I think we all need a mental health break

Play him off, keyboard cat!

I want to reflect on my teaching practice

Teaching is hard. Okay, so that's not the most insightful reflection but it's a pretty good representation of how I'm feeling right now. For six long weeks, we've learned about literacy (academic, content, critical and reading), pedagogy, cognitive process dimensions, knowledge dimensions, comprehension strategies, curriculum alignment, records of practice, higher order thinking, etc. So much information without much in the way of practical application can lead one to wonder, "what's it all for?" But I think that there's a method to the madness. If I think back to where I was before the program began, and what I know now, I am in a much better position to venture into Ann Arbor Pioneer in September. Yes, I know that you can read all the books in the world and you won't really learn anything until you actually get in the classroom. It's kind of like learning another language. Four years in a Spanish classroom did not prepare me to actually speak Spanish in a meaningful way. But my brother lived in Mexico for two years and became fluent. You have to immerse yourself completely to really learn.

Today's leadership presentation was a prime example. I'm not thrilled with how everything turned out. As a group we discussed how important it was to leave room for discussion and what did we do? Leave little room for discussion! I think that teachers can get so bogged down in the content, and this incessant need to get to everything on their list, that they can really lose the audience in the process. I know that I talked too much and didn't listen enough. That's my biggest challenge, clearly. Like Lisa Simpson, I suffer from knowitalism ("that's not even a word!") and I really need to work on letting go and allowing other voices into my hemisphere. Just as we wanted the class to learn from us, we needed to learn from the class and unfortunately, that didn't happen. But I'm trying to look at the positive. If we can learn from our mistakes and assess our strengths and weaknesses, doesn't that mean that we are making progress as teachers and mentors? My best teachers were the ones that listened to me and respected my opinions. I want to provide that to my students.

It's all a journey, huh?

I respect these voices (although I don't always agree)

Perusing some of the edublogger posts on Google Reader, I came across a link to Jay Mathews Class Struggle blog on the Washington Post. I've read his stuff sporadically before but am planning to make him a regular addition to my reading list from now on. He had a column a couple of weeks ago that I missed but it's worth linking to. Jay muses on a new book by Terry Moe and John Chubb about technology and education. Money quote:

Because of the rise of technology, Moe and Chubb say, our future schools will be more customized to students, more effective, more beneficial to teachers, less costly, more autonomous, more competitive, more accountable, better at serving needy constituencies, better at promoting social equity and better at doing what works. Whew. Sounds good. But are they sure? No.

The book addresses the proliferation of virtual schools and the way that they can democratize access to resources and AP classes that have for so long been out of reach for so many public school students. Jay, as always, is cautiously open-minded. I think I might check the book out during our August recess!

I love this video

Mental Health Break for the book lover!

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

I like treehugger...

... because they post interesting items like this.

I hope to remain relevant in the virtual future

Over at Not So Distant Future, Carolyn Foote discusses the future of the school building in the digital age. She links to a piece by David Jakes in which he ruminates on the the neglected art of learning space design. Money quote:

I graduated high school in 1977. The English classrooms I see in 2009 are almost identical to the English classrooms I experienced in 1977. I started teaching biology in 1986 and my biology classroom then looks exactly like most biology classrooms do today. Don’t get me wrong- a great deal of outstanding teaching and learning can, and does, take place in such spaces.

Will I be able to say the same thing 20 years from now? Will the English and Biology classrooms of 2029 look exactly like the same classrooms from 2009?

It is my personal belief that they will, and that the notion of what a learning space looks like will not fundamentally change in mainstream K-12 education over that same time period. It is also my belief that the concept of learning space is one of the most neglected concepts of school design. Unlike some, I spend each and every day actually in a school, and I see teaching and learning jammed into a one-size-fits-all space that has the potential to constrict learning.

So I’m interested in something more. Something different, something better. Some might say I’m passionate about learning space, some may say obsessed. So, here is a quote that I posed the other day on Twitter, from Ryan Bretag:

“What are the dimensions of a learning space?”

If I were to ask you to identify a single word that describes a place for learning, you would probably say “classroom.” And that’s a great place to start, but unfortunately, that’s as far as most schools go. So when I think dimensions, I think of all possible spaces for learning, and all the types of learning that could potentially take place in those spaces. I use dimension in that context.

He goes on to describe ways to revolutionize the learning environment. Foote approves:

Change can become viral quite suddenly and if we aren’t prepared for it, we find ourselves reacting to it. What if we envisioned our building five years down the road, or ten? And then added in the key component, what will our students be like ten years from now? (Imagine that first grader who can use a laptop, Wii remote, and iPhone and then project forward ten years.) What would we do differently in our building arrangement, remodeling, or planning to prepare for those students?

