Shared Art Project #exploringidentity

Last week I shared how I'll be using Jason Mamoa's short film Canvas of My Life to introduce identity webs to my students with Sara Ahmed's lesson from Being The Change. I also shared my ideas for inviting students to write about a door that has been significant in their life. After giving students an opportunity to get to know each other through these activities and others too, I then have a shared art project for them based on Canvas of My Life.

We've all heard of shared reading and shared writing, right? Well, this is a shared art project! I've always been an arts and crafts kind of girl. I come from a family of creatives and I'm lucky that they encouraged my creativity. Art is special and important and I want to incorporate it into my class as much as possible.

Here's what I have in mind for our first art project!

I bought a 5 x 5 canvas drop cloth from Home Depot for each of my classes and am going to ask them to work together to paint something that represents them as a class. My aunt is an artist and has tons of little bottles of acrylic paint and oodles of paintbrushes so I've asked her to come in and share her expertise and resources with my students. 

At this point, students will be familiar with symbolism so I'll talk to them about what they would paint that would represent them as a group. We'll talk about the message Jason Mamoa shares in the video and also what we've learned about each other from sharing our doors and what is important to us overall. Then we'll divide up the work and get started. I have space on one wall in our classroom where we'll display their artwork for the year. My thought is that at the end of the year, we'll cut the canvas up and students will each get a piece of the canvas to take with them as a keepsake and a reminder of the work we did together. 

My goal for our shared art project is to invite students to think about their identity in terms of being part of a community and how they impact that community. I'm so excited to see what they come up with because I already know it will be more awesome than I can even imagine. Don't worry, I'll share how this goes and how the art turns out!

Have you tried art projects with your students? I love the idea of bringing art into my classroom and would love to hear your thoughts or stories of what you've tried!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 08/05/2019

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA! 

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now...you just might discover your next “must-read” book!

Kellee Moye, of Unleashing Readers, and I decided to give It's Monday! What Are You Reading? a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children's literature - picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, anything in the world of kidlit - join us! We love this meme and think you will, too. We encourage everyone who participates to visit at least three of the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and leave comments for them. 

Last Week's Book Adventures:

This week I took some time to disconnect from everything and just read. I finished Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, They Call My Güero, and The Stars Beneath Our Feet.

Last Week's Posts:

On Blogging With Students

Jason Mamoa and Identity Webs

Doors In Our Lives

(Click on the image and/or links to visit the posts.)

Upcoming Book Adventures: 

This week I'm looking forward to reading The Bridge Home by Padma Venkatraman and Other Words For Home by Jasmine Warga.

So, what are you reading this week? 

Link up below and check out other blogs to see what they're reading!
To help build our community and support other bloggers,
we ask that you comment on at least three other blogs before you.
Also, if you tweet about your Monday post, don't forget to use #IMWAYR!

Doors In Our Lives #exploringidentity

Last week I shared how I'll be using Jason Mamoa's short film Canvas of My Life to introduce identity webs to my students with Sara Ahmed's lesson from Being The Change. I'm also going to use the film to introduce the idea of symbolism and then segue into think about people, places, and experiences that have shaped us. I'm planning to do picture book book-a-day and have picked out books with doors in them so we can discuss what doors represent and then share doors that have been significant in our lives. 

Thank You, Omu!

Door,

Doors In The Air

Wherever You Go

Knock Knock

Golden Domes and Silver Lanterns

*not pictured: Journey

Why doors exactly? 

Because of this guy: Alan Benchoam.

Here I am with Alan Benchoam in his gallery in Guatemala.

When I was in Guatemala in June, I met a photographer named Alan Benchoam who takes photos of doors. You can find more information about him at Doors of The World. He also creates collages with all the doors and as I was looking at his art, I realized how amazing doors are. There are doors we go through, doors that open, doors that close, doors that take us to different places. Doors hold a lot of meaning. I love the symbolism but also that doors are a universal experience.

The picture books I shared above all have doors in them, whether the door is a focus of the book or just embedded in the story at some point. My goal is to read the books to give students an opportunity to think of doors in different ways as they choose a door they would like to write about. Students will be asked to take a picture of a door of their choice and to write about it. Then we'll share the photos they took and their writing. I'd love to display these but haven't worked through the details of what this would look like. Maybe I'll get the kids' input and go from there!

Of course, I believe in writing along with the students so when I was in Guatemala and had this idea of taking pictures of doors and writing about them, I snapped pictures of two doors that meant a lot to me while I was there. Being a writer myself is imperative as a teacher of writing but sharing myself is equally as important. I'll share both of these pictures, talk through my ideas, and model writing about a door that is significant to me. (I'll be sure to share my writing and how this goes with students!)

