Catching Sparrows

One of my students was showing me his iphone, specifically a video about a new type of game that can be played on the phone. I said, “Isn’t it amazing what they can do these days?”

Another student said, “You sound a lot older than you are when you say that.”

I thought it was funny he said “…than you are…” rather than “…than you look.”

I’m going to try not to take it as a sign.

An excerpt from Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men, a laugh-out-loud young adult novel/fantasy parody. If you haven’t read any Pratchett, I suggest beginning with this one, or Guards! Guards! Fantastic humor, razor-edged social commentary, and a few poignant moments of pure poetry stuck in.

The traveling teachers:

…Bands of them wandered through the mountains, along with the
tinkers, portable blacksmiths, miracle medicine men, cloth peddlers,
fortune-tellers, and all the other travelers who sold things the people
didn’t need every day but occasionally found useful.

They went from village to village delivering short lessons on many
subjects. They kept apart from the other travelers and were quite
mysterious in their ragged robes and strange square hats. They used long
words, like corrugated iron. They lived rough lives, surviving on what
food they could earn from giving lessons to anyone who would listen. When
no one would listen, they lived on baked hedgehog. They went to sleep
under the stars, which the math teachers would count, the astronomy
teachers would measure, and the literature teachers would name. The
geography teachers got lost in the woods and fell into bear traps.

People were usually quite pleased to see them. They taught children
enough to shut them up, which was the main thing, after all. But they
always had to be driven out of the villages by nightfall in case they stole
chickens.

…What they did was sell invisible things. And after they’d sold what
they had, they still had it. They sold what everyone needed but often
didn’t want. They sold the key to the universe to people who didn’t even
know it was locked.

“He repeats it, looking right at me, all that vaunted eye contact. “I don’t know how to have fun.” And then, “I have no imagination.”

Beautifully captured moment in time. So very worth reading at TMAO’s blog.

Joanne Jacobs has linked to the brouhaha over teachers participating in the Soulja Boy dance to connect with their students.

Luckily, not once in the brief and forgettable internment of my no-prep teacher-prep program was I ever told “In order to connect with your students you should attempt to mimic their pop culture fads, preferably at the front of the classroom, most especially if they involve dancing.”

Oh sure, there are always moments (fleeting for me, but apparently very compelling for others) in which we wish our students would throw down flowers and bust out with a Broadway number every time we approach the daily agenda - to them I say you have seen too many teacher movies with convenient scene breaks cutting away from the day-to-day, and it’s completely stunted your ability to engage student interest without resorting to cheap gimmicks or that weird, icky behavior where adults try to act or talk too much like students. Nobody thinks that’s cool. Really.

Teachers might do well to remember there is a big difference between showing supportive interest in students’ youth culture, and actively participating in it. The former, done well, can open up doors of conversation and introspection, even honest discourse regarding depictions of sex and violence in music and media. The latter, whether done well or poorly, ends up on YouTube, and make the rest of us grind our teeth down a little closer to the gum line.

In my last post Catherine, from KTM, asked me this:

This may be slightly off-topic but I thought of you today while reading an article on motivation in the ADI newsletter.

That article advocated using group rewards in certain instances (I’ll get it typed up at some point).

What do you think of that?

I was intrigued. Having had my own kid subjected to so much group punishment over the past two years, I’m strongly opposed to any and all use of group punishment. So my first reaction was to ask whether group reward is too close to comfort. (The group could lose the reward if one student didn’t do well, although the exercise was explicitly structured so as to make sure the class did earn the group reward.)

On the other hand, it struck me that the wisdom in trying to form “communities” of students may be the wisdom of teamwork.

This is a great question, and one I’ve thought about before, actually. I am completely opposed to group punishment. I’ll take it one step further and say I’m even opposed to group scoldings of any sort. The problem with them is that it is never the entire group (by group I mean class). Never. It may be a group of three, seven, even ten, but it’s never all 30. It just isn’t. And to subject students to any group punishment, even if it is only the perceived punishment of having dissatisfied the teacher, is unfair.

