Sunday, April 28, 2013

Fourth and FINAL Observation!

I had my last observation this past Thursday! Finally, Dr. Shannon came to observe a period that is fairly well-behaved and rather academic. I'm not going to lie here, they're pretty much my favorite class.  The period started off pretty well...so far as I saw it, the students didn't really seem to mind Dr. Shannon's presence in the room, and they did not act any differently than they would have if she had not been there. I got the students settled down a bit and instructed them to pull out their TKAM books and reader response journals from the night before. I instructed them to split up into pairs and compare/discuss what they had written in their RRJs. After a  few minutes, I instructed them to select one passage and develop one question they had about the chapters they had read the night before. Once they had done this, I put polleverywhere.com on the screen and directed the pairs to submit one question and one passage. They were also to attach their name to the text. We used their text submissions as a structure for our class discussion that day.

The discussion was incredibly successful. The students were very opinionated on the details of the upcoming trial in the novel and Atticus's involvement/motives/intentions as lawyer for the black defendant. The students were active and engaged throughout the entire period. Though, many reminders were needed for students to raise hands and not talk over one another.

I'd say the only downfall, if you can call it that, of this lesson was that the students were so engaged and fired up about one question, that we spent the entire class discussing it. We were not able to get to any summarization activity. I'm more than okay with that though. And now, I await Dr. Shannon's post observation conference. 

Monday, April 15, 2013

Second Placement, First Observation

My first observation in my new placement occurred this past week. I was slightly nervous to have Dr. Shannon come an observe my 9th graders as they are not necessarily the most well-behaved students. Dr. Shannon cam in for my third period class on the day after the students had finished reading The Odyssey and had also completed the final test on the text. The very first part of class was devoted to going over the correct answers to the test as a class. This went fairly smoothly and we moved on to the next part of class. I wanted my students to do something more than just read, quiz, and test; The Odyssey is just too neat of a story for that. So, I created a project for my students that provided them with three different options for completion. The handout with the three options appears below.
I believe that the options provide enough diversity that the students should not have any trouble picking one that they would be interested in. During class, I explained my expectations for the project overall and my individual expectations for each of the three options. I ran into some behavior issues when it came to explaining the Fake Facebook option. For this one, I made an example so that my students would fully understand what I was looking for in their projects. Once I showed my students the example, however, several of them got off task asking me if I had a Facebook and then talking about how they were going to find it. I tried divert them from this off-topic conversation and bring them back to what we were supposed to be talking about. Unfortunately, there is always that one student who just won't let it go. In retrospect, I probably gave this student far too many chances as he continually talked. I've been working on that since the observation. After going over the individual expectations, I answered questions.I instructed the students to use the last five minutes of class to begin brainstorming and outlining their project ideas on the backs of their project papers. 


This is the example that I provided for my students. Overall, I have been pleased with many of the results that I have seen from them.




I think that student behavior will be my ongoing challenge for my 9th graders. Especially, since my co-op is having me begin a two to three week mechanics and usage unit with them.....engagement is going to be a struggle for that amount of time. 

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Second Observation & End of Placement

Dr. Shannon came in for her second observation during my ninth period class! I had hoped [again] that she would be able to see my 8th period students, but alas [again] she did not :( It went well anyway though! My classes that day were beginning to type their final drafts in the computer lab. During 9th period, I began class with a do now that instructed the students to write down [in full sentences] their goal for the period. How much did they want to complete on their final drafts? Thinking back on this part of the lesson, I wish I would have called on a few students and had them share what they wrote so that there would be a higher level of accountability. Next time! After the do now, I demonstrated how the final paper should be formatted on the overhead. The students were quite attentive for this, but that was probably due to the fact there was a stranger sitting in the room [no offense]. After this, I allowed the students to begin typing their final drafts. During this time, I made my way around the room answering questions and individually helping students. Apparently the stranger factor didn't last the entire class. In her notes, Dr. Shannon reported that a student [I guesses who it was immediately] got up behind me and started dancing while I wasn't looking in his direction. /sigh. I suppose you can control it all :P I got a little nervous/anxious when I noticed Dr. Shannon talking with small groups of students. The first three girls she talked with are very good students, but the second three are challenging. I feel that, overall, my meeting with Shannon afterward went well too. I think that I'm doing pretty well, but I still have so much to improve on.

