Author: Jana McCarthy

Student advocate. Belief in teaching as service. Teacher of AP Language and ELA 10-12 in Boston Public Schools. Former ESL 3-4 teacher in a city outside Boston. National Board Certified Teacher. Always teaching on YouTube. Worked as Director of curriculum and instruction and adult learning specialist in Boston Public Schools as well as Director of Opportunity Scholarships for first generation students at a large private university in Boston. Passionate about access to opportunities for students and families in and beyond high school. Believer in Restorative Justice and trauma informed teaching. Sometimes photographer and all the time obsessed with street art. Learned to write as a grant writer for the Seattle Rep, Gardner Museum, and American Repertory theatre. Cat and dog mom.

Discourse as Discovery: Debate, Trial, and Performance with The Odyssey

I had the opportunity to work with the Boston Debate League (BDL) through their Evidence Based Argumentation (EBA) program for two years with the help of EBA instructional coach, Sarah Mayper. Sarah supported my efforts in transforming lessons from static to dynamic through EBA activities that promoted student-to-student discourse grounded in evidence and reasoning.

Once I got the hang of transforming traditional, static lessons that I had relied on for years, I began to experiment with ways to leverage EBA strategies “off the page” to engage students in debate. Although intimidated at first to release the entire lesson to students in a whole-class debate, I realized that the structure of the debate protocol provided the necessary supports for students to feel in control of their own work. I saw students who had presented reluctant or resistant behaviors turn into passionate and empowered debaters, who hungrily searched the text for the right piece of evidence at the right moment to defend an argument.

A debate team representing Rose from Fences revises its opening statement in debate prep.

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Teaching Writing from a Strengths-based Perspective to Build Stamina

As a member of the eight-person 2016-17 Calderwood Writing Fellowship cohort, I worked with teachers across the state for one year to develop my own writing-based inquiry. This experience provided the space for me to approach teaching as a researcher and writer; I incorporated research in the field into my lessons to test my inquiry question: How can I utilize a teacher’s sense of urgency to build students’ writing stamina and overall academic resilience? I worked with my students that year in a different way than I had any other year: I began to view my teaching as a collaborative and reciprocal process with my students. Through the teaching of writing, I began to unpack my students’ writing resistance and rebuild their relationship to writing from a strengths-based perspective.

By focusing on my students’ assets, I re-designed the way I taught writing to incorporate partner and group writing (I was excited to find research that pointed to the strong connection between orality and literacy and talk with writing development).

A group essay planning and strategy workshop to build skills in evidence-based reasoning.

I also focused on the impact of my role as a writing teacher, thinking very carefully about how to scaffold and differentiate writing for students of varying learning and language backgrounds. I utilized feedback loops, probing questions, and 1:1 conferences, practicing ways in which I provided descriptive feedback. I engaged in dialogue with my students about writing to encourage their identity as writers in 1:1 conferences, group writing workshops, and written feedback via Google Doc comments. I also utilized tried-and-true pen and paper comments as a tangible document of my feedback.

Continue reading “Teaching Writing from a Strengths-based Perspective to Build Stamina”

Lesson Plans as Learning Experiences

This summer I participated in the district’s Social Emotional Academic Integration curriculum development cohort. I served as Point of Contact for the ELA/ESL cohort, facilitating meetings with colleagues across the district to develop strategies for integrating social emotional learning into the academic curriculum through both explicit lessons and lessons where social emotional skills are embedded seamlessly into the curriculum. As part of this curriculum development cohort, my job was to design a curriculum map for the year (Curriculum Map for ELA 12 (College English 12) SY2018-2019) as well as four lessons that incorporated social emotional learning standards aligned to state standards. While I have always approached lesson planning as facilitating events and experiences for students, the district’s “Learning Experience” lesson plan format helped me to think intentionally about the “Why” of my lessons as well as the “So What” and “What’s Next”–the lesson impact on student learning outcomes and trajectory towards student growth. Continue reading “Lesson Plans as Learning Experiences”

Curriculum Mapping

I developed this ELA 12 curriculum map (Curriculum Mapping) with the aim of aligning Social Emotional Learning standards to the Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks and objectives based in Webb’s Depth of Knowledge. As I built this curriculum map, I cross-walked SEL standards with MA Standards in order to plan unit goals by skill and content. If do not know what each student will know and do by the end of each lesson before the lesson and before the unit, then I know I need to revisit my curriculum map. Curriculum mapping for my practice is much more than a pacing guide; it is an evolving process of envisioning the big picture against the details of unit essential questions and daily agendas to create alignment and ensure clarity. Although I start the year with a clearly defined curriculum map for each prep, I also know how important it is to maintain an open mind towards adjustments and flexibility of practice. As I get to know my students through formative assessment and other data points, I refine my curriculum map as a way to be intentional about differentiation.

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