Month: April 2011

Things I Know 115 of 365: Fireworks are magic

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

– Tom Robbins

I sat in COSI working on on completing an assignment today when I heard a loud explosion. It’s really becoming something of a pattern with me. Last night, I ran a 4-mile race that started with the firing of a cannon. No countdown, mind you, just the firing of a cannon without warning.

I’ll admit it. I jumped. Then, I ran.

Tonight, I kept my seat. I was working under two deadlines. 1) COSI was closing. 2) The assignment was due.

Still, the explosions continued. I looked up for some indication of their source. Finally, I saw a reflection in the upper windows of a building across the street.

Fireworks.

Somewhere, to the east, near the Delaware River, fireworks were being launched. It continued for 15 minutes or so. Several times, I found myself craning my neck to get a better view of the display in whoever’s bedroom or living room window I was using as a mirror.

I wanted to go outside.

The 5 year old in me was begging 30-year-old me to pack up the laptop and go watch the show.

Thirty-year-old me held firm.

“You’re no fun now that you’re old.”

“I know.”

“It’s fire…in the sky.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

In reality, 30-year-old me wanted to go outside just as much as his younger iteration. All wound up in coursework and a need for sleep, he exercised his judgement and stayed put.

When the noise subsided, I looked around at my fellow patrons. I wondered if I was alone in my battle between my selves. Surely, one of the four middle-aged couples on the double date across from me wanted to politely excuse themselves from their table to step outside to oooo and aaaaaah as we were taught to pray to the gods of magic and fire when were younger.

Instead, they all sat and talked about Rebecca Black and drank coffee as we’ve been taught to pray to the gods of small talk and caffeine now that we’re older.

I thought about it in my seat for a second and could not explain to myself how fireworks work. The same thing happens once in a while with smell. I know there’s an explanation. When it doesn’t come right away, I chalk it up to magic.

As I pondered fireworks, my brain started to put together the physics of the whole thing.

I felt 5-year-old me eyeing me with contempt, and immediately shut down my reasoning.

“You’re right,” I said, “It must be magic. And next time, I promise we’ll go outside to watch.”

Things I Know 114 of 365: I work without a net

Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.

– Germaine Greer

I’m not afraid of heights.

Well, my mind isn’t afraid of heights. My legs, I was reminded Wednesday, are afraid of heights.

As part of a new collaboration, all of SLA’s G9 advisories are spending a day of of challenge-based education at Outward Bound Philadelphia.

It was fantastic.

It was hilarious.

The last time I’ve experienced high ropes or other such elements was when I was teaching in Sarasota. Through a partnership with the local YMCA, we took all of our G8 students to climb their Alpine Tower.

The difference between that experience and Wednesday’s was the kids. While not entirely urbanized, many of SLA’s students have seen more cement in their lives than trees. On the 15-minute bus ride to Outward Bound, several students asked where we were and whether we were still in Philadelphia.

“I’ve never been here, Mr. Chase.”

Though it’s not a part of town I visit often, we were riding through neighborhoods I’ve run to from my house.

It was a reminder of how foreign parts of the city remain to students who have lived here their entire lives.

If the neighborhood was foreign, the woods were downright alien to some. The discussion of checking themselves for ticks stopped a group of girls in their tracks.

“Don’t worry,” our guide told us, “They’re everywhere in the city.”

One girl scoffed, “Uh, not around my neighborhood.”

I chuckled to myself.

After some introductory challenges, our group of 40 students were broken in two and my co-adivisor, Matt Kay, and 20 of our students followed Lauren, our guide to the high wire element.

To complete the element’s challenge, two people in full-body harnesses climbed separate ladders to staples about 16 feet up a tree. They continue up the staples to about 25 feet above the ground and then step onto a wire.

The two people work their way down their respective stretches of wire using a robe strung between their two trees counterbalancing one another with their weight.

The two wires are in the form of the two arms of a capital “Y”, and the climbers meet at the access.