All in all, I have really enjoyed my placement here. I am definitely not ready to leave my students and my co-op. I am especially not looking forward to trying to learn all the names of five new classes of students! I am absolutely horrible at learning people's names, and I was just getting completely comfortable with the names and personalities and needs of all of my students at my first placement. Ahhh!


Saturday, February 16, 2013

The First Three Weeks!

The First Week: "Trial by Fire"

The very first week of student teaching at my middle school placement was fraught with altered schedules and impromptu physical fights in the hallways. While this should have scared me enough to request a change of major, I am extremely glad I stuck it out. Unfortunately for my boyfriend, this meant he had to listen to me babble nonstop on the phone every night about what had occurred that day in school. The first week was incredibly enlightening though. I was able to see how my co-op handled stress and the chaos of unexpected changes. This week my co-op and I also began the process of figuring out what I would be teaching and when. With her, I began to construct a general outline of what my 3-4 weeks of teaching would look like. I also began to consider how I would implement my ISLP...this was considerably more challenging :)


The Second Week: "The Takeover"

This week was the beginning of my takeover of English classes. Over the course of the week I picked up a class each day starting with period nine and working my way up to the earlier classes. My co-op and I chose to do it this way so that I could spend the earlier periods observing her and how she taught the day's lesson. This method worked extremely well and I was able to begin learning the students' names and how the school day functioned in a comfortable fashion. My co-op also allowed me to teach a few mini-lessons in our classes. The students seemed to respond well to this and it made me hopeful for the following week when I would be teaching every class with my own lesson plans. When I wasn't teaching during these days, I was conducting observations for both my teaching portfolio and for my ISLP.  With all of that going on, this week was just as chaotic as my first week. I don't think we had a single planning period due to all of the coverages and parent conferences we were responsible for. my co-op actually apologized emphatically at the end of the week for how abnormal the last two weeks were. I just laughed it off, because at that point it was just the norm for me. I look forward to each new day because I never know what is going to happen that day. I think this is a partly what drew me to the teaching profession anyway; I do not want the monotonous routine of the same thing every day.

The Third Week: "Total Control"

This past week, the third week of my student teaching, was the first week I began implementing my own lessons every day. Monday, the very first day, also happened to be the first observation by Dr. Shannon. I was feeling fairly confident in what I had planned for the entire week and was grading papers in my planning period when I suddenly received a text. It was from Dr. Shannon, and she was informing me that she was on her way over to the school now. I went into panic because if she was on her way that moment that meant she was going to observe 6th period instead of 8th period. This may not sound like much to whomever is reading this, but if you know my classes you know that 6th period is my most challenging class. So after I got Dr. Shannon's text I began to panic. I mean, I was already pretty nervous about teaching my own lessons, teaching all of the classes, AND having Dr. Shannon observe....and then I find out she's on her way to see 6th period. I reasoned with myself, however, thinking that both first and second period had already gone extremely well. What could go wrong with teaching it again? Hah. Haha. So, the lesson went well....until I ran out of planned content fifteen minutes before the end of class. I looked back at my co-op who was observing the lesson too and she just had a curious look on her face. I'm fairly sure she also realized how much time remained in the period. Thinking quickly, I just continued with what would be the logical next step for the students in the lesson. As a class, we verbally brainstormed and outlined how we could argue/persuade our administration to not force school uniforms. It worked fairly well, and interestingly enough, in our meeting after Dr. Shannon said she wouldn't have even noticed if I didn't mention it. I enjoyed hearing what Dr. Shannon had to say about everything in our meeting after class. She had many suggestions for how I could improve, and I am grateful for those. I realize how far I have yet to go, but I'm still extremely pleased with the progress I have made thus far. I was the most intrigued to read the 3 pages of observation notes Dr. Shannon sent me the next day. It was really fascinating to see the minute-by-minute break down of how she saw the lesson from the back. Beyond the observation on Monday, the rest of the week went swimmingly. My co-op was out of Tuesday and Friday. I really enjoyed these two days because my students seemed to give me more respect and authority. The best part of this was when she was out on Tuesday, they had other teachers from the building come and do coverages rather than hiring a sub for the day. It was neat to get feedback from each teacher [three of which were English teachers from other grades] who observed. Even better, the next day my co-op hear from almost every teacher who had coverage in there, and they all had great things to say about my lesson and teaching! It was really gratifying.

