Now that standardized testing season is over, I have a cool opportunity for my intervention class. I can teach in a style that is more tech-integrated, more socially-conscious and more authentic. I came inches from having my soul snagged by the Sultans of Standards, but I'm alive. On some level, I now teach with a limp, but I'll recover.

So here is what I would like to do:

I would like to have a two week collaborative unit where students from my seventh hour interact with students from another class. I'll spell out the basics:

1. We, as teachers, would share a blog where we collaborate, offer feedback and set up a general framework for the lessons. I don't think they need to be "common" given the varied contexts of each person's classroom. However, it would be cool to have a similar framework.

2. We create an avenue (I'm thinking a blog on edublogs) where students interact with one another on the two week project. In other words, students would have some method of working together. I'd like this to be tech-integrated, but it wouldn't have to require students to have computers at all times. It could be a computers-once-a-week deal.

My current project ideas are:

• Tech-integrated book clubs, where students post comments on shared blogs about particular books
• Issues in the Community, where students do a community Needs Assessment and compare issues in their communities to issues in other regions (this could also include a service or advocacy project)

Let me know if you are interested. I teach 8th grade in Phoenix, Arizona.

My e-mail address is socialvoice@gmail.com

I turn on the radio as I begin a drive up to Flagstaff.  Every song sounds the same.  The same three chords.  The same choir-boy, perfect-pitch lead singers and the same two and a half minute time limit.  I last ten minutes before I switch to Ray LaMontagne's album "Trouble" and eventually move to Sufjan Steven's "Seven Swans" and finish with Hayden's "In Field and Town."  

It's not that I'm a music snob.  I just like indie music because it is not standardized.  If Sufjan Stevens wants a song to list one minute, it can last one minute.  If Hayden wants a harmonica solo, he isn't told that it's not "accessible to all."  Furthermore, indie artists can choose a broad arrange of topics that would never hit a pop audience.  So, Hayden sings about a lonely security guard and makes a universal claim about the isolation of this age.  Ray LaMontagne can sing about addiction in "Jolene" and social injustice in "How Come" and Sufjan Stevens can sing about the depravity in telling the story of a serial killer. 

I'd like to be the Hayden of social studies teaching.  I don't want to be quite as raw as Ray LaMontagne or as breathy and eccentric as Sufjan Stevens.  But I want what indie music provides.  I want to be able to teach in a style that is not trying too hard to be standardized.  I'd like the freedom to choose what I teach and how I teach it.  I'd like my teaching to feel difficult and inaccessible at first, but then watch students grow into it.  

This has to be the funniest take I've ever seen on standardized testing. It's absolutely hilarious. If you don't want to watch the whole episode, at least watch it at 3:00 and at 10:00.

Today while I presented my posterboard at NAU, a professor talked to me about various doctoral programs.  One thing struck me as profound, "Some of the professors have great thoughts.  They're really cutting edge.  But they're so used to talking that they've forgotten how to listen. 

 They're great thinkers, but they're not very nice people." 

I kept thinking about that on the drive home.  I bet if I tried to have a pint with Thereau, he would talk my ear off about war and non-violence and imperialism and knowing the land, but it wouldn't be a dialogue.  He'd be bored with me.  My guess is that ee cummings wouldn't be a fun neighbor and as much as I enjoy Jeremiah, I bet he'd be a drag to watch a baseball game with.  

Honestly, that's something that frightens me a little.  I have a certain disdain for small talk and a propensity for offering long-winded diatribes on just about every subject.  I'm not sure there are always easy answers for this problem, but I suppose, like alcoholism and crack addiction, it begins by admitting I have a problem.  If there is any hope it is in the recognition that the only cure is in humility.  

Will our economy recover? Or was it broken in the first place? Does the system need to be fixed or was it simply a vapor?

This year when we read Brave New World, I posed this question to my students, "Would his savage solution have been as poignant if he hadn't first lived within the Brave New World." 

I'm convinced that there are two opposite types of mysteries. The first is that of deliberately staying away. It's a bit ignorant, but not always foolish. Cocaine is a mystery to me, and rightfully so. The other is to go through the experience, immerse oneself in the knowledge and arrive at the mystery in a sort-of paradox. 

I was born into the first generation of "digital natives" or at least I had a coming of age during the Digital Revolution. I'm still trying to figure it out and I'm slowly getting to that place of mystery and paradox, where I can step back and say with a smile, 

"Yep, I am becoming a Technocratic Luddite."

So, I'm blogging right now and I'm listening to a Ray LaMontagne record album. It's rustic and low-fi and feels like hard liquor the first time I hear it. But it's not too mixed and it's just what I need as I start to cut and paste onto a bulletin board and the cutting and pasting of text is tangible, not a one and a zero and a control x / control v and the board is made of real cardboard, the kind that kills trees in a way that I actually know that I am killing a try (rather than, say, my Google search). 

The scissors leave marks in my hands. My back legs fall asleep. I can feel the glue dry on my fingers and fall off in flakes.

A kid wrote this idea out for me and asked me to draw the cartoon portion. Normally I have kids jumping to sketch political cartoons, but this year they've been a little shy. Anyway, I thought it was a cool concept:

I meant to post this on my education blog, but I chose to do it here instead.  I admit that I am not an expert on music and have no business writing about it. However, these are my fifteen songs I play when I grade papers:

1. Chelsea (Counting Crows): I have to begin in solitude, with a reminder that I am meeting with a student. Nothing does this better than the horn instruments and the whiny, imperfect voice of Adam Duritz
2. Let Your Love Flow (Bellamy Brothers): It's a happy song.  It's a sneaky song.  It's like two hippies found their way into a honky-tonk and started singing about love.  And it reminds me of being a kid and sitting on shag carpet listening to this single on vynl. 
3. Romulus (Sufjan Stevens): There's something calming in nearly every Sufjan Stevens song and after a near pep-fest in the Bellamy Brothers, this cools me down.
4. New Soul (Yael Naim): Imagine a Russian immigrant singing Enya at a carnival.  That's my best comparison.  And yes, I know that she's a French singer-songwriter (with Israeli roots), but she sounds Russian to these ethnocentric ears.
5. Sleep Through the Static (Jack Johnson): I love the cynical, poetic nature of this song. Jack Johnson is the Rum and Coke of pop music. Calming, but edgy. Too much and your drunk, but a nice buzz in the middle of a stack of papers.
6. Hey Me, Hey Mama (Ray LaMontagne): I admit that this is not the best of the soulful Ray LaMontagne. Yet, it's low enough that I can sing to it and it's fun. I end up feeling less alone. This is a shot in the dark, but I think if Ray was in my class, he'd like it.
7. Catapult (Acoustic Version / Counting Crows): For some reason, when I worked at the grocery store, this song made it into the Muzak rotation.  It never fit within the Jim Croce / Lionell Ritchie group and so it felt like I was part of a little secret. 
8. Cripple Creek (The Band): I think of my dad and smile.  I've always felt that he loves me, but that he'll never really get me.  Then I hear this song and think, "there's a chance." 
9. Modern Times (The Go Find): For no better reason than the fact that I love the pacing of it and the refrain "we're not that modern people at all" which sums up my issues with the McLearning system that controls education.
10. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight (The Postal Service): The love child of Death Cab for Cutie and Nintendo
11. Sweet Baby James (James Taylor): Is it possible to stay angry and hear James Taylor at the same time? If we ever want serious peace negotiations between Israel and Palestine, we're going to need James Taylor to come along and bring his acoustic guitar. 
12. Wide Eyes (Hayden): The perfect vocals and piano for grading. 
13. Woman at the Well (Sufjan Stevens): A reminder that grading is always about grace and not judgement 
14. Sultans of Swing (Dire Straits): It's the type of song that makes me love music and storytelling at the same time. It helps me remember that every assignment is a story. 
15. A Day in the Life (The Beatles):  Far and above my favorite Beatles song.