From there, the robe won’t stretch any further, and the climbers must count on the weight of each other to counterbalance one-on-one as they make their way along the stem of the “Y” to attempt to touch a third and final rope before being lowered to the ground.

Meanwhile, on the ground, teams of students were on the ground belaying, literally holding their teammates’ lives in their hands.

If I could take students to places like Outward Bound once a month or once a week, I would.

Some of the students made it to the top of the ladder and decided they’d met their challenge. Others made it to the beginning of the “Y’s” stem.

When each one was done, and said they’d gone as far as they wanted to, we encouraged just one step farther.

After that step, their resolve to come back to earth steeled, we lowered them back down and celebrated their victory in meeting their own challenge.

True differentiated instruction.

Back in the classroom today, I started thinking about the implications of a similar approach to teaching. I wonder what would happen if we took kids to where they thought they couldn’t do one more thing, encouraged them to complete that one final assignment and then let them rest, celebrating the victory of how much they’d accomplished.

Often, in my own class, making it one step farther means a student is asked to make it yet another step farther and another step and so on.

While I do all that I can to praise my students and celebrate accomplishments, I could take a page from Outward Bound and let the kids get their feet back on the ground before asking them to take on the next challenge.

I wonder, if we push out kids to new experiences and then offer them a recess of play and reflection if they might not be the better for it.

There’s much to be learned from challenge by choice.

Things I Know 113 of 365: A teacher was born today

Any genuine teaching will result, if successful, in someone’s knowing how to bring about a better condition of things than existed earlier.

– John Dewey

Have you ever seen a teacher being born?

I got to today.

With little pomp and even less circumstance, I observed as the pre-service teacher who’s been largely observing my classes for the last few weeks taught his full lesson.

Sure, he’ll be thrown into the thick of it next year when he starts his full student teaching. Today, though, he stood in a classroom of high school students and led a lesson on mood, theme and genre.

What’s more, he taught a morning class of seniors the Monday after spring break.

Daniel had more working in his favor when he stepped into the lion’s den.

The thought’s been following me around all day.

I was there when someone taught his first first full lesson. What’s more, I served as a mentor in the event.

Though he’ll be responsible for finding his own voice as a teacher, my part is to help clear as much of a path as early as possible to ensure the best possible education for the students who will be in his charge throughout his career.

As one of my own mentors, Dr. Justice, once explained, I am now the grandteacher of classes of the future.

I took mad notes during the lesson. The positives and negatives were scribbled furiously. The lesson exceeded expectations. He conducted himself with a teacherly presence that calmed the classroom, came from a place of confidence and showed authority without being authoritarian.

It was a clear win.

Why take such copious notes? Why not offer a pat on the back and a congenial “good job”? Because the job is more important than that.

I’ve been entrusted with mentoring a new teacher. Think of the possible echoes in history.

Though I consider my eight years in the classroom paltry when compared with some of the veterans I’ve had the privilege of teaching and learning with, it turns out I’ve learned a few things along the way.

I watched today’s lesson trying to think of all the things I wish someone had told me when I stood in front of my first set of students at University High School in Normal, Illinois and fumbled through a lesson on Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Apropos of nothing, this new teacher has been entrusted to my care.

While the national dialogue around education has many of our brightest minds feeling as though they’re shouting at the wind, this guy has decided he wants to enter the fray and serve students and the country in the most democratic of ways.

He wants to teach.

Anyone who makes that decision, no matter the path, deserves as much support as we can muster because teaching is a long, taxing job. Those short on A Game need not apply.

If you can hack it, though. If you can push through the frustration brought on by apathy, bureaucracy and budget cuts; it will pay you back each day with the chance to make a difference that lasts.

I watched a teacher being born today.

Things I Know 112 of 365: It’s not enough to have the door open when I teach

An open mind leaves a chance for someone to drop a worthwhile thought in it.

– Unknown

One of the few specific pieces of training for being a teacher I remember was a piece of cautionary advice – Don’t teach with your door closed.