& Etc...

A little before I sat down to write this blog I went to visit my aunt and uncle. I found it a little alarming when they both informed me that the spaces under each of my eyes look dark and bruised. I hadn't thought that I was overwhelmingly stressed or that I wasn't getting enough sleep, but sure enough when I looked in the mirror, there they were!

Wednesday, December 5, 2012

R is for Reflection!

While this class has been a whirlwind and kind of crazy, it has also been incredibly fun and exceedingly helpful!

When I first started to consider becoming a teacher [think like 2nd grade Nicole...14-15 years ago...when people still called me 'Nikki'. If you need some context, check out the blonde girl in the ugly green dress with the white collar on the far right of the third row from the top] it was always that far off concept of when I grow up. Well, here we are...rounding out our last undergrad classes ever...preparing for next semester's student teaching. It's real. It's scary. But here we all are. Fortunately while I was growing up, I was only ever asked what I wanted to be when I grew up; no one ever asked me why when I responded with, "a teacher!". For the first time I need to explain why I believe teaching English is the right profession for me. Between methods and the Teach for America application process, I have been asked whyyy so many times. Well, here it is. I'll tell you why. I want to be an English teacher for three reasons: One, the teachers in my life have had so much of an impact in making me who I am today. With their help, I graduated high school, got into college, and have almost finished college (among many, many other things)! I want to have a similar, positive impact on my own students. Two, I don't know what I would do with a ton of money if I had a high-paying job. Becoming a teacher will provide me with just enough! :) And the third reason kind of solidified after spending a week at the NCTE conference. I came to realize that I really enjoy working with the people in this field, and I feel like I fit in here :) It also doesn't hurt that I've been living with a high school English teacher for the last four or so years. 
But what kind of teacher am I going to be? This is a question that has both intrigued and worried me for the las two or three semesters. I spent many of my classes here at Ship and back in high school observing the many different types of teachers and how they make it work. I know for sure that I do not want to be an overly boring or strict teacher, but I also do not want to be that super fun, pushover teacher [or any of the teachers on the left really]. I want to be a fun teacher who is also effective. I want to have that class that the students are actually excited to attend and experience. I also really want to use nontraditional texts in my classroom....but at this point, until I'm employed, that is an auxiliary desire. Anyway, I'm rambling. Carrying on with this blog post! I think that this semester has been rather crazy...what with classes, jobs, clubs, attempting to have a social life....I'm still not entirely sure how I've made it this far. I mean...apart from employing sleep deprivation to get everything done...I'm honestly not sure how I'm finally at the end of my undergrad career, but it feels pretty awesome! As far as this semester goes, there have been three major things that have influenced and solidified my continuing desire to be an English teacher.

  • NCTE & Vegas:  I was super super nervous to attend this conference on the other side of the country! All of my worries were for nought though. Honestly, every single person we met at the conference was incredibly nice and welcoming. Everyone was eager to chat and get to know one another. At the end of the conference Travis and I had the opportunity to meet Kylene Beers, an author on adolescent literacy, via Twitter and then in person. She wanted to help out a few pre-service teachers and decided to gift us her giant box of books that everyone received coming into the ALAN Workshop. It was so selflessly kind of her...it was freaking awesome. These kind of experiences occurred over and over during the whole trip. Furthermore, the panel that Dr. Shannon, Travis, Heather, and I put on was so well received. We had people talking to us directly after the panel and pretty much every day after as well. It was a really awesome experience!
  • Teach for America:  This has been a crazy process. When I first looked into it all I could see were the infinite steps one had to take and the hoops I needed to jump through; it was all incredibly intimidating. Somehow, I made it through the entire process and was offered to attend a final interview. I accepted and traveled to George Washington University in DC on 12/3 to do so. It was actually really fun! It was an all day event with about 12 other applicants from the area (I traveled the furthest distance, bleh). We all taught quick (and by quick I mean 5 minute max) lessons, participated in some group activities, and attended a few sessions. After all of this, we were allowed a lunch break. Given we were in the heart of DC, about five of us decided to go explore together for a few hours until our personal interviews. We ended up at some Mediterranean restaurant where we ate outside and got to know each other  I was really interesting to hear from others why they wanted to teach, why they decided to pursue TFA, and just their general background/life stories. If I get accepted into this program, I am excited to work with people just like them :) 
  • Pre-Student Teaching: This has been a particularly interesting step in the whole college process. My original placements were at Central Dauphin East Middle and High schools. First first two full days in each school found me driving the hour home and wondering what the hell I was getting myself into. The students and schools that I encountered were nothing like what I remembered from middle school and high school. I grew up in a bubble of a suburb. Not a whole lot of diversity to be found. CD East is the complete opposite of what I've grown accustomed to. Frankly, I was ready to just go ahead and pull a Walt White (for those of you who are familiar with Breaking Bad) and find something completely different to go and do. But, I couldn't really pull myself together to try and do something like that, so I just kept going back to the schools and soon they started to grow on me. The students are rather awesome and not nearly as intimidating as they started off as. And while I have a new placement for my high school for actual student teaching, I am really looking forward to going back to CD East Middle school!
The mystery now becomes student teaching. What will it be like? How overwhelmed are we going to be? Will our students like us and want to learn with us? I've met with my first co-op and, like I said before, I am really excited to work with her again. I'm looking forward to her email in the next week or two that will give me some clue as to what I need to start prepping for January. As of now, I'm pretty calm about it all, but come that email I'm sure the panicking will start. My co-op commented that she is glad I don't start in the classroom until a few weeks after the break; she wants time to warn them of my soon-to-be presence. So, future students, brace yourselves. I'll see you in a month.

