Tinkerings

I have been a fan of Dan Meyer for about three years.  I should say, I’ve been a fan of his blog.  As a math teacher, he is constantly challenging both his students and his blog readers to think in new ways.  Recently, he did a talk for a TED event.  In it, he talked about the need to fundamentally change the way we teach math.  He coined a phrase that stuck with me (and others from what I’ve seen on Twitter).  He said that we needed to develop our students into “patient problem solvers.”

I totally agree.

So I’ve been thinking of ways to make kids patient problem solvers in language arts.  We drill and kill all these rules for spelling, punctuation, sentence structure, and more.  But I’m afraid kids lose a fundamental truth needed to understand their importance: Why are we doing this?

With text messaging and other forms of quick, concise, truncated communication, kids have lost sight of what makes text messaging work.  Even those messages have certain rules.  Even abbreviations take on a consistent form in order to be understood.  One simply can’t shorten LOL to LL and have anyone understand what it means.  By the same token, I still get a kick out of using ROFLMAO with people that have never seen that acronym before.  It is total Greek to them until they understand the words behind it.

This led me to wonder about going back to Greek in order to get kids to understand the need for grammar rules.  In college, I had three wonderful years of Koine Greek, the derivative of Greek used to write the New Testament.  The original Greek texts were written in all capital letters with no spacing and no punctuation.  I wondered what would happen if I gave kids the note below on the first day of class?

After kids have taken a shot at re-writing the paragraph in a readable form of text, I would want to know the answer to one question: What general rules would you develop to make this and all writing easier to read? I would hope to hear rules about spacing between words, capitalizing only the important words, capitalizing only first letters, adding different punctuation for sentences and questions, and more.

Perhaps by struggling with the why of grammar we could develop patient problem solvers that could correctly use the how of grammar.

What do you think?

I love to spot the hidden curriculum in everyday life.  Parents (or teachers) who tell their kids to stop doing something, but then don’t follow up to make them actually stop teach kids that they can continue what they are doing until a more harsh penalty is enacted.  Parents who run stop lights, go faster than the speed limit allows, or flips off the driver in the next lane, all teach their kids how to be drivers in a way not covered in the testing manual.  You get the idea.

Today was another one of those days at Starbucks.  I walked in and got in line about 5 people back from the register.  It was busy for a Saturday.  I was in line behind a couple of with two children that looked to be around 7 and 9.  The mother was wearing a floor length jean skirt and the daughter was wearing a dress.  Both the husband and son were in jeans and t-shirts.  I don’t know about you, but where I live this screams extremely conservative religious views.  (This is an assumption on my part, but its my blog story to tell, so I’m sticking to it).

I was only half paying attention to what was going on at the register when they got there until the husband turned to his wife and, laughing, said his boss had come in and bought three coffees the other day and paid for them all at once, so he only got one star on his buy-10-get-1-free card.  He was buying all his separately so he could get 3 stars right now.

The lady behind the counter is a very nice person.  She is constantly smiling and helpful whenever I’m in the store.  She smiled her biggest smile and politely stated, “Weeelll, technically we aren’t supposed to let you do this.  It takes much longer to ring up and it isn’t fair to the people waiting behind you.”  I turned around and, sure  enough, there were four more people back behind me, and a couple of the guys looked like models for the local gym.  I wouldn’t want to hold them up very long.

It didn’t even phase the husband.  Even after I got my coffee and was walking over to get some cream (yes, I have to have cream in Starbucks to make it actually taste like coffee again), he was still laughing and talking about his “good deal” with his wife.

Immediately I thought about the hidden curriculum he was teaching his kids.  It is OK to inconvenience others as long as you get what you want was one that ran through my head.

Then I thought about the hidden curriculum of the lady waiting on him.  Technically, this is wrong, but I’m going to go ahead and let you do it, so next time you feel free to do it again.

As I was standing at the kiosk getting cream, I looked over at the 4-top table I like to sit at when its empty.  You know, the one with the comfy couch against the wall that makes it easier to sit there for several hours.  I was almost headed that way when I realized I would be creating my own hidden teaching curriculum.  I am more important than any 4 of you in here combined.

So I headed to the single table in the corner with the hard wooden chair and drank my coffee.  Somehow it tasted better at this table.

My feet can still get to tapping a bit when I think of a very young Michael Jackson singing “One bad apple don’t spoil the whole bunch girl…” with the Jackson 5.  Ah, that was when music was music and you could still understand all the lyrics in a song.

This morning, that song came to me while walking through Wal-Mart at 6:15.  I usually love Wal-Mart in very early morning hours.  There are no customers there to speak of.  You can find all kinds of employees in practically every aisle while they restock shelves.  It is very easy to get someone’s attention to help you find nearly anything.