As far as group rewards go that can be another sticky area, as pointed out by some students within the group not getting the reward due to other students’ behavior/work. At the high school level I don’t have the means (financial or otherwise) to give the students really tangible rewards (food, prizes, etc.). What I do instead is set goals and modify them as needed. I’ve found my students become very good at honestly relaying their needs to me in these situations, once they feel comfortable vocalizing them. So, for instance, I will give them a time frame in which we are trying to complete an assignment. At the end of that time frame I ask for a show of hands or comments about whether or not more time is needed. If we’re down to just one or two students, and the rest have been finished for a while, I will have them stop anyway with the reassurance they can finish during SSR (sustained silent reading) time at the end of class. It helps decrease anxiety over not finishing their work, or having to take work home that other students didn’t have to.

Another strategy I’ve tried is to reward groups when the entire group reaches a certain goal. This way their reward doesn’t depend on any one person, because groups always work at staggered paces. So, for instance, once a group reaches point A, they get to, say, work on a word search out in the hall together during SSR time. Or, go to the library as a group. Or select some reading from my special bulletin board, where I keep things like The Evil Overlord list (scroll down to read) or Logic puzzles. Or they get to look at the Ripley’s Believe It Or Not book together. Or even play a hand of cards for 10 minutes during SSR - only for VERY good work! It depends on the goals reached, and I plan the goals so that everyone has a chance - a quicker goal one day, a more difficult the next, etc. Also, with these sorts of rewards, groups who don’t reach their target goal at a certain time don’t feel left out of any tangible rewards like candy, prizes, etc.- they can finish their work and then try for the next goal. No matter what, it eventually all works out so that each group gets some sort of reward in the end. It takes a little extra planning, but it seems to work well.

I also try to keep the goals from sparking competition between the groups, because that is rarely the point of the exercise. I simply have the reward ready, and tell them what it is, and what they must do to earn it that day. I do a little bargaining sometimes too - they might need library books instead of doing a word search, etc. It’s pretty fluid. None of the rewards generally take more than 10-15 minutes of class time, so I don’t feel they are too much off-track.

I know the rewards may sound a little trite for high school students, but I find what they most value is some independent time, or some highly engaging reading or activity, so these things have worked well for me in the past. I somehow started a fad with word searches lately though, with a book of word searches that are very difficult. Not that I mind, but now, even during independent work time, they are trying to bargain with me for goals in order to win the word searches. They’re driving me crazy, and they’re even instituting a kind of auction - she did this, but I’m willing to do that and this, and etc. It’s pretty funny.

It’s Spring Break, and I’m desperately trying to get back to regular blogging. You know you’ve been gone too long when the only people who want to comment on your blog are those selling flyxmiglpluff and other helpful remedies and vague services.

Anyway, if you haven’t noticed the recent debates/commentaries on classroom management, you don’t get out into the blogosphere enough, so I’ll bring it to you.

dy/dan posted about classroom management, Dangerously Irrelevant then one-upped with some youtube videos of teachers gone wild (and not in the high-spirited Spring Break fashion, but perhaps with a similar after-thought of “Oh, man, I hope my parents don’t see this.”). Then Mr. K at Math Stories chimed in with what was a complete “aha!” comment for me:

“What the “good” teachers do:So, at this school at least, discipline is a huge part of being able to teach at all, much less well. Many of the teachers are successful. They have well run organized classrooms, their students are engaged and learning, and succeeding at it. In talking with one of them, we came to the realization that there are a lot of different styles, but they all have at least one thing in common:

The classroom is culturally isolated from the rest of the school.

Teachers stand at the doors, and do a brain check on each kid as they come into the classroom. Every kid is given some sort of reminder that that door is a threshold, that when they cross it, the rules change, the expectations change, and their behavior better change. Those classrooms are little individual fortresses, and the successful teachers bring in the kids, but have set up barriers to keep the bad behavior out.”

I do, in fact, stand at the door between each period, but what is so illuminating about what Mr. K says is that I do often feel as if I’m establishing a contract with students in which certain behaviors will not be indulged in my classroom, and I know the other effective teachers out there do the same. Over at Joanne Jacobs, I commented about the gray areas between “show ‘em who’s boss” management styles and the fallacy that its only alternative is some sort of “let’s all gather and hold hands” soft approach.

