Month: July 2011

Things I Know 187 of 365: Be nice and we’ll work hard

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.

– Jesse Jackson

A friend recently planted himself firmly behind the idea that effective teachers are the most important factors in student success. In the same breath he said he wasn’t one of those guys to praise teachers and call them the salt of the earth. He works to support kids, he said, not teachers.

It doesn’t work like that.

The two aren’t separate.

If we want healthy schools, places of learning enlivened by vibrant and curious people dedicated to being the best versions of themselves, the systems must support and value all members of those systems.

My morning cup of coffee is better when my barista and the coffee bean farmers in the fields are treated with decency and respect.

I cannot be surprised by a reticence to praise and support teachers when the rhetoric of education paints them so largely as deficient, lazy, undereducated hacks.

Who would dare praise teachers?

Sure, you praise the teacher you know, the cousin or friend of the family who is going into the classroom. They are great. But teachers, in the general sense? No thank you.

Tell teachers the majority are performing poorly and you can’t be surprised when students are performing poorly. I wonder sometimes how many teachers are doing worse right now because they’ve read or heard the rhetoric of education leaders bemoaning the poor quality of teachers.

My friend told me he’d visited a number of classrooms on a single day, to check up on good teaching. Of the 50+ classrooms he visited, not a one held good teaching. Not a one held a teacher at the time. His evaluation was based on whether standards were posted and other measures of the classroom walkthrough. Choosing not to challenge the evaluation, I asked a question I’ve asked here before.

“So, you can name at least 50 bad teachers. Can you name 20 good ones?”

He liked the question and thought I was making his point for him.

I was not.

My point was something else. Too many people are doing well for there to be fewer than 20 effective teachers for every 50 or 60 ineffective teachers.

“All students can learn,” is a popular bumper sticker of regressive education reformers. Pronounced as though a new idea that, once realized, solves so much.

I don’t disagree with it. I question the next ten words.

So long as we’re putting out truisms and bumper stickers to rally behind, let me try one. Let me try one that, coupled with the idea that all students can learn, would mean a sadly revolutionary way of thinking in education.

All teachers can teach.

And, yes, I’ve got my next ten words.

Things I Know 186 of 365: The teaching is ubiquitous

We seek not rest but transformation.
We are dancing through each other as doorways.

– Marge Piercy

I logged in to the dying social network today and found a message from a former student with the subject line “Blogging Advice”:

Hi Mr.Chase hope you are having a great summer. I am going to be blogging from california in a couple of days and was wondering if you could give me any advice. Thanks in advance!

I responded that I’d be happy to help and asked where would be best to have the conversation. I offered Facebook, IM, phone call, and texting.

I expected a quick IM conversation or phone call.

The student opted for texting, explaining she had no computer access at the moment.

I told her that would be great. A few moments later, I received the first text via my Google Voice number in my e-mail inbox.

I responded and archived the message. This continued back and forth, as you can see below, for a total of 25 messages.

All the while, I was working on other projects at my desk.

A question would pop up on my computer and I would reply to her phone.

It looked like this:

Student: Chase!!!!!

Me: What’s up, kid? Ok. Probably, the best place to start is you to come up with specific questions you have about blogging.

Student: Well, I guess my first question would be about the difference between a more journalist approach to blogging versus a more a free write style of blogging.

Me: Great question. Journalism is going to make sure you’ve got the who, what, when where, why and how in there. The goal is to communicate the story or event to people who weren’t there.

Me: For the journaling piece, it functions more as a personal record that is public. Something for you and your memories that is available to others.

Student: Ok, that makes sense. So what is the best way to establish the so what factor for both of blogging? I get that the journaling type of blogging is more personal, but if you are posting don’t you want people to get something out of it?

Me: The something they get out of it are the stories and thoughts you put into words. Sometimes, I’ll write from the perspective of, “I want readers to do X because of this post.” Often, I just want to tell a good story and make people think.

Student: Makes sense. Does that apply to journalist writing style too?

Me: Yes.

Me: When you’re writing to inform, the goal is to make sure you’re offering information people would want to have.

Student: Wait, that confuses me.

Student: What if it’s something they could care less about until you informed them?

Me: Your job as a writer is to make them care.I would imagine it’s the same as your job as a poet.

Student: You’re right. I would think it’s like writing a persuasive essay but i’m pretty sure it’s different. What the difference between essay and the structure of a blog?