Because they are coming soon, to a school near you.

Myself? I'm not totally convinced. Perhaps it's because I have a hard time pinpointing my role in that new learning space. One of my greatest concerns about the incorporation of technology into the 21st Century classroom, especially if it's done in haste, is that teachers will find themselves becoming more and more obsolete. If in the future there is no more need for an actual, physical building (the "schoolhouse" concept that we cling to with nostalgia), why stop there? Why not make all of the lesson plans digital? Why not use computerized instructors to facilitate a virtual curriculum? Eventually students can just download all they need to know into an implanted microchip. Okay, perhaps I've taken this dystopic vision too far. But the point still stands. I think that we all get so caught up in the romance of technology and innovation that we forget what education is really supposed to be about. As Jakes reminds us, a lot of teaching and learning has taken place in those old-fashioned classrooms without the benefit of multimedia stations and advanced software or social networking. Can we teach with Twitter? Sure. Can we teach without it? Definitely.

And let's not forget that schools and classrooms are not just places for adolescents to congregate between the hours of 7:00am and 3:00pm. They also provide space for community groups, adult education classes, extracurricular activities, athletics, tutoring, voting, and playgrounds. And for students that need a safe environment to study or stay out of trouble, there's nothing quite as reliable as a school. Of course, Jakes and Foote are not suggesting that our venerable institutions of learning will disappear overnight. But are we trending away from the traditional structure towards a campus-like layout? Will large common areas replace smaller classrooms and labs? What about the school library? Or cafeteria? Altering these spaces in such fundamental ways will inevitably have an impact not only on education but on the broader community relationship with the school. Before doing anything drastic, I think we should really consider some of these implications.

And finally, how are we going to pay for these incredible upgrades?

I want to provide an equitable learning environment

Leafing through a Wired magazine item, my husband read that approximately 70% of blind American adults are unemployed and, more startling, over half of all blind high school students will drop out before receiving a diploma. Upon hearing these statistics, I immediately jumped online and was dismayed to find confirmation of these alarming trends. In 2008 Dr. Fred Schroeder, National Federation of the Blind first vice president and former commissioner of the U.S. Rehabilitation Services Administration, delivered an address at the NFB national convention, which included the following remarks:

I recently learned that a friend of mine, Reggie Howard, had passed away. Reggie grew up in Alabama during the time when many southern states maintained separate schools for the blind, a white school and a black school. I remember Reggie’s telling me that blind students at the black school were always excited to hear that the white school would be getting new Braille books because that meant that the black school would also be getting new Braille books, the old books from the white school passed on to the black school for the blind. When the white school got new desks, the black school got new desks, the old ones from the white school.

Segregation was wrong. It harmed children, but how much and in what ways? It is true that it was a few years later that blind students at the black school learned that Constantinople is now Istanbul. And it is true that the books were a little worn, the desks a little the worse for wear. But they had books. They had desks. They had a school and teachers who cared and did their best. And, yes, they did learn. They learned math and English. They learned science and social studies, and they learned something else--they learned that society believed them to be inferior, inferior because of their race and inferior because of blindness. They were harmed by a substandard education. They were harmed by poor facilities. But most of all they were harmed by prejudice--prejudice rooted in low expectations. But society was wrong. Reggie was not inferior, not inferior because of race and not inferior because of blindness. And neither was any of the other students at the Alabama School for Negro Deaf and Blind.

Today most blind children, black and white, are educated in ordinary public school classrooms. But, as with the desegregation of public schools, including schools for the blind, physical desegregation does not in and of itself confer equality. Blind children, black and white, continue to be society's forgotten, some educated in schools for the blind and some in local public schools, but still forgotten, regarded as children with no future, no promise, no meaning--for the most part desegregated, but not yet integrated.

It is assumed that sighted children will learn to read and write, yet today only 10 percent of blind children learn to read and write Braille. It is assumed that sighted children will have books and libraries and other resources to support their learning; but today blind children continue to wait for Braille books, only a handful have ever seen a Braille library, and basic tools like Braille notetakers are rarely available; and when they are, often it is only after an intense struggle with school officials. It is assumed that sighted children will graduate from high school, and we count it a crisis in American education when the dropout rate reaches double digits. But where is the public outcry about the dropout rate among the blind? Today only 45 percent--fewer than half--of all blind children will earn a high school diploma. We will not stand by and allow this to continue.... It was the National Federation of the Blind that said to the Congress that the isolation--the social and economic segregation--of blind people must end, that blind people deserve the chance to learn and work and live as others, and, to do so, they must have the opportunity to become literate.