While I was in Guatemala, I stayed with my cousin Andrea and her family and this is the door to their house. It looks like a simple brown door but when I look at it, I feel the love that welcomed me on the other side of it. I think of her, her husband, and her three kids. I think of the stories we shared and the memories we made while I was there. We played hide and seek and Chinese jump rope, they were fascinated by my bedtime routine, and they ordered a vegan pineapple upside down cake for my birthday celebration are some of my favorites.

This is the door to K'Ashem, my cousin Edgar's adventure tourism agency in Guatemala. When I look at this door, I feel excitement. Going on an excursion with him was the highlight of my trip to Guatemala. I loved getting to see him in his element and to experience Guatemala with him. I'm such an outdoorsy, adventurous person and so is he so when I look at this door, I think of him and am reminded to live life to the fullest.

My goal is to take time for students to write about something in their life and share it as we get to know each other but then work on a shared art project based of off the Jason Mamoa video...I promise I'll share more about that next!

Jason Mamoa and Identity Webs #exploringidentity

I'm diving into learning on the very first day of school! This summer I read Sara Ahmed's Being The Change and truly loved her identity web lesson. My students are 7th and 8th graders so I wanted to pick a text that would catch their attention. I looked at the texts Sara suggests in Being The Change but ultimately decided to go with a digital text that I found from Katherine Sokolowski's blog post: Building Relationships at the Start of the Year. 

Katherine shared this Carhartt Handemade Film about Jason Mamoa called Canvas of My Life. I love it for lots of reasons and had already planned to show it as part of a community building art project but as I was thinking about identity, I realized this movie fits perfectly with Sara's identity web lesson. Here it is so you can watch it for yourself:

I'll ask students to watch and notice what we learn about Jason Mamoa and who he is. Based on Sara's lesson, we'll create an identity web for Jason based on evidence we find in the text, then I'll create one for myself, and finally, they'll have time to discuss and create their own identity webs. I'm toooootally simplifying this so you'll have to get a copy of Being The Change so you can read Sara explain this lesson in much more detail. 

Building students' awareness of themselves and their identity is super important to me but I want my students to grow their understanding of how we fit into communities we belong to as well. Using this video for our identity webs will be a great foundation for our shared art project that invites students to develop their identity as a classroom community/team. More on that soon!

On Blogging with Students #exploringidentity

My Writing Wednesdays posts are inspired by my friend Katherine Sokolowski who blogs at Read, Write, Reflect. She's a middle school teacher who writes too!

*****

Blogging has been an awesome addition to my life so I’m excited to share it with students! I first started our family blog in 2008 and then shifted to blogging about teaching in 2010 so it's a big part of my identity.

What I love most about blogging is that it's short and sweet. I try to keep my blog posts to the point but the writing process is also short when I blog. I spend time on my posts but I go through the process and publish what I’ve written fairly quickly (especially compared to traditional publishing!). 

I love that I can add a picture or a video and I can link to other ideas. And I really love that I have a cool artifact with all my thoughts in one place. It’s a unique sort of digital scrapbook that allows me to share my life with others. 

This year I’ll be sharing some sort of short text with students, either a photo, video, poem, or article. We’ll use these texts to practice visual thinking strategies, making connections, asking questions. Then students will think critically, discuss and maybe do some research, and respond by blogging. They'll have a choice to pick what they want to respond to from the week. Because blogging is meant to be short...both in length and turn around, I’m hoping this will be a place for students to explore ideas and experience publishing on a consistent basis. 

I’ll be looking for thoughtful content and for students to practice including different media in their responses but I won’t be grading their blogs. To start, I'm going to use Seesaw for the first trimester so they'll have a sheltered audience and then we'll discuss and decide if it's working for them or not. 

Shout out to Pernille Ripp and Tricia Ebarvia for sharing their thoughts on blogging with students and helping me plan for blogging with my students! Do you blog with students or have thoughts on giving students the opportunity to blog? I'd love to hear about it!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 07/29/2019

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA! 

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now...you just might discover your next “must-read” book!

Kellee Moye, of Unleashing Readers, and I decided to give It's Monday! What Are You Reading? a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children's literature - picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, anything in the world of kidlit - join us! We love this meme and think you will, too. We encourage everyone who participates to visit at least three of the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and leave comments for them. 

Announcement:

The winner of the Reading Revealed giveaway is:

Jenni Rodeghero

and

BN100

Congrats!

Thank you again to Scholastic for the opportunity to offer this giveaway.

