I’m not going to lie, I like Youtube. When my brain is fried, but I’m not quite ready to go to bed, there is nothing better that some video of a cat chasing a flashlight into a wall or a dog spinning around imitating the sound of the blender. Truly the world is a better place. With the arrival of the video function on the iPod Nano and the rise in popularity of the Flip camera, I can only hope that there will be more videos of squirrels drunk on fermented pumpkins.
But the proliferation of video has me keenly interested in how this affects our students’ view of the world. We already knew they demand more stimulation of their senses than previous generations, that they see the world in splashes of color and now clearly they see it constantly in motion. As an English teacher, how do I continue to engage learners with what must seem the most mundane of media: the printed word? Maybe even more importantly, how do I help these students understand the millions of images they are being bombarded with hourly?
First of all, I think we have to acknowledge that it is here to stay. Whether it is a simple project making a video of a scene from Shakespeare or shooting a video for the SAT Vocab contest, this is something these students like to do and it sticks in their brains. But now it is also incumbent upon us to help them understand what they are seeing. The iPod Nano comes with video effects from Thermal to Sepia to Motion Blur. In my mind, there is no difference between determining the result of an effect applied to a video and understanding the goal of an author when using a specific tone in his work. While they think it is easier to determine this visually, it is simply because they have more practice and exposure to visual media rather that words on a page. If they read as much as they watched television, surfed the net and went to movies, we would have rhetorical geniuses.
There is no doubt that we feel the pressure to add more and more to our classes everyday, and believe it or not, I am now advocating one more addition. We need to teach students visual literacy. To help them understand how they are being manipulated by images, but also how they can take control of those images to tell their own stories. Just as Mike Masnik wrote on Techdirt that technology has not been the end to writing, but has bolstered it, video will not be the end to books. Students will always need some place to look for ideas whether it is to react to them or mimic them. Books will thrive hand in hand with the visual age: It is our job to help students see that this is truly a perfect match.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
The Big Green Monster
Every Mother’s Day, my mom and I go to the nursery and pick out flowers for our gardens. This year, I decided to try my hand at vegetables as well. I bought two cherry tomato plants and some cilantro. Well, the cilantro died almost immediately, but my tomato plants chugged along until early in the summer before they started to take over my entire yard. Finally, in late July the tomatoes started to arrive and they haven’t slowed down since. I have picked literally hundreds of tiny tomatoes and that does count the ones my dogs have gotten away with. While this process must be rather entertaining for the neighbors, every afternoon I high hurdle over the fence that ineffectively protects the plant from the dogs and then crawl under the plant and paw through the leaves trying to find all the little red gems.
For the past few days, as I have been bobbing and weaving my way around the green monster, I have thought that this activity is the perfect metaphor for using technology in the classroom. The key to finding all of the tomatoes is looking at the leaves from literally 50 different directions. They hide under branches and leaves and every new way you hold your head looking at the plant, you literally stumble upon another handful of tomatoes. Similarly, through twitter networks and RSS feeds, teachers are literally looking in hundreds of different directions and every so often, they discover a new tool or strategy to implement in the classroom. Each day that I am out in my tomato patch, I smile thinking about what the neighbors must think and laugh at my dogs waiting patiently outside the fence hoping for a snack. I also relish the aerobic/pilates-like activity this has become and find the search as relaxing and enjoyable as the reward. My hope is that this holds true for folks in the classroom as well. Just like we hope for our students to enjoy the journey of learning as much as the results, I hope teachers enjoy the pursuit of new technologies as much as the actual reward of finding something new to implement in their classrooms.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Is Tech Where It’s At?
I am staring out of a rainy window in Memphis having just finished the Lausanne Laptop Institute. Having done a reasonable amount of traveling lately, I have been overly exposed to the public and its ridiculous habits. Without going on a tirade about people’s absurd behavior when exiting a plane, I keep thinking of the constant cell phone conversations that I got to overhear in the past two weeks. They almost always started with “Where you at?” Well, despite the grating of terrible grammar, it does give me pause to think. After a summer of heavy reading and a couple presentations here at Luasanne, I can’t help but pause to think about where we are “at.”