....

We must find blind people and help them learn to believe in themselves, believe that, given training and opportunity, they can live full and productive lives; and that means we must bring them into the National Federation of the Blind. It means we must help society learn to think differently about Braille and, by extension, think differently about blindness and blind people. It means we must help parents recognize the importance of Braille in their children's lives. It means we must convince teachers of blind children that Braille is the cornerstone of literacy and therefore the cornerstone of opportunity. And it means we must make sure that the resources are available so that blind children have access to competent instruction in Braille reading and writing.

....

No matter society's low expectations, Reggie was not inferior, not inferior because of race and not inferior because of blindness, and neither was any of the other students at the Alabama School for Negro Deaf and Blind. No matter how limited their opportunities, opportunities constricted b low expectations, they were not inferior, nor is any other blind person, black or white. Reggie was not inferior, nor am I, nor are you, nor is any other blind person. This is the Braille Readers Are Leaders campaign. This is the National Federation of the Blind.

Having spent the last two weeks celebrating the promise of technology to bring new resources and modes of interaction into the classroom, I find myself in somewhat of a shame spiral. I confess that I never even considered how technology, which I imagine to be a tool for shrinking achievement gaps, could have the opposite effect for some students, further isolating them from their peers and from the broader global community. It will be difficult enough to incorporate social networking and multimedia instruments into fluid curricula in an orderly and effective way. But the social, political and ethical implications of such drastic transformation of the classroom environment have yet to be fully explored. Students with visual impairments, clearly already suffering from a lack of resources and assistance, will likely have difficulty engaging in a classroom that emphasizes video or internet technologies. Students with hearing impairments might also find the use of audio resources (such as podcasts) challenging. Students with learning disabilities could find it difficult to adapt to technological tools that require a range of sensory explorations. How did I not see this?

Our job as educators is to provide an equitable learning environment for students of diverse backgrounds, abilities and attitudes. The integration of public schools, not only in terms of race and gender, but also disability clearly had unforeseen consequences. Before we look to the future of virtual classrooms, we should probably invest our limited resources in improving our actual ones.

I want to attend this conference

So this post is specifically addressed to those MAC-ers that are social studies majors (or any of the sub-specialties like economics, history, political science, and geography). I was surfing around some websites and blogs this afternoon and I ventured onto the National Council for the Social Studies site. They are the largest association of social studies educators in the country and they are having their annual conference in Atlanta, November 13-15, 2009. I asked our faculty members if it would be feasible to attend and I got the green light from Charlie. So I'm seriously thinking of going. If you think you'd be interested too, let me know and maybe we can coordinate a group rate. This could be a great opportunity to get to know the movers and shakers in the field and to get a head start on professional development. Plus, it could serve as an excellent complement to our methods class and help us as we transition into full-time student teaching in January.

Follow this link to find information about the Conference and if it sounds like something you would like to consider, find me in class!

I like the teacher incentive fund

So does the Center for American Progress.

I should have been homeschooled

Guest blogging for Andrew Sullivan over at The Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf links to a post by Alan Jacobs at The American Scene in which Jacobs ponders his homeschooled son's literature curriculum. Money quote:

He’s headed into the eleventh grade, and while his education so far has given him a sound overview of Western cultural history, we’re concerned that he hasn’t had enough experience digging deeply into particular issues, doing wide-ranging research and coming up with sophisticated theses based on what he has learned. So we’ve decided to organize the coming school year around particular topics with interdisciplinary facets to them, starting in each case with one or two books that will in different ways orient him to the issues. Our focus will be on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the West, though any non-Western topics could reach back farther.

Friedersdorf marvels at the quality of the young scholar's education and laments his own. His comments are worth quoting in full:

I say that as someone who attended a well-regarded Catholic high school that offered numerous AP classes, better than average teachers and a reputation among elite colleges for turning out exceptionally well prepared students. Even so, I cannot help but assess its curriculum with a Paul Simon line: "When I look back on all the crap I learned in high school, it's a wonder I can think at all." Despite hard work that resulted in a 4.0+ GPA, I spent four years studying Spanish without becoming anything near fluent, passed an AP Physics class knowing embarrassingly little about the subject, and endured a biology class that basically amounted to memorizing terms long enough to pass successive unit exams (and no longer), conceptual understanding be damned. The only classes that afforded real learning were senior year English, modern art, geometry, and an ethics course, classes I remain grateful for having taken -- they've afforded more intellectual fulfillment in subsequent years than anything in my upbringing save the fact that my parents read to me endlessly as a little kid.