Last Week's Book Adventures:

This week I realized Maybe You Should Talk to Someone was due at the library so I started reading it right away. I'm fascinated by it! I also read They Call My Güero by David Bowles which I can't wait to share with my students.

Last Week's Posts:

31 Things About Me

3 Things I Know to Be True

(Click on the image and/or links to visit the posts.)

Upcoming Book Adventures: 

This week I'm excited to get back to The Stars Beneath Our Feet and to finish Maybe You Should Talk to Someone.

So, what are you reading this week? 

Link up below and check out other blogs to see what they're reading!
To help build our community and support other bloggers,
we ask that you comment on at least three other blogs before you.
Also, if you tweet about your Monday post, don't forget to use #IMWAYR!

Teachers Write Check In 07/28/2019

Hello writer friends! I hope you had a great last week of writing with Kate and the Teachers Write community. I am so happy to be back to blogging! I shared two posts this week in my Exploring Identity series and I also shared a mini-review of a few educational books I'm reading that included a giveaway. That felt like huge progress!

One thing I've learned over the years when it comes to writing is to follow where my heart leads me. I've spent the last year giving myself A TON of grace after finding out last year that my agent was closing her agency. I wrote it about in last year's end-of-Teachers-Write post. My message then to myself and to everyone reading was to keep going. Giving myself grace was how I did that. 

As much as I had plans to draft a novel last summer, it didn't happen. And then I thought this year I would get to it or revise my third novel, but it didn't happen. And then this summer, I thought for sure I would finally crank out a first draft of another novel, but again it didn't happen. 

Even though I didn't write what I thought I would write this summer, I did find my voice again in my blog posts and that feels pretty amazing so I'm celebrating. Hooray for giving myself grace and celebrating progress. I hope you can reflect on this summer with Teachers Write give yourself grace for whatever didn't happen and celebrate what you did accomplish. Celebrate and keep going!

Did you catch all of Kate Messner's posts this week on using Kekla Magoon's The Season of Styx Malone as a mentor text? She had some great insight and advice for packing in information, dialogue, and figurative language. I hope you join me tonight to talk about Kate's ideas and share your own thoughts! (More info below!)

A reminder of my rules for Teachers Write Sunday Check-Ins:

1. We respect each other and the type of writing we do.

2. We are positive and encourage each other at all times.

3. We recognize and maintain this as a safe, inclusive environment for all.

**I reserve every right to put the smackdown
on anyone who messes with our positive energy.**

Ideas for today in the comments section:

How did you do this week? Did you meet your weekly goal(s)?

What was the pit of your week? (The hardest part, the non-fun part?)
What was the peak of your week? (The best part, the most-fun part?)
What are you looking forward to beyond Teachers Write?

Join us for our last virtual check in!

Sunday, July 28th

5:00 pm PST / 6:00 pm MST / 7:00 pm CST / 8:00 pm EST

Join Zoom Meeting

https://zoom.us/j/279769890

You'll need the link above to join the meeting. Please know that you'll have to download the Zoom app on your phone or computer and then click on the link and it should take you right into the meeting. You don't have to sign up or sign in but it will ask for your name. My advice is to sign in about 10 minutes ahead of time so you can troubleshoot. Let me know if you have any questions, my email is jen (at) teachmentortexts (dot) com.

Thanks again for sharing your journey with Teachers Write with me! I love being part of this community and meeting teachers who write. Keep writing! Keep shining!

3 Things I Know to Be True #exploringidentity

What you value and what you believe are important when it comes to knowing yourself but a few weeks ago, my friend asked me to name three things I absolutely know to be true. I shared those three things in my last Exploring Identity post, 31 Things About Me: Jen Vincent but now I'd like to expand upon them.

I absolutely know that I love myself. It's taken me a long time to get here but blogging about identity in 2015 helped me feel more whole. Writing about my life, people, places, and experiences that shaped me allowed me to better understand my unique experience with life and to appreciate my Latinx heritage. People, places, and things will come and go in my life but I love myself no matter what.

I absolutely know that stories make the world a better place. Telling my stories helped me grow to love myself. And in loving myself, I am better able to participate in the world. As a mom, writer, and educator, I'm better because I know my story, I appreciate my story, and I share my story with others. I started Story Exploratory because I know the power of story firsthand and I truly believe if we all owned our stories, shared our stories, learned from each other, and celebrated our stories, the world would be a better place.

I absolutely know that things change. In June, I went on an excursion in Guatemala with my cousin Edgar through his agency, K'Ashem. We camped at Laguna Lachuá and swam in its brilliant turquoise water. 