One thing that has been perfectly clear to me is the success of the launch of our one to one program. Those that know me know that I was not for laptops in any form and was brought reluctantly into this whole process. But I must applaud Elizabeth Helfant and my colleagues who did some serious heavy lifting in the years prior so that once the magic day arrived, almost one year ago, it was as seamless and meaningful as possible.
Despite this success, I am still left wondering about and assessing the role of technology in education. Thomas Newkirk in his book Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones discusses the early mechanization of education where many thought of a good education as a factory churning out identical products. He quotes one expert of the time as saying, “Teachers cannot be permitted to follow caprice in method. When a method which is clearly superior to all other methods has been discovered, it alone can be employed. To neglect this function and to excuse one’s negligence by proclaiming the value of the freedom of the teacher was perhaps justifiable under our earlier empiricism, when supervisors were merely promoted teachers and on the scientific side knew little more about standards and methods than the rank and file” (18). He goes on to discuss how in the process of reforming education, too much attention was given to research and little was paid to the actual classroom teachers and their “wisdom of practice” (19). At first this may seem like a perfect argument for technology and a way to convince the reluctant adopters. But as a classroom teacher, I support the “wisdom of practice.” All of this makes me worry, even just for a minute, as so many of these experts that travel around and educate us about technology use in the classroom have been out of the classroom for years. Are we walking down the same slippery slope that Newkirk is describing?
David Warlick recently discussed the results of two polls he ran. The first stated that teachers could still be good teachers without the use of technology and the second claimed that a teacher that is not using technology in the classroom is not doing his job. How can these results possibly exist side by side? Where will these two points converge?
All of this is not a drawn out way to announce that I am abandoning the tech side of the world. That would be impossible: I just joined Facebook. It is simply a cautionary note that we not go blindly into this new world. I believe that technology makes the classroom a more dynamic student-centered learning environment. I simply hope that we stop, look at what we are doing, reassess and make sure that our original reasons are still sound or that our new ones are even more solid. I know that my students are engaged in the literature and the class and writing sooner and more often with the use of technology. In the absence of hard date and research, this will just have to do for now. Finally, this is also a pledge from me that I redouble my efforts to make sure that on the eve of this new school year, I am doing everything I can to make sure my classroom is the best place possible for the students who will reside there these next nine months.
One thing that has been perfectly clear to me is the success of the launch of our one to one program. Those that know me know that I was not for laptops in any form and was brought reluctantly into this whole process. But I must applaud Elizabeth Helfant and my colleagues who did some serious heavy lifting in the years prior so that once the magic day arrived, almost one year ago, it was as seamless and meaningful as possible.
Despite this success, I am still left wondering about and assessing the role of technology in education. Thomas Newkirk in his book Holding on to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones discusses the early mechanization of education where many thought of a good education as a factory churning out identical products. He quotes one expert of the time as saying, “Teachers cannot be permitted to follow caprice in method. When a method which is clearly superior to all other methods has been discovered, it alone can be employed. To neglect this function and to excuse one’s negligence by proclaiming the value of the freedom of the teacher was perhaps justifiable under our earlier empiricism, when supervisors were merely promoted teachers and on the scientific side knew little more about standards and methods than the rank and file” (18). He goes on to discuss how in the process of reforming education, too much attention was given to research and little was paid to the actual classroom teachers and their “wisdom of practice” (19). At first this may seem like a perfect argument for technology and a way to convince the reluctant adopters. But as a classroom teacher, I support the “wisdom of practice.” All of this makes me worry, even just for a minute, as so many of these experts that travel around and educate us about technology use in the classroom have been out of the classroom for years. Are we walking down the same slippery slope that Newkirk is describing?
David Warlick recently discussed the results of two polls he ran. The first stated that teachers could still be good teachers without the use of technology and the second claimed that a teacher that is not using technology in the classroom is not doing his job. How can these results possibly exist side by side? Where will these two points converge?