What strikes me, all these years later, about my lousy but better-than-average high school education is how useful it proved in preparing me for college and the job market. Absent exceptional teachers, an academically competitive high school basically teaches the young how to game the system lots of people call the American meritocracy. It is difficult to describe this skill set precisely, though it certainly includes things like earning good grades in classes you know little if anything about, learning to game standardized tests and exams, employing writerly tricks to obscure the fact that you know nothing of substance about the topic of your five page paper, and understanding which teachers aren't desirous of substance insomuch as they want an ability to fake it on pages where the margins and font are diligently set to their specifications.

Oh to have those youthful years back. As an adult, I understand the preciousness of time, and I sorely regret having wasted any of it simulating rather than gaining knowledge. The experience does inform a suspicion that if we stopped making the overlap between academic skills and life skills a self-fulfilling prophecy, they might overlap less than we imagine. Were that the case, perhaps high schools would rejigger their curriculum to more closely resemble what Alan is attempting: knowledge as something more than a metric to be measured by standardized tests, a means of admission to a selective college or a prerequisite for strategic advancement in the American job market.

He could not have described my experience any better. I too went to an above average high school (although mine was public), populated by high quality teachers, ample resources and plenty of AP courses. I too spent four years studying Spanish only to achieve mild proficiency, managed to earn a G.P.A. of 3.9, and stumbled my way to A's in chemistry and physics without retaining much of anything. With the exception of AP English, an excellent Vietnam War class, an Introduction to Journalism course, and a fantastic AP Calculus teacher, my high school experience would have been utterly forgettable in terms of content literacy. But I definitely learned the art of B.S.ing on papers, rote memorization without any long term memory retention, and the importance of presentation over substance.

And yet, I was one of the lucky ones. Transitioning to college was challenging but not overwhelmingly so and I adjusted to the increased workload and higher expectations rather seamlessly. I can hardly imagine the difficulty less advantaged students faced, if they had the opportunity to go to college at all.

One of the first friends I made freshmen year was homeschooled and I remember wondering how she could have possibly been prepared for college without attending an actual high school. But she had a depth of knowledge that made my educational background look mediocre at best and I realized pretty quickly that the conventional wisdom was wrong. The one-on-one instruction of the homeschooling environment, free from the restrictions of standardized tests, allows for the kind of meaningful learning that Wes Jacobs has access to and even the best high school in America cannot compete with that. It makes me wonder just what we as educators can do to provide an environment that does encourage genuine exploration and critical thinking, even as we plan for the next round of assessments.

I am a cartoon

My great friend Donna told me about this cool website FaceYourManga that will help you create an anime avatar. I wasn't thrilled with my screen photo and I wanted something interesting but that was still clearly me. Well, voila! It (kinda) looks like me, right? Right? This is why I love the web, you can find all sorts of interesting applications and tools that can make your blog or twitter account more than just a repository of information. It becomes a total reflection of your way of looking at the world. I think you can tell a lot about a person by they way they design their web pages. What are their priorities? What functionality matters to them? How do they want to communicate with the rest of us? Even though this stuff is not exactly new to the world, so much of it is new to me and I'm having the best time exploring cool and innovative ways of expressing myself. I used to be really creative as a child. I painted, drew pictures, used clay and collage. I love performing as an actor but there is something unique about creating something with your hands. Yes, typing on a screen doesn't get my hands dirty. But I still feel like I'm sharing elements of myself everytime I publish a blog post or post a video or reply on twitter. It's pretty cool!

I think I love twitter

Yes, you read that correctly. As I said in class, I was the biggest Twitter skeptic and a committed resistor of the social networking thing generally. But the Iranian election and aftermath totally changed my mind and although I haven't personally invested a lot of time yet, I think that the whole phenomenon is worthy of a second look. Because the mainstream media outlets, particularly cable news, were completely AWOL on the story until it was well underway, I relied completely on some of my favorite political bloggers to keep me aprised of the situation in Iran. CNN failed big time and I'm not sure that I will ever trust that network to cover important stories again. People like Andrew Sullivan at the Atlantic, Nico Pitney at Huffington Post, the New York Time's The Lede blog, Tehran Bureau and the BBC provided the kind of comprehensive coverage that I was looking for. Not only could they link to official reports and interviews, they also uploaded photos and video from Iranians that offered a real-time glimpse into the on-the-ground narrative that was unfolding. Watching a cell phone video that recorded Iranians at night on their rooftops chanting "Allah-o Akbar" (God is Great) in open defiance of their leadership was awe-inspiring.



