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education and teaching

Learning

Tuesday 25 August 2009 | 0 Comments

He came up to me in the hallway between classes, somewhat visibly upset. We'd just had a meeting with the principal in which he explained his very high expectations for everyone, especially including dress code. This young man was soon thereafter working on tucking his shirt in when the charge of "sagging pants" was made.

"I got a referral for that," he said. "Can you believe that?"

It was one of those moments that I hide my true opinion.

"Bad luck, I guess." Probably not terribly fair, I thought. He seemed to handle it like an adult, though. He was irritated, but not furious, and his demeanor told me that he'd managed to keep his cool during the encounter.

"So what did you learn from that?" I asked.

"Nothin'. There's nothing I can learn."

It's the challenge I face with so many of my students. See the world around you as the Ubiquitous Classroom. Understand that the mindful person can learn something -- about herself, about the world, about her influence on others -- from just about every action and interaction.

I really shouldn't be surprised if they haven't learned this: they're thirteen and I, almost three times their age, still forget to be on the lookout for the hidden lesson.

Finding Our Space

Monday 24 August 2009 | 2 Comments

“I don’t know what to write about” is a common complaint among eighth graders, often regardless of whether or not a topic has been provided. To alleviate that, we began an extended lesson: “How do I find topics for my writing?”

It seems abundantly clear to me: just look around and there are things to write about everywhere: the jostling silliness and/or frustration of a class change; the way five minutes can just drag by even in the best classes; the dress code to which students are required to adhere; the difficulty of coming up with a topic for writing–topics are simply everywhere.

To give students a starting place, we worked on creating Expert Inventories today. “Imagine a teacher told you to write a paper on the topic of ‘blank.’ What topic would make you make you think, “Oh, that’s easy. I can do that I no time!” All the kids dutifully began creating the same lists. The boys wrote “basketball, football, Madden 09.” Many of the girls included shopping, texting, boys.

There were some surprises. One girl enjoys making bricks with her dad. “We like to experiment with how things used to be done,” she explains. Another is good at making mortar. “Mortar?” I asked, wondering if I heard her correctly.

Next step: branching out some of the general terms to more specific ideas. “What do you mean when you say you’re an expert at basketball?” I asked. “Playing it? Watching it? Commentating on it?”

“Shopping–shopping for what? Shoes? Music? Clothes?”

The kids expanded their list, some of them writing endlessly. “Can we use the back of the page?” one girl asked. A good sign.

What I’m trying to do is fairly simple, not to mention fairly obvious: before kids can get serious about improving their writing, they have to enjoy it, or at least tolerate it. Having them to “analyze the author’s craft” (as one of the required “artifacts” is to do) in a short story will not bring “Ooohs!” and “Ahhs!” of excitement. For it to be enjoyable, it has to be meaningful; for it to be meaningful for many eighth graders, it needs to have a personal connection. And so I’m taking the whole idea of required this and required that and tossing it in the recycling bin for a moment. We’ll return to these ideas soon enough.

Focus

Friday 21 August 2009 | 0 Comments

Some teachers, it seems, want peace, quiet, and calm in the classroom for their own sakes. I've tried something new, something that seems to legitimize my authority as well as the unfortunate, occasional necessity of "cracking down." During the first class period, I simply told them -- and tried to show them -- that I'm there to help them, to educate them, to increase their chances for success later in life. "And if one of you tries to take that opportunity from another member of this class by being disruptive in any way and refuses to work with me as I try to bring things back in line, I will make sure that disruption stops. It's not for me: I will simply not allow you," and here I point randomly at a student, "interfere with your," and here I point randomly at another student, "education." Pause for dramatic effect, then I add, "And vice versa."

This year, I am trying desperately to show that everything that happens in that classroom has only one intention: helping.

So far, they seem to be buying it.

Magnetism

Thursday 20 August 2009 | 3 Comments

To love one's job truly and deeply, so much so that one can hardly wait to return as one is walking out the door at the end of the day, is a great and wondrous gift.

I sat in my room, doing paperwork during a planning period, and I was excited by the fact that class began in ten minutes; I walked out of school this afternoon eager to return the next day.

Only two days have passed and I know I have the kids. I see in their eyes, "This year is going to be different." One hundred minutes with students (two fifty-minute classes) and I already have a better relationship with them than I've probably ever had with students, definitely the best relationship with students in America. I have their complete attention, and they enjoy being there. There's eye contact; there's smiling; there's thoughtfulness -- and we've just been talking as a class about how this year will be.

In short, I finally have the classroom I always knew I could: mutual respect with a common sense of purpose and an excitement about the year.

What's different this year? It seems so obvious now, but I've simply rejected the common "wisdom" about creating a first impression in the classroom. That so-called wisdom is based on a Hobbesian view that humans are inherently bad and respond only to coercion. "Scare them." "Make them know who's boss." "Don't smile before Christmas." That's fine if you want a seemingly well-behaved class that jumps when you require it. It doesn't do much for relationships, though. Students tend to think the teacher is simply flexing his district-given power. No one responds well when being "put in their place." No one works well in an environment based ultimately on fear.