All of this is not a drawn out way to announce that I am abandoning the tech side of the world. That would be impossible: I just joined Facebook. It is simply a cautionary note that we not go blindly into this new world. I believe that technology makes the classroom a more dynamic student-centered learning environment. I simply hope that we stop, look at what we are doing, reassess and make sure that our original reasons are still sound or that our new ones are even more solid. I know that my students are engaged in the literature and the class and writing sooner and more often with the use of technology. In the absence of hard date and research, this will just have to do for now. Finally, this is also a pledge from me that I redouble my efforts to make sure that on the eve of this new school year, I am doing everything I can to make sure my classroom is the best place possible for the students who will reside there these next nine months.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The Runaway Mindset
When I was in fourth grade, you know this story better go somewhere fast if it starts like this, I wrote a story called “The Runaway Lima Bean” starring an adorable bean named Ferdinand who escapes the table and has a series of madcap adventures. It was an immediate hit and even published in a children’s magazine. My writing career was launched and just as quickly, ended. I was a one hit wonder like Bow Wow Wow and Vanilla Ice.
According to Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, I had a fixed mindset. I had some ability in writing, but didn’t want to risk losing my fame, if you call it that, so I shut down and, despite everyone’s urgings, never wrote again. This guaranteed that I would not fail and have to face the fact that I did not have as much talent as I thought I did. The same thing is happening day-in and day-out in our classrooms. Teachers have mastered Hamlet and Dickens, quadratic equations and Pythagorean theorems, but don’t have the growth mindset that Dweck argues leads to even greater success.
In the world of literature, a growth mindset makes you’re a dynamic character while a fixed mindset makes you static. Dweck states, “ In one world—the world of fixed traits—success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other—the world of changing qualities—it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.” Her research reflected these differences most clearly when individuals faced setbacks. In the fixed mindset, if I submitted another story and was rejected it would prove to me that I was a failure with no talent: People may even be laughing at me. But in the growth mindset, while I would still be disappointed, I would seek information from others on what I could revise and how I could work to be better at writing: the growth mindset is about the challenge of solving the problem.
Malcom Gladwell in his May 11th New Yorker article titled, “How David Beats Goliath” takes this theory even further. While explaining how a less-talented team of twelve-year-olds could make it all the way to the championships, he states” The full-court press is legs, not arms. It supplants ability with effort.” When speculating on why other teams aren’t quick to pick up on the benefit of the full-court press he adds, “because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.” It is just easier to have the talent than to hustle. Clearly Gladwell is suggesting that the growth mindset allows the underdog to beat the favorite with a fixed mindset.
Teachers’ approaches to technology in the classroom seem to fit perfectly into these two mindsets. The fixed mindset teachers who feel that they have full command of their material and their classrooms bristle at the thought of taking a risk that may counter this understanding. Planning a lesson with technology that fails would send the message that they were in fact not good at teaching. Growth mindset teachers thrive on the constant learning that educational technology provides. Trying something new and failing only offers them more information for improvement. Growth mindsets are about effort and constant learning: exactly what technology provides teachers and students alike. Educational technology offers a unique opportunity for all of us to build our growth mindsets.
While this may seem like an indictment, it should be thought of optimistically. Changing mindsets is a paradigm shift that does require work, but it opens up the world of possibilities. It also gives those of us with fixed mindsets permission to be imperfect, to try and fail, and go on with the number one reason we all became teachers: our love of learning. Dweck quotes a CEO in her book as saying, “I never stopped trying to be qualified for the job.” This is the life of the teacher in the 21st Century. While we will never have full command of all the possibilities Educational Technology experts and Web 2.0 provide, it is our responsibility to keep up our efforts to learn and try new things. Isn’t this what we hope our students do?
Even with my new understanding , I haven’t rekindled my writing career, but I plan on using my newfound growth mindset to take on other tasks like surfing. A fixed mindset, and maybe even a practical one, might say that a Midwestern woman nearing forty should not be taking on the task of learning how to surf. A growth mindset simply says, just try.
According to Carol Dweck’s book Mindset, I had a fixed mindset. I had some ability in writing, but didn’t want to risk losing my fame, if you call it that, so I shut down and, despite everyone’s urgings, never wrote again. This guaranteed that I would not fail and have to face the fact that I did not have as much talent as I thought I did. The same thing is happening day-in and day-out in our classrooms. Teachers have mastered Hamlet and Dickens, quadratic equations and Pythagorean theorems, but don’t have the growth mindset that Dweck argues leads to even greater success.
