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.

UDUTU and "Green Beer"

This weekend I am rubbing noses with UDUTU amidst St. Patrick's Day weekend! As St. Patrick's Day falls on a Sunday -- not your typical "drinking" day, as Monday follows Sunday -- it seems it will be a three-day celebration. In retrospect, it arguably started last weekend, as one town held its St. Patrick's Day parade and many patrons in the establishment I work in on weekends were garbed in green. For me, however, the holiday means I'm saddled with an added day of work -- this Sunday, a day normally allocated to my grad work! A separate distraction this week has been finding out the new evaluation criteria for, get this, Language Arts and mathematics teachers, that will be tied to student performance and growth, a topic bandied about for some time. I received a link to this post, which, mind you, is SATIRE, about a teacher suing parents for the poor performance of their child. And I just had to smile as I reflected back to the simpler days of time in college reading Swift's "A Modest Proposal," another jewel of satire whose meaning, alas, was widely missed by the readers of his day. (It takes place in Ireland, so it's an Irish theme this week's post.) Hopefully, these changes taking place in evaluation reform will be far more bark than bite! In my last post, I mentioned the poem "A Birth" by James Dickey, and I find now that I am trying to turn the vision of my e-Learning topic and storyboard into an actual module, the meaning of the poem is all-too-fitting. To paraphrase the poem, the narrator creates a pasture, only to find a horse in it. The idea, I think, is that an idea comes to mind; however, the initial idea morphs into something else, something more complex and unique. Further, he cannot control the horse, the fence posts fail to hold. Such suggests how the creative process is limited by the realities of the world. A parent creates new life in the birth of a child, and yet, that child is a life unique and independent of the parent - or author- who created it. Back to UDUTU - I find that many of the ideas I have envisioned may be impractical or even impossible to execute, so my new philosophy is to work through UDUTU as one does a riptide: let it take you out and away and wherever it will, and, all the while, keep your head above water, swim parallel to the shore (your desired learning outcome), and make it safely back to shore whatever way you can. Let the journey begin!

Dancing with UDUTU

I think I've finally figured out the pattern to the MAITS program. Almost always, we're challenged to learn about a new concept and, at the same time, tackle that by learning a new tool, too -- often the means of reporting or sharing our learning. This week's challenge: to create a pre-storyboard for our e-Learning module, which, in my case, centers around the use of an apostrophe to form the possessive. Using Gagne's nine events, we are to call upon our ID skills and lay out a blueprint for our module. In this case, I'll be dancing with UDUTU, yet another unfamiliar tool, a partner I haven't danced with yet. The challenge of creating this storyboard is that I'm not altogether sure if what I envision myself creating is actually "do-able." In other words, I'm left guessing a bit whether the interaction I see happening is going to be implementable. I sure hope so. After listening to Amy mention "Capstone" time and again this past year and whatever, I haven't really had a vision of what that could be. But, warned again by Amy that we better like it and be invested in it, this project -- and the idea that I could use e-Learning as the teaching and learning vehicle for grammar -- is very appealing. It certainly meets some of the key criteria for e-Learning -- self-paced, independent, individualized, and so on. If I can create engaging modules for students to learn certain grammar concepts, then that is one less thing to take up valuable class time...of which there is so little as it is. For this project, I'm counting heavily on the prefix "pre" in storyboard, as I've learned there are a few walls to encounter and work over, through, around, whatever, to get to the final product. That said, I'm gearing up for the challenge. Here's a link to a challenging poem by James Dickey titled "A Birth." The poem's about creating a story is like creating a life -- how it takes on its own identity and begins to control itself, like a parent of a child. Anyhow, this project reminds me of that. And if I can find a way to use e-Learning to teach my students what they can learn on their own, it will free up my time to do what would be far too difficult for them on their own, things like reading, interpreting, and discussing poems like "A Birth." Enjoy creating!

Buzzing about Socrative!