When it was time to leave, I packed up my tent and my gear and went to sit by the water. Everyone else did the opposite, they swam as long as they could before they had to pack up, so I had the lake all to myself. It was serene. The water was clear and still and absolutely beautiful. (Here's a picture, that's me sitting in the hut.)

Soon Edgar came to tell me it was time to go. 

"No quiero ir," I told him as I wiped the tears streaming down my face. 

He laughed and reminded me that even good things come to an end and that's what's beautiful about life, it's always changing.

It was hard to say goodbye to that moment but now I carry my cousin's words with me and work to cherish every moment because inevitably things change, whether I want them to or not.

Naming three things I know to be true made me think about people, places, and experiences I've had and how they have shaped me. This is a great activity to explore for yourself and/or to discuss with students.

So tell me...what three things do you absolutely know to be true?

Reading Revealed Giveaway!

School starts for us on August 14th so I’ve been planning! I met with my 8th grade team last week and will be meeting with my 7th grade team in two weeks. 

In our school, students have a 3-period block of English Language Arts and Social Studies so I’ll have a group of 8th graders in the morning and a group of 7th graders in the afternoon. I’m planning to start the year with conversations about identity with both groups so I read Being The Change by Sara Ahmed and Upstanders by Sara Ahmed and Smokey Daniels. Both of these are absolutely amazing and I highly recommend them.

I also read through the first Units of Study Writing resources for both grades and then I read Reading Revealed by Diane Stephens, Jerome C. Harste, and Jean Anne Clyde. To be honest, the content in Reading Revealed is geared more towards K-5 but it’s still full of ideas so I’m excited to share it here as a giveaway for my K-5 friends.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Interested in what I’ve got planned for exploring identity with students? I’ll be sharing posts soon but to start, I took time to write about my own identity here. When it comes to identity, it is imperative to start first with ourselves so you might want to try this yourself. If you do, I’d love to see your list! Link it in the comments or paste in some of your 31 things about you. Feel free to use my 31 Things About Me post as a mentor text!

Thanks to Scholastic

for sending me a copy of this book to review 

and for partnering with me for this giveaway.

31 Things About Me: Jen Vincent #exploring identity

I've been thinking a lot about identity lately. My understanding of my own identity is constantly changing but I'm also starting the school year off with the theme of identity so I thought it would be good to do a blog series about exploring identity. 

In 2015, I participated in the month-long Slice of Life Challenge. The ideas is to blog every single day for an entire month. I had spent time unpacking my identity and thinking about my experiences and how they shaped who I am so I decided to take the entire month to write about this. That month of blogging was so powerful for me. I cried while writing most of those posts! Those posts are probably some of the most vulnerable writing I have ever written.

You can find links to them all in my wrap up blog post: The One Where I Have to Share My Stories if you're interested in reading them. 

But that was four years ago and I've learned even more about myself since then so I thought it would be good to share a little more about me again. This year during the March Slice of Life Challenge, my friend Mandy Robek wrote a post called 31 Things About Me at her blog Enjoy and Embrace Learning. Mandy got the idea from Lisa Keeler at Reading, Writing and Learning. Here's her 31 Things About Me post. I saved the links to their posts to use as a mentor text and now I'm happy to present my 31 Things About Me post!