Me: Think of a blog as fitting the information of an essay into a more informal storytelling structure.

Student: So there are no set rules?

Me: Nah.

Just tell the story of the piece.

Then, revise.

Then, proofread.

Then, revise.

Then, post.

Me: My best writing comes from reading blogs. See if you can check out some poetry blogs and get a feel for what others are doing. This will help you develop your taste.

Student: You make sound easy Chase. lol

Me: It’s quite difficult at times. I find the easiest recipe is to find something you want to say and commit to saying it. Again, not always easy, but always good.

Student: Well, I think i’m out of questions. Thanks for taking the time to help me. Hope you have a great summer.               Love, Chella

Student: P.S- I know you are going to be amazing at Harvard!

Me: It’s been my pleasure, kid. If any other questions pop up, don’t hesitate to hit me up.

Me: I’m going to try my best to make you proud.

Student: You already have!

The conversation did two things for me.

First, it made me realize I’m still a teacher. I know that sounds odd, but it’s been a huge fear since leaving the classroom. As confident and dedicated as I am to helping people learn, I was still mentally tied to the idea that the classroom or the official title was somehow tied to my powers of pedagogy. This lesson was just in time and just in need for my student and it showed me I am still a teacher.

Second, it made me think about what was necessary for the conversation to take place. Yes, the technology made it happen. I mean, it was a conversation about using technology as a forum for creation. It also could have happened without anything electronic. My understanding is there used to be these things called letters or missives. If my understanding is correct, my student could have sent me a letter with her questions and then I could have replied with my answers and questions. This process could have continued, similar to the one we used, interminably.

So, it wasn’t the technology that led to this learning.

I needed to know her. She needed to know me. Most importantly, she needed to know I cared and would be there if she had a question. I don’t remember making any statements as I was leaving SLA that I’d be willing to help kids with anything they needed. I’d like to think I didn’t have to. I’d like to think they knew.

Today’s conversation helped reinforce that belief.

As I continue to build systems and structures of care in my life, I will focus on and highlight the tools at my disposal for connecting and maintaining connections to people. Always and forever, I will highlight and nurture the caring necessary for community. Even if they’re multi-medium communities of two.

Things I Know 185 of 365: I wonder what’s next

That’s one small step for man…

– Buzz Aldrin

So what’s next?

As Atlantis made its way to the heavens, I felt a bit sad. This was it.

The feeling is somewhat akin to what happens in my brain the day after completing a marathon.  No other races on the horizon, a lack of purpose starts to circulate.

Sure, there’ talk of manned flight to Mars and landing on an asteroid. I all in favor of those. Thing is, I am also supremely confident those things will happen in my lifetime. Years of watching science fiction movies and television have made these goals seem almost expected. They are the logical next steps to where we have been thus far.

I want the illogical next steps.

A moment passed us by when Atlantis launched and no leader took to the podium to say, “Here’s what’s next. I know it sounds perfectly impossible, but we are in the business of the impossible.”

People don’t need permission to dream, but encouragement isn’t going to hurt.

Things I Know 184 of 365: I’ve got too many friends and not enough words

Words! Words! Words! I’m so sick of words!

– Eliza Doolittle

I might be in a little over my head.

I just woke up my phone to check the time.

Twenty-one people are waiting for my next move on Words with Friends.

Every time I get the chance, I chip away at my waiting games. On a good run, I can knock out five turns before the rest of life jumps in. But they keep. Coming. Back.

They keep challenging me.

I’m not even sure how it got this bad. I remember sharing my user name with maybe three people, never 21.

I’m not even very good. Of the 21 games queued up, I’m losing around 80% of them. Still, I play.

Then there are the invites at the end of the game. Just as my phone alerts me to my defeat and I click “re-match,” that same friend begins yet another game with me. In the face of such double booking, a rational person would resign from one game and keep the other game in play.

That’s just what they want you to do. Admit defeat before every playing a move? No, sir, thank you very much. If I’m to lose, it will be a beautiful and bloody battle.

Then there are the cheaters.

You know who you are…cough…Robbie…cough. Cheaters I’ve perhaps taught for two years in a row and with whose vocabularies I am well familiar. “Shoon?” Really?

Again, the rational person would resign the game knowing their vocabulary was reduced to a switchblade in the face of the nuclear armament of online Words with Friends cheating sites.

Not I.

