ETA 11/17/14:
Congratulations to Miss Maichael, the winner of a copy of Revision Decisions from Stenhouse Publishers!
Revision is always the most difficult step of the writing process for my high school students. They’ve had the writing process ingrained into their classes for so long that they can’t envision the process as anything but linear. Draft, write, revise, edit, hand in. When we talk about revision they tend to lump it together with editing and they are reluctant to do the meaty work of revision: adding and deleting ideas, trying new words and sentence structures, working within the text. 
That’s why I am so excited about Jeff Anderson and Deborah Dean’s newest book, Revision Decisions: Talking Through Sentences and Beyond. The book provides teachers with lesson plans and ideas for helping students through the process of revision in fun and interesting ways. I was so excited to get the chance to speak to Jeff and Deborah about the book and I had a few questions for them. Hopefully, their answers inspire you to go out and purchase a copy of Revision Decisions: Talking Through Sentences and Beyond. Stenhouse has also generously offered to run a giveaway for one copy of the book. To enter, leave a comment on this post! Q: Thank you so much for stopping by the blog today! I think that revision is the hardest step of the writing process for teachers to focus on in school and as a high school teacher I know it’s the step that my students writers most often skip. However, right at the beginning of the book you and Deborah Dean state, “True writers revise”. In a school system where standardized tests only value quick, rough drafts, how do teachers help students value revision? Jeff: Great question. A few things come to mind. This same conundrum faces middle and elementary teachers as well as your high school students. First, when we revise often, our first drafts get better each time, right out of the chute. So, the playing with sentences we call for in Revision Decisions lessons, prime our writers best craft to the surface. In exploration and discovery of how sentences can be put together, young writers minds are opened to possibility. These possibilities eventually get applied (sometimes with our nudges). As the Writing Next report (2007) concludes sentence combining is a proven pedagogy for improving student writing in grades 4-12. So there’s that. But also most standardized writing test have a test on revision, editing, and grammar. To pick the best sentences, students need practice at this kind of evaluating, and this is just the kind of practice they’ll get in Revision Decision lessons. Deborah: We’ve had quite a few teachers ask this question; there is so much concern about testing! But we both believe (and our work with student writers seems to show) that this kind of playing with sentences improves even students’ one-shot writing, which is often all they have time for on tests. After this kind of playing around with sentences and paragraphs, they have more ways of using language effectively stored in their heads, so they can use it spontaneously as well as in situations where they have time to revise and craft more carefully. Q: I promise this will be the only other question about standardized testing! Whether it’s the upcoming PARCC/Smarter Balance tests or the SAT/ACT, standardized tests force students to rush through writing an essay in 25-45 minutes. Is it possible for students to do any type of revising in these situations? Should we encourage students to revise in these situations?t Jeff and Deborah: If they have a moment to revise, great. If they don’t, then that’s not what’s being tested. I think the evaluative talk that Revision Decisions is built upon will, as I stated earlier, make them better drafters. Drafters who know more options and who are used to making sense and crafting for understanding and clarity should do well. But back to the actual revision–if time. I always say a reread is great idea. After that, I encourage students to look at the lead and conclusion. This is where you set the first and last impression before the paper is scored. I know the first read is really editing, but if they tinker with the intro and conclusion, that’s revision;-) Q: What is your revision process like? Jeff: Oh, man. That’s such a good question. I am a spewer. I plan less than most and find my shape, structure, and sometimes my message by drafting and freewriting little snippets until I find my access point. That said, I end up with a lot of writing that needs to be revised. First I revise for big things. This usually involves reading it aloud to a not-so-critical friend. I can find a lot of bumps in simply reading it aloud, but the questions the reader asks help too. Then I go and try this a few more times, all the while, tightening sentences structures, varying or tidying. I also have enjoyed the ability to cut and paste a sentence or passage that isn’t working in a new document and then mess with it there. If I do it right in my file, sometimes I mess it up. This copy and pasting in a new “play” doc allows me to take greater risks and not fear “messing it up.” Deborah: This is a really interesting question to pose to two writers who have just collaborated and, in the process, entwined their writing processes. I probably plan a little more than Jeff, but I still tend to be a writer who writes my way into what I have to say. In that way, Jeff and I were somewhat alike. We wrote a lot at first! We would, literally, talk about the general idea of a section and then pass the laptop between us to compose alternate paragraphs at times. Jeff mentions talking—and I think that