Instead, I've taken Rousseauian approach. I don't believe everyone is inherently good -- I believe we're inherently rather neutral -- but I do believe that people treat us the way we treat them: if we treat people well, they will respond well. If we establish from the beginning, unquestionably, that we respect people, they will return that respect.

This is critical when working with middle schoolers, and even more important with working with middle schoolers who might have grown up in an environment almost completely lacking in adults who behave in a way that inspires respect.

The upshot of all of this is that I simply can't wait to get into the classroom tomorrow, which makes it infinitely easier to plan lessons tonight.

Back to the Dream

Tuesday 11 August 2009 | 0 Comments

I end the year dusting and I start it with a rag in my hand as well. Before we can check out for the summer, we teachers have a myriad of duties and responsibilities, not the least of which is preparing our room for the summer cleaning. This involves taking everything not attached to the floor out into the hall way, refinishing the floor, then putting everything back. At both ends of the summer, then, there is a thin layer of dust on many things.

There is usually something similar clouding students' minds in the early weeks. They act as if we've awakened them from a deep sleep and not given them the time to clear the haze from their thinking. In short, they forget some of what they learned the year before.

It's to be expected. After all, who wants to rehearse subject/verb agreement and the quadratic equation when everyone else is at the pool or on a trip?

So I spent the day dusting and arranging, preparing to dust and arrange.

On Fire, In More Ways Than Intended

Wednesday 05 August 2009 | 0 Comments

I've been buying and reading books on pedagogy this summer, and one I bought was Rafe Esquith's Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness Inside Room 56. Esquith is all the rage: after all, how many fifth grade teachers do Shakespeare with students after class?

There are some good ideas in there, and initially I was hopeful that it would be a useful book. His discussion of the importance of trust in the classroom and some ideas of how to integrate that into a classroom management plan excited me, as this was something I was hoping to focus on this year.

Soon, though, some things started to feel off. Discussing the fact that educators are role models, Esquith writes,

Some of my students laugh bitterly at a teacher they once had. They discuss her in the most unflattering of terms. She often comes to school late. [... She] talks on her cell phone constantly. Even when the kids are being taken somewhere, their fearless leader walks in front of them gabbing on the phone. [...] The same teacher thinks she is "secretly" shopping online while the kids do their science assignments. She believes the kids do not know what she is doing. She is very much mistaken. (10)

My initial reaction: what an awful teacher. My second, more thoughtful reaction: how in the world does Esquith know this? Certainly, a teacher can overhear students talking in class about a teacher they had, but if the conversation continues long enough for the teacher to garner this much information, one of two things is happening:

  1. These kids aren't working but sitting in class having free time, which they're using to gossip about another teacher; or,
  2. Esquith discusses other teachers with his classes.

Neither one of these is terribly flattering. The passage in the book is terribly unprofessional.

One passages deserves to be quoted at length:

You see, the children at our school do not read well. They do not like to read. As of this writing, 78 percent of the Latino children on our campus are not proficient in reading, according to our state's standardized tests. This means one of two things: Either we have the stupidest kids on the planet , or we are failing these children. Please believe me when I tell you that the vast majority of our students are perfectly capable of learning to read. No one wants to admit it, but a systemic conspiracy of mediocrity keeps these children on the treadmill of illiteracy.

To fight the problem, we now have "literacy coaches" at schools. Most of these "experts" are former classroom teachers who never accomplished much with their own students. [...]

Teaching our children to read well and helping them develop a love of reading should be our top priorities. People seem to understand this. Millions are spent on books and other reading material, celebrities make public service announcements, and thousands of hours are spent training teachers. The spin doctors at various publish companies tell us that our students are doing better, but honest people know this is simply not the case. Concerned teachers have learned not to bother raising their voices, because powerful textbook companies have carefully prepared answers to anyone who points out that the emperor has no clothes. Young teachers are afraid of being crushed by bureaucrats whose only real mission is to keep selling their product. As testing services compete to rake in millions of dollars, nervous school districts anxiously await the latest test results. And year after year, most children do not become passionate lifelong readers.

It's complicated. There is a lot of finger-pointing. But to borrow a phrase from another big, fat book that won a Pulitzer Prize, our children are victims of a sort of “confederacy of dunces.” Powerful forces of mediocrity have combined to prevent perfectly competent children from learning to love reading. These forces include television, video games, poor teaching, poverty, the breakup of the family, and a general lack of adult guidance. (29-31)

There is a lot of truth in the statement, Testing services do make a lot of money from the increasing number of standardized tests students have to take. There can be pressure to use state-funded textbooks regardless of a teacher's preference. But the bottom line is this passage is highly insulting by presumptively marginalizing literacy coaches.

This book has some good ideas, but most of the time, I found myself thinking, "I'm glad I'm not this guy's colleague!"

Still, listening to him on NPR, I sense a humility that just doesn't come across in his writing, which is too bad.