In the world of literature, a growth mindset makes you’re a dynamic character while a fixed mindset makes you static. Dweck states, “ In one world—the world of fixed traits—success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other—the world of changing qualities—it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.” Her research reflected these differences most clearly when individuals faced setbacks. In the fixed mindset, if I submitted another story and was rejected it would prove to me that I was a failure with no talent: People may even be laughing at me. But in the growth mindset, while I would still be disappointed, I would seek information from others on what I could revise and how I could work to be better at writing: the growth mindset is about the challenge of solving the problem.
Malcom Gladwell in his May 11th New Yorker article titled, “How David Beats Goliath” takes this theory even further. While explaining how a less-talented team of twelve-year-olds could make it all the way to the championships, he states” The full-court press is legs, not arms. It supplants ability with effort.” When speculating on why other teams aren’t quick to pick up on the benefit of the full-court press he adds, “because relentless effort is in fact something rarer than the ability to engage in some finely tuned act of motor coordination.” It is just easier to have the talent than to hustle. Clearly Gladwell is suggesting that the growth mindset allows the underdog to beat the favorite with a fixed mindset.
Teachers’ approaches to technology in the classroom seem to fit perfectly into these two mindsets. The fixed mindset teachers who feel that they have full command of their material and their classrooms bristle at the thought of taking a risk that may counter this understanding. Planning a lesson with technology that fails would send the message that they were in fact not good at teaching. Growth mindset teachers thrive on the constant learning that educational technology provides. Trying something new and failing only offers them more information for improvement. Growth mindsets are about effort and constant learning: exactly what technology provides teachers and students alike. Educational technology offers a unique opportunity for all of us to build our growth mindsets.
While this may seem like an indictment, it should be thought of optimistically. Changing mindsets is a paradigm shift that does require work, but it opens up the world of possibilities. It also gives those of us with fixed mindsets permission to be imperfect, to try and fail, and go on with the number one reason we all became teachers: our love of learning. Dweck quotes a CEO in her book as saying, “I never stopped trying to be qualified for the job.” This is the life of the teacher in the 21st Century. While we will never have full command of all the possibilities Educational Technology experts and Web 2.0 provide, it is our responsibility to keep up our efforts to learn and try new things. Isn’t this what we hope our students do?
Even with my new understanding , I haven’t rekindled my writing career, but I plan on using my newfound growth mindset to take on other tasks like surfing. A fixed mindset, and maybe even a practical one, might say that a Midwestern woman nearing forty should not be taking on the task of learning how to surf. A growth mindset simply says, just try.
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Balance Happens
Last November I attended a clinic during the NCAA Division I Women’s Field Hockey Final Four. It was sponsored by US Field Hockey and taught by the men’s and women’s National Team coaches, Nick Conway and Lee Bodimeade. We talked strategy all weekend and one of the first things that Nick said was, “At the start of the game, look at the defense of the opponent and decide how you are going to attack.” Seems simple. To me, it was a complete shift in thinking; when I started games, the first thing I looked at was the opponent’s offense and decided how I was going to defend them. A simple shift from defending to attacking and you view the world in an entirely new way.
This past weekend the same happened for me in the way I see the teaching of writing. For the past few weeks I have been involved in the English Companion Ning’s discussion of Maja Wilson’s book Rethinking Rubrics. The exchanges have been akin to an invigorating graduate school debate without the extra homework and inconvenient class times. In Chapter Three, Wilson writes:
“When our purpose in reading student work is to defend a grade, we do not apply any of our natural responses to text. Encouraged by the performance levels on the rubric to rank students against an external standard, our readings of student work are based firmly in a deficit model. We look for mistakes, inconsistencies, and unclear thinking to justify which square in the matrix we will circle” (30).
While this seems obvious, it was as big of a shift of defending to attacking in how I coach. When I look at student essays, I am looking for mistakes to correct and not potential to develop. Instead of approaching their work as a reader, I approach it as a corrector.
She goes on to say:
“The consequences of this skepticism are great. In our search for mistakes, we often miss potential. We should never assume that student papers will be perfect; our job is to help students realize what they cannot yet do. This involves a subtle but important shift in our view of the texts they create. It means that we articulate for them what they have succeeded in doing, explore the meaning in what they have written, and help them connect what is not yet there to what could be there” (30).