Yesterday marked the first day I used Socrative in class. I'm sure several of you may have used or are using it frequently in class, but, for whatever reasons, this was my first step into the waters of using BYOD in class. I put together several multiple-choice questions together on the short story "Contents of the Dead Man's Pockets"d and had students partner to complete the quiz at their own pace. As Liz Calderwood has used Socrative with our students already, they came in all set to go, only asking for the room number to access the material. If I could sum up the response in three words: Everybody love it! The students were on task, active, and able to interact and collaborate on the material. The application allows the teacher to monitor each group's progress and provides results that are easily downloaded. What I found, however, was that more students were attentive to and engaged in our discussion of the questions after they had completed them on Socrative and the deeper discussions we had about the story that resulted. Socrative offers a variety of options as well that include test formats to polls to short written responses. I see endless ways of dovetailing this interactive application into my classroom teaching to engage my students, increase their collaboration and participation, and monitor the progress of their learning. I also continue to use Edmodo as our learning hub, and partnering up with social studies -- where the students are learning about the Bill of Rights and the Amendments -- we have applied several of these in mini-research topics in English. For example, we explored the topic of flag burning as an expression of free speech, then continued with listening to the Dixie Chicks' song "Not Ready to Make Nice," after which the students learned the story behind the song online. Many of the students expressed their surprise and interest in this kind of research. Now we are considering the Establishment Clause, known better as the separation of church and state, and the controversy of the words "under God" in the "Pledge of Allegiance." Enthusiasm was tepid intinitially until I had them follow a recitation of the pledge in which I replaced "under God" with "under Allah." That fired up quite a bit of interest, to say the least. Now I have the students preparing for an in-class debate next week. I have posted several balanced links to resources on Edmodo, one of those being Pro/Con.org , which offers links to resources to BOTH sides of several controversial issues such as the Pledge controvery. I have told them to come prepared like lawyers to a trial with facts and evidence to support their side and to be prepared to counter the other sides' arguments. Further, students will have their smartphones on hand to do more fact finding during the debate, too. And all this from a teacher who once had a stranglehold over students NOT to bring cell phones into class! The world, and most certainly the landscape of learning, is changing, indeed!

Dollars and Sense: R & D in Education

So, my cohorts and I have finished our Learning Strategies graduate course recently and today is the first day of spring break. I enjoyed learning about a variety of learning theories and paradigms and exploring how they dovetail and interweave in my teaching. Indeed, I have gained a retrospective view of how I have been teaching and gained insights on how and why certain approaches I use are successful. Such has afforded me a "rear-view mirror" of where my teaching was and where it has led to over my fourteen-year career. More importantly, my knowledge and understanding of learning theory has made me more cognizant of fine-tuning my lessons to make them even more powerful, impacting, and effective. With that said, it's a sunny and beautiful day on this first day of spring vacation. And I need it.
Recently I watched a speech by Professor Roland Fryer, an economist professor at Harvard University and found a number of the points he made in his speech compelling. So, why have I included Fryer in this post? Simple. It's because Professor Fryer is endeavoring to use his understanding of economics and statistics to improve education. As the youngest black professor to earn tenure at Harvard University, Professor Fryer is trying to give back and make an impact on improving education. As Fryer says, "Facts are our friends. We need more facts and less politics if we're ever going to really change educational reform." Fryer is trying to gather educational data and statistics to discover effective teaching strategies. One of the ideas he mentions in one speech includes paying students in poor performing schools to take the tests and increasing the payments based upon their performance on the test. This simple idea, it seems, is showing evidence of being not only effective but also cost effective. That is, the money required to pay students for their effort and achievement works out to be less than the thousands spent with little or no effect. So where did this idea come from? Again, simply enough, from Fryer spending a summer talking with the kids themselves. From those conversations, Fryer discovered that the students found no reason for education, and when Fryer told them that they could make a ten percent return on their education, this idea had no meaning for these kids. They couldn't see that far down the road. However, paying these students gave them a tangible incentive to read and to learn. And the program seems to be working.
Several years ago, I attended a seminar on improving students' reading skills, and one of the ideas offered was the Drop Everything And Read (DEAR)program, where time is allotted each school day for EVERYONE to read. And by that, it means EVERYONE -- teachers, students, secretaries, even janitors. I brought my idea back to my school with the suggestion of trimming away two minutes from each of our eight periods to create the block of time to implement DEAR in our school. Unfortunately, teachers decided against the idea, citing their need for the instructional time in class. So I approached my team's teachers, and we created the time within our team's core content classes. After implementing the program within our team, our students showed marked improvement on their Gates reading tests and on the GEPA state testing, so much so that the administration decided to change Study Hall to Literacy. Now students use a twenty minute block of time simply to read, and reading skills have improved as a result. The lesson and point: we need to keep an open mind to new ideas and approaches to improving education.
In closing, Fryer remarks how companies invest far more capital in research and development than we do in education. As our country and the State of New Jersey looks to make dramatic changes to curriculum, testing, tenure, and more, perhaps we need to take a more serious look at what works and what may not. The age-old wisdom of the adage, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!" seems all too fitting here.
It's nice out. I've gotta go now.

