And They're OFF!

My "Aha" moment today is, well, an "Oh Boy!" one. Put another way, I feel like I'm either digging a new Grand Canyon, or maybe I'm trying to fill one in. So, how do I feel? Well, I just read Andy's entry and had to laugh -- he feels like he's being told to go into a tomato field and leave with tomato sauce. I feel sorta with ya there, Andy, my brother! This is going to be an arduous year of work. That said, I sure hope it will be a rewarding one, and I absolutely hope it will advance my understanding of and teaching of writing skills to my students. I began with looking over our Syllabus carefully -- I see "Amy's Army" will be marching far in short time with a minefield of due dates in between. (Amy's advice to keep pace, I think, is to be adhered to.) Then, I read the first two chapters of our textbook and realized that a number of things we learned in IDD came back to me. Finally, I arrived at writing my Topic Paper. My concern at the outset is that I may be trying to paint too big a picture. Writing is always a difficult skill to teach and to have students develop. That said, it is still an essential one to develop. As I begin my Capstone, I am eager to experiment with some strategies and techniques I have already developed and to evaluate these with my new students in a controlled manner. Additionally, I have several "outside-the-box" ideas I'd like to develop and implement -- even some ideas using synectics -- that I want to develop and implement. My problem is how to fit all of it INSIDE the box. And it's a problem...even as I just clicked the "Submit" button to hand in my Topic Paper. I guess even horses stumble out of the gates at times. Why can't this Capstone be as easy as our Syllabus quiz? Just saying.

Way Leads on to Way...

This August past, as the days turned colder, thoughts of fall and returning to school and the beginning of my Capstone for my MAITs degree began to press upon me -- mostly, in fact, my Capstone. It seemed others in my cohort had clearly decided what they were going to do for their Capstone, even as I wavered in uncertainty and indecision. Going into the summer vacation, my plan was to research what is referred to as "looping" in education, where a teacher keeps his or her students for more than one year of instruction. I have spent the last fifteen years -- and my only years -- teaching as a looping teacher, holding my 7th grade students as returning 8th graders. In effect, I served as their English teacher during their entire middle school experience. My district, I think, had a clear reason for adding looping when I was hired, that reason being that we had no "sister" team to which we would pass our students along. A few years later, as our district grew, another looping team was added, and we now had a "sister" team only in name, since both teams retained their own students. Last year, my district made the decision to eliminate looping from the middle school. No reason for doing so was offered other than that looping made no difference in student learning. I could not disagree more strongly. As an veteran looping teacher, I have experienced first-hand the enormous advantages to both teacher and students of retaining the same students a second year -- especially middle-school aged ones. Accordingly, the shock and disappointment of this decision was, and still is, enormous. From the moment it was announced to the time I'm writing this entry, I remain convinced this decision -- for whatever reason(s) it was made -- was wrong. To that end, I began what I thought would be the topic for my Capstone as summer began. I started to research the advantages and disadvantages of looping. What I discovered was compelling and overwhelmingly consistent: the advantages of looping, especially to middle-school aged students, far outweighs the disadvantages. In fact, each source I found was remarkably consistent with the others in endorsing the practice of looping, so much so that I was surprised that looping was not the "norm" in education today. Of course, there were disadvantages cited, too, but far fewer than the many advantages. What I also learned was that I already knew this -- all the advantages, all the disadvantages -- I was familiar with these. Indeed, I had learned them, firsthand, through fifteen years of teaching. After spending a challenging semester working through my Instructional Design and Development course, I realize now that I would probably be considered an expert in the area of looping. It's been my life blood my entire teaching career. All that said, each of my graduate professors has stressed how we must be passionate about the topic we choose for our Capstone, as we will be "living, breathing, eating, and sleeping" this topic working on it our last year. Such is why I considered the topic of looping to begin with. However, I also did not want to select a topic, spend a year working diligently on that topic, only to find a locked door at the end. Simply said, a year's worth of work to discover what in my heart and my mind I already know would be fruitless -- it is doubtful to change the decision of the administration to bring back the practice of looping. As disappointed as I am with the decision to do away with the practice of looping, I have decided not to make it the focus of my Capstone. I hope one day to return to the issue of looping as a passionate advocate of all the benefits of looping. That day, however, will come some time in the future. A by-product of my search into looping was latching onto some intriguing research into motivation and learning and performance. Perhaps best known is Daniel Pink and the surprising insights he has offered about the effects of incentives on motivation and performance. His research and those of others have led me to decide upon the topic for my Capstone for my MAITs degree: the relationship of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation on student learning and performance, with a focus on the area of writing. This is a topic I will discuss and explore more in my next entry. All that said, a challenging year of work and discovery has begun!