I used to hate grading. It was all checkmarks and data input. I agonized over grades, hoping that each class would fit into the dogmatic bell curve presented to me by the Sultans of Standards. The most dangerous type of dogma is that which won't admit it is dogmatic.  When Data is divinity, learning must be quantifiable.  

I'm not sure that learning can be measured.  I'm not even sure that I can admit to you how much I know and how much I don't know.  If I've learned much about education from my own children, it is that growth is rarely linear.  It's a few hard switchbacks followed by dips and even at my best, I can't be a cartagropher.  The best things in life are not quantifiable.  I can't measure love.  Or conviction.  Or passion.  Or creatvity.  Or thinking.  Or even my own beliefs.  

After awhile, I shifted toward looking for growth.  The problem is that growth happens so slowly, it began to feel like measuring sod in the backyard.  I grew cynical and tired.  I felt the need to quantify growth with rubrics.  If ever there was a compromise between quality and quanity it was the tidy rubric.  

Some time last year, I read a paper and it hit me, "This is isn't grading.  This is a conversation.  I'm not a surgeon picking a paper to pieces, I'm a teacher listening to a student.  This is my chance to get to know a child, offer some advice, ask some questions and slowly, mysteriously, growth occurs."  When I am grading, it might be asynchronous, but the child is there.  Each work has a voice that is telling a story. Each assignment is a mystery. 

Every paper gets 100%.  Call it grade inflation.  I think all grades are inflated.  Most of my students earn between a 75-100% in the end.  They ace the school-wide common assessments in social studies.  My guess is this that kids work better when they feel known rather than judged.  Sometimes I wonder if my most subversive belief within education is the concept of grace.  

So what if the purpose of grading is not grading at all?  What if it is not to measure quantiatively or even to check for growth?  What if it is another chance to teach?  What if it's the opportunity, albeit small and imperfect, to meet a child one-on-one and share in a dialogue that might eventually lead to learning?

I meant to post my grading papers playlist yesterday.  I went ahead and posted it on my personal blog. 

I recently bought my first portable music player. I love the versatility of it. I can create playlists, record podcasts and take 2,000 songs to the gym. Still, I have mixed feelings about the digital nature of music. Sometimes I yearn for vynl. I like the imperfections and slips that you don't get with the clear sound of digital. I also miss the collective nature of listening to records. We used to sit on the shag carpet and listen to The Eagles or Fleetwood Mac. Even with cds, I could let a friend borrow an album and try it out for awhile. Now it's getting harder to share music.

With that in mind, I pose this Techno-Tuesday question:

In what ways do you feel more connected because of technology? In what ways does technology isolate you?

I'm fairly conservative in some respects.  I'm a libertarian in my beliefs on economics, personal freedoms, unions, etc.  One thing is sure, though.  Conservatives suck at being funny.  They lack the subtly and intelligence of liberals like Jon Stewart.  I can handle a guy like George Will, who is at least intelligent.  But this crap is why Fox News infuriates me.

Canada gets pulled into every stupid American mistake we make and no one sees them mocking our military on Canadian television.  Distasteful shit like this (although all shit is distasteful unless you're a dog) is why the world hates us. 

I'm watching the latest Harry Potter movie right now and I'm noticing some great insights into our educational system:

1. Often schools focus is on passing the test rather than using knowledge for life

2. Obsession with rules and a lack of trust leads students to go underground with their misbehavior

3. When students are left on their own to learn, they do a phenomenal job

4. The educational system vastly underestimates the dangers that lurk in "the real world" 

5. It is possible to be heavy-handed in discipline (even cruel) and do so with a smile and a nice-guy attitude

6. External politics often has a much stronger pull on education than teachers or students realize . . . until it's too late

7. Nagging people with rules and lists of rules will only lead to misbehavior that is more hidden and perhaps more dangerous

I'm listening to Iron and Wine's subdued version of "Such Great Heights" and thinking about what it means to learn in an environment that's hostile to learning. In a week, my students will take the AIMS test. It's easy to misinterpret the term "my" to mean possession. Actually, ownership might not be entirely wrong. There is a sense, at this point in the year, that we have an unspoken social contract. They can call me, "my" teacher and I can call them "my" students and we both possess a part of one another in that mysterious process of classroom interaction.

The people at the top use the term "these" when referring to my students. I'm convinced that big decisions shouldn't be made when there is a lack of a posessive pronouns. "These students" need to pass the test. After all, our school's mission is to "increase student achievement." I'm told that if I don't believe that "these kids can pass the test" I don't believe that "my kids can learn."

Achievement is a hot air balloon. It's colorful and flashy, the type of stuff that makes headlines and belongs on the marquee sign advertising perfection on the well-manicured front lawns of suburban schools. The conductor pulls levers in a scientific system of flaming hot air until the students reach higher levels. It's a thrill ride that enables some students to get a free ticket to college where they can look down on the terrestrial reality below where the Falls Far Below learn to look up and the Bubble Kids hang by the rope, hoping to push their way inside. The balloon is designed for a fifty percent capacity. If too many kids climb aboard, they renorm the balloon. Otherwise, what's the point? We'd all be on the ground.

Learning is a seed. The wisest man told his students it was a mustard seed, the tiniest kind available. It's buried in the ground and yet, it has the potential for life. The teacher provides some water, hopes for the best light possible and it feels miraculous when we see a sprout. It's a long, hard, sometimes painful profession. It's rarely as captivating as a hot air balloon ride. But visit the Redwood Forests some time and see how that compares to the most glorious hot air balloon.

Learning is not the same as achievement. "These" is not the same as "my." Doyle, the Science Teacher suggests that a great solution to deal with tagging is to have students sow seeds in land that is being unused. Although his idea might never catch on entirely, I wonder if part of what it means to be a teacher is to be silent, subversive gardeners in the midst of the commotion about how best to fill a hot air balloon.

I recently read a post on Countdown to Teachhub about whether or not we should offer an online option for 6-12 students. 

My approach would resemble this:

I agree with the idea, as long as there are some face-to-face social interactions. If I were to structure an online class, I would use a hybrid model with steps:

First Phase: Tech-integrated traditional classroom setting. Here they would use many of the Web 2.0 tools in problem-based learning.  I would allow this as an option for students to determine if online learning works best for them. 

Second Phase: Hybrid Model. Students would attend class twice a week and do the rest online. The twice a week class would run like a seminar class with heavy emphasis on discussion. A class of forty students could easily fit into two twenty-student blocks every other day with a fifth day for more intensive small group tutoring. 

Phase Three: Offer the options of taking hybrid and/or online classes.  Here students would use online tools for live chats on Skype, asynchronous discussion boards, a web of interactive blogs and the use of other Web 2.0 tools in creative long-term projects.  

So, my question is this:

Which schools should offer online classes?

Never invest in a company that buys the naming rights to a sports arena or stadium. 

Disclaimer: I am not an investor and I admit that the above law is entirely unfounded.  

I hate being trendy and I hate being mainstream.  I love the quasi-mainstream limbo state of my life.  So, it's difficult for me to admit that I embrace something so incredibly trendy and mainstream. I'll even use the cliche term "bandwagon" to describe my current t.v. viewing habits. I love the NCAA Tournament. 

I'm sitting here rooting for UCLA over Villanova for no other reason than to see the West Coast win.  As a kid, I used to get so angry when Big West, WAC and Pac-10 teams were neglected in favor of the oft-over rated Big East.   

For me, the draw of the tournament is that it embodies the greatest of the American values: the sense of locality and region, the triumph of the underdog and the communal bonds of bracketed gambling. 

I've mentioned before my theory that students need to be cybergeeks and technogurus. They need to become experts in how it works, how to blend multiple media and the best functions of a medium within any context.  Yet, students also need to examine the role of technology on humanity and the way we interact with one another.  No medium is ever inherently good, bad or neutral.  It's always a double-edged sword.  