It’s a social contract, with the heavier responsibilities and behavior restrictions actually lying (rightfully so) on the teacher’s shoulders. In return for the students’ agreement to behave civilly and responsibly, to communicate their needs and dissatisfaction in an appropriate manner, and to reject inappropriate behavior within the classroom walls, the teacher’s portion of my personal, internal contract (the one I relay to them through my actions throughout the year) reads something like this:

1. I promise to make my directions, daily agendas, and expectations clear. I promise to clarify them when you are confused without expressing frustration or impatience with you.

2. I promise to be consistent with any disciplinary consequences I may have to enact. I promise to give adequate warning and opportunities to change your behavior before enacting disciplinary consequences. I promise to notice and express gratitude for changes in behavior, especially if they occur spontaneously.

3. I promise to keep your working environment clean and organized. (This is one I hold especially dear, which I know a lot of people don’t. It’s one of my personal notions of professionalism, which extends to the classroom where students are required to be.)

4. I promise never to enact group punishment for individual behavior, nor to threaten it in order to gain your attention/compliance.

5. I promise to communicate my dissatisfaction with inappropriate behavior in a calm and responsible way, not to let it build up until I explode.

In the end, though, I’ve realized over the years this contract isn’t solely for the benefit of students - it’s also for my own, and often benefits me more than them. This is the contract I make with myself, for the students of today, tomorrow, 2009, 2010, and etc. I make this contract with myself every year before I make it with the students, because I know that in holding myself to these expectations I am consciously establishing the behavior with which I will approach adverse situations, the parameters within which I will create an atmosphere of high expectations and rigorous learning for students, and the behavioral model for myself that I will consistently strive to achieve.

Now, I realize I may have lost a few readers with the paucity of my posting of late, but if you do go and peruse the blogs and muse over the issue, I hope you’ll leave some thoughts here to add to the conversation. What’s in your contract? What events have tested that contract? How do you approach classroom management? Etc.

Friday, a close friend/colleague mistook me for a purist because of a completely harmless sotto voce muttering on my part, something about English teachers using expensive Smart classrooms (a laptop for every kid, etc.) to assign 11th grade English students image-heavy posters of the literature they’re reading, and then being discontented that the posters didn’t demonstrate any literary awareness of the book.

Let’s face it, many times if the technology is impressive to adults, then it’s most likely boring to students. This has been true down through the centuries. I was the official Betamax operator in our household, my parents just the bemused audience. I can still remember typing something like 10 If 20 > 50 goto 70 in order to get a little snowman to wave on a field of blue with white pinpoints appearing and disappearing to simulate snow and that was a damn cool thing then, as was feminism a la Cindy Lauper, the emergence of rap into suburban teen consciousness, and anything Ralph Macchio.

Technological prowess took many forms then. This one kid I knew - who, in the immortal tradition of being affectionately cruel we called Stinky Stan because he had such a mercurial relationship with personal hygiene - couldn’t make the snowman, but he could make a green box appear on a black background while long streaks of red lines came pouring down like some pixilated apocalyptic nightmare. Over the years I lost touch with Stinky, but I hear he went into film.

Quite honestly, technology was a little boring to a lot of us at that point in time, which might be why some of us didn’t think it would really take off. Black screens with stiff green (or goldenrod) text was a little like having a very large digital watch with less interesting minute-by-minute updates. Cell phones were the size and weight of bricks, and usually only owned by neighbors who didn’t have children - thereby having the money and the Saabs to install them in.

But that has certainly changed, and while technology is much cooler now, the ease with which the younger generations manipulate it and instinctively understand its cosmetic applications hasn’t. Thursday I picked up an orphaned iPod in my room and pushed play (I seldom do - I just had a moment of curiosity). The volume made me, and several nearby students, jump. To my dismay, there was no volume button, and I’ve never owned an iPod (or cell phone). Apparently, you have to stroke the front of the thing counter-clockwise to turn it down, something like calming an over-excited cat. The students who taught me how to do that are the same ones who have complained of not knowing how to click on and print the converted PDF files of calendars, grade graphs, and homework assignments on my teacher website, or to register on my secure class message board so they can converse with other students about those same documents and other content issues.

Technology may be relevant, but it is also relative. I may not know how to turn down an iPod, but I have a hobby designing websites for a few folks outside education. Because of that, I know superficial interfacing abounds in teaching, and I know what it looks like. The only thing I object to is attempting to teach students how to stroke the volume button when they’ve already calmed the cat. Truly, I must be a Luddite, papyrus and squid ink on a horse-hair brush my instruments of educational torture. Or just a conscientious objector to poor practices in the guise of whizzbang clip-‘n-paste production. It’s a toss-up.