was the biggest thing. We talked a lot! On the phone and in person. Early in the process, we had worked out a broad framework and had written more than half the book when we had some extended time to talk. All of a sudden, Jeff said, “I think we need to approach this differently.” I remember thinking, “NO! We’ve got so much done!” We talked. At first, I resisted his revision suggestion—not because of the idea of it but because of the work of it. I think students are often in that space, too. By talking it out, I could see the ways Jeff’s new framework would improve the overall book. So, then we went back and rewrote, moved parts around, and drafted new parts. We did a LOT of reading aloud during revision, too. And the talk at that point, too, benefitted us. Not just in hearing the words aloud but also in deciding if they really said what we wanted them to say. Jeff is very playful with language; I am more straightforward. We had to hear our words to make sure they say what we wanted them to and in the way we wanted them. Q: I love that the lessons in the book bring grammar lessons into the revision process. It’s a natural fit but not one I have seen presented very often. Instead, grammar seems to fall under “editing” in the writing process in the eyes of many teachers and students. Do you see editing and revising as separate steps or is more of a “you can’t have one without the other” situation? Jeff: My friend Kelly Gallagher and I have chomped on this a bit in conversation. I do see grammar as part of revision. Almost all grammatical structures embed detail in a economic, sometimes musical way. So separate. Sure. But not really. Just as when I revise, I draft again often. My go to phrase is from Donald Graves: “The enemy is orthodoxy.” That is the only enemy of writing process. Those who try to over pigeon hole or programatize it into expensive kits. Process is messy and goes in and out. To me, it all mixes in eventually. Am I sounding like a hippie? Deborah: Jeff is a little bit hippie! J But he is definitely right. We can make generalizations about separating editing and revising, but in reality they often blend into each other. If we try too hard to make the distinction, separating the two processes too distinctly, some writers feel shut down. In the book’s lessons, concepts of punctuation are entwined with the language concepts because punctuation often affects meaning. It’s not only about correctness. So if meaning is revision and punctuation is editing, how can we do this kind of thinking unless we’re willing to muddy the boundaries a bit? Q: And last but not least, something a little fun. What are you reading right now? Jeff: I’m working like crazy on my middle grade book, so on a my way to a retreat with Linda Urban, I am reading A Crooked Kind of Perfect. Deborah: My grandfather grew up in the early 1900s and didn’t get past the 8th grade in school, but he was one of the most active readers I have ever known. He always had more than one book going at once, and I’m afraid I take after him. Right now, some of the books I am actively in the middle of are these: This House of Sky by Ivan Doig, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot (finally getting to this after it’s been in my to-read stack for a year), and The Encyclopedia of Me by Karen Rivers. I just finished two picture books I am still thinking about how to use as mentor texts: Whimsey’s Heavy Things and An Armadillo in Paris, both by Julie Kraulis. Thanks so much for stopping by, Jeff and Deborah! I’m looking forward to using your strategies with my high schoolers! GIVEAWAY INFORMATION:
- This giveaway is for a copy of Revision Decisions: Talking Through Sentences and Beyond, courtesy of Stenhouse Publishers.
- For a chance to win this copy of Revision Decisions, please leave a comment on this post by Monday, November 17th at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time. I’ll use a random number generator to pick the winner, who will be contacted via email.
- Please be sure to leave a valid e-mail address when you post your comment, so I can contact you if you win. Stenhouse will be shipping the book to you, so I will share your mailing address with them.
Thanks to Eric Devine, author of the new Press Play, for stopping by today! I’m always on the lookout for great books that deal with sports and Eric’s newest book is making its way around my room as I type this. I asked Eric if he would be kind enough to share some of his favorite/most recommended sports books and he was kind enough to do so.
On my whistle:
Sports books are best when the sport is a backdrop, a canvas used to explore greater aspects of society and humanity. I think that is why even though I’ve written two sports books––even one listed as a Booklist “Best of”––I don’t think of myself as someone who writes sports books. But I do, and those, like mine, that use the court or the field as a means to an end, rise to the top with the exciting world of athletics, while grounding that action in the reality of those who play.
Therefore, my sports picks focus on stories that can, at times, juke us with the game, while showing us so much more about ourselves.
All the novels listed below come from my reading or from popular books among my students (I teach High School English), and all blurbs and images are from Goodreads.
Deadline
by Chris Crutcher
Goodreads: Ben Wolf has big things planned for his senior year. Had big things planned. Now what he has is some very bad news and only one year left to make his mark on the world.
How can a pint-sized, smart-ass seventeen-year-old do anything significant in the nowheresville of Trout, Idaho?