Rush to Get in Line?

At my last department meeting, I met with my colleagues to discuss curriculum. This seems to be a never-ending discussion, as it seems we are perpetually redoing the curriculum. In any case, one colleague attended a Principals' Conference where one of the speakers mentioned the direction education may be heading in our state. Apparently, the idea was espoused to standardize the curriculum. How much? So much so that the curriculum would pretty much dictate what is taught and when. Moreover, in lieu of the state testing that takes place once a year, several quarterly assessments will be given to measure the progress of learning that has occured. The logic, I'm guessing, is that if teachers are going to be evaluated, they better be evenly evaluated on a level playing field...which seems to sound all good. Maybe. Or maybe not. I am concerned that such a move would constrict teachers and limit their creativity in finding novel teaching methods. If we are all doing the same thing, the same way, and at the same time, how, then, will there be any difference? If you want to identify your better teachers, then allow them the freedom and creativity to teach their students most effectively. The intent of such changes, I believe, is to try to make the teaching conditions equal. Sadly, I believe such changes may have the effect lowering the effectiveness of some teachers, especially your more creative ones. A look at history, more specifically our American Revolution, points out the stupidity of standing in a line wearing red coats while others are shooting at you. We won our independence by being creative and fighting in unconventional ways. Such has served us well historically, I might add. With New Jersey posting scores much higher than other states in the union, I'm left wondering, are we trying to change too much too quickly. And what the consequences be...

Arab Spring in Africa?

I received an email from a former student who is now a freshman. In the email, she mentioned how she is inspired to promote the message about "Kony 2012," a movement to capture the man who is ranked the number one criminal of the world. And how? Through the use of technology to make him "famous" and to curtail his ability to avoid being arrested. The idea is to use technology -- You Tube and other social networking mediums -- to spread the word of his criminal abuse and exploitation of children, ranging from abducting boys as young as seven or eight and forcing them to serve in his army as well as the raping of young girls. Why has he not been caught already? The best reason is that he is not newsworthy enough, though, as the creator of the movement mentions, had one child in the United States been treated in this manner, it would have become headline news. So how is the movement gaining momentum? So far, several celebrities have joined the cause, hoping to bring an equivalent notoriety to Kony, and the upshot is that a once disinterested United States congress has dispatched over one-hundred advisors to Uganda to aid in Kony's capture. Additionally, the movement plans a "Kony 2012" day on April 20th to make his notoriety known worldwide, which brings me to my former student. She asked, as I mentioned, for me to try to organize the movement in the middle school. However, I noted immediately the red flag of mixing politics and education directly. With that said, I was going to post the link to "Kony 2012" on Edmodo for my students' own interest (and did so, briefly) until I received an email from our school principal not to allow students to hang any posters about Kony. She added that the topic would be addressed in social studies. The video begins with the phrase, "Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come," and I believe the seed of this idea originated in the powerful and sweeping changes in the "Arab Spring" which relied upon technology to bring down long-enduring strong-armed dictators. I must say that I have mixed feelings about my principal's decision, and, in fairness to her, have not been able to talk to her about the reasons for proceeding this way. Of course, I am mindful of the ages of the students I teach and of the disturbing nature of Kony's actions. However, technology is shrinking both the time and space of our world -- the tragedies of 9-11 are evidence of that -- and, as educators, we must prepare our children for the realities of the world they are growing into, which, in this case, is a rather harsh one.