Mr. K, at Math Stories, has posted some interesting thoughts on my thoughts, about the effect (or impact) of external factors in student learning:

“These schools are different. The Kids are different. The environment they come from is different. You can’t ignore that. If you do, If you try to say that the only difference between these schools and others is the skill of the teachers, you are going to continue to doom them to failure.”

 and in the comments of his post TMAO once again took the words right out of my mouth with

“In no way am I suggesting that institutional racism and deck-stacking don’t matter. What I reject is the notion that we must fix schools and schooling by FIRST changing the composition of the deck. That silly Richard Rothstein path is a slippery slope, and it’s all too easy to pick up some unwelcome traveling companions along the way. We fix schools by first fixing the schools, a two-bird-one-stone-thing that will do much to restack those decks.”

 While I think we are all arguing the same point in different ways, I’ll at least attempt to clarify with this: I certainly don’t believe that external factors have no effect on student learning, or that “eliminating everything except the teacher” is the answer.  What I believe is that external factors should not be used to justify or diagnose learning failure, because doing so places the blame for that failure on a situation which the student has no control over, rather than on the school which certainly has control over what methods and techniques are used to foster learning when the child is away from those factors.

Definitely worthy posts, both of them, so go read, won’t you?

TMAO has written some sentiments that are right up my alley:

“This is an educator achievement gap…”

and

“When we come to understand, identify, and implement – on a large scale – those strategies, skills, process, structures, and dispositions that foster high achievement in the key student groups we’re so rightly concerned with, we will see a reduction in gaps, and more importantly, a corresponding reduction in the generational factors that can, in a vacuum, pull away from success and make it more difficult to attain.”

I will go one step further to say that I don’t believe there are all that many external factors which make the education of any group as difficult as it may seem. I come to believe, more and more each day, that arguments such as home life, socio-economic status, “cultural behavior” (don’t even get me started on how much I hate that one), and even quickie-diagnoses of learning disabilities which may or may not exist are simply excuses to blame the child for a perceived inability to learn - an accusation which is completely inappropriate and laziness on the part of adults charged with children’s education, to say the least.

In fact, we do know what these techniques are that foster achievement at high levels. But a rampant knee-jerk adoption of fad theories (adopted and dumped as quickly as any teen clothing fad), and misconception of the teacher’s rights and duties in the classroom help to muddle the view of the end product, set teachers against parents against teachers against admin, and all around blur the path which should be fairly straight and narrow.

The problem I have seen, in my time in the profession, is that practitioners are given curriculum “guidelines” rather than “particulars,” are discouraged from true collaboration by being fed nonsense about teacher autonomy in their classroom vs. best practices for all, or are completely flummoxed by new initiatives to have “differentiated classrooms” occupied by students with vastly divergent educational needs in order to cut costs on resource and special education programs in schools under the guise of an “equal education” for all. (A movement occurring now in my high school.)

Anyone who remembers my old blog may remember that I often related my experience as an education “professional” to my experiences before education in various employment including fast food service and management, cocktail waitressing, nannying, office management, and airline customer service, sales, and training, among others. I will say it once again: I have never in my life worked in any industry where the customer’s needs were so clearly secondary, treated as suspect, and sub-standardized in favor of the creativity, self-esteem, and self-congratulatory concerns of the employees.

Achievement gap, indeed.

Serendipitous Update: Jose Vilson discusses tough times for education, the deterioration of the image of the teacher, and how people call teaching a “noble cause, and tell me how people depend on me and others like me to lead the children to a better understand of not just math but life itself, even conceding that they probably wouldn’t do it themselves.”

I feel like I will never know, unless I get to see the stage version, whether Sean Combs was up to the task of playing Walter Lee.  Because unless I drifted off during the three hour presentation of what I’ve always considered to be an admirably concise play, I missed the few parts in which the actor playing Walter Lee really gets to show his chops.  Did he even say the money phrase?  Did I miss that?   It was like someone took a plot diagram for the play and skewed it so badly they completely missed the climax.  Just when Rashad had grabbed hold of my heart and begun to yank it from my chest, with Walter Lee on his knees before her, they cut to commercial.

So much potential.