Of all the prototyping I have done this past school year, this one was actually the hardest. It wasn’t difficult to do, per se, but the ideas I had in my head were far more intricate and involved. I was unable to make the Annotation Poster look as much like an infographic or a map as I wanted to. I think this is because it would have been too difficult to do so, even for an adult. I had to keep myself to a less complex style: no lines connecting phrases to explanatory notes, no artistic arrangement of note “bubbles”, and far fewer notes than I’d imagined… I was able to create something, though, even though it was late. The poster I created pointed out to me the changes I’d want when it came time to for students to undertake the same project: I’d want to have them provide the research they did to fill the poster, perhaps on an annotation notecatcher; I’d want to have a more locked down rubric for what would need to be included in the poster; perhaps it would be nice to have a QR code that would bring up an audio version of the poem for people at Exhibition… Going through the prototyping process brings up new ideas that may not have surfaced otherwise.

I love coming up with projects and lessons from scratch, but I fear that I overthink, and rabbit hole, and otherwise make the process longer than it needs to be, which eats into the finite amount of time I have to do these things. It is hard for me to focus, and even harder to un-focus, and this is a challenge I am working on. How do teachers not let excitement lead them into a joyous, extended frenzy of planning and building?

Here is the poster I made as a prototype:

And here is the Project Handout:

2 Sided Thems Fighting Words

825KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The front of the handout is something I am reasonably proud of, despite it probably not meeting accessibility standards:

Finally, here’s the Backwards Project Planner:

Kristin Copy Of Backwards Design Project Planner W Crp

286KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

• Kristin’s Education & Humanities Links (the whole list - I am working on breaking it down into proper categories)

Not Waving But Drowning

by Stevie Smith

Nobody heard him, the dead man,
But still he lay moaning:
I was much further out than you thought
And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking
And now he’s dead
It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,
They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always
(Still the dead one lay moaning)
I was much too far out all my life
And not waving but drowning.

No one needs to hear my story of learning and listening and becoming less racist. Most people my age were taught similar things: Columbus was a great explorer who discovered the Americas, indigenous people were violent and easily duped savages, the people who moved west to map out and invade further were “explorers” and “pioneers”, the North beat the South thereby ending slavery and racial persecution, industry and capitalism built this great country, and all is now well. Of course there were teachers who made the message truer, but the textbooks and curricula needed help, and the best source we had outside of family members who knew better was Mr. Rogers, Sesame Street and some books we might find in the library. My entire life has been a slow crawl into knowing better, and toward being part of the necessary change. A large part of this has been questioning more things, especially the things that have gone unquestioned, working toward becoming a better listener, and a keener judge of source.

All of this blather is to say: when I was trying to come up with a tagline for this site1 that was both pertinent and a slight non-sequitur (as is my wont), I came up with “Do you even like fish?” I’d been overthinking the played out axiom about giving a man fish versus showing him how to handle a rod, and the list of questions generated by my brain-swirl went something like this:

• What if the person is, for whatever circumstance of physical configuration, unable to fish?

• What if they have a seafood allergy?

• What if there are no bodies of water nearby?

• What if they are veg(etari)an?

• What if catching fish would throw off a currently delicate ecosystem?

• What if fish are sacred?

• What if they just don’t like fish?

In other words, are giving someone carp and carping at them about getting their own d*mned carp the only two options available? I know that the fishy saying is a simplified version of an idea, but picking at it made me think, which isn’t a bad thing, most times. This kind of re-aiming of the mental and societal lens is key to fomenting change, and we got a fine example of this skill in our first week of class: The producers of the “Seeing White” season of Scene on Radio provided us a beautifully uncomfortable lesson about race and the construct of whiteness by focusing on the palest of us, which was a new - for me - way of viewing it. Take a listen, and head out onto all the paths that branch from it.

There is more than one way to teach any one thing, and more than one answer to any one question2, and I cannot wait to teach and learn.

I am of the basement

I am of the basement

I am of the slow, echoing descent on wooden steps into the dank darkness.

I am of the Lightswitch of Immediate Banishment at the bottom landing that exiles Basementmonsters with an upward flick.

I am of well-window eyes, high on each wall, glassy beyond sobriety, and lidded with old, webby valences, but still watching... watching.

I am of an atmosphere of scents: sawdust, garlic, must, dill, laundry soap, dust.

I am of the goosebumping chill of a stained-rust-red cement floor against a summer-sweaty body.

I am of the perceived security of visible load-bearing pillars and cinderblock walls, and I am of those who sheltered with me, securely, when tornado sirens blared.

I am of the liminal and mysterious:

     laundry chutes,

     dark corners,

     spaces under stairs,

     the midnight depth of the sump,

     and the unknowable world on the other side of the well-windows

I am of treasures found and sometimes shared:

     baskets of polished rocks,

     a freezer full of cow,

     a crock full of pickles,

     a year's worth of ball jarred veg and jam on floor to ceiling shelves.

I am of a quiet classroom filled with unintentional education:

     forts made of sheets over furniture,

     mom's art supplies,

     a pool table and dart board full of physics and geometry,

     an armchair and a stack of books from the bookmobile,

     scraps of wood and my own ball-peen hammer (with secret, hidden screwdriver),

     geology sets, chemistry sets, erector sets,

     and a set of 1953 World Book Encyclopedias which smelled like all the knowledge in the world.

I am of the pause, the mental preparation needed to go back up the stairs, knowing that when the switch is flipped down, the basement belongs to the Basementmonsters...

I, too, may be a Basementmonster.

I am of the basement.

• I start class tomorrow at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education, in the hope of becoming a high school English teacher by obtaining a California Preliminary Teaching Credential through San Diego Teacher Residency, and a Master’s degree in Teaching & Learning.

• Toward the end of August, I will join my mentor teacher in their classroom for the 2025/26 school year (the residency part of the program listed above).

I am less anxious about the coursework, to be honest… Or perhaps I should say, I am familiarly anxious about the coursework, while I am not sure how to be anxious about teaching. I am sure that I will learn the right ways to be anxious before the first week of class is done.

I want to share a few things that are keeping me level, and even eager (alongside all the other emotions) as I head off to bed. The first is something I have been using to pump myself up and chase away worry whenever I start a new adventure, big or small. I even have the text of OG internet creator Ze Frank’s “Invocation for Beginnings” as a poster on my office wall:

I also want to leave here, as a reminder and a silly show of gratitude, this comic, representative of how lucky and happy I am to have people cheering me on, checking in on me, and confident in my abilities. I am a fortunate person, and I know it. I will do my best to return the love and support to you all.

Here we go, Cohort 8! We’ve got this!