Blame it on "Rise and Read," a program where my eighth graders get a chance to read with kindergarten students.  Or perhaps it was the fact that we spent fifteen minutes in the library and I allowed the lowest level readers to pick a few books with more pictures and graphics (like comic books or non-fiction books on lizards), but we turned a corner in reading.

In the first week of school, many students resented silent reading.  A few enjoyed it from last year, but others found it hard to concentrate.  They gradually moved from bitterness to a general sense of finding it a tolerable chore.  Still, I had students asked why we didn't get stickers or coupons or names on a wall and I told them it was because reading is inherently rewarding.

So today, when a student complained, "Why are we stopping?  I was just getting into my book," after twenty minutes, I asked the students if they wanted another twenty minutes.  The hands shot up.  They read.  Silently.  Calmly, but with a certain level of excitement.

It confirms two almost contradictory ideas in teaching.  Sometimes you have to force students to do something that is inherently rewarding in order to get them to feel like it's not forced upon them.  It makes little sense, I realize.  However, students need a forced detox sometimes before they can find the enjoyment they once had when they picked up a book.


Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

"Daddy, you need to come outside before the sun leaves us," Micah says.  He normally says "sunset" or "gets dark," so I'm intrigued.

"The sun won't leave, Micah."

"Yes it will," he says with a tinge of anger. "We'll get a new one tomorrow, but this one is leaving."

So we stare out at the sunset, not for long, but for a minute or two.  Then Joel entices me to play a game of baseball.  He chides me when I don't lob him a high, outside pitch or when I forget to use the baseball announcer voice.  

Micah's right.  This sun, right here, on this evening, won't be back.  Ever. Something about sunsets and baseball and stinky bare feet on the grass help me to make sense out of the universe.  It breaks me free from a cyclical analysis of whether or not students are dividing fractions or understanding exponents or making inferences.

Earlier today, the Important People visited my classroom.  I say visit, but they didn't really stop and chat and spend much time. It was more like a drive-by analysis of whether I add up. Not that they're inherently bad or anything.  It's just that when you have a district to run, you end up running, too.

The superintendent and the assistant superintendent (who I guess assists in attending in a super way) and the principal at another school - all of them walked around and asked me about the netbooks and wrote on their clipboards.  For awhile afterward, I agonized of it, scared that I measured up to their standard.  For a moment, I thought that their status actually equaled power.

But this evening, when I'm barefoot and running toward an imaginary base, I'm able to see that the best things in life are not easily taken away.  The folks with the clipboards can make my life difficult, but they can't take away baseball and backyards and sunsets.

*     *      *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

During Social Studies, as the students differentiate between the beliefs of each party, one says, "Mr. Spencer, it seems like both sides think that more money in education is the answer to fixing the system."

"What do you think?"

"I don't think it's broken.  I came here not speaking English and now I'm reading chapter books.  That doesn't sound like broken to me."

Another student, "So, you don't think ten million dollars could make this place better?"

"We could do some cool stuff, but no.  It comes down to good teachers and good students."

*      *      *

"Let me get this straight: the party that wants the government out of their lives also wants to ban gay marriage and the party that's against killing murderers is okay with killing babies."

Before I have a chance to respond, a boy asks inquisitively, "Did I hear someone talk about a party?"

*     *     *

Two random kindergarten kids ran up and gave me a hug.

"You look like you need a hug," one said.

"My brother's in your class."

"That's great."

"He says that you guys don't give hugs in eighth grade, but you do let them paint."

I had all these plans for what we would do and who we would be as a community. The problem is that they were my plans. They were my dreams. They were my vision. Part of leading a class of self-contained means letting those plans shatter and seeing the beautiful mosaic we build together from those shards of hope. (See podcast below for the short reflection)

Hey Guys,

Sorry I'm late.  I've been busy in the Bahamas.  Then there was this snafu with the franchise and Lois didn't like the actress playing her in the latest movie, so we had to fly back to New York and Lois suggested that riding a plane might make more sense, but when you're the Man of Steel, fresh air and the mist of the clouds is enough to stir up some nostalgic memories of crime-fighting.  No, it wasn't crime I was after.  It was justice.

I think there has been a mix-up.  People keep waiting for me.  Oh, first it was the Flaming Lips song.  I really enjoyed it more when Sam Beam offered it in that low-fi, folksy kind of way.  The answer to the question is, yes it does get heavy to use a crane to crush a fly.

