Tinkerings

A few days ago, I stumbled upon a Twitter entry from The Art Guy that had a link to ask him anything.  I say “stumbled” because I don’t check my Twitter feed quite as often as I should, and it just happened to be in the stream of posts at the time I was there.  But that’s probably too much information, so let’s just move on…

The link took me to an interesting site that allows users to ask The Art Guy anything.  I was intrigued enough about the possibilities for my classroom, that I created my own account.  You should be able to see a widget for this site now on the right side of this blog (I had a little trouble with my widget editor, so I’m hoping it is still there.  If not, just click here).

The questions are private until he chooses to answer them, so even if inappropriate questions get asked by anonymous jerks, they don’t show up anywhere unless the user decides to take the bait and answer them anyway.

Eventually, I plan to include this on my class homepage and give an assignment to all our 8th graders to “ask me anything” about high school, graduation requirements, etc.  Then, my answers can appear on our class page for both students and parents to read.

So….

Go ahead.  Ask me anything.  Who knows?  I might just grant you an answer.

This has been a burning question on my mind for a few days.  I’m going to try to put down some thoughts in this blog, but please be aware that most of my blogs are first drafts.  They are a stream of consciousness at the time I feel I have to write.  Sometimes I look at them later and wonder, “What was I thinking?” or “I don’t remember saying that.”  This post may well turn out to be the same kind of thing.

I can tell you a big reason that is NOT why I teach.  I don’t teach for a paycheck.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like mine.  My creditors like for me to have it.  I know my daughter who is still in college is grateful for it.  But I don’t teach for the money.  If I did, this would just be a career.  It is more.  Much more.

I guess in simplest terms, I teach because I must.  I always have.  I was teaching adult Sunday school classes while still in high school.  Put me in a small group, and I’ll be the one explaining how things get done.  My kids hate it.  Their questions turn into mini-lessons from dad.  Sometimes it even gets me in trouble, but we won’t talk about those times here.

I am a teacher.  That’s not a career description.  It is a personality trait.  Every spiritual gifts inventory I’ve taken puts teaching at the top of the list.  Personality profiles all indicate I would be happiest in an area involving instructing.  I’m a helper.  Plain and simple.  Personality profiles indicate that I will often jump in to “fix” something without thinking simply because I know the answer.  Remember that statement about getting in trouble?  I’m still not talking about it.  If I wasn’t hired as a teacher, I would still be teaching…something….somewhere….to someone.

I teach because I love to see the light go on.  You know the one.  That little light bulb above every head that suddenly brightens when they “get” it.   I love the look of their eyes when the sparkle of learning something new sets in.  I love the fact that I have had an opportunity to change a life for the better….forever.

And I teach because I want to help teachers better themselves.  Some would say it is all about the kids.  I disagree.  Somebody has to be all about the teachers.  Someone has to want to help teachers be better teachers so they can reach more students.  OK, maybe that is all about the students in some convoluted way.  Streams of consciousness are tough to get out sometimes.

Why do you teach?  If you’re not a teacher, leave me a comment about one of your teachers that really showed you what teaching is all about.

Being sick is absolutely  no fun.  Anyone who tries to tell you otherwise is itching for a fight.  Yesterday I came down with what I can only describe as a severe head cold.  I couldn’t breathe.  My eyes were watery.  My nose alternated between clogged and runny.  And my fever came and went throughout the day.  On the advice of my principal, I got hold of a substitute teacher who had been at our school in the morning and offered her an afternoon of work so I could go lay down.

After about an hour’s nap, I felt a little better, and my nose had completely stopped running.  Instead, it felt like a concrete truck had poured a full load of high impact concrete into my sinus cavities.  It was awful.  I tried to drink liquids, but nearly died from suffocation while drinking water simply because there was no way for air to get into my nasal passages.  It was awful.

This morning, after an Allegra D and a squirt of Afrin nose spray, I am better.  I can breathe.  My fever is gone.  My eyes are still a bit hazy from it all, but overall I’m probably an 8 out of 10 on a wellness scale.

It did, however, make me think (what doesn’t, right?).

How many times are kids in our classes that should be at home.  Maybe they want to go home, but their parents can’t come get them.  Or perhaps they are over achievers and want to stay at school no matter what.  If they felt half as bad as I did, it wouldn’t be any wonder if they were not able to concentrate or do the work I set out for them.

Sometimes I forget that these are children in  my care.  I’m more than just a teacher to some of them.  I’m a role model.  A friend.  A big brother.  And sometimes I’m a parent.

Being sick yesterday and today has reminded me just how vulnerable some of my students are in this world.  I hope I can take better care of them as a result.

In our last post we talked about the first three of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and how they relate to Project Based Learning (PBL).  Today, we’ll briefly go through the last 4 together.