As is often the case with this sort of advice, no one ever really filled in the gap of how to do the opposite of teaching with my door closed. Namely, I received no direct instruction in door-open teaching.

I often read about technology’s affordances for networking teachers with one another. It’s always seemed a bit like showing someone a telephone and wishing them luck on finding useful numbers.

Teaching with my door open is best when it is a combination of the personal and the virtual.

A few weeks ago, I received an e-mail from a fellow SLA teacher linking to a Slate article about movie theaters’ resistance and attempted avoidance of the Food and Drug Administration’s draft rules requiring restaurants to post the nutrition information for the food they serve.

Movie theaters would rather not have their patrons realize each tablespoon of butter they just doused their popcorn with had nearly double the number of calories of a tablespoon of the butter back in their kitchens.

I tagged the article in delicious (long may it live) and stowed it away to use last week in my food class. The students and I read the article and engaged in some pretty fantastic conversation about the economics of movie theater food as well as the cultural implications of the event of going to the theater.

I’ve talked all over the place about this food course. Even before it started, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut about it. I wasn’t bragging, I was just thinking and planning aloud, inviting anyone who read or heard what I was thinking to throw in some ideas.

Thus, the e-mail.

We read the article in Tuesday’s class, whetting our appetites for Friday’s convening.

I remembered about a month ago one of my science teacher friends explaining an experiment to me during my first year at SLA.

Students exposed popped microwave popcorn to a sodium hydroxide solution that corroded the organic matter.

One would imagine that would include everyone one would find in a handful of microwave popcorn.

No so.

I remembered this experiment because it had sounded interesting. Were I a teacher who claimed open-door teaching, but who really only carved a window into the door, I would just have told my students about the experiment.

While, I’m fairly eloquent, me telling can never replace them doing.

Friday’s class, everyone met in my room. Then, we walked down the hall to VK’s room where we donned safety goggles and completed the experiment.

First, we submersed the popcorn to a hydrochloric acid solution so the kids could see what happens in their stomachs.

Next came the sodium hydroxide or lye.

We watched as it ate through the corn and could feel the heat of the exothermic reaction.

When all was said and done, we were left with a white substance at the bottom of our beakers. This, VK explained, was the plastic used to coat microwave popcorn kernels in order to keep them from burning through the bag during the popping process.

More importantly, this was the plastic a person ingested with each handful of popcorn.

Not only had I kept the door open, I’d led the class out the door and down the hall to experience a perspective I wasn’t equipped to provide.

This Tuesday, we’ll return to the article and reflect on the experiment and try to cobble together an understanding of the role of popcorn at the intersection or science, culture and literature.

Had I propped my classroom door open and simply waited passively for technology to bring me something worthwhile for class, it never would have come.

What I wasn’t taught in my teacher preparation, but needed to experience for myself is that teaching with my door open works much better if I’m willing to walk through the door and see what’s out there that I can bring back to the classroom.

Things I Know 111 of 365: I did a foot’s worth of traveling

I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. It seemed to me that I had several more lives to live.

– Henry David Thoreau, Walden

This is what my right foot looks like at this moment. There’s a lot of story for one foot.

If you could see the underside, you’d be able to read even more.

The river did this to my feet.

The contrasting lines of red and Philadelphian springtime-inspired paleness are the result of wearing only my Chaco sandals for the last 7 days. Slathered with sunscreen regularly throughout the trip, the marks attest to the intensity of the sun along the river.

The fact that I made no move to fish my hiking shoes from the depths of my dry bag attests to the intensity of every moment along the river. Those red spots are sunburned. Showering after getting off the river, I felt the heat of my skin fighting with the heat of the water. In about a week, the burn will turn to itching as my skin repairs itself. I’ll take it as a kind of post card from the river.

Along the outer edge of my foot is a scrape.