As students develop their philosophy of technology, one thing that I encourage them to do is to examine their cyber-footprint.  I usually ask a question like, "Twenty years from now, as you are being interviewed for a promotion at work, is there any text message, e-mail or Myspace picture from our time that you might regret in the future?"  Students begin with a two-paragraph reflection about what type of online activity they might regret and how it could be used against them.    

 

It's not that students are particularly malevolent compared to previous times.  When I was in eighth grade, students threw stink bombs in lockers, stole shoes from each other and spread rumors.  Now they simply video tape throwing stink bombs, sell the shoes on Craig's List and spread rumors on Myspace.  When I was in middle school, a kid might draw an inappropriate picture.  Now students take inappropriate pictures and forward them on cell phones to friends.  

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not an angry old, curmudgeonly man.  I'm not of the "cell phones should be banned from school" camp, either.  I'm simply suggesting that kids will find destructive ways of using technology, because they are at the age of boredom and exploration.  Bored explorers are dangerous, but also creative and fun.  What students miss is the concept of a cyber-fooprint.  That cell phone picture can creep up years later.  That video of the stink bomb can never be permanently erased from YouTube.  

So, when I have students examine the philosophy of a cyber-footprint, I ask the following discussion questions:

1. How can your interactions online some day be used against you? Do you already have any regrets?
2. Should older children (pre-teens) be trusted to handle the responsibility of cell phones and Internet?  If you were a parent would you trust your child to use technology wisely?
3. What guidelines would you suggest for someone your age who is online?
4. Technology has reduced our sense of privacy. What are the pros and cons of being so transparent to everyone?
5. The Internet becomes a place where things are permanent.  It is a place of constant surveillance.  The metaphor I've used is a cyber-footprint.  Can you think of a better metaphor?

We usually bring up this concept as we study the 1990's and the era of globalization.  It's led to some great discussions.  

One of the kids in my third hour came in after school with an idea of a video we could create. It's only twenty seconds long, but I really like how it turned out.

I'm getting ready to start the book that I want to write.  I will be posting it as a free e-book.  The following are some options that I am considering.  Please let me know which one seems the most interesting:

1. Beyond Bribes: From Managing a Classroom to Leading Students - This would be a blend of practical and personal, meant to be easily accessible to teachers
2. The Impact Paradox - I've mentioned this before, but it's about the paradoxes of teaching
3. Moco Loco: Memoir of a Mediocre Superhero - A fictional book abot a superhero who enters the teaching profession as a superhero trainer

Step theorists never meant to make it a stair-climbing race.  Most of them set reasonable target dates for childhood development, with the caveat that some children mature faster than others.  It's normal. Some children crawl at five months, others at a year.  Some walk at eight months, others when they are eighteen months old.  The point is that most children learn to crawl and learn to walk and eventually learn their ABCs.  

The stair-climbing race works something like this:  I want my child to go to college.  I want him to be successful.  So, I'll order all the right books and the right DVDs to guarantee a Baby Einstein.  I'll start music lessons early.  He'll swim as an infant and we'll start him on a sports league at four.  We have to make sure that he gets into the honors, if not the gifted program, so we'll make sure to get him into a preschool that's ahead of the curve.  We need to make sure that he learns to read and write, because an education will equal a better life.  After all, prison is filled with people who dropped out of school.  If they had just been hooked on phonics, they never would have become hooked on crack.  

I mention this because Micah, my youngest son, is learning to use a toilet this week.  It was his decision.  He pointed to underwear on Monday and said, "No diaper."  He just turned two, so this might be a little early.  However, it's on his terms.  We're not giving him cookies every time he pees.  Nor are we setting up a rigid regiment.  There will be accidents (though yesterday we were accident free) and things might get messy.  However, he'll learn and I can guarantee that by the time he's school age, he'll be a pro at using the toilet.

I wonder how often we turn education into an absurd pissing contest.  Like parents who demand that their children learn it early, we force students to do things that do not match their maturity. In the state of AZ, we have second graders (concrete thinkers) learning longitude and latitude.  We have first graders taking standardized tests.  We not only accelerate students through the steps, but we have labels for students who take awhile to find their stride.  Imagine taking a few steps, finding a pace and then learning, "You're Falls Far Below."  How is that not leaving a child behind? 

In third grade, they suggested that I was special ed, because I was shy and I had a hard time with math and I didn't enjoy most chapter books.  Truthfully, I hated math because I didn't believe that I could take a "negative thing" and multiply it "a negative amount of times" and make something positive.  It wasn't just that it was too abstract.  It seemed illogical.  The next year they wanted to place me in gifted, because I understood math quickly and I would arrive to school reading Michael Crichton books.  Thankfully I had parents who de-emphasized grades and would say, "Someday you'll get it.  It's just how we mature."   

In eighth-grade, I have some students who are awesome abstract thinkers.  I have others who need more concrete examples to understand concepts.  Some students are almost adult-like in their emotional intelligence.  Others have the relational maturity of a fourth grader.  Perhaps they are not climbing steps so much as scaling mountains. Some students are still a little weaker, a little slower and feeling it out before they jump to a higher level.  Some leap quickly, but then plateau and the best I can do as a teacher is encourage them and help show a way up the mountain. 

Photo Credit

Flickr Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eni/2068072269/

I caught a girl tagging on one of my chairs. Let me restate that. I noticed tagging on my chairs, matched it to the tagging this student has done in the classroom and then determined that it had to be her. It felt like a punch in the gut. After going over two years with no tagging in the classroom, I see her name in bright silver.


At this point, I have a few options. In the past, I would have written a referral in order to start the documentation. I would have said, "She's in my one honors class and there are three regular classes where she should go instead." At one time, I believed this was the only option. Punishments and rewards. Otherwise, kids would go soft or my class would erupt into absolute anarchy.


I've shifted my approach over the years. Deep within, I believe we are all beautiful, like stained glass windows. Science can tell me the structures and systems and metalic wires that keep us together and art and poetry and stories can instruct me on the shades of colorful glass. But I also believe that our windows are broken, completely broken and that every one of us tries our hardest to put masking tape to hold each shard in place.


On a practical level, this means I don't have the good kid / bad kid list. I believe that we are capable of knowing what is right, but even on our best day, we'll choose to do wrong. I believe in justice, but I don't confuse natural consequences with imposed punishments. I believe that people want to be known, not changed. I believe that teachers need to lead with humility, that even on my best day, I might yell and that might mean I apologize and when a student sees my humanity a relationship is restored. I believe that we make our own decisions, but we are also a product of our environment. It's why I can never completely discredit behaviorism (especially the studies on social behaviorism and framing as well as body language) or the more humanistic ideas of William Glasser or Alfie Kohn.


I'm not suggesting that this approach is universal, but it has worked for me. My class is generally respectful, reasonable in our volume (quiet during individual work, semi-quiet in group work) and on-task. It's the idea that the class is a relational community, with a distinct ethos, a set of implied values and unspoken norms. But it's more than that. I can't differentiate between the importance of humor and play, of motivation, of quality teaching strategies, of leadership, of clear procedures and of the desire to be known. They all work together. At our best, we are playing free jazz together. At our worst, we're just making noise.


So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pull her aside and tell her that I know about the tagging. She'll probably get defensive, maybe even a little angry. I'll tell her that she's not in trouble, that I haven't written a referral and that I'm still concerned, because some day she'll run into someone who won't give her a last shot. I'll walk the tight rope of mercy and justice and I'll end with, "I felt hurt when I saw tagging on our classroom chairs. I do my best to make this place beautiful. So, I'm going to use my prep time today to scrub off the tagging. Do you want to come in and help?"

I'm not much of a data guru, but I remember reading information from Marzano about what works in school.  According to his research, the most critical factor in a child's education is the teacher.  Parental background is huge.  The local and school culture play a significant influence.  A student's natural ability plays a vital role.  Yet, quality teaching is the best chance for a student to face the barriers of natural ability, poor parental support or a lousy school climate.  