I now need to think how I can best achieve this shift, how I can balance my need to produce effective writers who can create complex sentences with proper agreement and punctuation with this newly introduced understanding of how I can be developing these writers as well. This becomes even more vital and intricate as so many new types of writing come into play. As I have been reading this book, much attention seemed to be paid to personal essays, but we have students creating wikis, blogs and participating in nings. How do I help them see the potential of their writing in these contexts as well? Sometimes that seems easier with the increased ability to provide instant feedback, sometimes harder since I can’t get my pen on their screens to point out the errors, but maybe this is where the balance happens.
This past weekend the same happened for me in the way I see the teaching of writing. For the past few weeks I have been involved in the English Companion Ning’s discussion of Maja Wilson’s book Rethinking Rubrics. The exchanges have been akin to an invigorating graduate school debate without the extra homework and inconvenient class times. In Chapter Three, Wilson writes:
“When our purpose in reading student work is to defend a grade, we do not apply any of our natural responses to text. Encouraged by the performance levels on the rubric to rank students against an external standard, our readings of student work are based firmly in a deficit model. We look for mistakes, inconsistencies, and unclear thinking to justify which square in the matrix we will circle” (30).
While this seems obvious, it was as big of a shift of defending to attacking in how I coach. When I look at student essays, I am looking for mistakes to correct and not potential to develop. Instead of approaching their work as a reader, I approach it as a corrector.
She goes on to say:
“The consequences of this skepticism are great. In our search for mistakes, we often miss potential. We should never assume that student papers will be perfect; our job is to help students realize what they cannot yet do. This involves a subtle but important shift in our view of the texts they create. It means that we articulate for them what they have succeeded in doing, explore the meaning in what they have written, and help them connect what is not yet there to what could be there” (30).
I now need to think how I can best achieve this shift, how I can balance my need to produce effective writers who can create complex sentences with proper agreement and punctuation with this newly introduced understanding of how I can be developing these writers as well. This becomes even more vital and intricate as so many new types of writing come into play. As I have been reading this book, much attention seemed to be paid to personal essays, but we have students creating wikis, blogs and participating in nings. How do I help them see the potential of their writing in these contexts as well? Sometimes that seems easier with the increased ability to provide instant feedback, sometimes harder since I can’t get my pen on their screens to point out the errors, but maybe this is where the balance happens.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Twon Over
Okay, so I did it. I can’t believe it, but I did it. People kept pushing and I kept reading articles about how great this was, but I couldn’t pull the trigger, didn’t want to be a follower, couldn’t see the function. I want to go on record that I fought valiantly for almost two years until I finally crumbled…I joined Twitter. I have Lance Armstrong to thank for this. Once he announced his comeback and then crashed out of Vuelta Castilla y Leon breaking his collar bone, I found out I could follow his comeback and subsequent recovery via Twitter. I was sold. Sure I would like to tell you that I joined so that I could build my own PLN, but I would be lying. Now the happy side effect is that I am building my own PLN. Today solidified my understanding of what so many folks including Alec Couros, Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis are talking about when they encourage educators to embrace this tool.
While I am new to Twitter, I was a pretty big fan of the Google Reader’s ability to help me keep track of quite a few blogs including Susanne Nobles’ blog “Still Learning.” I remember her discussing using a Ning to aid her class’ work with Othello but couldn’t find that link. Well, I sent Susanne a message via Twitter and had a response and the link in just a few hours. Being able to connect the dots that fast is amazing and keeps the momentum going on something that could have easily gotten bogged down or lost for me as I look to new tasks and projects.
So all of this didn’t just show me the power of this tool, but also the kindness of so many of the educators using it. I have been struck by this before as I have seen presenters ask for a “shout out” on Twitter and they have received a multitude of responses from all over the world in a matter of moments. Twitter is not simply a group of people announcing the most mundane of details about their lives, but a group of people sincerely willing to help and share whenever they can. Susanne Nobles didn’t know who I was or what I do, but she was perfectly willing to share. It is forcing me to think about the argument of those concerned that we spend so much time looking at screens that we don’t know how to connect with people. Well, I just got more connected and now I am a Twonvert.
While I am new to Twitter, I was a pretty big fan of the Google Reader’s ability to help me keep track of quite a few blogs including Susanne Nobles’ blog “Still Learning.” I remember her discussing using a Ning to aid her class’ work with Othello but couldn’t find that link. Well, I sent Susanne a message via Twitter and had a response and the link in just a few hours. Being able to connect the dots that fast is amazing and keeps the momentum going on something that could have easily gotten bogged down or lost for me as I look to new tasks and projects.
