What if they don’t like me, again?

I’m imagining this to be easier to write given the lack of Internet connectivity. After three days of travel, we’ve arrived a Gonubie, Eastern Cape, South Africa.

While the others showered or settled in, I put on my running gear and ran down to the water.

Three and a half miles along the Indian Ocean at sunset with a full moon over the horizon turned out to be exactly what I needed.

I’m unsure what to expect from this first week of workshops. Though the e-Personnel here in Eastern Cape will have their own laptops, what I’ve read about the education system here has been bleak. I am, as always, waiting to be proven wrong.

One of the sessions I’m charged with leading this week is backward design. If your memory’s some sort of steel trap, you’ll recall I was Mr. Backward Design for last year’s projects in both South Africa and Kenya.

In Cape Town, we were met with resistance. Not resistance to the ideas or to me in particular, but resistance to what it resembled.

In preparation for this year, I did my research and found this report on the advent and predicted failure of Objectives-Based Education (OBE) in South Africa.

OBE is close to Backward Design (not the same, but close enough).

Handed down in the wake of Apartheid as a way to rejuvenate the South African education system as well as create an influx of creative, innovative thinking, OBE went along with attempts to reform the blatantly racist curriculum of Apartheid.

The study lists 10 reasons OBE will fail in South Africa. The study’s author is no dunce.

After the fact, this helps to put last year’s teachers in context and helps me to gear up for this year.

The piece that hung in my head – if you squint you can still see it hanging there – was the idea that OBE would also mean the advent of a slew of new jargon and terminology accompanying the new way of thinking. Add that to the existing structure of the South African classrooms and the paper argues teachers will overload and either reject OBE or implement it incorrectly, shaping what they’re already doing to fit what they understand OBE to be.

This last part stands at the crux of some of my concerns when working with teachers in a workshop setting.

I’m learning each year to push my students to think more deeply vs. trying to get shallow understandings of everything.

Professional development, though, is so scarce, it’s nearly impossible to resist the urge to throw everything into one week.

Looking at our schedule, I think we’ve a good start.

Tomorrow’s first face-to-face full-team meeting will help to flesh some of this out in my mind.

Sunday’s meeting with Charles (our liaison with the Eastern Cape Ministry of Education) and his colleagues will also bring a better understanding of what the participants here need and want.

So long as we’re working to those needs and wants, we’re on the right path.

Let’s Plan

This semester, I’m teaching a senior English elective class called Sexuality and Society in Literature.
Our first text of the year was Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex along with several supporting documents including Helen Fisher’s TED Talk “The Brain in Love.”
The idea for the outline of the class is to take a look at sexuality and society in lit throughout the different phases of life. The idea behind reading Oedipus first was to look at the idea of how some society’s have interpreted our course in “love” prior to birth.
Rather than wrapping unit plans around a particular book as has been the practice of English teachers for time in memorium (with the possible exception of short story and poetry units), I’m approaching planning by theme. Oedipus looked like this, and I wasn’t satisfied.
I find myself asking “What do I want them to learn?” vs. “What do I want them to learn from this book?”
I know it seems like a simple thing. Look around, though. It’s not how most English teachers are planning.
Speaking of, here’s the point of all this.
This is my sorta blank unit plan for the “Childhood” unit which is next. If you’re reading this, then I’m looking for your input.
What can we build?

They Understood! (by design)

13 August 09
Last Thursday was a bit of a frustration. I say this because understanding last Thursday is important to understanding the mood with which I took on today.
Last Thursday, I had the charge of leading back-to-back workshops introducing the concept of backward design to Kenyan teachers who admitted afterward they often don’t plan their lessons until they arrive at school, let alone plan entire units of study.
Even state-side, this can be a difficult concept, necessitating 1 or 2-day workshops to effectively communicate the methodology and its implementation. Last Thursday, I had 90 minutes in a poorly ventilated room with teachers who were either waiting to go to their next session dealing with digital storytelling or who had just come from a session on digital storytelling. An hour-and-a-half pedagogy session on a complex and difficult concept wasn’t quite what they were hoping for.
Add to this the cantankerous nature of the Kenyan educational work scheme (Read, “scope and sequence,” though mainly “sequence.”) and you’ve got a party.
That is you’ve got a party if your idea of a party is a hot and sticky room filled with confused teachers who, at times, were clearly just nodding at what the hyperactive muzungu was saying.
Last Thursday dispensed with, one can imagine the feeling in the pit of my stomach when Sunday’s planning session included assigning me the task of leading the backward design session today.
You know what, though? It rocked.
I’ll admit I entered the room with a bit of trepidation. My confidence hadn’t exactly been boosted at Wednesday night’s planning session when Simon, one of the Kenyan facilitators helping with the session, said, “I cannot see the implication for this in our system.” Awesome.
I told Simon he wasn’t the first Kenyan I’d heard that from.
By the end of the session, though, Simon and Mary, the other Kenyan facilitator in the session, were singing a different tune.
I approached them during the session’s second run and asked if they felt comfortable circulating amongst the groups of teachers who were working to backward design their plans for when they return from break in September. Mary gripped my hand, saying, “I am so happy to be learning this.” And I’m pretty sure she meant it.
Simon nodded in agreement and made his assent further known when he stood and told his colleagues “As an architect plans how a house will be finished before it is built, teachers must plan how they want their students to show what they have learned before teachers begin teaching.”
When another participant suggested to his group that they change their planned assessment because it didn’t seem relevant or authentic enough, I think I could have kissed him.
Take that, Thursday!