Habit #4 – Think Win-Win

Project Based Learning cannot be a rigid demand of results from the teacher.  By its very nature, the student owns the work and the results.  If the teacher has laid out a set of guidelines for providing a finished product for assessment, he or she should realize that they are just that: guidelines.  Allow the student to offer tweaks to your expectations that relate more directly to his own interests, learning style, or abilities.  Compromise.  Make exceptions.  Believe me, you will enjoy the finished product so much more.

Habit #5 – Seek First To Understand, Then To Be Understood

Hand in hand with Habit #4 comes this nugget of wisdom.  As the student is working her way through the steps of the project, make it a priority to understand what her concerns are, where her limitations lie, and where her knowledge needs broadening.  By understanding where your students are, you will more powerfully propel them to success.  There is no need to pound your rubric into their heads if they genuinely need help or guidance.

Habit #6 – Synergize

This is a powerful habit.  It is the power of 1 plus 1 equals 3.  We have greatly abilities working together than we could ever have working alone.  Project Based Learning should be a community effort.  Students need to work in pairs or small groups.  They will need your guidance and direction certainly in order to stay on task, but the lessons they will learn about life far outweigh the possibilities of being off task.

Habit #7 – Sharpening the Saw

It is imperative that an assessment be done of the total project when you are finished.  Get feed back from the students.  Write your own notes as you move along through the project.  Think about what is working and what isn’t.  What would you change?  How would you change it?  This summative assessment piece is crucial to future success.

Project Based Learning can be a wonderful experience for students, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders.  It can be the greatest of experiences when handled with the right guiding principles.  The 7 Habits of Highly Effective PBL will help.

I have been a fan of Steven Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People for many years now.  Like most fans I know, it is easier to be a fan than it is a fully devoted follower of these habits.  Yet the principles espoused in this perennial bestseller fit with so many aspects of life.  They fit most especially well in the classroom.

As teachers look at creating authentic assessments in their classrooms using Project Based Learning (PBL), these 7 Habits are indispensable for maintaining student engagement and keeping one’s sanity.

Habit 1: Be Proactive

In this age of standardized assessments, many teachers and administrators are afraid of Project Based Learning because they worry that it “won’t be on the test.”  As a teacher, you will have to be proactive in beginning the process.  Tie your project to the standards.  Demonstrate to your administrators how kids will, in turn, demonstrate proficiency through the project.

Habit #2: Begin With The End In Mind

This is crucial.  Don’t think about PBL in terms of “the kids will do this, this, and this.  Now let’s think about how they can demonstrate that.”  Instead, think about the finished product.  Is this a video? A letter? A tutorial?  What do you want kids to do at the end? Then, build backwards.  Fill in the blanks.

Habit #3: Put First Things FIrst

PBL is cool.  It is fun.  Kids love it.  But never forget that it does have to be tied to your state standards.  Establish those up front.  Make sure you know what you are going to assess, how you will assess it, and why you are assessing it.

These are the first 3 Habits.  We’ll cover the last 4 in our next blog post.

Join the conversation!  Leave me a comment.

Even before reading Nicholas Carr’s poignant article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” in the Atlantic, I have been struck with the gnawing realization that we are slowly but surely degrading critical thinking skills through technology.  This is not the fault of schools or parents or even kids.  It is a naturally occurring phenomenon that is both insipid and insidious.

When I was a child in the 60s (born in 1958), technology was pretty limited.  We had 3 channels on the TV (sometimes 4 if you count the local UHF channel), a radio, and a record player.  Yes, those were the days when kids played outside with one another and the ear bud, if thought of at all, was a gnat that flew into your ear canal.

Kids had imaginations.  They thought.  They figured things out.

Think about it in terms of music alone.

When I was young, music was something we heard.  We had to use our minds to imagine what the band looked like.  We made up mini-movies in our heads that went with the lyrics.  Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds had a different video for each mind that hummed it.

Then came the Midnight Special and MTV.  Suddenly, we weren’t forced to make this stuff up any longer.  The band was in our living room in all their sweaty, long-haired, torn-clothes glory.  Video Killed the Radio Star didn’t just kill a star.  It killed our need to imagine a story.  And our brains got stupid.

Today, we have no need to commit facts to our brains.  Let Me Google That For You is not only a modern catch phrase, but a fantastic site to use for those too lazy to even look stuff up for themselves.  6th graders arrive at middle school with few, if any, multiplication facts committed to memory.  Why would they?  They have calculators (or WolframAlpha).  There is no need to remember important dates or historical facts.  Wikipedia stands at the ready.

Henri Nouwen, my 2nd favorite author behind Kurt Vonnegut, Jr (what a combination), wrote that all decisions are laden with life and death.  The key to successful living is to make decisions that contain more life than death.