Many of the standardized, core-curricular acolytes distort this information in order to advocate scripted curriculum, but they miss Marzano's point.  It is the teacher, the person in the classroom, the flesh and blood human, who makes a difference - more than the computers, the textbooks, the curriculum, the standards.  I have never met someone who wants to visit a former textbook manufacturer to thank them for making a difference.  Teachers are powerful.  

If we really believe that teachers play the most critical role, why do district office personnel make more money?  I realize that it's more about status and role than financial compensation.  However, we live in a socially stratified society, bound by the ideology that money equals power.  I'm not suggesting that the district office would become more humble as a result, but teachers would certainly be more receptive to their feedback if we didn't see so many Mercedes and Hummers parked in the district office parking lot.

As a result, the quality wouldn't change.  The best district office workers wouldn't change their approach, because they are the people who care and who fight out of a desire for change.  The mercenaries, on the other hand, could find jobs elsewhere.  The ineffective bureaucrats would remain ineffective, but receive less compensation for sitting at their desk and eating cake while playing Sudoku. I realize the money saved would be small, but the statement would be huge.  The district would have to put their money where their data-driven mouth is.

Photo Credit

Flickr Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sgw/2892058635/

After taking some time off of school, I feel that I've found my voice.  I feel that I am learning to walk the limbo between casual and formal, using complex sentences at one point and then switching the pace to a quick syntax.  I feel unencumbred by the restraints of the academic community or by the need to not sound so nerdy.  

So I'm starting on writing a journal article tomorrow.  A part of me is scared that I'll lose my voice.  I know it seems like paranoia.  The best writers can switch between poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction.  But I'm not one of the best writers.  I'm a guy with an old, but competant Compaq and a small group of people who will listen.  

No one could accuse me of suffering technophilia.  I rarely watch t.v.  I don't own a cell phone, a watch or an iPod. My body is my alarm clock.  True, I write blogs, use computers in my classroom and drive a car.  However, I see each of the following activities as a double-edged sword.

Which leads me to the Kindle.  I so badly want one.  I love the way I can look at the screen without having eye strain.  I am a multiple book reader, alternating between a novel, a classic novel and a non-fiction work (usually in sociology or a historical monograph).  The Kindle is a lightweight alternative to taking a fat stack of books to Starbucks.  Besides, it looks so trendy and I rarely have a chance to do anything trendy.  It might even set me within the fringe of coolness. Besides, eBooks are so much cheaper than regular books. Thus, I could be lightweight, cool and cheap simultaneously.

Aside from the cost ($350 - which is roughly 700 tacos at Jack in the Box), I have some serious issues with switching to a Kindle.  I love the ritual of a book.  I love flipping the pages and feeling the texture of the paper between my fingers.  I love glancing at my bookmark (usually a handout from staff development, covered with cartoon doodles) and seeing how close I am to finishing a book.  I love setting the book down when I am done and feeling that mix of accomplishment and the sense of loss.  When my allergies are not bad, I enjoy the scent of an old book and I love re-reading parts that I have underlined or notes I once wrote in the margins.   

The price tag alone prevents me from buying a Kindle.  Yet, I realize that it will drop soon, especially in the earlier models.  At that point, I will have a difficult decision about whether or not I want to buy a Kindle.

Photo Credit

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dekuwa/3267474040/

Flickr Creative Commons

I've posted two random collages here.  You can see more at our class website..

True artists might mock my students' creations.  Simply cut out pictures from Time and Sunset and Smithsonian, place them on stapled used paper and dabble some paint throughout.  Yet, I identitfy deeply with each collage.  Though the medium might be simplistic, the thoughts seem profound, full of personality and relevant to the themes of globalizaiton. I like the accessibility of it; the notion that art can be communal and possible for all students. 

In most respects, I'm a collage artist.  Nearly every one of my ideas originate from a conversation or begin with an NPR interview or develop as I read a novel. When I think of my own classrooms, there are fragments of Brad the Philosopher, Ms. Waller and her AP Government class, Ms. Jackson (not from the Outkast song) and her integration of reading and writing.  I owe much of my tech integration to my Master's program and much of my tech skepticism to Neil Postman.  

So on Friday, I notice an envelope adressed to me.  Inside I read the note, "Mr. Spencer.  Thanks for inspiring me to love reading. You're right when you say that reading is an acquired taste, but you never warned that it would someday become addicting.  Thanks."  So I think of the collage concept and realize that this letter should be addressed to a team of individuals; the first grade teacher who taught him phonetic awareness and the second grade teacher who taught him to string together sentences and the fourth grade teacher who read aloud to the class.  

When I remember that I'm a collage artist, I remember that I am part of a group, a guild of teachers practicing a sacred craft.  The art we produce is communal and requires constant borrowing.  It's a humbling thought, but it is precisely this humility that can make us approachable, authentic and effective.  

The impetus toward transformation began as I noticed my three year old son pinching his baby fat in front of the mirror.  Though he was a skinny kid, he felt the need to mimmic my actions of self-scrutiny.  I used to break myself into subsections, dividing my body into neat categories of "this is decent" and "I need to change this" and "skip that part, because it's too fat for me to view right now."  It's a cultural myth that men don't have body image issues.  The same children who grow up idolizing Barbie also grow up watching roided-up wrestlers and GI Joe men. 

Truthfully, I despised my body.  I hated feeling out of breath when chasing my toddler around the house.  I hated the rolls of fat when I sat on the couch.  So, I stood in front of the mirror and saw myself honestly.  I saw a person. A dad. A husband.  A potential heart attack candidate if I didn't start eating right and excercising.  My goal was not to lose inches or to go on a crash diet.  I simply wanted to live.  

I began to see my body as valuable.  When I first ran, I couldn't get past one hundred yards.  Yet, over time, I started training for a marathon.  I lost over sixty pounds.  It's easy now to suggest that I have a better body image, because I am fit.  Instead, though, it began the other way around.  Once I could see my body honestly I grew healthier.  

When I look back at it, I grew up in a world that told me simultaneously that my body had to be perfect and that my body had no value anyway.  I learned that personality meant more than appearance, though the school hierarchy taught otherwise.  I learned health tips in PE yet the school system told me, "Unless your a jock (at which point you recieve special treatment) your mind is what matters.  It's your ideas.  It's your test scores.  It's the work you produce that counts."  

So, today, for the Survey Saturday (a day late), I'm posing two questions (that don't have mutiple choice answers)

1. Do schools play a role in students' body image issues?

2. What can schools do to teach students that their own bodies actually matter?

The greatest lie of the Digital Age is that I can see the world and still feel the grass between my toes.

-A thought after teaching my unit on globalization

I know a guy who loves music.  By a combination of hard work and sheer luck, he now runs a company that creates and licenses music for large multinational media conglomerates.  It's a sweet gig with risidual income, a hefty dose of creative control and a decent amount of relational interaction. 

I'm at his house on Friday night and we begin talking about education.  He pretty much dropped out early on, because he found it completely irrelevant to his love of music.  I ask him what he thinks children need to learn and he answers, "It's not about test scores.  It shouldn't even have to be about getting into college.  Kids need to learn about money, about financial planning, about credit and debit and how to create a budget.  But more importantly, they need to learn that you can work a job that is fun."   He later defines fun as a sort-of limbo between enjoyment and meaning.  

I have a boy in my fourth hour who is pulling an A, but is failing all his other classes.  He drew about half of the icons on our Social Voice page.  His globalization collage is amazing, but his description is even better, "We smashed the world into pieces, leaving shards of culture and humanity and politics.  To make money, we chopped it like an onion and made our own global pico de gallo.  It was tasty at first, but now we're realizing that we're not whole.  We're connected, but we are unable to communicate.  We're crowded, but we're lonely. We keep gluing the pieces together, but we can't fix it.  Once humpty dumpty fell, no amount of kingsmen could make him whole again."