For losses to a cheater are the sweetest losses of all. If I lose to a cheater, I can tell myself that I would otherwise have won, which, ipso facto, makes me the winner…who lost.

I’m not losing these games because I’m stupid. I’ve got words in my head. I’ve been gearing up for all 21 of these battles since I was in middle school and thought accusing friends of having “minuscule vernaculars” was the best blend of adolescent humor and linguistic insult one was likely to find.

At issue is my lack of strategy. I’m smart, but don’t play smartly. I like the words too much to toss them around like taudry tiles which have no more use to me than to help me score. Oh, I’ll score, but when I do, it will be because I’ve shaped and sculpted my letters into a Monet of syllables. Grown men will weep and children will feel a deep and abiding sense of hope.

And then, I will lose.

Keeping Tabs 7/11: 5 Sites Taking Up Space in my Browser this Week

Some sites get written about. Some sites get looked at and then forgotten. The five sites below have been open on my browser for at least a week. I’ll be bookmarking them and closing their tabs in my browser as soon as I post this.

What MySpace’s Tom Anderson Thinks of Google+

More people than I care to count, including me, have been pontificating on the possible impact of Google+ this week as the launch begins to go global. It all feels a little like critiquing a newborn’s progress toward an eventual Ph.D. Even so, looking through the whole thing through the eyes of someone who tried to build a social network and then took many admitted wrong turns was interesting. Anderson at once holds a sort of humility and optimism as he writes. The piece has a definite tone of, “If not me, then I’m glad it’s these guys.”

The New Aesthetic

No designer am I. It’s probably why I’m so curious to learn how design works and what the edge of a field I know little about might look like. This tumblr page has yet to fail at giving me a new angle from which to view the world or at least providing me with better questions. It’s getting thrown in delicious as well as my reader. If you’re going to check it out, be sure to see where it all began.

eLearning Africa News Portal

After two summers working with teachers in Kenya and South Africa, I’ll admit to a bit of withdrawal. For as much as teachers in North America like to talk about helping their students connect globally, I’m struck by our general lack of knowledge of what education looks like in various African nations. Fifteen minutes skimming this portal could prove prospective changing.

WikiViz 2011: Visualizing the impact of Wikipedia

I like a challenge. More importantly, I like a challenge that requires literacy. The WikiViz challenge is a competition calling for visualizations telling the story of Wikipedia’s impact. I’ve seen countless keynotes and listened to even more podcasts explaining the site’s importance. I’m keen to see what happens when the story leaves traditional narrative arc behind and gives us something to see. If you’re interested, the deadline is August 19.

BO.LT

I love this. Copy and edit any page on the web. It reminds me of those booths at the state fair when I was younger that let you superimpose yourself onto the cover of Time or People. I wonder if BO.LT let’s you put the site on a T-Shirt after you’re done.

Things I Know 183 of 365: It’s entirely possible I’ve never thought of what circle you’re in

Will the circle be unbroken?

– Ada R. Habershon

My junior year of college, Katy and I were in an argument. I didn’t know it at the time. The details remain a bit sketchy, even now. I do remember a discussion of being best friends and what it meant to me compared to what it meant to her. The values we each put on the idea of best friends versus friends differed.

I’d honestly never considered how those terms might have differing meanings in my life. I certainly had paid no mind to the idea that these terms might hold deep and abiding meaning to someone else. I learned a lot from that argument. I felt parts of how I see the world shift by the end of it.

Luke and I have known one another since I was in eighth grade. We have never lived in the same town. He is one of the people I know I can call who, if need be, will have his flight booked before we hang up. Our interactions, our social networking, take place with remarkable inconsistency.

Last week, Google threw its hat into the social networking ring with the release of Google+. Each day, I’ve been receiving e-mails notifying me of my addition to this or that person’s circles. It’s restarted the 21st century game of categorizing those I know into lists or groups or circles.

“This person is connected to you,” says the site, “wouldn’t you like to cement for us exactly how y’all know each other?” (I imagine Google+ to speak to me with a folksy southern twang.)

More than a few of the conversations feeding through my Facebook, Twitter and Google+ accounts have centered around how people were organizing their circles. They wanted to import contact groups from their Gmail accounts or replicate their lists from Facebook. Now, they needed to come up with a whole new version of how they were connected. Some, I’d imagine, even split-screened their monitors to make sure the connections were the same across platforms. I’d hate for Katy and me to be best friends in Illinois, but only friends in Philadelphia.