This morning I didn’t need help.  I knew where the blank DVDs were, and I had a pretty good idea about the clear packing tape dispenser I needed.  So my walk through Wal-Mart lasted a total of 3 minutes.

Then I went to check out.

Because it was the early hours with no customers backed up in long lines of overflowing carts, there was one cash register open.  This particular Wal-Mart has over 30 cash registers, but only the 15 items or less lane was available.

I walked up to the register and laid my two items down for the man in the khaki colored pants and blue t-shirt to check me out.  (Just as a side note, sometimes a dress code really doesn’t matter).  Without a word to me, the man turned around and walked away.  I was left in the only available check out lane and there was no one there to do the checking out.

I continued to stand there while four other employees walked by the register and merely looked at the growing frustration on my face and continued on their way.  Finally, the checkout person came back (along with another customer he was evidently helping) and proceeded to move me backwards away from the register so he could help the person he brought with him.

Nothing was said.  No apologies made.  No explanations.  Just rudeness and a total lack of customer care.

If I hadn’t been wearing my DE Streaming Beyond the Textbook t-shirt I might have responded differently.  (Sometimes dress code does make a difference).  But since I was easily identifiable by the personal branding I had chosen that morning, I smiled, slid my credit card, gathered my belongings, and walked out of the store to let my blood pressure go down just slightly.

Think about it.  An entire store full of employees working away to get things ready for the shopping spree of the day, and one…just one…ruined my entire experience.

Sometimes that’s just one student.  Just one can ruin an entire day of teaching.  Sometimes that’s just one teacher.  Just one can make a student hate school for years to come. Sometimes that’s just one parent.  One administrator.  One professional development opportunity gone bad.  One badly needed website that’s blocked.  One email written in haste.

Michael Jackson had it wrong.  One bad apple really can ruin the whole bunch.

Always do your best to be a good apple.  We don’t all have to be the same type of apple.  Simply being a good one is enough.

If there is one thing that has totally transformed my teaching (besides a few years of experience under my belt now), it is developing and following a Personal Learning Network (PLN) on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Diigo, LinkedIn, and more.  I go to these sites every single day to glean (which means steal) ideas, find new websites, look at online gaming, discover classroom management techniques, watch motivational and inspirational videos, read blogs, and a host of other things that keep me sharp in my profession.

But I use these sites for fun as well.

Back in February, our local school board passed a major overhaul of our ethics policy for teachers, administrators, volunteers, and others who make up our educational team.  They developed it in two parts.  The first part was a total re-write of our old ethics policy (from one page to four) based almost entirely on the ethics document formulated by PET (Professional Educators of Tennessee).  The second part is a procedural explanation of how to file ethics complaints and what happens once it is filed (another four pages).

Other than asking for clarification on a handful of ambiguities (what legal document doesn’t have those?), I have absolutely no problem with the new policy, and I heartily endorse the two committee system for handling complaints.  It was a much needed overhaul.

However, there was nothing in the policy that directly talked about the ethics of teachers’ use of online social networking.  Perhaps this was not the place to put such a policy, but after reading through the entire policy manual online last weekend, I can’t find anything directly related to teachers’ use of online social networking or social media.  Email is addressed, as is the creation of web pages for direct use at school.

Is such a policy needed?

That is the question hanging at the back of my mind.  I could list several things that “bother” me about what I see with teachers’ and social networking, but let me just mention one.  It is one I was guilty of myself for a brief time.  I see teacher friends who Facebook and MySpace that have friended students in their classes.  I did this when I first started on Facebook.  I saw it as an opportunity to reach kids outside the classroom.  I tried to make myself available to them if they needed help with homework, or wanted an easy way for their parents to find me.  While I changed my mind after the first year and “unfriended” students still in school (even in high school – I’m a middle school teacher), I suppose it is still left up to one’s own judgment about such things.

While some teachers choose not to friend students because of possible legal situations or because the teacher simply needs a space “without kids,” mine was more of an ethical conundrum.  I realized that some of the kids I had friended simply were not old enough to even have a Facebook or MySpace page.  According to those sites, you must be 13 to create an account.  Many of our 6th graders have accounts, and they are definitely note 13 (although one claimed to be 27 on her page).

I realized I could not support these kids lying about their ages in order to participate in these networks when other social networking sites were available for kids their age.

Which leads me to the question that has been on my mind since last week.  Do we need an ethics policy for teachers related to social networking and social media?  Is it enough to simply block such sites at school and then pretend like they don’t exist after school?  Do school boards have a right to set such a policy for teachers?  Or do they have an obligation? Where does free speech come into play?

