New Student

Every parent would like to know that their child, as a new student in a school, will be greeted enthusiastically by teachers and warmly by students. The hidden reality is that a new student comes with a trace of anxiety. One more student in an already large class can be perceived by a teacher as the tipping point between control and chaos - the difference between effective teaching or what amounts to mere seat work for students. The thought of additional reporting, and even the apparently simple yet important consideration of where to seat a new child, can tinge that hoped-for welcome a new student so critically needs. After several weeks of hard work together, a class and a teacher create a working relationship that can be quickly altered by the emotional, academic, and social needs of an incoming student.

At a recent intake meeting, I learned of a prospective new student with significant challenges. I thought about how another teacher, perhaps even me a few years ago, might have smiled outwardly yet quietly internalized this information. How am I going to do this? Is this fair to my class? Is this really the right placement for the child, considering all the accommodations required?

I felt none of that. I thought about how fortunate this incoming child was to have a parent advocating for him. I thought about what a great experience this child’s presence would be for my students. Finally, I thought that I really don’t need to change a thing in terms of my instructional approach.

I wonder how it came to this. I can say now that writing with my students in my classroom has made that much difference in my approach to teaching. With that, we may not have precisely or entirely covered the curriculum prescribed, but we have learned and I have taught all that needs to be in order to accommodate this particular student, or any student. Together, we’ve learned to flex, to allow ourselves to be shaped and to embrace whatever person or idea comes through the classroom door. We've practiced patience with the process of writing; with the process of finding our thoughts and clarifying them with written words. We’ve established trust; that from wherever one approaches their writing is legitimate, fragile, and needs to be made to feel safe in order to share with others freely.

Where else will a new student like this be more suitably placed, but in a writing classroom?

An Almost Perfect Day

I had the most incredible day today. One student stopped me in the middle of the class and said, "What I like about this class is that everything is so hands-on." I was shocked. I had to tell him, "You know, the only thing you've had your hands on in this class is a pen and a piece of paper." Then it was his turn to be shocked. It was true.

We're working on getting our heads around creation stories, specifically, comparing the Iroquois Creation Narrative with the Judeo/Christian story of Genesis 2 in the New International Version (NIV) Bible. They've heard both stories, once just a listen, and the second time to pull out and write down objects/events and any symbolism they may percieve in them. We'll be looking for similarities and differences. But, there's so much more, and these seventh graders are so ready for big questions.

I put this writing prompt on the board. "Perfection is the enemy of creativity." - Edward Koch. Then asked them to write what they thought this might mean.

Unbelieveable. The level and intensity of conversation blew me away. I copied statements on the board, and prefaced our conversation by telling students that as we talk, see if you can place some of the things we mention into the meanings of the creations stories we've read. and took suggestions for a diagram that started to develop alongside the statements.
"If something is perfect, it doesn't need anything added to it, so there's no need to create anything for it."
"Perfection is impossible."
"If perfection is impossible, why try?"
"We can't be perfect, but we can try. We should. We struggle."
What about a perfect bowling game?"
"That's just a maximum, not perfection."
"Technology and knowledge cancel out religion. We get so full of knowledge, we think we don't need it."
"People make mistakes, so how can we be perfect?"
"Who defines mistakes?"
"What if we're still perfect, even with mistakes. Who are we to say?"
"There's good and bad. Everyone knows this. It just is."
"If perfection is the enemy of creativity, then imperfection is the ally of creativity."
"Well, we got that going for us."
Beauty, Plato, imperfection, the perfect ideal of something. It was really a thrill to have such a level of participation in class.

From there, we tied it into the creation stories. It seems that both of them begin with a perfect world. Then humans make a bad decision and end up in an imperfect world - this world we live in. They struggle between good and evil.

All of this emerged out of four minutes of writing and thinking.
Then we wrote again.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

Of Pups, Faith, and DNA

Seventh graders. They’re like pups, bounding into the room, nipping and bouncing and if they only had tails, they’d be wagging them. Yet, they can transform that energy into incredible insights, clear thinking, and respectful dialogue. They may be like pups, but they want to know. They have big questions. If only that energy can be channeled.