As for the rest of you from methods... We've sort of made it to adulthood! Whatever that means.

Monday, November 12, 2012

Teaching Grammar and Grading Papers!


Over the last few weeks in my placement at Central Dauphin East Middle and High School, I have been able to read over a large amount of student writing. I was even allowed to bring some fiction stories that my 8th graders wrote home to grade on my own. These experiences weighed in heavily when it came to reading Image Grammar and "The English Teacher's Red Pen: History of an Obsession".  To begin, I would like to discuss a quote from the "Red Pen" paper: "I'll read your paper only until I get to the third error, then I'll stop and send it back," or "If you have more than two errors in your paper, it's an automatic F" (Zemelmen and Daniels 2). The mere fact that this is something any teacher would consider an option scares the crap out of me. Are these the kinds of people I am going to be teaching alongside of? How is it plausible to anyone that this would be a helpful teaching strategy for correcting students' errors? If this were my co-op's grading policy (it is NOT) about 95% of her students would have failed the last paper. They're not going to learn from a grading policy like that. My co-op has observed that if she overloads her students' papers with corrections they will glance at them and then simply toss them in the trash can. This isn't what I want from my students; I want them to want to improve! Perhaps this is too idealistic of me, but so be it. It shouldn't be about the quantity of errors...it should be about the category of errors. What are the common errors in the class? What are the common trends in writing (both good and bad) for each individual student?

As far as teaching grammar goes there are two methods I would like to play around with. One would be to hold certain designated "grammar days". My high school co-op devotes every Wednesday to grammar activities and instruction. I haven't been observing and present in the classroom long enough to measure if this method is as effective as possible. But to me, it seems as if the students appreciate knowing exactly what they will be doing every Wednesday. Because they know what to expect, they seem more comfortable in the classroom and ready to sit down and focus on grammar for about 45 minutes (we have really short class periods). Another would be to give mini grammar lessons when my students show that they do not fully understand a particular concept. Every class I teach is going to be different, so why set grammar lessons in stone?  I could also use the mini grammar lesson idea to introduce new skills right before my students will need them. This goes along with what I have learned from James Gee and his learning principles. His "Explicit information On-Demand and Just-in-Time Principle" states that the learner is given explicit information both on-demand and just-in-time, when the learner needs it or just at the point when the information can be best understood and used in practice. 

The "Red Pen" Piece
"For example, parents do very little evaluation or correction of their young children's early speech. They don't give two-year-olds feedback about their placement of adjectives relative to nouns or about the quality of their subordinate clauses...Junior will not go off to college saying 'I no like chemistry,' but  it won't be because his parents started correcting his earliest errors in the crib" (Zemelmen and Daniels 4).

don't explicitly say what is wrong but respond in the correct fashion. And he definitely picks up on it. Poor thing, living with an English teacher and an English major.