1. I adore Megan Stielstra and her essays and would love to meet her someday! They inspired me to write a short story about loving Guatemala which then led me to buying a ticket to go and visit last month.
2. My friend Leticia recommended the podcast Let Their Be Luz to me so I listened to every single episode and it has been life changing in so many ways. I definitely recommend it!
3. We got a minivan last spring and I LOVE IT mostly because we can fit lots of people in with us and traveling with friends is always more fun. 
4. Baths are amazing. I discovered Lush about a year ago and love their shampoo bars and their bath bombs.
5. Yellow is my favorite color.
6. The sun makes me happy. I even got a sun tattoo last year. 
7. I think I'm fairly coordinated but for the life of me, trying to get better at something like baggo or bowling stresses me out.
8. I love Chocolate-Covered Katie's black bean brownie recipe (gluten free and vegan!) and I also love sharing them with people because most people love them too and never guess there's a whole can of black beans mixed in. 
9. If I could live anywhere...it would be Guatemala.
10. I used to write regularly in my laundry room when I was working on my first novel. 
11. People should have the option to take an afternoon nap. Like, this should be a regularly scheduled afternoon plan.
12. My first Story Exploratory workshop was in 2015. My sister and my neighbor came...which I considered a huge success but at the same time didn't think was a success at all. Then it took me until 2018 to remember how much I believed in Story Exploratory. In 2019, I filed for my doing-business-as certificate!
13. When I trained for (and ran) the Chicago Marathon in 2003, I would see rabbits all the time. I always thought they were my grandpa coming to visit me and to remind me that I was strong and beautiful. Since starting up my Story Exploratory workshops, I've seen more rabbits again and now I really think it's a sign from the universe that I'm on the right path and that I should keep going. 
14. Any time I visit a new place, I like to find a local coffee shop and/or an independent bookstore. They are the coolest places.
15. I've been vegetarian since 2010 and vegan most of those years. I swear, my skin is softer. And I kid you not, I feel absolutely zero menstrual cramps (and before it was bad!).
16. I consider myself to be super low maintenance but my friend Elizabeth sells Color Street and I do like doing my nails from time to time.
17. Star Wars is an epic love story and I'm a huge fan. 
18. Adopting our puppy Perdi from a shelter in 2015 was one of the best decisions of my whole entire life.
19. Tacos are amazing. Just like ice cream in a cone, you don't need utensils or containers so they're good for the environment too!
20. I'm always up for an adventure. 
21. Sometimes I wish I had a more Latina name. Even my maiden name, Jennifer Jones, wasn't Latina. Our names are such a part of who we are and my Latinx heritage isn't represented in my name. Although, when I went to Guatemala earlier this summer, I met people whose names sounded American to me so maybe what I really need to do is get over this idea of names belonging to a place.
22. The first time I experienced professional development in my school district that focused on identity, I cried. It was emotional for me because identity and discussing topics of anti-racism and being anti-biased is something important to me but at that time, it felt like we never discussed it as a system.
23. I love winter but don't like all the stuff that goes with it. Especially as a mom...snowpants, hats, gloves, boots...ugh.
24. Writer's workshop is my jam. I'm so lucky that I had teachers who gave me the experience with writer's workshop as a student because it just made sense to me as a teacher. 
25. The kidlit community is the best.
26. I find it hard to half-ass anything. But sometimes in life, you have to decide it's okay to put in the minimum so my motto has become, "We're going to full ass the minimum."
27. One of the best compliments a student ever gave me was when they said, "Mrs. Vincent, you're like a student." Yup. I'm a true lifelong learner and super proud of it.
28. I often feel like people don't understand me. Like my ideas are so out there. Like I approach things differently. Like I'm comfortable diving into things. Like I'm not worried about stuff. Sometimes it's lonely and other times it feels pretty badass.
29. I've been known to turn down a lunch invitation because I had an amazing, just-ripe avocado waiting for me at home. 
30. I cry. A lot. But most of the time I cry because I'm so so so happy and that's how my body reacts. I also see it as a form of cleansing. It's my body's way of releasing or processing the emotions...I think? I'm not really sure but these two explantations make sense to me at this time.
31. There are three things I absolutely know to be true: I love myself, stories make the world a better place, and things change. (I have a blog post about this coming up next!)

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 07/22/2019

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? From Picture Books to YA! 

It's Monday! What are you Reading? is a meme hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. It is a great way to recap what you read and/or reviewed the previous week and to plan out your reading and reviews for the upcoming week. It's also a great chance to see what others are reading right now...you just might discover your next “must-read” book!

Kellee Moye, of Unleashing Readers, and I decided to give It's Monday! What Are You Reading? a kidlit focus. If you read and review books in children's literature - picture books, chapter books, middle grade novels, young adult novels, anything in the world of kidlit - join us! We love this meme and think you will, too. We encourage everyone who participates to visit at least three of the other kidlit book bloggers that link up and leave comments for them. 

Last Week's Book Adventures:

Last week I started reading The Stars Beneath Our Feet by David Barclay Moore and I reread Upstanders by Sara Ahmed and Smokey Daniels. I also read a stack of picture books as I've been prepping for classroom bookaday. AND I also read the first two books for Lucy Calkins' Units of Study for writing. Fun times!

Last Week's Posts:

(Click on the image to visit the post.)

Upcoming Book Adventures: 

This week I'm going to keep reading The Stars Beneath Our Feet and am hoping to get to The Season of Styx Malone by Kekla Magoon which is this week's Teachers Write mentor text. Kate Messner has been sharing some great writing ideas at her blog for Teachers Write! And if you've been writing this summer, I'm hosting a meet up next Sunday at 7:00 CST via Zoom. If you want to come chat about writing, plan to join me!

So, what are you reading this week? 

Link up below and check out other blogs to see what they're reading!
To help build our community and support other bloggers,
we ask that you comment on at least three other blogs before you.
Also, if you tweet about your Monday post, don't forget to use #IMWAYR!

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