So, I'm thinking about where this student belongs.  He might be retained and do eighth grade over again.  If this occurs, he'll take off.  I've never seen retention work.  If he passes, he'll be forced to take two math classes next year for failing AIMS.  I'd like to find a place for him.  At first glance, it seems that he's edgy and urban and wouldn't fit in at the Arizona School for the Arts.  Yet, he needs to be somewhere like that.  He needs to find a place where he can be himself. 

 

I caught a girl tagging on one of my chairs. Let me restate that. I noticed tagging on my chairs, matched it to the tagging this student has done in the classroom and then determined that it had to be her. It felt like a punch in the gut. After going over two years with no tagging in the classroom, I see her name in bright silver.

At this point, I have a few options. In the past, I would have written a referral in order to start the documentation. I would have said, "She's in my one honors class and there are three regular classes where she should go instead." At one time, I believed this was the only option. Punishments and rewards. Otherwise, kids would go soft or my class would erupt into absolute anarchy.

I've shifted my approach over the years. Deep within, I believe we are all beautiful, like stained glass windows. Science can tell me the structures and systems and metalic wires that keep us together and art and poetry and stories can instruct me on the shades of colorful glass. But I also believe that our windows are broken, completely broken and that every one of us tries our hardest to put masking tape to hold each shard in place.

On a practical level, this means I don't have the good kid / bad kid list. I believe that we are capable of knowing what is right, but even on our best day, we'll choose to do wrong. I believe in justice, but I don't confuse natural consequences with imposed punishments. I believe that people want to be known, not changed. I believe that teachers need to lead with humility, that even on my best day, I might yell and that might mean I apologize and when a student sees my humanity a relationship is restored. I believe that we make our own decisions, but we are also a product of our environment. It's why I can never completely discredit behaviorism (especially the studies on social behaviorism and framing as well as body language) or the more humanistic ideas of William Glasser or Alfie Kohn.

I'm not suggesting that this approach is universal, but it has worked for me. My class is generally respectful, reasonable in our volume (quiet during individual work, semi-quiet in group work) and on-task. It's the idea that the class is a relational community, with a distinct ethos, a set of implied values and unspoken norms. But it's more than that. I can't differentiate between the importance of humor and play, of motivation, of quality teaching strategies, of leadership, of clear procedures and of the desire to be known. They all work together. At our best, we are playing free jazz together. At our worst, we're just making noise.

So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pull her aside and tell her that I know about the tagging. She'll probably get defensive, maybe even a little angry. I'll tell her that she's not in trouble, that I haven't written a referral and that I'm still concerned, because some day she'll run into someone who won't give her a last shot. I'll walk the tight rope of mercy and justice and I'll end with, "I felt hurt when I saw tagging on our classroom chairs. I do my best to make this place beautiful. So, I'm going to use my prep time today to scrub off the tagging. Do you want to come in and help?"

Right now my students are writing sections of a class book called United by Borders. We discussed the concept of implied and stated theme and determined a stated theme, "We all share the common human experience of facing borders.  They aren't minor barriers or hurldes.  They're walls, monstrous, immense, intimidating and even when we attempt to immigrate a part of us changes in the process."  What is interesting is to watch the subtle, implied themes emerge.  Will we have one universal implied theme as a result?  

Fifteen students have chosen borders that include death.  They write candidly, sometimes in prosaic clarity and other times in poetry that is saturated with figurative language.  I feel like a surgeon when I go to edit.  I want to retain the clarity of prose, but enhance the student's ability to convey emotion.  At the same time, I can easily cut it to pieces, make it mine and then watch a student's voice drown in the carcass of a paper that bleeds blue.  

I am beginning to realize that students learn about life constantly but never about death.  Sure, they might glimpse a battlefield picture in social studies or see the life cycle in science, but there is a sense that they never share experiences with death.  Students have no place to deal with the issues of mortality (and perhaps immortality) and with the existential questions that connect to it.  I don't blame the school entirely.  Our society locks up the young and the old, both in completely separate prisons where they seldom interact.  

I feel ambivalent about a pedagogy of death.  I've seen what they have done to sex; making it cheesy and clinical.  They stripped it of its power, of its embrace of its allure and in the process encouraged exploration to go underground.   Students educate one another rather than learning from experts.  I can't imagine what the system would do with death:  vocab charts, word walls, fifteen minute videos with people with long bangs and pastel sweaters, workbooks with fill in the blank answers.  

At the same time, it feels that the censorship of death means a censorship of all things philosophical.  It's the cliche elephant that's howling in the room, reminding students that soldiers don't hit targets, they kill people; and a soldier is never a casualty,  he's dead; and the life cycle isn't exactly as pretty as the reduce-reuse-recycle; and the purpose of education has to have death in mind for us to think about what it means to live well.  

As long as we assume that there is no death, we assume that there is no life and that seems to be a dangerous place for a child's mind.  

Happy 100! I now have one hundred blog posts on Learning with Impact! 

I love birthdays, not because I have a particular affinity for cake or because I love the "Happy Birthday" tune.  I'm actually not all that crazy about scheduled gift-giving.  Instead, I love birthdays because they are an individual celebration, a personal holiday based upon one's identity rather than achievements.  

When I finished a marathon or earned a master's degree, the day seemed significant enough.  Yet, in each case, I exprienced a slight letdown.  Somehow, I realized that I hadn't changed.  Sure, I had a medallion and a crazy story to tell, but the process of training for a marathon had been more significant than the actual event.  Similarly, I recieved my diploma in the mail from the same man who hands me stacks of coupons.  

Birthdays are significant because they remind me that my self-worth is not connected to my accoplishments.  It's a holiday that reminds me that it's easy to fall of the corporate latter, especially when backstabbers are clammoring for the top.  I'd be best to stay on the terrestrial reality of the classroom.  Moreover, I remember what matters.  It's a personal 

For PLC training, we cram together in an empty classroom (an empty shell remaining from the days before the sherrif's immigration raids and the collapsing housing market) to watch Fred Jones teach us to manage behaviors.  I roll my eyes at most of his humor.  It's campy and homey, but not in the Prarie Home Companion kind of way.  Think Dr. Phil without the anger.  

Don't get me wrong, many of his ideas work.  It's just that I would take it from a different angle.  I'd rather stand up there and be transparent.  Instead of the guru offering a seal-proof formula, I'd probably share the story of shaming that honor's kid who copped an attitude because her grandma had died and I was too fixated on her behavior to remember I was dealing with a human.  I'd talk about relationships, about what it means to lead a class rather than manage one and about the motives for misbehavior. 

If I were videotaped in front of the classroom, my humor would be cynical and the video editors would have to edit out anything with cuss words or innuendo.  So maybe I wouldn't try all that hard to be funny.  The white board would be covered with a web of reasons for misbehavior (boredom, confusion, a bad relationship, rough day at home, overly social) and then we'd brainstorm potential solutions that don't resort to coercian.  

Fred Jones says that I should stand up and say, "I'm in charge," and the first step is to have a seating chart.  I wonder if he's wrong, though.  What if it's more of a paradox?  What if I am at my best when I am part leader, part servant?  What if it's a tricky paradox of having universal expectations and norms while taking a different approach with individual students? What if it is personal when a kid tells you to "fuck off," and the best approach is to demonstrate forgiveness?  

It's the verbiage, too, that was hard for me.  I don't have class rules.  I have one expectation and I tell the students we'll all screw it up: Love one another.  When I fail, I apologize.  I don't have class procedures, I have rituals.  I explain to them that being quiet for bell work is a necessary ritual, because it preps them for group work.  We talk about the value of silence and I say that part of why I love Starbucks is the feel sliding the cardboard and using the wooden stir stick and watching the cream swirl around before I turn it light brown.  

I can't expect Fred Jones to be a poet or a mystic or anything other than a man selling his ideas for a hefty price.  I don't discredit him for it.  But it's not for me.  The tone, the language, the approach doesn't work.  My class is well-behaved precisely because I am not focussed on behavior.  It works because it's interesting and there is plenty of interaction and the students feel known.  We laugh, we play, we think, we talk and in the process a community develops.