Though it looks fresh, the scrape is now a few days old. Wednesday, as we were attempting to paddle down the river, the wind had another plan. Gusting from canyon wall to canyon wall, it first stopped our boats and then began to move them upstream. Making matters worse, the river was incredibly low and we continued to find ourselves stuck in the mud as our boat was buffeted from shore to shore.

Finally, in an act of frustration with all her paddling coming to naught, Steph, our river guide, hopped from our boat, grabbed the bow line and began to pull us down the river in thigh-high water.

Minutes before, the three students riding in the bow of the boat had been largely incommunicative, choosing to lounge rather than engage in conversation.

“What can we do?” one asked as Steph jumped from the boat.

“If you want, you can get in the water and help push the boat,” she said.

In seconds, the the three were in the cold muddy water.

I jumped from my spot at the stern and we all pushed together.

It was freezing and the kids were loud. I’m not certain how much we actually helped other than taking some weight out of the boat to ease Steph’s efforts.

Somewhere along the way, I slipped and scraped my foot on a rock.

Not until we were docked along the shore did I look down and notice the scrape. Even then, it wasn’t for another few hours until we’d set up camp that it began to sting.

I’ll be a bit sad when it’s healed. I was working with students to move forward against forces outside our control. Usually, we do that sort of thing in a more figurative sort of way. I’m happy to have the battle scar as a reminder of the progress we made.

The scrape and sunburn are all the sweeter when taken along with my toenails.

They’re painted – by Steph, actually. The other foot’s nails are decorated as well – by a student.

Our second night on the river, as we waited for dinner to cook, I sat in the sand with my back against a rock face, alongside the other men of our group and had my toenails painted.

It’s something of a tradition on river trips.

In the case of rain or boredom, every trip brings along a retired 20mm ammo can labeled the “Fun Box.” Invariably, the box contains a collection of nail polishes.

I’d be lying if I claimed I wasn’t momentarily surprised when I pulled my feet from my sleeping bag the next morning.

A few days later, now, and I’ve gotten used to them. I won’t be removing the polish when I get home. I like the portrait the toes create combined with the marks of my sandals and the gash of our journey.

I like the idea that the polish, like everything else, will slowly chip and fade. For now, I like the story the heart and polka dots afford me when I catch strangers trying to make sense of my feet.

They are a map of my last week on the river.

Things I Know 110 of 365: She broke her self against the diatreme

The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong in the broken places.

– Ernest Hemingway

You don’t need to know what a diatreme is to understand this. All you need to know is that Sam cried when she got to the top.

Far from the familiarity of Philadelphia’s sirens, horns and more vocal pedestrians, Sam had hiked with our group to the top of the diatreme.

A few days earlier, she’d flown on her first plane and hiked into the Grand Canyon and out again.

She was well outside of her comfort zone. Well, well outside.

When she arrived at the summit of the diatreme and sat with the rest of the group as cereal bars were handed out and water was encouraged, one of the other adults on the trip motioned that I should look at Sam.

I turned my head to find Sam, chin on her knees, sobbing.

She had just done something completely outside of what had ever been asked of her, and it hit her.

She was hot and tired and in a foreign space eating a cereal bar.

I turned back and nodded acknowledgement.

I didn’t sit next to Sam and comfort her. She didn’t need that from me.

One of the river guides from our trip was sitting, rubbing her shoulders.

Sam knew she was surrounded by people who cared for her. She knew she was safe. She knew we would take care of her.

I didn’t sit next to Sam because that’s what caring for Sam looked like in that moment.

Putting my arm around her and telling her things were going to be ok wouldn’t have made things any more true.

What’s more, as she was pushing herself to do more than she thought she could, Sam needed to know she was there to reassure herself, that she was enough.

I will encourage students (anyone, really) as much as I possibly can and as much as they need.

In that moment, sobbing in the shadow of a 12-foot limestone boulder, Sam supplied her own encouragement.

Friday, as we floated the last few miles of our trip, Sam and I were on the same boat.