"In writing, on the other hand, we think that every word that every kid ever writes must pass beneath a teacher's red pen. And kids who risk writing anything imperfect, exploratory, playful, or over their heads are tld, in effect, "This is terrible. You flunk. Don't try this again until you can do it perfectly"(Zemelmen and Daniels 5). This quote made me think of a scenario in a piece I had to read for Teach for America. The piece was called "Assessment Through the Student's Eyes" and it discussed ways that current assessment practices simply segregate our students into those who succeed and those who fail, and from that, how these practices only serve to perpetuate these feelings in students. The piece proposed a few ideas for fixing this, and you can read them by clicking HERE! The scenario I am talking specifically about goes something like this:

Scenario 2: Help Students Turn Failure into Success
          Here is an illustration of assessment for learning in mathematics used to help a struggling elementary student find the path to recovery from a chronic sense of failure. Notice how the teacher highlights the meaning of success and turns the responsibility over to the student. In addition, notice how the learner has already begun to internalize the keys to her own success.
          Gail is a 5th grader who gets her math test back with “60 percent” marked at the top. She knows this means another F. So her losing streak continues, she thinks. She's ready to give up on ever connecting with math.
          But then her teacher distributes another paper—a worksheet the students will use to learn from their performance on the math test. What's up with this? The worksheet has several columns. Column one lists the 20 test items by number. Column two lists what math proficiency each item tested. The teacher calls the class's attention to the next two columns: Right and Wrong. She asks the students to fill in those columns with checks for each item to indicate their performance on the test. Gail checks 12 right and 8 wrong.
          The teacher then asks the students to evaluate as honestly as they can why they got each incorrect item wrong and to check column five if they made a simple mistake and column six if they really don't understand what went wrong. Gail discovers that four of her eight incorrect answers were caused by careless mistakes that she knows how to fix. But four were math problems she really doesn't understand how to solve.
          Next, the teacher goes through the list of math concepts covered item by item, enabling Gail and her classmates to determine exactly what concepts they don't understand. Gail discovers that all four of her wrong answers that reflect a true lack of understanding arise from the same gap in her problem-solving ability: subtracting 3-digit numbers with regrouping. If she had just avoided those careless mistakes and had also overcome this one gap in understanding, she might have received 100 percent. Imagine that! If she could just do the test over . . .
          She can. Because Gail's teacher has mapped out precisely what each item on the test measures, the teacher and students can work in partnership to group the students according to the math concepts they haven't yet mastered. The teacher then provides differentiated instruction to the groups focused on their conceptual misunderstandings. Together the class also plans strategies that everyone can use to avoid simple mistakes. When that work is complete, the teacher gives students a second form of the same math test. When Gail gets the test back with a grade of 100 percent, she jumps from her seat with arms held high. Her winning streak begins (Stiggins, Arter, Chappuis, & Chappuis, 2004; Scenario 2 adapted by permission).

I think this method (though used in a math class--ewwww) is awesome for both improving students' work and increasing their opinions on their own abilities. If we could integrate a practice like this into our classrooms our students would be so much better off!




If you're at all interested, or even still reading at this point, one of my favorite comic/grammar/generally awesome websites is The Oatmeal. You should definitely check it out.

Friday, October 19, 2012

Is the way we're teaching writing right?

In my high school experience, writing was a straightforward and nearly always boring task. Rarely were we asked to write about topics and issues that were of interest to us as individuals. I hated, and still rather dislike, writing analytical pieces for my English classes. I did (and do!) love to write. In high school, I spent a large amount of my time writing and editing fan fiction. Every November for the last five years I've participated in NaNoWriMo. These two things, along with frequent blogging, are the enjoyable writing endeavors I participate in. After reading these last few chapters of Teaching Adolescent Writers, I've found many different writing activities and starters that I think students would genuinely enjoy.

Chapter Five:
Gallagher opens this chapter with a quote that I rather like, "writing anchors a literate life". Shortly after this, he outlines how allowing students choice in writing is beneficial. One, "Choice fosters a feeling of ownership in the writer" (91). If the student isn't personally vested or at least interested in what they are writing about, the writing they produce isn't going to be their best work. Letting students chose what they write about allows them to own what they write and enjoy it. Two, "Choice drives better revision" (91). We can require our students to revise their writing over and over, but they're not going to put solid effort into meaningful revisions unless it's something they are interested in.