Relate to their lives. The writing prompt yesterday was “Explain how an ipod works.” They all wanted more guidance, but I didn’t give in. Some made up stories about little people inside that played tiny instruments and ran around frantically finding selections for you. Others made a valiant effort to connect memory chips with LCD displays and explain what they could about binary coding. It was entertaining to hear some of the ‘theories’, and indeed, it was quite clear that no one in the room could really explain exactly how that amazing little device works. Extending this further, we could all agree that there is a lot in our world that we believe will work for us, even though we don’t know how many things actually operate.

Then someone popped the F-word, Faith. Can we actually believe in something, have faith in it, and still not understand it? It was good stuff. During the last 10 minutes of class, we wrote again, and I explained the homework. Before you go home today, talk to someone in this class, at lunch, study hall, or wherever, and write madly to fill up a solid page about our class conversation today. Use your second write in class as a starting point.

This morning the pups shared their thinking (that came from the one page think/write homework assignment) with others at their table. They decided whether they wanted to share with the class, and I took notes on the board. What a fascinating and uplifting discussion we had. I tried to capture the essence of what some were saying, with my notion of where I wanted the conversation to go as well. All over the board, we seemed to find belief and knowledge. Yet there was a gap between them. What was that gap? The F-word again. Faith. The Leap of Faith! Oh! They seemed to understand! It’s not like you’re committing suicide by having faith. You're filling in the gaps. It’s not a cliff you’re jumping off of, it’s like a gorge (only in Ithaca) we leap to get to the other side!

Finally, I showed them the clip of a video, in which a geneticist meets with Navajo elders to share their perspectives of human origins. In it, one of the Navaho elders eloquently defends his ancestral beliefs even in the face of scientific proof to the contrary.

We’re going to take a look at Native American creation stories. At this place where scientific evidence of a DNA trail leading all humans back to Africa intersects and Native Americans’ strongly held beliefs of their origins, my pups are ready.

Revolution... One Step At a Time

I handed my students a content map. It has essential questions I hope to challenge students with. It has major understandings that I intend my students to absorb and internalize. It has skills I expect my students to improve and build upon. It even has a vocabulary list of content related words.

I was quite proud of this content map as I passed it out, having worked on it over the summer. I’d been looking forward to sharing it with my students as we set out on this unit of study together. As I read it with them, I told them, “Pay attention. This little piece of paper contains the questions and answers to 70% of any test I may give on this unit.”

Granted, content maps aren’t just for students. They provide continuity among grade levels. They set a foundation of instruction and objectives which can then be supported. They allow for some degree of equity in terms of what all students are learning. They are helpful to support staff, ESL, paraprofessionals, and parents. The kicker is that they are required.

Such a wonderful document for everyone else, why not share it with my students? A bit novel perhaps, but you know, it’s just the kind of teacher I am. No secrets. Laying it out there. Just giving it away! They’ll eat it up and love me for it.

So, why do my students not remember that valuable piece of paper from two days ago? Why do I see it crumpled at the bottom of a backpack, in the recycle bin, and left on a desktop after class?

Easy enough to say I should have given my students the opportunity to help create the essential skills and understandings for the unit. And easy to suggest that I provide some choices to students regarding what they are going to learn. However, right now I don’t have the fortitude to enact a paradigm shift of student-centered curriculum design. The inertia of the current system, the steady stream of daily tasks, and the reality of tomorrow’s lesson plans make the chances of this one man’s heroic stand pretty much nil.

I thought I was doing my little part for the revolution by passing out the content map to my students and sharing it with them. But my students did not catch the spirit. That’s the catch.

Tomorrow, I'll pull out the content map again, and try to involve my students with it in something more than a cursory way. Is there a found poem in it? Maybe a comic strip. I’m wondering if a couple of students can make a quick game of it.