Technology comes with life and death.  We must integrate technology into the classroom.  It is the future, and the future is now.  We cannot ignore it.  But we must also realize the death that comes with it and be prepared to combat that with every sinew of our educational beings.

We have to find a way to allow the technology to spawn creativity again (see Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk on how education is killing creativity).  It is through creativity that critical thinking is born, enhanced, and maintained.

Is Google making us stupid?  Is technology destroying critical thinking?  What do you think?  Leave me a comment.

I like to listen to NPR in the mornings and afternoons.  I sometimes find the news to be refreshing, but always interesting.  Today’s feature was on the way Nielsen is falling behind in the way it calculates viewership for television shows.  The move to watching TV on Tivo, Hulu, and other media outlets might just be making Nielsen’s ratings obsolete.  Currently, Nielsen is not doing much, if anything, to calculate the eyeballs viewing a show in these formats.

But Tivo and Hulu can.

They can tell viewership based on time watched, commercials watched and fast-forwarded, and more.  To do this, they have to look at a show over time. People don’t watch these shows on the nights they air.  Viewers have found a way to watch when they want to, as long as they want to, in as many snippets as they want to, and they fast-forward through parts that are boring.  What we often forget is that everything we do on Tivo and Hulu is being watched by someone.  Every log-in is tracked by our IP address, and that tells them (if nothing else) where we live.

We shouldn’t be surprised that we are watched so closely over time.  Groceries stores and big box stores have done this for years.  Did you really think they gave you that discount card to save you money?  Think again.  With a discount card they have your demographic data and track every purchase your make whether you have a credit card or not.  Using these cards stores determine what products are selling.  They determine which aisles are working.  They determine which shelf is going gangbusters.  And, like advertisers, they charge their suppliers to get their products in those aisles and on those shelves.

So, in education, we do the same right?  We track student scores over time.  We look at how they behave in a certain class.  We look at interactions between students and teachers.  We calculate time on task every period.  We assess how one student relates to another.  We look closely at whether they are late or early to class or school.  If they are absent, we tabulate the reasons.  We factor in how many minutes or days they spend in In-School Suspension.  We look at whether they completed all of their homework, half, or none.  We’ve even looked at whether their parents are involved in their schooling or not.  And once we’ve looked at all these data points throughout the school year, we determine whether the student is working or not, learning or not, behaving or not.

What’s that you say?  We don’t do this?  Well, pray tell, what do we do?

We look at one test on one day for an entire year.

Let’s flip that around for a minute.

Let’s say that Nielsen decided to measure a show’s impact on one night only rather than an entire season.  Let’s hypothesize that Tivo and Hulu will do the same.  Or that grocery stores will determine the impact of their store layout by calculating customer purchases on one day out of the entire year.

Kind of silly isn’t it?

Don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not saying to throw away standardized tests.  They tell us a lot.  They can help us determine what we should teach or reteach.  They can show us if a student “gets it.”  We are doing this in the classroom with tests, quizzes, warm-ups, and more.  We are collecting many, many data points and using them to fine tune our classroom instructions.  We need these tests, but we need more as well.

If we truly want authentic assessment that measures not only the learning of children but the effectiveness of teachers, we are going to need a lot more information than what a standardized test can give us.

What is your opinion?  What data points would you gather to assess student learning?  Teacher effectiveness?  Leave me a comment.

Tomorrow is February 2nd: Groundhog Day.  It is the day when we finally learn if we will have more winter weather or if spring is about to start.  And that decision rests entirely on the shoulders of one groundhog somewhere up in Pennsylvania.

I can’t think of Groundhog Day without letting my mind wonder to the classic movie starring Bill Murray. In the movie, Murray plays a weatherman who wakes up at 6:00 AM each morning and is doomed to relive the same day over and over again until he gets it right.  It is up there in my top 20 movies of all time I suppose.

Sometimes I think about this movie when I get up on days that are not February 2nd.  The alarm goes off at the same time it did yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that.  I lay in bed and wonder how the classes of the day will go.  Will it be more of the same?  Will I just live yesterday over again?  Or will something extraordinary happen?

This is not a fair thing to do.  After all, my students are all waking up to a new day as well.  The circumstances of their lives will have an impact on whether they wake up happy or angry, peaceful or sad, hungry or full, fulfilled or longing.  Currently, I have about 135 students during the day.  That’s 135 different variables that come to bear on my day.  I am not that good at math, but I would say that gives me somewhere in the billions of chances for a unique blend of personalities and events to make this day totally unlike any other.

So why do I wake up wondering if I’m in the Groundhog Day movie?  That fault, my friends, lies totally with me.  I am either open to a new set of circumstances, or I manipulate my own fate to make my day boring and repetitive.

I have the power to create the day I want to have.  I can choose Yogi Berra’s “Deja Vu all over again,” or I can embrace “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

And so can you.

See you in the morning around the Groundhog Hole.