First, Ben makes sure that no one else knows what is going on—not his superstar quarterback brother, Cody, not his parents, not his coach, no one. Next, he decides to become the best 127-pound football player Trout High has ever seen; to give his close-minded civics teacher a daily migraine; and to help the local drunk clean up his act.
And then there’s Dallas Suzuki. Amazingly perfect, fascinating Dallas Suzuki, who may or may not give Ben the time of day. Really, she’s first on the list.
Living with a secret isn’t easy, though, and Ben’s resolve begins to crumble . . . especially when he realizes that he isn’t the only person in Trout with secrets.
My take: Fantastic premise, period. What do you want to do with the time you have left? How do you want to be remembered? And how can you use football to prove to yourself that fear is the only thing holding you back?
Ball Don’t Lie
by Matt de la Pena
Goodreads: Sticky is a beat-around-the-head foster kid with nowhere to call home but the street, and an outer shell so tough that no one will take him in. He started out life so far behind the pack that the finish line seems nearly unreachable. He’s a white boy living and playing in a world where he doesn’t seem to belong.
But Sticky can ball. And basketball might just be his ticket out . . . if he can only realize that he doesn’t have to be the person everyone else expects him to be.
A breakout urban masterpiece by newcomer Matt de la Peña, Ball Don’t Lie takes place where the street and the court meet and where a boy can be anything if he puts his mind to it.
My take: What’s there not to enjoy? Alost soul, looking for a path, and finding more than just his skills are valuable, so is he.
Stupid Fast
by Geoff Herbach
Goodreads: I, Felton Reinstein, am Stupid Fast. Seriously. The upper classmen used to call me Squirrel Nut, because I was little and jumpy. Then, during sophomore year, I got tall and huge and so fast the gym teachers in their tight shorts fell all over themselves. During summer, three things happened all at once. First, the pee-smelling jocks in my grade got me to work out for football, even though I had no intention of playing. Second, on my paper route the most beautiful girl I have ever seen moved in and played piano at 6 a.m. Third, my mom, who never drinks, had some wine, slept in her car, stopped weeding the garden, then took my TV and put it in her room and decided she wouldn’t get out of bed.
Listen, I have not had much success in my life. But suddenly I’m riding around in a jock’s pick-up truck? Suddenly I’m invited to go on walks with beautiful girls? So, it’s understandable that when my little brother stopped playing piano and began to dress like a pirate I didn’t pay much attention. That I didn’t want to deal with my mom coming apart.
My take: Here is the classic, sports-can-bring-your-life-to-a-new-level tale, but one that explores how that elevation, that tunnel-vision focus, which reinforces talent, can blind you to the truth, and lead to a terrible fall.
Out of the Pocket
by Bill Konigsberg
Goodreads: Star quarterback Bobby Framingham, one of the most talented high school football players in California, knows he’s different from his teammates. They’re like brothers, but they don’t know one essential thing: Bobby is gay. Can he still be one of the guys and be honest about who he is? When he’s outed against his will by a student reporter, Bobby must find a way to earn back his teammates’ trust and accept that his path to success might be more public, and more difficult, than he’d hoped. An affecting novel about identity that also delivers great sportswriting.
My take: A beautiful use of sports as a dual-edged sword. For many, a chosen sport can be a way to better things, but the social pressure and limited perspective valued can mean that not fitting the stereotype undercuts all your talent. But can an athlete and a team rise above the norm and be something better?
Winger
by Andrew Smith
Goodreads: Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He’s living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he’s madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.
With the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics, Ryan Dean manages to survive life’s complications and even find some happiness along the way. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what’s important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart.
Filled with hand-drawn info-graphics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen’s experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.
My take: The cover says it all: you’re in for one bumpy and volatile ride. But rugby, again, is a metaphor for so much of the other issues at play in this novel. The world is dangerous and mean, and yet we must find comfort and solace in our friends, our teammates, ourselves. Ryan Dean West helps us navigate how that can be.
Shameless self-promotion:
Tap Out
by Eric Devine
Goodreads: Seventeen-year-old Tony Antioch lives in Pleasant Meadows, a trailer park where questions aren’t asked since everyone already knows the answers from their own experience. He dreams of rescuing his mother from her constant stream of abusive boyfriends but in reality can barely duck the punches that are aimed at himself.
When Tony is coerced into joining his friend Rob’s Mixed Martial Arts class, he is surprised to find that he has a talent that he actually wants to develop. But with a meth-dealing biker gang that is hungry for recruits and a vicious cycle of poverty and violence that precedes him, Tony is going to need a lot more than blood and guts to find a way out.