She started talking about hiking the diatreme.

“At some point, I just got angry and decided I was going to do it,” she said.

By the time the group was ready to head back to the river, Sam had composed herself. Still visibly raw, she had a look on her face that was part determination and part frustration. The exact mixture of the two parts was fluctuating as she walked.

I picked up a round, flat volcanic stone – a perfect skipping stone.

“Look at this,” I said, “Isn’t this a great rock?”

I handed it to her, and we kept walking.

As we unloaded from the van tonight after driving from Flagstaff to Phoenix, Sam was talking to another of our students and said she still had the rock, that she’d kept it with her.

I’m an advocate of leaving only footprints and taking only pictures. I’ve said it dozens of times over the last week.

More than a small part of me, though, is perfectly fine with Sam bringing that stone back with her. She battled the diatreme and some lesser version of herself. Let that rock be the trophy of her victory.

Things I Know 109 of 365: My viewing habits have changed

Television!  Teacher, mother, secret lover.

~Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

Netflix Watch Instantly has started to ruin my life.

In the past, I’d watch a television show, or I wouldn’t. Sure, there was on-demand or DVDs, but those cost money or were restricted to the last five episodes.

With instant viewing of an entire season, I can marathon watch whole seasons of Eureka or Brothers & Sisters or Stargate SGI.

This should not be so.

Things I Know 108 of 365: I bunt on purpose.

I don’t mean to sound sleazy, but tease me; I don’t want it if it’s that easy.

-Tupac Shakur

I bunted a lesson Friday.

Having students lead the class through close readings of texts of their choosing has reminded me of the nuance of teaching. What I do is tough stuff. It’s not brain surgery, but it’s not not making flip books out of pads of Post-It notes either.

Nevermind, I’ve never been able to make a satisfactory flip book, but you get the idea.

For the first few students, the assumption seems to have been that playing the song or reading the passage they’ve selected will lead to rapid interest and equally intense discussion.

It’s the same thing I’ve seen with teachers who can’t understand why their class doesn’t love that one book they loved when they read it in high school. As often happens with those teachers, my students have ended their conversations frustrated and agitated with the class.

I stepped in Friday to model a lesson.

I started by asking them to list all the components of a song they could think of. Then, they shared with those around them and amended their lists as they saw fit. Finally, they shared what they heard with the whole class – again, amending as they wanted.

Next, I told them to rank the elements they’d written down from most to least important.

They noted the top three, and I played some music.

First we listened to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself.” Then we heard Tupac’s “Keep Ya Head Up.” The listening was rounded out by Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight.”

Between each song, they took note of how that song participated in the top three components they’d written down.

Everyone had different components they were tracking or at least listed them in different configurations.

As they were finishing up their notes on the final song, I pulled up the U.S. map on Google Earth on the white board.

“What did you notice?” I asked.

We were off to the races.

My goal had been to model a 30-minute conversation of the type I’ve been asking them to lead. We were talking the entire 65 minutes of class.

The discussion talked about the geographic origins of texts, the sociopolitical implications of an author’s biographical information, the effects on a relationship when that relationship is re-appropriated for public consumption as art and a whole mess of other topics.

At some point, we talked about the implied unity of marriage across government and religious definitions as played out in Eminem’s music.

Things got real.

Here’s how I bunted.

Talk about rap, Eminem, or Tupac in separate lessons, and you’ve set yourself up for success. Pull all of them into one lesson and you could probably sleep through the lesson and still come out ahead.

Plus, I was ready for at least two different conversations. We could have discussed influences on rap music (or music in general) brought about by geographic location (hence Google Earth). Or, we could have talked about the progression of a genre through time as exemplified from Sugarhill to Tupac to Eminem.

Add to all of this my knowledge that some of my students no all the ins and outs of rap history while others know virtually nothing, and I’ve built in opportunities for students to ask questions and other students to act as experts.

