled to nothing. At the end of the class period I made sure to tell them that their good behavior was appreciated and had earned them The Wheel once more. We spun The Wheel to pick three winners for prizes and the students seemed happy with themselves.

So far, this new behavior has continued during other class periods. Now that the students have made the direct association between their behavior and privileges, I hope it remains ingrained in the long-term. Though I wasn't expecting such dramatic results so quickly, I'm glad to see that a little positive reinforcement can go a long way.

Second Year Kick Off

I emerged from my first year of teaching surprisingly unscathed. A few chaotic moments struck, such as the first time the power went out in class (I soon adapted to this because it happened quite frequently for a while), the time a student accidentally sent my entire desktop computer crashing to the floor (it remained intact, say what you will about slightly older technology), and the time a student choked on a piece of candy in class. Though hard to forget, the chaos was few and far between. In fact, most of my first year was characterized by positive interactions with hardworking students. And a healthy dose of middle school humor and sass.

After gallivanting off to Wisconsin to spend a great, albeit brief, summer with family and friends, I am back in Puerto Rico for my second year. While my mentality for my first year was mostly focused on survival, my goals for this second year are all centered on improvement.

First bulletin board of the year.

First on the docket: classroom management. Last year I used a tally system in which each class acted together to try and earn more tallies than the other classes. Detentions followed the school-wide policies and rules and were given to individual students as needed. As far as rudimentary classroom management goes, it mostly worked most of the time. That system was pretty bare bones, but gave some semblance of positive and negative behavior. The flaws, however, were that it did not reinforce positive behavior in individual students and the rewards were not immediate when the class did succeed as a whole.

This year, I looked around for new ideas and eventually took bits and pieces from several methods before concocting one to test in my classroom (essentially, this method is PBIS). On a clipboard I have a spreadsheet with each student's name, the date, and spaces for recording tally marks. I selected five positive behaviors that I wanted my students to do daily in my classroom:

• Raise their hand (RH)
• Respect others (RO)
• Be on-task (OT)
• Be prepared (P)
• Listen attentively (LA)

At the beginning of each week, I select one of the behaviors for students to focus on and write it on the board to remind them. If students are "caught" doing the behavior, they receive a tally next to their name. I also tell students that they can earn tally marks that day for two more of the behaviors that I have secretly picked, however I will not tell them which ones I am looking for. (One student already asked me if not telling them which additional behaviors was just a ploy to get them to do all of the behaviors. Yes, yes it is.)

The number of tally marks that a student has at the end of each period is the number of times their name will go into a Rewards Drawing. Because my school is "paperless", I do the drawing online using this website  which puts the names into a color wheel and selects one at random (the students have been enjoying seeing how many times their name is on the wheel and waiting in anticipation while it slowly spins). Because I want to get them hooked on this system, I have started by drawing three names each class period, but I will eventually lower this number. When a student's name is drawn they have their choice of the following rewards:

• Late Work Pass: Student may hand in homework 1 day late without losing points
• Sit by a Friend for a Day
• Listen to Music During Work Time

The rewards are printed coupons that I made, but the student gets the instant gratification of seeing their positive behavior pay off, which they have thus far seemed stoked about. I also explained to students that part of being responsible is not losing their coupons because they will not be replaced. 

Though it is only our second week of school, parents and students seem to like this system. While I'm sure there will be a moment or two of chaos, I hope that this year brings an abundance of positivity and lets students know that their good behaviors are appreciated.

The Hunger Games

This Spring, when I broke the news to my 7th grade students that they would be reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, I was shocked to hear a series of groans:

"But Miiiiiiiiiiiiiss, I've already read that book!"
"Oh, I saw the movie like a million times so I don't have to read it, right?"

Though the students who had read it before enjoyed The Hunger Games, I could tell I was on a mission to make the book interesting a second (or even third) time around whilst still helping the first-time readers navigate Panem and keep spoilers at bay.

My stab at a Hunger Games bulletin board.