I have a Twitter Account, but I'm seriously considering deleting it. For many, it is an addicting habit, a sort-of Sudoku meets Scrabble meets Text Message. It's a game of words, playing clever in a space of one hundred spaces.

I never really got into it. I'm long-winded. I meander back and forth when I write, often taking three paragraphs to introduce something that could be summarized in two sentences. I'm not really into soundbytes and clever one-liners, mostly because I enjoy the layers of metaphor that can exist in a blog.

Twitter, to me, feels like wandering around a party. I'm a wallflower, so I sit in the corner, hand clenched to the plastic punch cup. I yearn to say something social, to engage in the superficiality just long enough to feel normal. Instead, my mind wanders toward books or teaching or my wife or my kids. When I see the boxes of people all lined up in rows, it seems like an unspoken popularity contest. So what if I have nine followers? I get defensive and surprisingly edgy, "I'm just an introvert, that's all. Trust me, I could get more followers if I tried harder and . . . "

It's not simply the smaller social aspect that bothers me. It's the banality of voyeurism. I don't care what someone ate for dinner. I don't care if you're on your way to buy milk at the store and then you realize that you're lactose intolerant. It's not that I don't care about you, but that it's hard for me to step back and say, "How profound. We both share the same human experience of eating dinner. Wow, I feel closer to you."

Oddly enough, there is an allure and even an intimacy in distance. It's why no one cares about Madonna. She's been naked too many times and has shared too much that we feel the simultaneous feeling of boredom with her life and the contradictory sense that we know her too well and that, as a result, we'll never really know her at all.

I enjoy reading Donald Miller. I have an idea of what he does based upon his blog. I'm not sure if he uses Twitter, but if he does I won't follow him. I'd like to think that he's in a coffee shop somewhere talking to someone or in a book store signing copies while engaging in conversation or alone at a keyboarding sharing his stories. What I don't want is an open window into his life.

Often creativity occurs where I least expect it

The dullest people I've known have been those who try too hard at being creative.  Sure, they don a trendy hat, wear some eye liner and attempt to be "different."  They might read an obscure poet, find a regional brand of chai tea and go online in search of a Sufi scholar. After awhile, though, in attempting to be different, they become a prototype.  One might say to me, "What's your favorite coffee place?"  when I answer, "Starbucks," I wait to hear, "Oh, I go to The Willow House."  If I ask, "Do you ever listen to The Mountain Goats," I'll get, "I have it on vynl."  

I'm not knocking all of these things.  I enjoy obscure poetry, The Willow house and indie music.  Yet, I do not consider myself to be all that "different" from most people.  I am about a decade behind the trend on clothing (witness my short, spikey hair and overall Mormon Missionary appearance - though I am neither a Mormon nor a missionary).  I'm actually pretty plain.  

Yet, when I am creative, it is precisely when I am not attempting to be all that different.  When I am searching for truth, expressing an idea, grasping for an elusive metaphor - that's when I resort to creativity.  When I find paradox and try to commmunicate it in a tangible way, that is when innovation occurs.  I realize that creativity conjures up images of messy paint and abstract canvases and poetry with internal metaphors.  It would seem, then, that children would need to learn creativity as a discreet skill, perhaps with a structured hour block of learning the right way to paint abstractly.  

What if creativity cannot be taught as a discreet skill?  What if it emerges from within?  What if it is not something coerced, but something allowed?  What if the best way to "teach creativity" would be to encourage divergent and convergent thinking, to allow students some creative control and to find ways to encourage passion for truth?  If we want to see innovative, twenty-first century thinkers, the best teaching strategy might be to encourage students on a quest for wisdom and paradox and poetry and truth and elusive metaphors that flitter away before they are caught.  

I realize that nearly every post begins to resemble a "Metaphor Monday."  I experience the world through an affective, figurative lens, so it's difficult for me to state anything "as it is."  When I consider my shift toward tech-integration, the metaphor I adopt is that of an immigrant.  I realize that "digital natives" and "digital immigrants" are both used often to describe generational differences, so I am stating outright that my metaphor is entirely unoriginal.  Nonetheless, here is my journey:

Phase One: Tech Tourist

-My Story: I began using technology every once in awhile.  We started with a class website.  I used no Web 2.0 tools.  I controlled all the content, but I allowed students to choose topics to write about.  In the process, I fell in love with the "Tech Land" 

-Attitude: Excited, almost giddy

-Main Questions: How can I get some technology?  How is this different from how I normally teach?

-Focus: Technology Segregated 

Phase Two: Tech Foreigner

-My Story: I obtained seven computers and rotated students into tech stations.  In terms of a border, I was just beginning the process of using it.  We had a class blog, experimented with wikis and I used some WebQuests with them.  

-Attitude: I loved technology.  Everything felt so cutting edge and different.  Occasionally, I felt overwhelmed by this new culture, but I relished in my new status. As a digital immigrant, I embraced assimilation; even to the extent of choosing Educational Technology as my major.  

-Main Questions: How can I teach using technology? What skills do students need in order to use the technology?

-Focus: Technology-based

Phase Three: Loyal Immigrant

-My Story: I found old computers that were not working and ran them on Linux.  I began joining discussion boards, searching various websites and learning the language.  I hate to admit it, but language was the greatest barrier and I was still a DLL.  Over time, I knew words like, "switch" and "terminal" and "router." Running an entire class on computers, I began to use many more of the Web 2.0 applications, but I also grew a little edgier about technology.  I found that this new world was not the paradise I had predicted. 

-Attitude: I still see technology as cutting-edge, but I feel as if I've been cut by the edge a few times.  I don't see it as a fix-all and I don't believe it is ever neutral.  Instead, technology is powerful and even when we try our best to use it for good, it changes us in both negative and positive ways.  Feeling a "citizen" of the tech-integrated world, I am more critical, more reticent and perhaps more jaded about technocracy. 

-Main Questions: Which technology will enhance learning?  How can I get students to use it rather than me?  What are the pros and cons of each medium?

-Methods: concept maps, podcast, video, web 2.0 - same methods, but more criticism

-Focus: Technology-integrated 

Phase Four: Critical Citizen

-My Story: In creating a Capstone Project, I begin to realize that a machine will never replace the teacher.  I research what "works best" and it turns out to have a common thread of authenticity.  I sense that power, both negative and positive, of technology and it overwhelms me.  I go back and re-read Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman and become skeptical of the uncritical love of all things technological. 

-Attitude: I still see technology as cutting-edge, but I feel as if I've been cut by the edge a few times.  I don't see it as a fix-all and I don't believe it is ever neutral.  Instead, technology is powerful and even when we try our best to use it for good, it changes us in both negative and positive ways.  Feeling a "citizen" of the tech-integrated world, I am more critical, more reticent and perhaps more jaded about technocracy. 

-Main Questions: What are the best methods and how does technology fit within this? What are the pros and cons of each medium? How can technology enhance learning? In what ways does technology dehumanize and how can I help gain what is lost? How does a medium shape a worldview?  How can it be used to colonize?

-Methods: concept maps, podcast, video, web 2.0 - same methods, but more criticism

-Focus: Technology-integrated 

I posted the first of my class globalization poems. This one is not my style, necessarily. I tend to enjoy free verse better. The language might even be too cliche, but I thought it was interesting how he linked McDonalds and Al-Queda as both being terrorist organizations - one killing quickly, the other slowly. I don't necessarily agree, but it certainly made me think. I posted it anonymously, because he's embarrassed about the fact that he writes poetry.

Transnational Terrorists

I'm riding my bike near nineteenth avenue.  It's a crowded street that strattles the line between urban and suburban; a sort-of purgatory on pavement where people grow edgy in the invisible permissiveness that invites people to jaywalk, yell or chase down the bus, because the cops are busy dealing with the homeless lady who yells at pedestrians for walking too close to her teddy bear collection.  