I’ll admit to currently having a dozen circles in my account.

The whole thing began to feel like an empty version of that argument with Katy 10 years ago.

I see the meaning of grouping those to whom I am connected online. Putting all the names in one place at one time makes the collective that much more daunting. It has value on the site, but that value isn’t something I carry around with me in life. When I get the chance to share a meal with Bud, I don’t think to myself, “Bud lives in my friend circle as well as my PLN circle, I will restrict conversation accordingly.”

The best moments are when those circles break, when the people with whom I’ve forged relationships exist in the ever-shifting cloud of relativity, when how I know you isn’t a categorical imperative.

Things I Know 182 of 365: Sometimes, I’m ready to move on to the next discussion

Discussion is an exchange of knowledge; argument an exchange of ignorance.

– Robert Quillen

I won’t call it an argument.

What I got into this evening that lasted from the beginning of dinner, through settling the check, the drive to the movie theater and up to the point at which we took our seats for the previews was a discussion.

We discussed education.

In a party of 9, my friend and I ignored all others and searched for common ground.

He discussed from a deficit model.

He discussed the importance of standardized tests.

He discussed there were far more teachers who should be fired than were excellent.

He discussed end-of-year assessment and the ability to write a well-reasoned essay as the marks of a highly-qualified teacher.

I argued against it all.

I argued against it all except the very last point.

I wanted to. In my argument for project-based assessment, for the value of asking students what they can create and teaching to their passions, for the idea that having students read from textbooks precludes the idea that a teacher has created a constructivist classroom – in all of this – I could not make my way to the argument that writing an essay should no longer be the measure.

This thought hung on the coatrack in the back of my mind as I attempted to make my exit from the discussion.

He wasn’t ready for the idea that what might deserve our focus is teaching students to make arguments, but that writing them down – on paper or screen – mightn’t need to be the standard by which we measure their rhetorical abilities.

It was incredibly frustrating to realize how many layers of discussion were necessary before I would be able to get to an idea I recognized as truly progressive.

I wanted to suggest having kids write with video integrating links, tags and annotations a la youtube videos could liberate voice, deepen understanding and lead to more dynamics arguments. I wanted to suggest that writing in words wasn’t native to the human experience, that doing something because it’s what’s been done for centuries isn’t answer enough.

Instead of this, I had a discussion I’ve had time and again regarding truths I take to be self-evident. It was a moment of frustration. I want to be having a better discussion based on a common belief that learning and adequate yearly progress are not the same thing. Tonight, I had hoped that our conversation of what education can be could come from a mutual belief that teaching is a respectable profession and that we must care for teachers as we would care for students. It turned out, we weren’t ready for the conversation.

I’ll find myself in some iteration of tonight’s conversation again (soon, I’m sure). I will listen and question and push with as much vehemence as I did tonight each time I’m allowed.

Still, in some moments, it would be nice if we all decided we were ready for the next big conversations.

Things I Know 181 of 365: Students need guidance, not oversight

When we want to develop meaning-making we run counter-clockwise to our instincts as teachers. We are explainers and our instincts tell us to make things simple and unambiguous. We must fight this.

– Grant Wiggins

Lady next to me at the coffee shop has concerns about a school that has 1-to-1 laptop program and no Emperor Palpatine-like oversight software.

“What if they get into trouble?” she asks.

“We help them get out of that. More importantly, we work to help them avoid it,” I answer.

I go on to explain the deep and complex discussions to be had around appropriate use policies and brainstorming problem situations into which students can get themselves.

She likes the idea of this, but remains concerned.

“It just feels like they’ll still get into trouble.”

They do.

I could chalk it up to them being kids, but that’s not quite why.

They’re people, you see, and prone to mistakes.

Walking this morning, I saw a man riding a bike in the wrong lane of a 2-lane street, talking on his cell phone. Time to review his appropriate use policies.

Last night, a woman backing out of a parking spot ran into and tipped over what I was told was a fairly expensive Dukati motorcycle. In a fair fight, the woman’s Prius would have lost by most measures. In this moment, it was too soon for the joke. She was reviewing her appropriate use policy in her mind.

Running along the path, I find a man who has decided to block traffic to stretch out his hamstrings. I checked the tiny pocket in my running shorts for an extra copy of the appropriate use policy.