The short of it is, I need to resolve that every document I give to students is, or becomes, meaningful to them. That, or don’t give it to them. I like that idea.

I’m taking suggestions on how to make documents meaningful. Not just the ones students like. The one's they need.

Playground Essay...Work in Progress

My previously shared weekend update was about playgrounds. While discussing this with my students, I realized I had a lot more I wanted to say on the topic. I told them I would go home, write more, and bring it back.

Here’s what I shared on the LCD projector the next day:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AW0d22CwYgP0ZGhwa3hzYzhfMTkzY2tycXZkZDg&hl=en

As I read through this with my class, I shared some of the thoughts I’d had while writing it. What surprised me most was the revelation that I had discovered a Burning Question. I’d actually written right past it, and then in re-reading, found the question written on the page. I edited a bit to point this out to my students.

Here’s that section of the writing…

“The real question to me isn’t, “What happened to the good old days?” aka “What happened to splinters?”, but “Why were playgrounds so UNsafe before?”

Hey, wait a minute. My writing just turned into an intro to a BURNING QUESTION!

(Honest, I didn’t plan that.)”

The point of all this was to share myself as a writer with my students. In the process I shared myself as a learner, a thinker, and a researcher.

I wanted to find some pictures of the lethal animal swings, and started a google image search. Nothing satisfactory came up, but somewhere along the line, I came across a short video of ‘traditional playgrounds’ in New York City. An amateur videographer had put this together from archival photos and footage of Coney Island. I emailed her, and shared my burning question. Her video focused on a man named Robert Moses, a politico-engineer-planner of NYC in the 50’s I think.

Here’s her response…

ethel malley just sent you a message on Vimeo:

Hi Eric!

"sorry i can't help you re: documentation, but for thoughts on safety, i'd guess there actually weren't thoughts on safety to begin with in NYC. Robert Moses was something of an off-shoot of city reformers influenced by Jacob Riis and his documentation of the frankly horrifying tenement conditions. i'd argue that just the very thought of creating a public space not only where people of lower incomes could congregate but their children could actually be children and play (relatively) safely was fairly unique. i'd think at the time of Robert Moses, just creating the space was the goal and that it would be incredibly safer than having children play in the streets and among the trash.

your project/paper sounds fascinating: i wish you the best of luck with it!"

If you want to reply:
http://vimeo.com/messages/#inbox/ethelmalley

ethel malley's profile on Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/ethelmalley

Ms. Maley helped me a lot. One reason she suggests that playgrounds were so unsafe in the early early years of public spaces is that people were just glad to get kids off the streets and out of the trash, and to have opportunities for clean and relatively safer play.

I poked around more and found lots of information about the developmental considerations of childrens’ play structures. I’m thinking of making a timeline to help sort it all out. And I’m still not sure whether my original question has been answered. More later, when I share with my students what I’ve got so far.

Chalk-Talk ~ Going Low Tech

I reserved the computer lab today to guide my students through the process of enrolling in my online Blackboard course, and to give them a little time to try out a U.S. geography game. I distributed new user IDs and passwords to every student. I created a step-by-step hardcopy guide for students to follow. I made a tear-off section so families could post the course log-on directions on their fridges, with a return section to verify that they had successfully logged on at home.

Even though my classes were scheduled for the lab, it was crowded, so I took a mobile lab into my classroom and distributed laptops. Some kids couldn’t log on. Some logged on to a ‘phantom’ website that was like my site, but incomplete. We figured out that everyone had to start from the district webpage link, rather than the school library webpage link. We also found that if they clicked on my class link before they clicked the ‘enroll’ button, bad things happened. Finally, some computers just didn’t boot up.