So, in the midst of this atmosphere of anarchy, a man bursts through with a voice amplified by a megaphone.  He's shouting gigantic curses on "this generation," reminding me of Heaven and Hell, but mostly of the fires of Hell.  He tells me their is a magic incantation to recite, a Sinner's Prayer, all typed up for me so that I don't have to use my own words.  I listen for a minute, but the voice fizzles out before the sound, until he's eventually just a man in a suit, gently kissing the a technological medium that promises power in exchange for words.

It's not that I disagree with him . . . at least on the core issue of the possibility to know God.  I love Jesus; not the Silverscreen Jesus who speaks with a British accent, as though he is ready to have tea at any moment while he waves his shiny Treseme hair at his scholarly disciples.  But I love the rebellious one who challenged the standardized system and suggested that the rules and coercion and social hierarchy were meaningless in an upside-down kingdom.  The problem is that the megaphone approach tells the story the wrong way, full of fear and anger.  It's like taking the beauty of Romeo and Juliet and making into porn.  It just feels wrong.  

The Megaphone Man dominates the debate on public education.  Wearing the same polished suit and gently kissing an even more technogically-developed medium, he gains power through a loud voice.  He blames the teachers and insults the laziness of the current generation and tells me that I am leaving children behind if they don't pass a test.  He yells gigantic curses, warning of the impending Hell of a lost status; a world where India might have a crack at being the dominant superpower.  He busts out charts and graphs to tell me that my students are stupid and then promises me a pre-packaged, magical incanatation that I can use each day to force students into passing a standardized pissing contest.  

What scares me is how easily I try to compete with Megaphone Man.  Sometimes I look back to my blog and wonder if I am falling in love with my technological medium, using it to feel powerful.  I read the tone of my last paragraph and it seems angry and full of fear.  Sometimes I have to step back and and realize I am becoming the very person I am rebelling against.  

Sometimes on my worst days, I become the Megaphone Man in my classroom.  I hurl gigantic curses about "being prepared for high school" and explain that "this project is worth too much for you to ignore." I did that on Friday.  I knew better.  I pulled kids aside and tried to coerce them with a heavy-handed lecture.  Though my volume was quiet, my tone was loud and angry and I'm sure they eventually were able to ride away and ignore me.   

But on my better days I am able to set the megaphone down, ask a few questions and listen.  On my best days, I hope that in my classroom and on my blog I am not becoming a blowhard who resorts to angry retorts and fearmongering.  Instead, I want to be vulnerable and open and engage in a dialogue.  On my best days I can remember that the loudest voice is not necessarily the one people listen to.  I can calm down and listen, realizing that no megaphone can penetrate into the walls of my classroom. 

Photo Credit

Flickr Creative Commons

http://www.flickr.com/photos/larimdame/2575986601/

When I'm in church, I think about teaching.  When I'm in the classroom, I think about God. 

I gave the students a three-day problem-based learning based upon a fictional town that was outsourced.  In phase one, the students explored the issues and developed a solution.  In phase two, students created a presentation and wrote a business letter to the mayor of this town.  In phase three, we met as a town hall.  Each group presented (painful at times) and then we discussed a possible "best option" that could combine multiple projects.  In the end, we had 1-2 proposals per class and now the students will read and vote on it.  If you'd like to vote, feel free to check out the blog and vote.

After finishing this, I've come to the following conclusions about how I'll do this next year:

1. Use the Maryvale area instead of a fictional town.  Our area has been hit hard with the housing crisis and with outsourcing.  
2. Spend more time on analyzing "why" it happened and combine elements of white flight (which was last unit) and other issues we've already evaluated.  Maybe the students will develop a Needs Assessment and bring in a few people to interview in person
   
3. Let the students help develop the criteria for their solution.  
4. When the students create a solution, they'll also create a small website or blog that will include the presentation (embedded) and the business letter with their general proposal.  
5. I'll let them find an "authentic" audience to view it - city council, perhaps?

I honestly wish I could have last week back and see if I could pull it off in a week to a week and a half.  

I posted the following as a comment on a teacher's blog.  It's an off-the-top-of-my-head list of why people push toward standardization.  I think the motives are so mixed for the people at the top. I'm not a list guy, but here is a list of reasons why the people push toward standardization:

1. They honestly desire to see all kids learn and they mistakenly believe this can be measured. They mistake quality and quantity, unity and uniformity, standards and standardization, fundamentals and fundamentalism.
2. They are afraid - afraid that India has smarter kids, that the U.S. will turn dumb, that they won't have a social security check in the waning years of their lives, afraid that "doing nothing" will prove their job is unnecessary
3. They believe they are following science, without realizing their science is as outdated as phrenology. And they miss the connection to all the other science that complete the whole (neuroscience, brain science, social pyschology, humanistic psychology, anthropology, sociology, quantum physics, natural medicine) 
4. They were raised in a culture that blindly accepted imperialism in the name of God and country and they apply a Western, imperialist concept to a child's mind. 
5. They can see the big picture, but in order to see the biggest picture they have to step back so far that they miss the details and thus they miss the beauty of a child's painting or the pain of a child's poetry or the dialogue that occurs when we read The Jungle and Anthem during the same unit.
6. They have witnessed bad teachers who practice really bad teaching and they want a system that fires the bad teachers (and there are some really bad teachers out there) 
7. School has been following a model based upon militarism, industrialization and assimilation and instead of looking for what we lost (in a more classical theory) they are attempting to create the Uber-Factory. School becomes a factory or a war or a business that creates diplomas.  Parents are not partners, but "investors." 
8. They confuse making a difference with power and are under the illusion that they are creating a solution rather than destroying what works.  Many are so drunk on power that their vision is skewed and they're driving a car full of kids that's heading for a light pole. 
9. Many of them were really good students themselves and have no concept of what it's like for those who "don't get it." Because we live in a country that idolizes childhood and because parents keep beauaracrats and politicians in power, they have to prove that they are keeping the teachers in check. 
10. Most people in power are managers of liability instead of leaders of change. A liability manager looks for uniformity, conformity and effeciency on a numerical scale rather than effectiveness and authenticity on a human scale. Many of them are hard workers who have no idea that they are micromanaging.  

Today I brought Micah with me to take items from our home to my classroom.  He's at the age where he believes I'm Superman and anything we do together is the ultimate experience.  We stop by a teacher's classroom and I notice three of my students.  

One remarks, "Why are you always reading aloud to us now?" A few years back, I would have accepted this as an invitation for a dogmatic apologetic for all things Spencer-ian.  It still stung a bit, but I ventured forward.  

"Do you like it?" 

"It's all we do lately," he answers.  

"We read globalization poetry on Friday and we just finished a small group project where you had to create a solution."  

A girl adds, "We do lots of group work his class."  

"What did you do in your former social studies classes?"  

"Mostly worksheets," he answers.  

"And reading out of the book," she comments.  

"What do you wish we could do?" I ask. 

"What if we could actually do community service during the school day?  Or what if we could build stuff?  Like the Civil Rights Museum.  Why couldn't we build a model for it?"  he asks. 

"We have limited time and I want to make sure you read and write," I answer.  

"So how about this," the girl suggests, "what if we could do one hands-on project per quarter and one service field trip."

"Maybe someday we could give it a go."  

"How about you do something creative with the reading.  Like you could take what you read and turn it into a debate afterwards.  Or you could let kids create a picture or a college to go with each day's reading.  The book's not boring, but a lot of us would like to do something while we're listening.  You could make them into stations for each day."  

The dialogue continues for another few minutes and I am left consider new ideas and better ways to reach kinesthetic learners.  It's strange how their criticism still hurts, but I am not getting too defensive.  On the other hand, I get angered when an administrator criticizes my teaching strategies.  Or, worse, I feel a need to justify myself any time a colleague makes a negative comment about my ability as a teacher.  It's not an issue of power, so much as it is who has the permission to criticize.  Those who know me best have the most freedom to offer criticism.

It's more than that.  It's the fact that I don't feel judged by students.  I don't sense an ulterior motive.  They have nothing to gain in suggesting change.  Most often, when they truly offer meaningful feedback it's because they care about their education.  