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

Tuesday 14 July 2009 | 1 Comment

Many educators are not fond of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, which Obama doesn’t seem intent on scraping. I suppose education is never the priority politicians claim it is, though to be fair, neither candidate made much of education in 2008.

Some outside of education are confused as to why a teacher would oppose NCLB. They see it as an unwillingness to be held accountable for what happens in the classroom. Or even a fear of accountability. This is deeply inaccurate, at least in my case.  I (and many others) oppose NCLB because of how it (claims) to hold teachers accountable.

One effective way of illustrating some of the absurdities of NCLB is to apply it to sports. I’d seen this online a time or two, but a professor posted this for us in class the other day and it made me realize anew how skewed some people’s perception of NCLB actually is. So here’s the scenario: football is run according to guidelines similar to NCLB:

The regulations:

  1. All teams must make the state playoffs, and all will win the championship.
  2. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable.
  3. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time and in the same conditions. No exceptions will be made for interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities.
  4. All kids will play football at a proficient level.
  5. Talented players will be asked to work out on their own without instruction.
  6. Coaches will use all their instructional time with the athletes who aren’t interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don’t like football.
  7. All coaches will be proficient in all aspects of football, or they will be released.
  8. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th and 11th games.

This will create a New Age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals.

The fact is, children in the same grade start at different places intellectually, emotionally, and socially.

What’s worse, NCLB is a moving target. Every school must achieve “Adequate Yearly Progress.” If you fail to make that progress, you have to make up all that ground and then some for the next year. Another sports analogy (this time, my own) might make it clearer:

Let’s say to make the football team, you have to run the 40 yard dash in 5.5 seconds. You fail to make it by one tenth of a second. You work out. Finally, you reach 5.5 seconds and come back to try again. The coach now tells you that now you have to run the 40 yard dash in 5.4 seconds. You can’t do it, so you go back and work out some more. When you can sprint it in 5.4 seconds, you go back to the coach, who informs you that now the bar has been moved to 5.25 seconds.

Or, as someone else put it:

The annual measurement bar is a moving target and once missed it is like chasing after a train pulling out of the depot year after year. Of course then it becomes the fault of the instructors, and not the curriculum , or the administration, or heaven forbid the students themselves. (Source)

Accountability is good; poorly-thought-out accountability can only be harmful.

Strangers in the Classroom

Friday 05 June 2009 | 0 Comments

They enter the classroom in August and they're strangers. I struggle for a couple of weeks to learn everyone's name; the energetic talkative ones I get down by the end of the first day. Slowly, I learn their personalities: their passions, their quirks, their fears. By mid-October, I know a group of 80-100 thirteen-year-olds fairly well; by mid-May, I can almost predict their every move.

This is what keeps me hooked on teaching: the relationships. A picture of a group of students is a fairly meaningless thing to anyone but the students' teacher, but to that teacher, it's a thousand stories about 180 days spent working, laughing, and sometimes arguing together.

And this is why I consider it a privilege to teach. Between 160 and 200 parents trust me with their children for almost an entire year. In some ways, I know their children better than they do. This can be problematic -- "Oh no! My child would never do that!" -- but only rarely.

Yesterday, I said goodbye to the kids I spent 180 days with. In a few, short weeks, I'll begin again, with a new group of strangers in my room.

It is a testimony to how well the year went that I am as excited about starting next year as I've ever been. Last year was a tough year, with a tough group of kids. Many teachers on the eighth grade hall said it was the most challenging group they've ever taught. "Baptism by fire," one laughed when I commented it had been my first year teaching there. Last year, the goodbyes were a formality, and I was relieved to have the year behind me; this year, the goodbyes were touchingly sincere, and I was a bit saddened to see the year come to a close.

One young man was terribly upset. I saw him and smiled; he thought I was mocking him. "Mr. S, don't laugh!" he begged. I went quickly to him, trying my best to smile warmly. "I'm not laughing," I reassured him, telling him-probably vainly-that the sadness of this ending will transform itself into joy at a new beginning. I didn't tell him how difficult it was for me to go through endings, how it's still difficult. Perhaps I should have, but I was afraid I would upset him more. On his own, he will learn to recognize the sweet in the seemingly bitter moments.

If I'm fortunate, he'll come back to tell me about it.

xtranormal in Action

Friday 29 May 2009 | 0 Comments

I mentioned earlier my efforts to use xtranormal.com -- the free animation site -- in school. Here are a couple of examples from students who used the site to animate research done on selected topics about Victorian England.

(Content removed--website died.)

Education in Victorian England

(Content removed--website died.)

xtranormal Shakespeare

Monday 04 May 2009 | 2 Comments

I've been playing with xtranormal.com, the site that allows you to create a movie merely from text. I'm thinking I might use it somehow next year with my English I Honors class when we work on Shakespeare.

Something like this:

(Since removed.)

The pronunciation is a bit off at times, but otherwise, a potentially useful tool.

I'm just not quite sure how to use it...