This is to say nothing of including personal brainstorming, small-to-whole group discussion, auditory learning styles and the asking of open-ended questions.

I bunted.

Like all good bunts, I did it on purpose.

We took the last few minutes of class to get all meta.

“How did I set up the lesson for success?” I asked.

No dummies, my kids then proceeded to call out all the little pieces of what we’d just done.

I told them they would hugely increase their chances of active class participation if they only pulled in one or two elements of what they’d just explained.

I hope they do.

Things I Know 107 of 365: We are explorers.

Uncovering the two of us
On that fundamental ground
Where love’s unwilled, unleashed, unbound
And half the perfect world is found.

– Leonard Cohen

This is the third year in a row I’m spending my spring break with students.

Each year, just about a week before we depart, that voice coughs slightly in the back of my head.

“Yes?” I say.

“Oh, nothing,” says the voice.

“No, you have something to say. Let’s not play games. What is it?”

“Fine. Are you sure you want to spend your entire break with the same kids you spend the bulk of every day with during the school year? I mean, it’s your break.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Anyway, don’t mind me. I’m going to go back and finish clearing out our understanding of declensions in Latin. Who were we kidding when we thought that would be useful?”

And I’m left alone with the realization that I have, in fact, decided to be a mandatory responsible adult during my vacation.

The thought doesn’t trouble me long.

Most of my vacations are about exploration. Chaperoning the river trip is no exception. The students on the trip aren’t the same as the students I teach daily in my classroom. These students are unplugged from electronics, living in a foreign place and exploring right alongside me.

During our week, I get to explore the pieces of who these kids are beyond their literacy profiles. True, my classroom practice has never been solely tied to the curriculum. On the river, though, it’s entirely unbound.

And we’re all exploring together. We’re walking in spaces indigenous peoples walked hundreds of years ago, viewing petroglyphs, studying rock formations. The places are as foreign to me as they are to them.

In the classroom, I’ve been most of the places to which I’m asking my students to go. I’ve explored prepositional phrases for years. I’ve excavated the revision process long before they arrived at the dig site. While a certain joy exists in vicariously rediscovering these things with my students, nothing can take the place of learning and exploring together. It’s why I sometimes select a text to teach in class I haven’t read – so we can discover it together.

I climb back to those Latin declensions to find that voice.

“We’re going on this trip because we are explorers,” I say.

“Oh,” says the voice, “that makes sense.”

Things I Know 106 of 365: I’m small.

It’s like trying to describe what you feel when you’re standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or remembering your first love or the birth of your child. You have to be there to really know what it’s like.

-Jack Schmitt

I have to write today’s post ahead of time because we’re at the Grand Canyon and I wouldn’t be online even if I could find a connection. What follows is educated conjecture.

When they woke up this morning, my students were sore and more refreshed than after most other nights’ sleep they’ve had.

Some of them struggled to sleep without the noise of the city act as a lullaby. They all learned the warnings from last year’s river trippers were true and I do have just as much energy in the morning as I do throughout the rest of the day.

Then, later in the day, they stepped up to the rim of the Grand Canyon and saw something bigger and more beautiful than anything else they’ve ever seen before. Some were stunned to silence. Others couldn’t stop commenting. Everyone knew the trip was worth it.

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon was my junior year of college.

My friend Dave and I drove straight through from Illinois over Spring Break. We arrived at the rim in the afternoon. From the parking lot we came out of a pine stand and there it was.

I felt immensely small and powerfully connected at the same time.

When I called home to tell my family we’d made it, words failed me.

“Wow,” I said over and over again. “It’s just, just…wow…”

Later that night, I found the words or better understood the urge that overcame me as I stood on the rim. I wanted to touch every part of everything I could see all at the same time.

I could comprehend what was in front of me – the forces, time and elements at play – but the sum of it transcended.

I needed that moment. I needed to feel small and young and connected at the same time.

If my guess is correct, today, somewhere in their understanding of themselves, my students had to start weaving in an understanding of the earth.