So all of this didn’t just show me the power of this tool, but also the kindness of so many of the educators using it. I have been struck by this before as I have seen presenters ask for a “shout out” on Twitter and they have received a multitude of responses from all over the world in a matter of moments. Twitter is not simply a group of people announcing the most mundane of details about their lives, but a group of people sincerely willing to help and share whenever they can. Susanne Nobles didn’t know who I was or what I do, but she was perfectly willing to share. It is forcing me to think about the argument of those concerned that we spend so much time looking at screens that we don’t know how to connect with people. Well, I just got more connected and now I am a Twonvert.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
TPCK is Alive
Sandra Day O’Connor, Benjamin Zander, Greg Mortenson, Rosalind Wiseman--these are just a handful of speakers that I have been fortunate enough to hear speak at my school. In addition, we are so lucky to have countless professional development opportunities right on campus including Alec Couros, David Jakes, and the delightful Flat Classroom women Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay (I truly enjoyed reading about their recent Flat Classroom Summit in Qatar). This past week featured a day with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach that was a terrific way to frame the way we should be thinking as the words of 21st Century skills and literacies buzz in our minds and often make our heads spin. What I liked about the day was the way she essentially tried to reframe the way we approach things and, in the spirit of Benjamin Zander, forced us to think of all of the possibilities. Her emphasis on sharing, cooperating, collaborating, and collective action as stages of what we should be developing with our classes is exciting and daunting, but she left us with plenty of examples of people who started small and made it big.
Alongside of these stages was an introduction to something called the TPCK model, which I affectionately call the Tupac model. This visualization is helpful in describing, and conceptualizing, the perfect storm that has to occur in teaching in the 21st Century. Before, a solid handle on your content was all you needed in an Independent school, add some pedagogy if you were teaching in a public school (a distinction I have never quite understood) and then recently, we have been asked to dabble in some technology. But as I have struggled to frame the role of technology every time I learn more, this model truly helps me see where I need to be aiming my work day after day.
Mishra and Koehler in their work “Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge: A Framework for Teacher Knowledge” state: “Though not all teachers have embraced these new technologies for a range of reasons—including a fear of change and lack of time and support—the fact that these technologies are here to stay cannot be doubted. Moreover, the rapid rate of evolution of these new digital technologies prevents them from becoming ‘transparent’ any time soon. Teachers will have to do more than simply learn to use currently available tools; they also will have to learn new techniques and skills as current technologies become obsolete. This is a very different context from earlier conceptualizations of teacher knowledge, in which technologies were standardized and relatively stable. The use of technology for pedagogy of specific subject matter could be expected to remain relatively static over time. Thus, teachers could focus on the variables related to content and pedagogy and be assured that technological contexts would not change too dramatically over their career as a teacher. This new context has foregrounded technology in ways that could not have been imagined a few years ago. Thus, knowledge of technology becomes an important aspect of overall teacher knowledge.”