I don’t have any answers to these questions.  I’ve asked my friends on Twitter to let me know if their school district has such a policy (I’ve read about a few online), but so far no one has volunteered one.  I wouldn’t know what to put it such a policy myself, but I have this nagging feeling in the back of my brain that a policy, even a flawed one, might be helpful.

There is an #edchat hashtag on Twitter where knowledgeable professionals discuss all manner of education needs, but I haven’t seen a discussion on this topic yet.  Perhaps its time.

What do you think?  Does your district have such a policy? If you are a teacher, would you welcome such a policy?  What about the parents that read this blog?  Any and all comments are welcome!

It is the end of the school year.  Usually around this time I start to think about what I did right this year as well as what I did wrong.  I try to make it an even handed list, but I’m usually harder on myself than others would be, so the “wrong” list seems longer than the “right” list many times.  Thankfully, Santa doesn’t use my list or I would never get any presents at Christmas!

I was thinking about these lists recently in a spin class.  I had to think about something other than the fact that I couldn’t breathe and my legs felt like jello.  This particular class was a bit annoying.  One of the bikers kept shouting things out throughout the routine.  You know the type.  He was tall, physically fit, barely broke a sweat, able to pedal and talk at the same time.  I would have hated him if he had never said a word.  But I digress.

I often have one or two kids in my classes that like to blurt things out.  They interrupt me in mid-sentence with a request to go to the restroom.  They try to finish my sentences for me.  Many times they will try to answer my questions before I finish asking them.  That last one always reminds me of the old “Name That Tune” show: I can answer that question in 3 words from Mr. Childers!

As a teacher, these kids are often the first to get on my nerves.  Probably because they remind me of dealing with my children (ok, one of my children, but I love her anyway).  But cycling in this class was the first time I had been able to see these students as another student.  It was a little weird.

At first I thought, “OK, here is someone who is trying to impress the instructor.”  That thought had never crossed my mind as a teacher.  Are these kids really trying to impress me? If they are, they are missing the mark by a country mile (for those of you from the North, that’s sort of like a baker’s dozen).  And yet, I could see that perhaps they really are looking for some type of validation.  Which led me to wonder about their home life and how that would create such a need in a child.  Suddenly, my thoughts of these “constant interrupters” began to soften.  Then we cranked up the evil red knob and began to ascend a hill.  My compassion went downhill.

My second thought was, “This guy is just a class clown.  I know the type.”  But I had no more gotten that thought into my head than another chased right behind.  “This guy is kinda funny.”  I was irritated and chuckling inside at the same time.  What did the kids in my class think about these interrupters?  Do they have the same kind of conflicting thoughts?  As their teacher, how can I use mental judo in the classroom and refocus their energies so that they are funny when I want them to be funny?  That was a new thought to me.  In my early days of teaching, I would just humiliate the kid into submission.  There’s nothing quite like a teacher’s sarcasm to quiet a crowd.  After I realized that wasn’t helpful, I would tell the clown..er..student to wait out in the hallway.  When I had the other students working I would walk out and have a quiet talk about his or her behavior, get a promise to do better, and then hope for the best.  Next year, I need to figure out how to make the kid’s humor match my own and be a teammate with me.  Lots to think about there.

I’m still struggling with this one.  What do you do with kids that continually interrupt you in the classroom?

The questions that come up at the end of the year are so different from those I heard at the beginning.  When kids come into my class in the fall, all cherub-like in their innocence and desiring to please, questions are always about what they can do to get the best grade possible.  “Is this right, Mr. Childers?”  “Am I missing any work, Mr. Childers?”  “I was absent last Thursday.  Is there anything I need to make up?”

Those days are long gone.

After spending an entire semester working with 7th graders on writing good, solid five-paragraph essays, this question was asked today: “What’s a concluding paragraph?”

My 8th graders are putting together a Glog about a career of their choice.  We’ve been working on them for nearly a week.  One of the requirements is to add an audio file of them explaining why they chose their career.  Today’s question, “Mr. Childers, what grade would I make if I chose not to add the audio file?”  After explaining that the grade could range anywhere from a B to an F depending on the other areas listed in the rubric, another student asked, “Mr. Childers, what grade would I make if I chose not to add the audio file?”

Another wanted to know how to add the audio to their Glog.  I asked if they had watched the video tutorial I had talked about every day for the last week?  Their question?  You guessed it.  “Where is the video tutorial?” and “There is a tutorial for that?”

Other questions today?  What is a metaphor?  How many paragraphs do I need for my 5 paragraph essay?  Can I just get people to sign my yearbook today and work tomorrow?  How do I save my Glog?  What did people dress like in the 80s?  Do you know where I can find blue body paint?  Is there a game harder than the World’s Hardest Game?

Its the end of the year.

Sigh.