Making Thinking Routine

As we round out the school year and our MAITs course on "Critical Thinking," I thought I'd share a few thinking routines I worked into lessons recently. For our reading of SPEAK, Laurie Halse Anderson's page-turning story about Melinda Sordino's first year in high school, I incorporated a number of thinking routines in sequence. To begin with, I had the students respond to the novel's cover artwork. The students listed details shown in the illustration and thought about what the novel (with its title) might be about. Several students noticed smaller details, such as the fact that each eye is a different color, that there is no mouth (which they connected to the title "Speak"), that there was a marked contrast between light and dark, the appearance of leaves, and that the face appears to be torn in the middle. As students completed their reading, class discussion returned back to the cover illustration to determine what aspects now had meaning. Next, the students completed the "3-2-1 Snapshot" routine on the character Melinda Sordino after the first twenty pages of reading. As this novel deals with the extremely sensitive topic of a girl's rape (but which is not directly addressed until well into the book), I was interested in seeing the students' impression of Melinda early in the story -- well before they understood what had happened to her and how it affected who she was. The results were fascinating, providing me with valuable insights into what they were thinking of the character and what they saw as important in the story so far. I also was surprised by some, as some students wrote "relatable" as one of their adjectives, suggesting that Melinda's feelings of alienation (she calls herself "Outcast" because no one will talk to her because she called the cops at a summer party) seem to suggest that these students also feel the effects of not being accepted. The questions students wrote were somewhat expected: What happened at the party? And, why does Melinda have no friends? were common ones. Most interesting, though, and creative were the metaphors students came up with. I used several of the metaphors students suggested and Googled images for some of these and created a montage of metaphors. The students viewed the metaphor montage and selected a metaphor to write about. They could select one that represents the metaphor they chose, or they also could select another. Students completed their explanations on a "What Makes You Say That?" answer sheet, and students passed back their writing so that classmates could read a variety of student responses. Through a Powerpoint slide, I presented each metaphor picture and the class discussed what quality of Melinda's personality it revealed. Needless to say, I was tossing a few "What makes you say that?"s at students, who then backed up their opinions with support from the story. And I believe the students were engaged by seeing their own metaphors and those of others. The one included here is the simile "as quiet as a stream with no water" -- one from Christian (who came up with the simile) and another by Ashley, who offered another interpretation of this same simile. Another interesting metaphor was Julia's, one about a bird that needs to learn to fly. This, believe it or not, is a metaphor the author later uses later in the story.

Remember Those Who Have Served

Yesterday was Memorial Day. Many think of Memorial Day as the unofficial start of summer and picture trips to the shore and barbeques with family and friends. And this is fine. Last Thursday I walked my students over to the high school where each student placed two American flags arranged in rows on the front lawn along Route 9. Each flag symbolizes an American soldier who made the ultimate sacrifice -- that being lost his or her life -- in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am glad that the Student Council in the high school came up with and planned this commemoration, as it not only produces a powerful and beautiful tribute to these American heroes but also gives our students the opportunity to reflect upon the many freedoms they enjoy and the great dangers so many of their fellow Americans are placing themselves in to protect us and our freedoms. Here are two powerful films that I feel are ideal for Memorial Day and, in another week or so, the anniversary of D-Day (allied invasion of Normandy, France in WWII). The first film is title Taking Chance, and it depicts the true story of the death of 19-year-old Marine Chance Phelps and the return of his body to his family. I never knew how much respect and attention to detail were taken in so doing. It's a moving and powerful film, and one we showed our students last year before they placed flags as 7th graders. The second film is Saving Private Ryan by Steven Speilberg, depicting the D-Day invasion and the search for a sole surviving brother in the middle of France during WWII. It is graphic and disturbing and reveals all the horrors of war; however, underscoring this graphic violence is the valor and sacrifice of those who serve our country. Enjoy the time off and the barbeques and the beach...but also take time to remember those who allow us to do so.