I do not agree with the method of teaching this novel with students competing against one another as tributes because it glorifies the Hunger Games-- something the novel itself discourages. However, I did give students a taste of how much strategy the tributes needed in order to survive by staging tribute interviews. Each student assumed either the role of a tribute (of their own creation) in an attempt to win sponsors or the role of the interviewer (channeling Caesar Flickerman) to ease the tribute's interview and schmooze the audience into sponsoring the tribute. Each interview was scored as a pair and the rest of the class voted via text message on Poll Everywhere to anonymously say if the pair had won their sponsorship. The students quickly learned that both roles were equally important in order to achieve success, which helped us focus on the significance of minor characters in the novel as well.

Student Work: Cinna's Design Book

Because many of my students were already familiar with the novel, we were able to delve deeper into the text and focused on characteristics and consequences of dystopian societies, using cameras as a way to manipulate situations on television, symbols and other literary analysis, and various activities using the text to support arguments they made-- the most entertaining of which was a heated mini debate on whether Katniss and Peeta's relationship was real or fake (arguments could not be made unless a page number and example were provided).

Student Work: Katniss and Peeta Scrapbook 

At the end of the unit I gave students seven choices for a creative project. As I had hoped, each choice was completed by at least one student. Many students opted to create a survival handbook for the Hunger Games, several created their own soundtrack to the novel with descriptions of how the lyrics connected to various points in the novel, a few created and drew their own versions of the costumes Cinna created for Katniss with explanations of why her look was important at that point in the novel, some put the Gamemaker on trial in a mock trial against a tribute, one pair made a scrapbook of Katniss and Peeta, a few comic books depicting a scene from the novel were created, and a couple students created their own dystopian societies to present to the class.

Student Work: Dystopian Society (Map)

Though many had read it before, the students seemed to really enjoy this unit and I thoroughly enjoyed watching them become more and more engrossed in the novel, angry at the Capitol, curious if our future could ever head in a dystopian direction, and defensive about what "real" love is.  Watching the students utilize the talents they have to create something entirely their own demonstrated that, with their creativity and innovation, the odds will be ever in their favor.



 Here are a few more projects:

Student Work: Comic Book

Student Work: Comic Book

That's Genius

You are not a genius. But, if you've ever experienced a moment of spontaneous inspiration that you simply cannot explain, you may have a genius, according to Elizabeth Gilbert's TED Talk "Your Elusive Creative Genius" (video below). Gilbert explains that in ancient Rome "genius" did not refer to a person, but to a creative spirit that rained inspiration and aid onto writers, musicians, dancers, etc. The benefit of this view, she explains, is that if a work flops, the genius is also partly to blame; similarly, if a work is highly successful, a writer must give credit to their genius and cannot claim it is solely of their own creation. It keeps creative minds sane.

I watched Gilbert's TED Talk approximately three years ago, shortly after seeing a documentary on the white-tailed tropic bird. This bird mesmerized me with its long, sleek, white tail that trails through the air as the bird glides and dives near ocean cliffs. And I felt it: my genius, if it had a form, would be the white-tailed tropic bird. I promptly changed my laptop background to a picture of the bird rocketing above the waves to remind me to write. Inspiration, no inspiration-- it need not matter because eventually my genius will chip in to do its part. I used to wait until the first line of a story or poem would attach itself to my brain to begin writing, but I wanted to learn to start with nothing and create something. To this day, my laptop background is still the white-tailed tropic bird.

One problem:
I haven't been writing.

I've made stabs at stories and penned a poem or two since then, but my writing habits seemed to write themselves off. A full-time teaching job has not helped, try as I might to adopt the philosophy of my Puerto Rican coworkers to not bring much work home. Somehow, not-writing became my routine. But then my genius showed up.

The salt sections were to the left, the beach to the right. 