"Pass the Portrait"
I particularly enjoyed this activity Gallagher described. Each student gets an unusual picture when they come into class and begins writing based on what they interpret from the picture. After a few minutes, they pass their picture and what they have written to the person next to them and, after viewing the new picture and reading over what has already been written, the student starts up writing from where the last bit ended. The process is repeated a few times and then students group up and share what they have written. They pick the best one and then, as a class, the groups share their picks. I think this is a wonderful idea; it combines images, creative writing, and collaboration.  I think it would be interesting to do a version of this where the class is first split into groups and each group is given the same set of pictures. They preform the same activity, but at the end it would be interesting to compare how identical pictures potentially produced different results in writing. I think the students would find it interesting to see how their interpretations differed from their fellow classmates' ideas.

"I am an expert"
I also liked this idea from Gallagher. It would be a good method of teaching idea generation and allowing students to, again, chose what they're writing about. Gallagher started this chapter off by discussing how difficult it is to balance student choice and standards. I think that this activity could easily be manipulated to include both choice and standards. If the students were to select an idea from what they are experts in, they could turn their idea into a persuasive paper. For example, if a student were an expert in skiing they could write a paper/essay convincing readers that skiing is better than snowboarding. This is an idea that I will likely employ in my own classroom.

Chapter Six:
What I took most out of this chapter is how beneficial it is for students to be writing for someone other than their teachers. I think it is a wonderful motivator for students to know that they are both writing for a purpose and that their writing means something. Gallagher had his students write to their local politicians when a few local issues came up that impacted the students. This was a wonderful way to teach students the purpose in writing and how your audience is important. I would like to use this concept in my classroom.

"Targeted Bulletin Boards"
There were many of Gallagher's ideas in this chapter that I just couldn't see myself using. Many of them seemed to highlight so few students, leaving many in the dust. The targeted bulletin board is one idea that I could definitely see myself employing. I would display different features of writing (corresponding with whatever I was teaching/emphasizing at the time) so that multiple students could be featured on a rotating basis. Students would know that there would be more of an audience than me reading their papers and thus, take more time and effort constructing and editing their writing.

"Promote Writing Contests"
After helping with Sigma Tau Delta's writing contest last semester, I've seen how excited students can get over competing with their fellow classmates. I think this is definitely something I will encourage/organize in my school. The students have the opportunity to enter any writing they want [choiceeeee] and are elated when they win. Something Sigma Tau Delta also does is get a book bound with all of the winning pieces for each of the students. This gives them something to keep and remember. We also gave a copy to their English Teacher for the classroom, this ties back to Gallagher's idea on having collections of student work for current students to peruse.

Blogging!
I started blogging about seven years ago. Never did I ever ever think that it was something I would be *allowed* to use in my classroom. Gallagher mentions it as a growing trend among students in his classroom. He glosses over one of the biggest potentials I think blogging offers. Anonymity. Students could write freely and openly on anonymous blogs and expand their writing skills along the way. All the blogs could be connected so that the class could read each other's blogs and comment anonymously. It is a win-win situation! This is something I will definitely use in my classroom.


I shall end this exceedingly long post with some relevant and [imho] wonderful quotes:


“It seemed so obvious now that it was too late: a story was a form of telepathy. By means of inking symbols onto a page, she was able to send thoughts and feelings from her mind to her reader’s. It was a magical process, so commonplace that no one stopped to wonder at it. Reading a sentence and understanding it were the same thing; as with the crooking of a finger, nothing lay between them. There was no gap dug during which the symbols were unraveled. You saw the word ‘castle’, and it was there, seen from some distance, with woods in high summer spread before it, the air bluish and soft with smoke rising from the blacksmith’s forge, and a cobbled road twisting away in the green shade…”

Ian McEwan, Atonement, Page 35



“What authors mean doesn’t really matter, I don’t think. What’s important is that critical reading can be a way of thinking quite deeply about questions that are difficult and complicated and not in some like boring and abstract way like “Oh, in Moby Dick white is a symbol for nature’s ambivalence to man.” But instead in like a concrete and totally interesting way like, “Nature’s complete indifference to you, as expressed by the color white in Moby Dick, is something that you had better get your head around or else you’re going to end up like Captain Ahab.” So it’s not so much about uncovering secret mysteries for the sake of uncovering secret mysteries, it’s about using story as a way into thinking about our actual lives and how we’re actually living them.”
— 
John Green, Question Tuesday! Paula Deen Riding Me (and critical reading) 6/16/2011