Dartmouth or Drano?

This past week, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, "Compare a plumber to going to Harvard College — being a plumber, actually for the average person, probably would be a better deal. You don’t spend ... four years spending $40,000, $50,000 in tuition without earning income.” [Extracted from Pipe dream: Skip college, become a plumber]. His comments sparked controversy and raised questions about the advantages of pursuing a college degree with tuition rates that have skyrocketed some 400% in the past thirty years. Bloomberg added, "The people who are going to have the biggest problem are college graduates who aren’t rocket scientists, if you will, not at the top of their class" and that "Success in college and careers requires good writing and critical thinking skills as well as good math and science skills." [Pipe Dream] Perhaps Bloomberg meant more precisely that if you attend college and don't do well there, you may be wasting your time and money, and maybe you would be better off learning a trade. This point about doing well at a trade is one I understand. After Superstorm Sandy devastated the northeast region, I returned to my island home to the clanking noise of gas company workmen dismantling my now turned-off gas meter -- it had been submersed by flooding seawater and required replacement. Faced with being homeless for weeks or possibly months, I was elated to return home to my new gas meter one week later, replete with red ribbon and tag for the plumber-I'd-have-to-find to reconnect to my home. I quite literally collared a plumber who was working on my street two days later and -- a half-hour later and $125 poorer -- my gas was reconnected with my house and I was reconnected with my home. That's a lot of money for time spent with no cost for parts, but I'm not complaining. So to be or not to be a plumber? In an economy where jobs are being eliminated as quickly as others are being created, Bloomberg notes that it's "hard to farm that out and it’s hard to automate that." [Pipe Dreams] That said, I decided to poke my nose further into the issue and discovered Trends in Higher Education, which pointed out the much higher job loss and unemployment rates of high school level educated workers compared with college educated ones. And this makes sense. As our world whirls forward with innovation and technology, it follows that certain jobs that once required manpower no longer do. A drive up the parkway shows how toll collectors have been mostly replaced by EZ Pass, and tours through modern factories reveal marvelously complex robotics completing intricate manufacturing. The end result is a loss of blue-collared jobs. At the same time, computers and technology have impacted white-collared jobs, too. Think of the accountants who have lost clients to Turbo Tax and lawyers to online legal resources like Legal Zoom? A Georgetown study showed the advantages of a college education in "The College Advantage: Weathering the Economic Storm.", where it confirms much higher job loss in blue-collar jobs during the Great Recession of 2007 and the overall job recovery for college graduates. In addition, the report suggest that college graduates recoup the money invested in college on average in 11 years and that the economic advantage is enormous over the course of a career. So, what's the final answer? Plumber or college graduate? Perhaps the answer is as simple as this -- you better be great at whatever you choose to do. And this, I believe, is as simple as common sense.