I understand the coffee shop woman’s concern. Computers and the Interwebs offer tremendous potential for trouble. The best we can do is draw up a set of guidelines, review it with students and keep the dialogue open. It’s not the most we can do, but it is the best.

To impose draconian measures of Big Brotherly monitoring robs students of the chance to build internal structures and systems for monitoring and safety.

We will always be there to help, but like the parents of the man on the bike, we won’t be running alongside forever.

Things I Know 180 of 365: 5 PM is everyone else’s summer vacation

I was thinking that we all learn by experience, but some of us have to go to summer school.

– Peter De Vries

I’m out in Long Beach, CA for the month working with the Freedom Writers Foundation. While I’ll be helping to pull together a few exciting projects in my time here, today concluded with data entry.

A bit mundane, the data I’m entering is a necessary component of a project I’m working on. The project will end up being interesting, helpful and important. For now, though, I’m entering the addresses of 200 teachers into a spreadsheet.

I’ve entered data before. The data entry, in and of itself, didn’t stand out to me.

What stood out, what absolutely blew my mind was the fact that I stood up at 5:00 PM and walked away from my spreadsheet.

Alright, it was 5:13, but the point stands.

Between now and tomorrow morning, when I show up at the office, I’ll not need to, nor will I tempted to open that spreadsheet and continue working.

This is a foreign concept after 8 years of walking home, manilla folders of essays to grade in my bag or documents waiting when I logged in to Google Apps from my home computer.

In my first year of teaching, my friend Sarah, who had been in the game for a few years mocked me for taking student work home to grade.

“I’ve decided not to do that anymore,” she told me, explaining she kept her school and home lives separate where work was concerned. Grading was what her planning period was for. Anything that didn’t get done Monday could wait for Tuesday.

I attempted this tactic a few times throughout the years.

It never took.

To be the kind of teacher I needed to be and that my kids deserved meant sitting in my room or local coffee shop in my free time underlining, circling and commenting in margins.

I don’t have the exact math on this next claim. If I did, it would prove the claim false. So, from pure conjecture, let me suggest that my time grading, answering questions, reviewing drafts, planning units and lessons of study and collaborating with other teachers done outside of the school day throughout the school year would come close to the days I’d spend in the classroom during the 10-week break that has become summer vacation.

Though it was overwhelming at times, the teaching and learning I did outside of the classroom were always worth it. Writing narrative report cards at 2 AM turned out to be incredibly satisfying.

Having met hundreds of teachers around the country, I can say with an elevated degree of certainty, this is the life of a teacher.

It is not, I learned today, the life of many others. That kind of drive and dedication in most other fields evidences and intention to move up a corporate ladder. In teaching, it evidences an intention not to bury ourselves alive.

Turns out not everyone brings their work home with them. Feel free to raise your hand and bring this up the next time you hear someone justify homework as preparation for the “real world.”

Things I Know 179 of 365: Not all systems need disrupting

We’re flying in a Lockheed Eagle Series L-1011. Came off the line twenty months ago. Carries a Sim-5 transponder tracking system. And you’re telling me I can still flummox this thing with something I bought at Radio Shack?

– Richard Schiff as Toby Zigler in The West Wing

I think the man across the aisle from me wants our plane to crash. Just before takeoff, when the flight attendants were announcing the need to power down all electronic devices, I saw him select a playlist on his iPhone and slip the phone into his pocket.

A few hours into our flight and he’s still sitting across from me, still listening to his music…and we’re still in the air.

My phone is off, in my pocket.

It will stay there because I have been told that is where it should be.

Thirty minutes later, we’re still in the air, and guy-across-from-me is still listening to music on his phone.

It strikes me as counter to my nature that I don’t follow the evidence and have my phone out during the takeoff and touchdown.

I admit it seems highly unlikely that my phone, my Kindle or my iPod would take down this 757. If that were the case, I probably wouldn’t be allowed to have them on the plane in the first place.

But I don’t know.

And that’s the key.

I don’t understand the system. Aviation, engineering, electronics – all these are outside the areas of my expertise.

In this system, I have an amazing amount at stake. I am thoroughly invested and committed to its success.

Entire sub-systems and interactions are beyond my understanding. Thus, I keep my mouth shut. If I decided to study aeronautics, become familiar with everything involved in the process of moving a plane from one side of the country to another, then would I have a space to speak up.

When my life and the lives of others are on the line, it’s probably best not to disrupt a system I do not understand.