Pardon My French!

Today I read and learned about Cognitive Load, and one of the concepts behind this theory is that the working memory is capable of handling a certain number of items at one time. And that magic number, it turns out, is about seven. Hence, phone numbers are of this length to provide the maximum number of phone numbers but still be capable of retained in memory (though, truth be told, with cell phones today most everyone would be lost in the dark of important numbers if they were to lose their phone, as these no longer have to be dialed but simply summoned through a contacts list. Yikes! It occurs to me that I can recall rotory dial phones and how frustrating it was to misdial a number if it were the sixth or seventh number. I'm getting old, I guess!). Anyway, one lesson I teach my students in English underscores the importance of visualization and background knowledge. I provide students with two passages -- one in English about Australian cricket, the other in French about the geography of mountains and rivers in France (see pictures below). Naturally, one would expect to comprehend and retain the passage written in English. However, since the passage is about cricket, with which most students are totally unfamiliar, students tend to have extremely poor comprehension and recall of the text. The French text is accompanied with an illustration and, while written in French, enough of the nouns are Latinate to make them resemble the English ones and, combined with the illustration, the students' comprehension surpasses that of the passage about cricket. Seems schema and illustrations do matter with comprehension, retention, and learning. Something to think about -- Penzez vous!

Things We Mean to Teach and Some We Don't

One of the questions we responded to during our consideration of Behavioral Theory was how punishment may be "archaic," that is, outdated and unnecessary in education. Of course, a clearer understanding of what "punishment" is, exactly, matters greatly here, as punishment has a wide range of extremes. The fact of the matter is that negative attention or consequences are a fact of life in the real world. You speed, for example, you ought not be surprised to get pulled over and issued a speeding summons. If we are to posit, as I do, that education is to prepare students for life in the real world, then not including punishment in some way might be leaving students somewhat unprepared for the real world. In a perfect world, all students would learn and be attentive and work to their ability all the time, everyday of the school year. Alas, our world isn't perfect. So I keep the options of punishment available.
With that said, I haven't written a referral or sent a student out of my classroom in years (literally), and one student I did send out of my class in my second year of teaching for chewing gum (and defying me) ending up getting arrested some thirty minutes later (literally -- it's one of my principal's favorite stories to tell). I teach middle schoolers, and I have discovered that if you are honest with them -- tell them what they have to do and why they should do it and so on -- most often most of them "buy in." I happen to think that there are few "bad kids," just kids behaving badly, often times because they find themselves in bad situations beyond their control. There, the teacher can play a pivotal guiding role to help steer these kids away from poor choices and bad decisions. In my first year of teaching, I taught an entire class of retained 7th graders and another of retained 8th graders. I say with some sincerity that I learned more from them than they did from me, though, truth be told, I also like to think that I helped to put them on a better path in life.
Last year I was teaching a book called Speak, in which a young teen girl is raped at a summer party. One of the issues of the book deals with "Learned Helplessness," a concept in which one learns not to do anything when, in fact, one can. The girl fails to speak up and get help. Why she doesn't seems puzzling? The answer is Learned Helplessness. This concept helps to explain the behavior of prisoners in concentration camps during the Holocaust. In any case, I have included an interesting link to show just how powerful and subtly influential Learned Helplessness can be. If students can be influenced so easily so quickly, it makes me pause to reflect on all that I may be teaching my students entirely unaware. Something to think about.

We've Soared in 50 Years!