So many of these reports came through Twitter and Facebook that I signed up for both services just so I could follow the news. Endless refreshes on twitter made for riveting viewing. As Jeff mentioned, the State Department actually asked Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance because the tool was so vital to the protesters. Amazing stuff.

So, now I am a twitter convert. But what of facebook? Well, not two days after I signed up I received a really sweet email from a friend that I had fallen out with years ago. We have reestablished contact and I have Facebook to thank! Although I still haven't spent the time fixing up my page that I would like, I finaly understand what all the fuss is about.

I dream of a technology wonderland

Thinking about how to incorporate technology into my classroom reminded me of a rather mundane experience I had a couple of years ago. After my husband and I adopted a border collie, I suddenly found myself taking at least one LONG walk every day and I needed something to listen to on my iPod. Music wasn’t cutting it (lacks a beginning and end) so I started to explore podcasting, discovered an entire universe of fascinating conversations and I became a bona fide podcast addict. Not only did podcasts provide information on current events, history, politics, economics, and the arts, but it also taught me auditory learning skills and revealed to me that the nature of learning is about listening and exchanging ideas, asking questions and exploring controversial issues. In addition to standards from NPR (The Diane Rehm Show, On Point with Tom Ashbrook, Fresh Air, Talk of the Nation, Science Friday, On the Media, and This American Life), I devour episodes of Stuff You Should Know, Open Source, The Moth, Radio Lab, and Democracy Now. Okay, so what is my point? Well, one afternoon while listening to Diane Rehm a caller identified herself as a high school student and said that her entire class was listening to the show that day. They had voted on a question to ask and she was elected to make the call. I was completely delighted by this and thought that it was an inspired idea by the instructor. Since then I have heard teachers and students call into various shows to make comments or ask questions and I always imagined that if I ever went into teaching, I would try to incorporate podcasts into my lesson plans somehow.

Obviously, I went into teaching! Or else I wandered into the wrong classroom on June 22… Anyway, when faced with the possibility of designing my ideal classroom, I immediately thought of how to encourage engagement with the content material in untraditional ways. I want my students to read texts, no doubt, but I am determined to avoid an overreliance on one textbook or even a handful of books. I want them to have access to many points of view and many different types of resources and media. I approached this activity imagining that I have millions of dollars to fund my wildest fantasies and I know that most of my initiatives are pipe dreams. But I can think big and experiment with cheaper or more accessible paths to those goals. Having my students subscribe to and follow one podcast for the length of one term, with frequent assignments that require them to engage in deep learning, is one example. Most podcasts are free and even if students do not have access to a computer or iPod, there are ways to provide these resources. I want them to think about how geography, history, economics and political science are relevant to their lives and using technology to expand their understanding of real world implications might inspire them to, well, pay closer attention!

After filling my drawing and wish list with high tech computers, multimedia stations, kindles, advanced mapping software and editing equipment, I had a sudden suspicion that the whole exercise was a trick. Did Jeff and Liz anticipate that we would create these wildly idealistic laundry lists of gadgets and devices only to crush our souls with the reality we will face in our schools? I think that it would be easy to get swamped by technology, to constantly have to confront the rapid rate of technological advancements, and to always be consumed with the innovations that you don’t have access to. When I was a theatre practitioner, I learned an important lesson about technology and I think it applies very well to teaching. While it would be awesome to have a limitless budget, a gigantic stage with the latest lighting and sound equipment, and access to video and computer technology, ultimately, theatre is about actors communicating with audiences using written texts. The best directors can create incredible theatre with a ten-dollar budget and a million-dollar budget. Teachers should approach the classroom with the same attitude; having access to technology can be helpful but not necessary to create a rich learning environment. In decades and centuries past, teachers did not have the same resources that we have today but they still managed to teach and their students still managed to learn. Technology can enhance learning but it should not be used as a crutch or an excuse for teachers to abdicate their responsibilities as communicators.

I blog, therefore I am.

This is it! My first real blog post. I think I am much cooler than I actually am right now. So, down to business after two weeks of SMAC goodness. It's been quite an adventure so far and I only hope that I'm retaining at least some of the information they are throwing at us on a daily basis. My dreams are filled with concept maps, knowledge continua (plural of continuum!), literacy objectives, philosophical theories and covariates. Is anyone else exhausted?