Yesterday was our first official day of Spring Break and so a few friends and I ventured to the Southwestern-most tip of the island to Playa Sucia. The beach is part of a natural reserve--and the DNR was there to protect it, knowing it would be busy. There were areas of the ocean that are saturated with so much salt that the water is pink! Another section looked identical to a frozen lake with a light layer of smooth, glittery snow sitting peacefully on top, not a wave disturbing it. These areas are not part of the beach itself, but are along the road leading up to it and they are used to "mine" salt.

Playa Sucia, from the main part of the beach.

The beach area was stunning, of course. Puerto Rico never seems to stop showing me the extravagance of nature and I've learned I'm a sucker for anything ocean-related. Along the right side of the beach were some rocky cliffs, easily hiked, that lead up to a lighthouse. We took in the various views from each cliff edge, all showing the same view but in a slightly different way. At the very top, just before we decided to enter the lighthouse, I saw them. White birds trailing a banner of white after them through the sky. I thought I had seen them near Guayama at the beach, but after seeing them up close I realize I was mistaken. They were magnificent.

Two of the white-tailed tropic birds that stopped me in my tracks.

I half-skipped half-ran to the edge of the cliff to watch them and attempted to snap a few pictures. Three years ago I was enchanted by a documentary on white-tailed tropic birds, and yet part of me never expected to see one in real life. Since moving to Puerto Rico I'd been keeping my eye out for them, just in case, but they had become more of a symbolic ideal of creativity and writing that I only hoped, but did not actively seek, to return to.  But there I was, watching them pirouette above ocean cliffs, swoop down above the waves and somehow gracefully shoot back up to the cliffs like it was the easiest thing in the world. And I realized that was the end of my excuse to not-write. Because you simply cannot stop a creative spirit.

 Gilbert's TED Talk, "Your Elusive Creative Genius"

Something's Gotta Give

One of my classes and I started off on the wrong foot this school year; in fact, let's call it a peg leg. I wasn't originally supposed to teach the class, and though I was definitely willing, the following problems quickly battered the ship:

-We had no textbooks. Since the school purchased access codes to an online version of the textbook, I was informed no more hard copies would be purchased.

-When I tried to access the online textbook from my classroom, I couldn't project it large enough for students to read and the audio function would not play loud enough for the class to hear.

-Pop-up settings in the computer lab prevented students from accessing the text during class. This same problem occurred for most students at home.

-The school is "paperless" which means no copies and no handouts (unless students print them on their own). Printing each story would have been a ridiculous amount of paper.

It seemed for a while that each time I found a way around a problem, it would only cause another to surface from under the sea foam. I was frustrated and the students were flustered. Eventually, I took to hauling 22 textbooks from an upstairs classroom down to mine (and back again!) on days students needed to interact with the text.

In addition, this particular class loves to talk. Loudly and in disregard to anything else happening in class. In no time, my classroom had a palpable animosity coming from both sides. Consequences were set and administered, parents were contacted about behavior, and I knew this was not how I wanted to teach. Never had I thought I'd have a class where the teacher and students felt pitted against each other. It's not sustainable; something had to give.

I began by catering more to student interests. For example, we created a mock outline for a compare/contrast paper about Batman vs. Superman. Slowly I was winning over individual students. But it wasn't enough. Small groups replaced the majority of whole class discussion: students would break into smaller groups where they could better hear my instruction and then each group would present their discoveries. Class was going significantly better, but it wasn't until this week when the something finally gave.

 In past units, homework was graded and that was that. This time around, students are given graded assignments back with comments and are expected to fix any errors to make up the points they missed. It didn't seem revolutionary in any way, but it pushed the ship away from rocks trying to sink it. How? Because it gave the message to students that they are expected to succeed because their teacher wants them to. Because homework is for practice not punishment. Because if they put in a little more work they will be rewarded for their efforts. Because, even though they frustrate me, I want to help them.

That's what gave. It gave way to a positive classroom environment. It gave way to students proving they can behave better than before. It gave way to more fun with activities. It gave way to palpable respect coming from both sides. And it gave this first year teacher one heck of a learning experience!