Gritty, powerful, and unapologetic, Tap Out explores what it takes to stay true to oneself and the consequences of the choices made along the way in order to do so.
My take: This is one of the darkest YA-sports books you could read. It is the essence of MMA, brutal and unrelenting, with only way out being through.
Press Play
by Eric Devine
Goodreads: Greg Dunsmore, a.k.a. Dun the Ton, is focused on one thing: making a documentary that will guarantee his admission into the film school of his choice. Every day, Greg films his intense weight-loss focused workouts as well as the nonstop bullying that comes from his classmates. But when he captures footage of violent, extreme hazing by his high school’s championship-winning lacrosse team in the presence of his principal, Greg’s field of view is in for a readjustment.
Greg knows there is a story to be told, but it is not clear exactly what. And his attempts to find out the truth only create more obstacles, not to mention physical harm upon himself. Yet if Greg wants to make his exposé his ticket out of town rather than a veritable death sentence, he will have to learn to play the game and find a team to help him.
Combine the underbelly of Friday Night Lights with the unflinching honesty of Walter Dean Myers, and you will find yourself with Eric Devine’s novel of debatable truths, consequences, and realities.
My take: With the recent events at Sayreville War Memorial High School unfolding, you would be hard pressed to find a more pertinent story to use in order to explore the cycle of violence within athletics. Folded into the story is the question of trust so many athletes and students deal with when it comes to authority. Who do you turn to? What do you do to stop things, especially if you’ve been on the receiving end of the violence? Who are you if you look away?
Huddle up:
I hope you find a title or two or seven that you enjoy. The world of sports is omnipresent, and so it makes sense to read about it, not for the highlights, nor for the statistics, but for the games, the wins and losses, which, when the field is cleared and the bleachers are emptied, help define the individuals that play.
Enjoy.
Bio.
If the recent hazing events at Sayreville War Memorial High School have you searching for resources, please check out my Tumblr, Initiation Secrets.
Eric Devine is the author of multiple works of Young Adult fiction, most recently Dare Me, with Press Play being published 10/28. He is also a veteran high school English teacher who spends as much time teaching as he does completing field research for his novels. His work has been listed by YALSA and Booklist for reluctant readers and for Best in Sports. He is married to his high school sweetheart, and his wife and he have two wonderful daughters and two not-so-wonderful Labradors. Find out more at ericdevine.org, facebook.com/ericdevineauthor, or Twitter: @eric_devine
(A version of this was originally written on 9/11/03, on my personal blog. It has been edited for this posting. I have reposted some version every year since 2003.)
the view I see each year from the beach at home.
I can’t forget. This morning, between classes I was sitting in my car listening to the radio. I listened to the children read off the names of those who perished in the WTC disaster. As I listened to the small voices read the thousands of names, tears ran down my cheeks. I managed to miss hearing the names of anyone I knew, but still…….
I can remember that day like it was yesterday. I remember eating breakfast with one of my best friends, Erin (we barely even knew each other at the time, having moved into our freshman year dorms only a few days earlier). The dining hall had talk radio playing over the speakers and they were talking about the WTC bombing. I remember Erin and I wondering why they were talking about something that had happened in 1993. We tuned out the radio as it became nothing more than white noise in the background. Quickly, we finished breakfast and I went to my Women and Public Policy class.
As my classmates settled into seats in the small lecture hall, our TA, Jen, apologized for having to keep her cell phone on during class. She explained that she had flight reservations later that day, and she needed to keep up on any airport delays due to the incident in the city. That was the first that I heard about a plane crash, as the TV in my room wasn’t hooked up yet. (We had moved in only days earlier). But everyone in class seemed fairly calm. We talked about what had happened for a few minutes, but most of us assumed it was just an errant pilot; a tragedy, but nothing too life-changing for the majority of us. So from 9:50-10:30am we continued on with our normal class schedule, discussing women in the current political system. As class ended I remember walking back to the dorm, over the Hickman Bridge, and hearing people around me say classes were canceled for the rest of the day. Yet I still really had no idea what was going on.
I walked back to my dorm on the other side of campus planning to turn on the news while I got organized for the day. Then I remembered that I didn’t even have a tv (stupid no cable in the dorms). As I walked into the building, you could sense the panic. The stress and tension in the air was palpable. I walked up the 3 flights of stairs to my room and immediately saw that my answering machine was blinking wildly. Each message was from my mother, trying to get in touch with me. I grabbed my cell phone to call her back, but by that time the lines were down.