So today's question is:

Whose criticism do you handle the best?

I am a little lost one where to go next with my book.  People have suggested the following options and I'm interested in what my reader's think:

1. Publish it as an eBook - going on Google Books and Amazon.com (I could let people download it for free)
2. Self-publish it - Go through something like Lulu and publish it as-is
3. Find an agent - I'm really bad about how to go about this, so I'll be a little lost in this process
4. Reformat it as a "Christian" book - in other words, keep most of it, but add a few more Biblical examples.  I would keep the language.  Don't worry, I'll never use "bless" or "lift up" or any of those words.  

On another note, I've decided I'm going to write a book that will be available as a free eBook some time in the summer.  (Those who have read my old Moco Loco blog will know where I'm coming from) It's a fictional superhero memoir, but it's not a graphic novel.  It's a book I've always wanted to write, so I figured I might as well go for it. 

Yesterday I attempted to create a class motto that would carry on as a legacy from this year to the next.  It's not a vision or mission and I hope it doesn't become a slogan.  However, I want something that begins with the students.  

I suggested my favorite (which is partially stolen from another teacher) "Learn to live well."  Students immediately rejected it because it "sounds funny."  So, they suggested their own.  The first was, "Learn, live, love," which, though catchy might not work.  The next was, "liberate your mind, liberate your world," which has a sort-of Marxist tone to it.  The last one was not catchy, but it got me thinking.  "Move from saber to conocer."   

I always assumed that conocer meant "to know a person," but a student rightly pointed out to me that it's not a difference of "what you know" but "how you know it."  She said it's possible to use conocer to describe a way of knowing a subject, a book, a town or a person.  I read online, checked in a few Spanish books and reviewed past experiences.  She's right.  

It got me thinking of a sage in the past who described wisdom as a woman.  He said that wisdom is  not a one-night stand, but rather a beautiful bride to pursue for a lifetime.  She's the type who tells you what you don't want to hear and you listen intently, because you trust her with who you are.  Knowledge will put on a little rouge, hike up a skirt and lie to a man so that he believes that life can be found in the answers.  Knowledge will boost a man's ego. Wisdom will slowly seduce a man into asking hard questions. Wisdom will humble a man and, in the process, he'll gain a better self-concept.   

I guess that's what I want student to get from history.  I want them to conocer the multiple narratives and thirst for philosophy.  I want them to move past the one-night stand of saber and move into the realm of wisdom; the hearty type that will tell them what they don't want to hear. I'm not sure if the saber/conocer motto might work, but it is certainly a part of why I teach.  

1. A student asked me on Monday how many prisons their closing in comparison to the number of schools closing
2. I'm one of the few parents I know who doesn't feel scared about the world that Joel and Micah will be entering 
3. I believe the current generation that I am teaching is one of the most selfless and self-sacrficing groups I've ever taught.  For all the talk of the "Generation Me" I see kids who are more than happy to volunteer and who have a well-developed social conscience
4. Spending a day with Joel and Micah was more fun than I had thought it would be.  
5. The fact that I am excited to be back at school today means I haven't lost my passion
6. Re-naming "Curriculum Specialists" as "Achievement Specialists" isn't really double-speak at all.  It never was about curriculum (which comes from a root word meaning journey) but about who can win the standardized pissing contest. 
7. Students in the barrio are not inspired by stories of how they can "get out of this place" or "rise above" their parents' situation.  
8. There are many people I "know" online who I wouldn't recognize if they walked into Starbucks
9. It's easier to press 99 than to press 1:40 on the microwave and I'm just that lazy that I'll add nine seconds to something that requires 1:30
10. I'm finding that globalization makes kids both scared and excited simultaneously.

I caught a girl tagging on one of my chairs.  Let me restate that.  I noticed tagging on my chairs, matched it to the tagging this student has done in the classroom and then determined that it had to be her.  It felt like a punch in the gut.  After going over two years with no tagging in the classroom, I see her name in bright silver.  

At this point, I have a few options.  In the past, I would have written a referral in order to start the documentation.  I would have said, "She's in my one honors class and there are three regular classes where she should go instead."  At one time, I believed this was the only option.  Punishments and rewards.  Otherwise, kids would go soft or my class would erupt into absolute anarchy.  

I've shifted my approach over the years.  Deep within, I believe we are all beautiful, like stained glass windows.  Science can tell me the structures and systems and metalic wires that keep us together and art and poetry and stories can instruct me on the shades of colorful glass.   But I also believe that our windows are broken, completely broken and that every one of us tries our hardest to put masking tape to hold each shard in place.  

On a practical level, this means I don't have the good kid / bad kid list.  I believe that we are capable of knowing what is right, but even on our best day, we'll choose to do wrong.  I believe in justice, but I don't confuse natural consequences with imposed punishments.  I believe that people want to be known, not changed.  I believe that teachers need to lead with humility, that even on my best day, I might yell and that might mean I apologize and when a student sees my humanity a relationship is restored.  I believe that we make our own decisions, but we are also a product of our environment.  It's why I can never completely discredit behaviorism (especially the studies on social behaviorism and framing as well as body language) or the more humanistic ideas of William Glasser or Alfie Kohn.

I'm not suggesting that this approach is universal, but it has worked for me.  My class is generally respectful, reasonable in our volume (quiet during individual work, semi-quiet in group work) and on-task.  It's the idea that the class is a relational community, with a distinct ethos, a set of implied values and unspoken norms.  But it's more than that.  I can't differentiate between the importance of humor and play, of motivation, of quality teaching strategies, of leadership, of clear procedures and of the desire to be known.  They all work together.  At our best, we are playing free jazz together.  At our worst, we're just making noise.

So, here's what I'm going to do.  I'm going to pull her aside and tell her that I know about the tagging.  She'll probably get defensive, maybe even a little angry.  I'll tell her that she's not in trouble, that I haven't written a referral and that I'm still concerned, because some day she'll run into someone who won't give her a last shot.  I'll walk the tight rope of mercy and justice and I'll end with, "I felt hurt when I saw tagging on our classroom chairs.  I do my best to make this place beautiful.  So, I'm going to use my prep time today to scrub off the tagging.  Do you want to come in and help?"  

Nice guys don't get crucified.  They don't get shot on the balcony of hotels.  They aren't forced to drink hemlock when they ask too many questions.  Nor do they get sent to jail for refusing to sit in the back of the bus or stand up to fire hoses and snarling canines. Nice guys don't get blacklisted for speaking up or get reprimanded in the office when they speak out against judging children by drill-and-kill instruction methods.  

Nice guys wear loafers and sip Merlot and silently sit on their hands when the district data diva reads charts reminding everyone that Raul and Tyrone and Brian aren't filling in the bubbles correctly.  Nice guys line students up in single file lines and fill out blackboard configurations and type the right numbers into the spreadsheets.  Nice guys can tell themselves, "This is my job and the boss is in charge and it would be anarchy if I wasn't so pleasant."  

The reason I despise Big Brother is that he disciplines with a smile.  Though a faceless bureaucracy, he spouts out trite phrases and empty buzzwords shaming professionals with bulleted points.  It's five steps and three keys and nine bullets, until we're all a bunch of janitors on a stair master, trying our best to avoid a drive-by delivered with a smile.  

I fear nice, because it's so dangerously antiseptic.  Nice guys pulled levers in concentration camps, claiming straight-faced, "I was just following orders."  Nice guys colonized Native American land, raped the women, scalped the civilians and then padded themselves on the back when their children sat still in church on Sunday.  The reason the district office scares me is not because of their unprofessionalism, but because they can sell a child's mind to McGraw-Hill and still shake my hand. 

What if it's not about being nice?  What if the most dangerous thing a student could have would be Nurse Ratched in a cardigan?  What if people who really believe in authentic education will make enemies, not out of spite or anger or failing to be "team players," but because they refuse to be programmed? 

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