In essence where teachers were asked to be experts in one area or maybe even two, they are now required to be proficient in all three areas of content, pedagogy and technology. Consequently, the stages of sharing, cooperating, collaborating, and collective action in concert with the Tupac model has shifted my paradigm on how I view my daily work and has moved my insular classroom of academic rigor, to a broader classroom that may be even more rigorous due to the diverse thinking skills I will be demanding from my students.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Breaking Point
My colleague Scott and I teach a class called the Sudan Project. It is a year-long course with the goal being to take over forty hours of footage provided by photojournalist Karin Muller and create a documentary about Sudan and specifically the crisis in Darfur. We spent the first semester trying to lay some groundwork for the students covering the history of Sudan, the nature of the conflict, other geo-political conflicts, documentary film making and training them on the video editing software they need for producing this film. We’ve have our had ups and downs, but for a team-taught, interdisciplinary class with no blueprint, I have been fairly pleased with our progress…until today. Today was our first production meeting and the power of the mob ruled the day. Students were broken up into groups to produce ten mini-documentaries that will then be sifted through for the final product. As groups began reporting, we heard the start of grumbling: it took a long time to download the footage; the timecodes aren’t matching up with the shot lists; there is so much footage to look through; there is no way to do this task in sixteen school days. The frustration built as each group reported to such a point that when a young woman wanted to report the success she was having with aligning the shot list and the clips, students were literally shouting her down. Normally my colleague and I play a bit of good cop/bad cop, but in this case we both put the hammer down. When the students left disgruntled, we simply stared at each other and realized that this was really our first hurdle that the class had to overcome. Sure there were technical glitches with their documentaries from first semester, but the gravity of their job was finally hitting them. Their frustration and anger had two sources. One was the overwhelming work of sorting that few anticipated because they simply did not know the process: They were not used to the idea that there was no easy solution to this problem. The other was the realization that they were responsible to the people they were seeing in their film. As one student said, “I don’t want this to be a show on Animal Plant looking at some weird place. I want my audience to be able to connect with the humanity of these people.” I know that meaningful learning is born out of frustration and while I would not wish such discomfort on my students regularly, in the midst of my own aggravation, I was lucky to witness one person’s triumph.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Reflections on Readicide
My colleagues joke about my “inner German,” but to be honest, my German is pretty much on the outside too. I don’t apologize for my love of order and my dedication to rules. If there is a rule, it should be enforced. We need structure: It is a building block of society. My students often don’t understand what this has to do with chewing gum, but they kindly acquiesce and consequently my trashcan is a pile of gum at the end of each day. This love of order also instructs how I teach English. There are ways for us to approach texts; we will have homework and we will analyze together. Kelly Gallagher’s new book Readicide: How Schools are Killing Reading and What We Can Do about It challenges my inner German. His argument that in order to fuel the love of reading that is often lost in students sometime between third grade and seventh grade, we need to have unstructured reading time with texts that will not be closely examined. He wants students to experience the “flow” if reading. This much freedom would send me into a swivet. How will I know if my students are actually doing the reading? How will I hold them accountable? How could I possibly take classroom time to let students sit around and read and not feel like I am reverting to elementary school tactics? Despite this discomfort, I really think he has a point.
Right now I am trying to drag 43 reluctant 10th graders through A Tale of Two Cities. I think it would be easier to take them all to the dentist and then off to do some yardwork. They literally have looks of physical pain while we are doing this. And that leads me in two directions. First it is causing me to articulate my approach to this novel more carefully and secondly, seriously consider Gallagher’s suggestion. These students would not be in so much pain if they were better readers. Dickens’ is tough and, as Gallagher argues, they should not be tackling this text alone, but when this may be all they read, their skills are not improving. It is like trying to train a high school pole vaulter by setting the bar at the world record. They aren’t going to like the sport for long.
So Gallagher’s 50/50 suggestion makes sense to me. We need to find a balance between structure and the freedom to explore. And I hope my discomfort will lead to some newly engaged readers. I still will not be about to embrace this with 100% certainty. I look forward to the online discussion with others across the country. Locally, I would like to try to invite the other members of the 10th grade team into this challenge and perhaps create some Nings that are moderated by each of us. Each semester we can select a list of books that we have read and then moderate these groups throughout the entire 10th grade class. I can get to know some new students; the students can engage with each other across the classes and we can all read some books together.
Right now I am trying to drag 43 reluctant 10th graders through A Tale of Two Cities. I think it would be easier to take them all to the dentist and then off to do some yardwork. They literally have looks of physical pain while we are doing this. And that leads me in two directions. First it is causing me to articulate my approach to this novel more carefully and secondly, seriously consider Gallagher’s suggestion. These students would not be in so much pain if they were better readers. Dickens’ is tough and, as Gallagher argues, they should not be tackling this text alone, but when this may be all they read, their skills are not improving. It is like trying to train a high school pole vaulter by setting the bar at the world record. They aren’t going to like the sport for long.
So Gallagher’s 50/50 suggestion makes sense to me. We need to find a balance between structure and the freedom to explore. And I hope my discomfort will lead to some newly engaged readers. I still will not be about to embrace this with 100% certainty. I look forward to the online discussion with others across the country. Locally, I would like to try to invite the other members of the 10th grade team into this challenge and perhaps create some Nings that are moderated by each of us. Each semester we can select a list of books that we have read and then moderate these groups throughout the entire 10th grade class. I can get to know some new students; the students can engage with each other across the classes and we can all read some books together.
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