This was probably the best Wednesday of the year, even with the fact it's a white Wednesday! No, my account has not been hacked, this is really me. I am capable of positive emotion on rare occasion.
In my English classes, we discussed letters of recommendation. I told them that a few of them, especially the ones who already have jobs, may have to write one of these in the very near future. We had a great discussion on what makes a letter of recommendation professional and not personal, and I inadvertently said the famous Godfather line in class, which brought a smile from a few of the students (first lesson only, after that, I planned it). I again gave them sample letters that I wrote so they could see the formatting and content this type of writing should contain. Being the nerd that I am, I made one letter about Jon Snow joining the Night's Watch in Game of Thrones, and the other letter about Will Hunting being recommended for a job by Lucious Fox of Stark Enterprises. Yes, I realize I just committed comic world blasphemy by mixing the Marvel and DC worlds, but I took it a step further and put Mr. Fox's contact number as working number that dials Santa Claus. I need to have some sort of fun with this job. I also received a recommendation letter from fellow Star Wars fan that recommended me for a position with the Mandalorian bounty hunters. Needless to say, this one is a keeper.
Cluster today was quite different. Last week when I was absent, a firestorm happened in cluster and revolt almost took place. Many of my colleagues said it probably was a good thing I wasn't there. So on Sunday, I wrote a lengthy email to our cluster leaders with a study attached the shows how writing across the curriculum is the best way to improve writing. In today's cluster, our leaders had a completely different tone and actually said teaching writing cannot solely fall on us. I may had said "It's about dang time" louder than I meant, but they didn't hear me. I am not naive enough to believe my email had anything to do with this, but at least we seem to be all on the same page, or heading there. I did get quite a bit of a vindication that English 12a is working. In part of our cluster, we looked at all the student data we had access to in a data warehouse called Pivot. I was curious to see my student's SAT scores. I was able to see a student of mine who took the SAT in June and then again in October. After 8 weeks of my class, her writing score went up 40 points on the SAT. What we are doing with our students in 12a is working. I wish we could start this sooner. I was very encouraged that we have hard data that in some form shows that what we are teaching and doing in 12a, with a curriculum myself and another teacher virtually created, is working. I was also encouraged that it appears some conversations will take place about writing and reading across the curriculum may start taking place.
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