Epiphany and True Grit

Pondering what critical thinking is, I viewed a few videos on YouTube and stumbled upon "Imagine: How creativity works," in which I found several interesting points, some of which confirmed and sort of explained some understandings I already had, and others which I found surprising but, with explanation, made some sense. The presenter Jonah Lehrer discussed how insights are made and what science and neurology have discovered about the process. One point Lehrer made was that the brain tries to find solutions in one part of the brain, but when the answers or solutions aren't forthcoming, it begins to use other parts of the brain, one being the "interior superior temporal gyrus" (yeah, right!). This part, it seems, becomes active when the ordinary solutions don't seem to be working, and it seems to be operating when one is in a more relaxed state. Epiphanies (sudden realizations) seem to come from this part of the brain. From the video it appears there are times where one has to grind away to find the solution to a problem and there are others where one needs to step away and relax to find the answer. One critical thinking activity I have my students complete is to try to connect a box of nine dots using four, continuous straight lines without ever lifting your pencil. To so To solve the problem, one has to go outside the box of dots; however, in most cases, people just don't do that. Visually, it seems, the constrain themselves within the box. I usually give students a week to try to solve the problem, and my advice to them is to draw a new set of dots each time they try and advise them to see what isn't working. As the week progresses, I offer some visual clues (abstract pictures with the meanings "Think outside the box") In addition, I offer some quotes to provides some guidance, such as Edward Albee's "Sometimes it's necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly." I endeavor to challenge my students to think and to work hard. Last year, I had one student named Emily who really became obsessed with trying to find the solution. And I mean obsessed. After nearly a week of failed attempts, Emily was posting on Edmodo how she had nine (that's right 9!) pages of failed attempts, and I was honestly becoming concerned about the frustration Emily was expressing from her posts. I told her to look over her failed attempt and to think about what was not working. Later, whatever happened, Emily discovered the solution. Once it occurred to Emily to go beyond the box of dots, she found the one and only solution. Here, you can see how she found it. This experience seems to line up with what Lehrer mentions about how the minds works in a dual state to find new and fresh solutions to problems. And Emily showed both the grit (determination to succeed) and ability to find the solution.

On Dancing Bears and Goats -- Coffee, Regular or Decaf?

Before reading on, click on this link and complete the "Awareness Test." Perhaps you have already seen this "Awareness Test." If so, then you know what to look for. This is analogous to finding the arrow in the negative space of the FedEx logo. You cannot NOT see it once you know it's there. The problem I find having completed my Instructional Design and Development course and now involved in Creative Thinking is that there is a divide -- perhaps in my view a chasm -- between the objectivity of measurable learning objectives desired in IDD and the nebulous and seemingly unquantifiable nature of creative thinking. Simply said, how does one measure creativity, exactly? As I face completing my first lesson on creating a lesson incorporating and fostering creative and critical thinking, I run into the wall when trying to create measurable objectives for these. And, frankly, the idea seems almost antithetical. That is, the very idea of conforming to measurable objectives cries of closing the door to the act of creative thinking. In the "Awareness Test," one is so focused on counting the number of passes that one misses the dancing bear altogether. And can one really count the passes and appreciate the dancing bear at the same time? It seems they are two separate experiences. Which bring me to Black Holes, a concept of space I find fascinating. Physicists and astronomers know they exist, but you cannot "see" them. They are so powerful they consume all around them, so gravitational that even light cannot escape their grasp. Black Holes seem to me to be that aspect of learning relevant to creative and critical thinking in that it somewhat defies some precise, measurable and certainly observable objective. I am enjoying reading Making Thinking Visible, as it presents a number of "Thinking Routines" to provide strategies to foster and enhance critical and creative thinking. But again, evaluation tools? Even the notion of evaluation adds the component of extrinsic motivation -- one of the creative thinking "killers." Which brings me to dancing goats. I love coffee -- it helps me awake in the morning, and it is morning when I relish thinking most. In Starbucks I found some artwork and historical information on coffee. (See pictures.) It seems an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi discovered coffee quite by accident when he noticed his goats, who had been eating the red berries, had sudden bursts of energy. When he tried eating the berries, he found the same burst we know to come from caffeine. How does this relate to creative thinking? Simple. He observed. He speculated. He tried. And he discovered. Ah, coffee! Which brings me to decaffeinated coffee. Again, another historical accident was the discovery of decaffeinated coffee, the result of coffee beans that had become soaked in sea water. It appears the beans lost their burst. Again, no one was looking for this. Rather, they simply noticed it, and learned from it. Edison quipped about his attempts to create the light bulb: "I have not failed. I've just found 10000 ways that won't work." I am delighted to find new "Thinking Routines" to provide my students with "tools" to effect better creative and critical thinking skills. I haven't read anything yet to help with these objectives. I think they may be in that Black Hole.