Fifty years ago on this day, John Glenn rocketed into space on the Mercury space flight aboard Friendship 7. His five-hour flight took him around the world three times before returning safely back to earth. Fifty years seems a long time ago, but considering that Glenn had no computers on board for that first trip into space, and the ubiquity of computers and cell phones and so on today -- it may seem even longer. That trip was a sorely needed confidence booster for our country, which seemed to suffer a loss of self-confidence when the Soviets sent up Sputnik to take an early lead in the space race. I watched Glenn deliver a speech in 2002 in which he recalled the preparations for and flight of Friendship 7, and in his closing remarks he mentioned how essential research is to human progress. He mentioned Alexander Fleming, whose curiosity with mold led to his discovery of penicillin -- and our world and industry has been forever changed. He also mentioned a visit he made to Wernher von Braun, noted developer of rockets, and was surprised at the books he found in von Braun's study. He expected to find books on mathematics and engineering; however, he found more books on religion and philosophy. Glenn concluded that most of our great thinkers and innovators shared one quality: an intense curiosity.
Last week I delivered my first virtual lesson on the learning theory Synectics. I was fortunate to be able to work with Angela and Sue -- between the three of us, we managed to work out an effective presentation of Synectics along with a good lesson, too. I watched another NASA legend, Gene Kranz, who related the trials and tribulations of trying to get the astronauts of Apollo 13 safely back to earth after an explosion disabled the spacecraft. As Kranz related the process he and the others at NASA used to find solutions to the myriad problems to surmount, I realized the process he employed was Synectics. These problems were, like space travel itself, unfamiliar and strange, and to discover the solutions to problems -- one of which was finding a way to take a square filter and retrofit it for a round hole -- those at NASA followed the steps almost identical to find those solutions that ultimately resulted in three lives saved.
At a time when Americans may be feeling a loss of self-confidence -- with a sluggish economy, a massive, looming national debt, and other problems -- maybe we need to look back at how far we've come in just fifty years. Glenn, who became a senator from Ohio after his concluding his career as an astronaut pioneer, concluded his speech by mentioning how great a doctrine the Constitution is and the need for Americans to be active and involved in our government. While we live in problem-laden times, we also live in times of great opportunity. Like Synectics, maybe we need to just look at it a different way!

Synthesizing Synectics...Virtually!

Today is showtime -- the day we present our lesson on Synectics to our colleagues. As I have learned a great deal about the Synectics approach to problem-solving and generating interesting and "fresh" ideas, I feel comfortable with delivering the content of our lesson with, I think, an interesting "hands on" lesson. My nervousness centers around delivering this lesson "virtually" using Wimba (and, hopefully, only having to use Wimba). Reflecting back upon the mere year I have been in the MAITS program, my experiences with technology, as well as many of my colleagues', I might add, gives me reason to pause...and perhaps tremble. You never know -- and cannot control -- when the lights will go out (as they did for our final presentations last year)and the technology stumbles and falls. My experience working with Angela and Sue has been a good and rewarding one. Each of us, I feel, carried our share of the load in preparing for this lesson, and, with a little bit of luck, it should go well! It's a good thing this is a virtual lesson -- you won't see my rabbit's foot and horseshoe and four-lear clover on my computer. Good luck to all the presenters!

Connecting the Dots...

Recently I presented my students with a simple but challenging problem: to try to connect all nine dots in a square box using four continuous straight lines only. That is, you cannot lift your pencil or retrace your lines to complete the task. Sounds simple enough, but, for most, it isn't. Usually most fail by trying to complete the task by remaining within the box of nine dots, and these efforts are futile -- it cannot be done that way. The only solution is to extend a line beyond the box in order to connect two of the dots on a diagonal. The quaint words of wisdom "Think outside the box!" ring true here. And the sentiment of this message is to look at and try things in a unique and different way. So it's no surprise that this task came to mind as I delved into the Synectics theory these past two weeks.
Steve Jobs, the great innovator and founder of Apple, whose achievements in his shortened life far surpass those who live long, full ones, offered a few words of wisdom in his commencement speech to students graduating from Stanford, and one of his points including reflecting back on one's life to "connect the dots." He added that you cannot do so looking forward -- you just have to "trust your instinct that it will all work out."
Years ago (too many, in fact), when I was taking education courses, we were asked to share how we study and prepare for tests. Many of my classmates offered that they review their notes and so forth; however, I told used an analogy of what I learned of nomadic Indians who migrate during the year, and how they travel a certain distance, remembering to turn and look back. Why? It's all too simple: so that they would know what the return trip would look like. I added that I always try to "fit" whatever is new with my learning into what I already know, and certainly this is reflected in several of the learning theories we are presently considering, including cognitivism, connectivism, and constructvism. Doing so helps to add to the schema I have already constructed, perhaps even strengthening the concepts and ideas I have learned already.
One year into working toward my masters in instructional technology, as I stare at the daunting road ahead of new learning and the attending work it entai.s, it seems appropriate now to glance back to see where I was and how far I have come. One year ago I did not know what a Web 2.0 tool was (LOL) and couldn't perform even the simplest of tasks, such as adding links. Today, this morning, at my brother's kitchen table, I am drafting a new post on my blog some 100 miles away from home. After Amy's last class, where I had to step out of my comfort zone by creating a 50-point contract of my own projects -- something like opening the door of an animal who has spent a lifetime in a cage and now doesn't know what to do (please note the Synectics connection here!)-- as Jobs says in his speech, it all somehow worked out. Now I am presented with new challenges and obstacles to surmount -- preparing presentations and delivering a lesson with a remote partner, finding and sharing work and theories with a global parter, and so on. And all this while teaching my 7th graders English and working a second job on the weekend seems quite daunting. I suppose it's time to end here, so I'll do so with a few word of Steve Job's: "stay hungry, stay foolish" and believe "it will all work out somehow."