Enough! I had the kids put the laptops away, and rolled the mobile lab into a corner, where it can stay for all I care. I went to the chalkboard. (yes, a chalkboard, one of the few still left) and drew an outline of North America. With a piece of chalk, I took my students on a visual tour of the major geographic features of the North American continent. We ‘flew’ from west to east, over the Sierra Nevada’s, up to the Cascades, the over the Great Salt Desert, the Grand Canyon and the Rockies. We buzzed the grasses of the Great Plains, ran up the Mississippi, over the Ohio Valley, and around the five Great Lakes. We came over the Appalachian Mountains to the Tidewater region and the eastern seaboard. All the while, I sketched and swirled and ball-parked these features on the chalkboard. It was a whirlwind tour, but it kept their attention when all the expensive electronic technology had failed.

Something to be said for good old chalk - it’s there when you need it. The map on the board was a mess. It was ball-park estimation, sketches and outlines of general areas. I’m wondering whether many of them will be able to ‘retell’ the chalk-talk story of their cross-country flight, with more geographic information, than if they’d gotten online and followed an interactive map game.

I Am Not A Control Freak

Today, my students sit at their desks, read 12 pages of a textbook and take notes. It is very quiet.

This appears to be strange and unusual. People walk by the open door and peek in, eyebrows raised. They think I’m angry at my class - everyone sitting with their noses in a book. They stifle a chuckle at the notion that this is punishment for some misbehavior. Or, maybe they think I just didn’t have a plan for today and regressed to the textbook.

Some teachers assign reading (and writing) for homework, and believe that class time should be used for other things. They do many, many wonderful things with their students during class time. There is an overwhelming amount to get done. It can be justified, then, to defer reading and writing to homework. It is, after all, what a student should be able to do independently.

I do a lot in my classroom as well. I also have students read and write in class. When I do, kids sit in their seats and read or write for a sustained period of time, quietly.

Excuse me while I ask my students what they think of the book they are reading for 20 minutes straight…..

I’m back. Here are the comments.
“It’s interesting.” “I like it.” “It puts you into the story.” “It’s fun.”

OK, not the most eloquent descriptions, but you get the point.

Here’s how my ‘No I’m Not a Control Freak’ class session is set up:

The textbook is A History of US – The First Americans, volume one of a 16 book series written by Joy Hakim about the history of the United States. I’ve modeled reading the first chapter aloud, and have had a discussion with students about why reading aloud and following along is vitally important to their personal growth as readers. In a nutshell – Listening and following along with a good reader helps them to:
1. hear good pace, cadence and inflection
2. hear and see words being pronounced correctly
3. hear and see mistakes that can be glossed over without losing meaning/understanding
4. simply receive input from more than one modality

I read the first chapter out loud, and I thought out loud as well. I stopped when I wondered about something, and I shared that with my students. I wrote down a few phrases that captured my attention. I messed up on a couple of words, and quickly told the class, 'Eh, it doesn't matter. I used another word just like it."

Now it's their turn, reading silently.

There isn’t a corresponding worksheet to go with this reading. They aren’t writing ‘words I don’t know’ for a vocab list. The notes I modeled for them to take consist of listening to their own silent reading, and copying a few sentences from each chapter (2-3 pages) that catch them; make them stop and think, ‘hmmm’; cause them to pause and imagine for a second before moving on. They are leaving space under each set of ‘hmmm’ sentences, and tomorrow we will circulate the ‘captured sentences’ and allow other students to respond to these ‘findings’. Something of a simplified ‘Gallery Walk’ of text statements, that will hopefully generate personalized responses and thoughtful input from others.

What’s the point? Will we make anything of this? I’m not there yet, but if I don’t do anything else (hey, I could test them!), the process I’ve involved my students in is a skill they can repeat anywhere, any time for their own benefit. The content is no longer isolated in some barren text. It is food for thought, individually selected and shared with others. It allows students to have their individual takes on content-related reading be shared, read, and listened to. It will enable students to ‘think big’ in terms of the course content, and to know that simply wondering and being alert to their own thoughts is worthy of sharing. I’m sure I can turn this into a major writing assignment, and if I do, students will be more willing to buy in to it because they generated the thoughtful fodder to make it interesting for themselves. But I don’t have to make something more of this. Some reading and writing should be left just to the pleasure of seeking, discovering, and sharing.