As I kept hitting the redial button I watched my floormates pace up and down the halls. One of the girls walked past my door no less than 20 times in 2 minutes. She was trying to get ahold of her father, who worked in the Towers. Others were just trying to find their parents even if they didn’t work in the city. Unable to get through to anyone on the phone, I took my cell phone and walked back downstairs to the lounge and sat on the couch with my dormmates, staring at the images that were being flashed on every station on our common room TV. No one spoke.
Still dialing, I headed back upstairs to my computer, sure that I would be able to find more information on the internet. The news anchors were so unsure and so frightened. I finally got through to my mother (while reloading news sites over and over) and she was relieved to hear from me. She told me you could see the flames from the beach by our house, and that there was a huge cloud of smoke and a smell enveloping Middletown. She asked if I wanted to come home, and while I considered it, I chose to stay. I wanted to be with my friends, and admit that the idea of driving home was frightening. None of us knew what was happening or what would happen.
The panic in my dorm just increased all afternoon. My friends and I sat in stunned silence watching the television coverage. At one point, military planes flew over the campus, and people ran for the basement. No one knew what would happen next. That sense of terror was something unimaginable only hours before.
We watched the news for hours on end. I IM’ed and recieved IMs from friends who were at school in the city. People I hadn’t talked to in months came to mind. I went to a tiny high school, 60 kids to a graduating class, and our network of students was reaching out to one another. We just needed to know that everyone was all right. I remember the anxiety we felt while we checked on all the Maryland people, friends who went to school near the Pentagon and Washington, DC. Eighteen years old and we were frantically searching for people just to make sure they were still there.
I will never forget signing on to our high school email network and reading the the public announcements, a forum usually reserved for messages about upcoming school dances and PTA fundraisers. The tragedy began to hit home as some of my peers posted messages asking for the readers to look for names on lists- parents, aunts, uncles, siblings, cousins. As new lists were posted in the media it became more and more apparent that some of those who were missing would not be coming home that night. This wasn’t supposed to happen to people you knew…
Only a few minutes later my mother got through to me again, telling me that my brother’s best friend’s dad was missing. That’s when I made the decision. I went home.
I stayed home. School was canceled. The next few days were filled with phone calls “Did anyone hear anything? Any word?” My mother told me how on September 11th, ferries came from the city to the our harbor. Ferries that were based all over NY just packed with passengers from NYC. People who just had to get somewhere besides Manhattan. They stumbled off the boats- people covered in ash, people in shock. They were hosed down immediately by men and women in hazmat suits, for fear that they were carrying biological agents.
The papers talked about how Middletown was the town in NJ hit the hardest by the tragedy. We lost so many. So many people from my church, people I knew from middle school and high school. Parents, siblings, friends, colleagues all of them.
Then, my worst fears were realized. A friend was put on active duty. Along with all this tragedy, I had to deal with the idea that one of my best friends could be sent into the city. At that time, it was a terrifying thought. Would NYC be hit again? Were we safe?
Later, I learned that another friend had worked at the pier in Jersey City on September 11. Unloading and loading ferries and boats, for days at a time. But her story had a happy ending- she became engaged when she grew closer to a friend who took care of her at the time.
My brother spent days with his then-girlfriend and their best friend. A sophomore in high school and he was trying to hold up his friends while they learned that a parent was never coming home. I admired my brother immensely for the strength he showed in those days. He grew up more than I ever knew he could.
We all grew up.
And we will never forget.
God Bless all those lost on 9-11-01……
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My current don’t have any memories of this day in history. September 11th is history to them, something they read about each year and pass memorials for in their towns. It’s something their parents and other adults talk about. The visual of a plane hitting the towers live on television isn’t part of their life. That’s something I can’t imagine. I knew this day was coming but it’s so foreign to me and I just can’t believe that there are people here, in my area of NJ, who don’t remember September 11th. Today is September 11th “capital letter because it’s a month” not September 11th “a day that changed our lives forever so it has forever been ingrained in our minds”.
For me, it is hard to fathom not being able to articulate exactly where I was that day, that hour, that minute. While I am glad they have no memory of the terror our nation, especially the tri-state area, experienced that day, it still leaves me stunned. It’s such an integral part of my life that I can’t imagine it not being a cornerstone in others’ lives. Yet I am grateful for that blessing, too. September 11th will always be a day that stops me in my tracks but I am glad that it’s history for my students. I hope they never experience anything like we all did on that day.