On the Road Again!

Welcome back aboard, MAITS! It's time to get On the Road Again! I had to admit to getting a chuckle out of my in-class support teachers at school when I told them I was taking "Learning Strategies" -- a course they teach for some of our students who struggle with learning. Anyway, I hope and don't expect to encounter those types of challenges and difficulties during this course. Indeed, I am looking forward to learning more about theory, as it's been quite a while since I have done so and quite a lot has changed and/or evolved since. I am looking into Synectics this course, and have learned it relies somewhat heavily on metaphors and analogies. And that's the life I live and lead, so I'm interested in learning more. In an odd sense, I feel like I'm doing some sort of dissection of my teaching -- in other words, learning about how I teach today and to discover how my teaching has shifted and changed and evolved over my fourteen year career. I am thankful that I am pursuing my masters after having taught so many years. I feel much better placed to learn about my teaching and to focus my learning on improving my teaching for the better.

Let's Remember Who We Are Teaching...

Tomorrow, we end our second graduate course. And tomorrow, for two of my classes, after they complete their exams, I will say "Good-bye." These are students I have had for two years. Perhaps I should add here that they are no longer my students -- not because they have finished their work for my class -- but because, after having spent two years together, they are no longer my students. They're my kids. I know that, in this era, it may be the politically-incorrect thing to say. I don't care. It just may be that in this climate where we don't want to show others that we care about our students-- why? -- because it may be misconstrued, we need to do just that.
Recently, I found a YouTube video that underscores the powerful roles of teachers upon their students - how students can "Learn Helplessness." In a poem that I wrote for my students, I expressed my concern for comments I may have made that may have hurt I students I have taught. Who can say, after all, the impact words can have on another?
Many years ago, my grandmother died. At the time, I worked in a restaurant where I worked as a manager. I didn't attend the funeral. The owner was away, and I felt I had to work. It was my responsiblity. Ever since, every time I see that picture of my family at that funeral -- that is, of everyone except me -- I am reminded of what really matters in life: family. I vowed to myself never to let that mistake happen again.
And yet, few years ago, I was recognized as "Teacher-of-the-Year." I attended a lucheon with others who were recognized. I wondered who they were and what made them great teachers. I didn't know any of them, and didn't really care to. In the back of my mind, I thought of my kids, who were at the Activity Day picnic I would miss. Subsequently, I realized that the people I was spending my time with were meaningless to me -- not because they were not good people -- but because they were not important in my life. And the ones I should have been with, I wasn't. History, sadly, had repeated itself!
Tomorrow, I say "Good-bye" to kids I have had for two years. Tonight, I have more work that I can do for my graduate course. My work for this course, I feel, is inadequate. It does not meet my standards. That, however, does not define me. I can do better -- indeed, I know I will. Tomorrow, some of my kids will be leaving me. I need to get some rest.