Then, I get this message that I'm supposed to reform education.  Sorry guys, but I'm not interested in your education reform party.  Just isn't my deal.  In fact, if I showed up to most schools clad in tights and red briefs  you might just call the police. Therefore, although I am known for dodging bullets, let me offer some bulleted points on why I am not the man to reform education:

1. Corporate take-overs don't work:  Look, I was a non-profit figure.  I was self-funded.  I didn't ask for tax-payer money to pay for my ventures.  Instead, I chose to serve the public.  What reformers are proposing is the opposite - let the public pay for private take-overs.  Honestly, that's more of a fascist economic policy than anything of a free market.  But, hey, it might work.  After all, Blackwater has done just as good a job protecting our nation as our own military, right? And, deregulation of the power companies in California worked really well, too.
2. Crappy Stories: Okay, I can't watch my own movies.  They've changed the stories completely.  They don't include the times I ran into poles or dropped someone mid-air and they changed it from an unmanned railroad car to a huge commuter train.  When the bottom line is profit and expansion, you end up with stories that aren't true.  This goes for the Man of Steel and for KIPP. 
3. Media: The media tends to fuck things up, like the make-believe weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the insane amount of time they have devoted to Lady Gaga. Television, as a medium, is a horrible way to tell the truth. 
4. It's Not Broken: Look, when I was a superhero I used to deliberately break things just to fix them.  Not joking.  I once set a building on fire just to prove I could save the day.  I had to meet my quota.  I had to fulfill the demands of a Data Diva.  Crime rates were down and I didn't seem necessary.  Is it possible this whole education hysteria could also be a manufactured crisis?
5. Imperialism:  It took me a long time to realize that there was something arrogant in going into the city and "saving the day." I fear that much of the ed reform movement fails to recognize that a top-down approach of "big ideas" often turns out to be a rehash of the imperialism story. I re-lived this story when I created the Super Hero Institute of Training (how's that for an acronym?) and then watched as almost half our student population dropped out to become super-villains.  We had done nothing to contextualize our curriculum to the local, personal, relational needs of students.
6. Sustainability: Ultimately, solutions have to be sustainable.  My biggest mistake as a superhero was how often I would catch a bad guy, bust out a monologue and then fail to address the bigger needs of what had caused the villain to succeed.  I was an action figure.  We need dialog and reflection and honesty in education.
7. Bigger Issues: I learned awhile back that the biggest issues are social.  I can stop a super-villain, but I can't solve poverty or genocide or racism.  I can't run into the ghetto with my tights and cape and punch poverty in the face.  

I don't see anything wrong with charter schools if they are thoughtful and transparent.  This isn't about charters or non-charters.  It's about whether or not we should look to the Man of Steel in a post-industrial society.  My answer is, "not so much."

So, with that in mind, I'll go hang out with Lois and try and convince her that I'm not using my x-ray vision to find a younger replacement.  She'll get a little jealous and then she'll trust me and then I'll secretly wonder if maybe I should have spent more of my life as Clark and less of my life trying to fix what wasn't broken. Then I'll have a martini and see if I can find a decent rerun of ALF (really TBS?  Four episodes of Blossom and not a single rerun of ALF?) and then slip off to a John Grisham novel or maybe some light-hearted James Joyce and the education reformers will just have to continue waiting for me.  I won't show up.  I won't save the day. And here's the deal: no other individual will, either.

Sincerely:

Clark

*      *      *

For a counter-narrative on Waiting for Superman check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

So, the initial sketch is up there.  It will eventually be "pathway through reading" with images of reading strategies and scenes of favorite works.  We'll be adding some definite details, like more of the skyline, additional mountains (as well as depth to the current mountains), street lights, etc.  But the initial sketch helps it to make sense.

After reading a few posts from Dan Meyer, I e-mailed him about the concept of a pseudo-context in math. The following is an expansion of the e-mail I sent him:

Issue #1: Pseudo Context
I admit that I use some problems that very well might be a pseudocontext. I try to keep them based on real-life experiences, but I never really know if they are. For example: How many Legos did my sons use when stacking Legos to the ceiling (definitely had them engaged and they ended up learning to divide fractions), which line is faster at the supermarket? Estimate how long a road trip will take to Disneyland if you drive ten miles over the speed limit (they ended up factoring in rest stops and doing two-step equations)? How much tile will you need if you replace the carpet in your house with tile?

I also had students interview people in their life for math applications. The answers surprised me a bit. One kid's grandma mentioned multiplying out the tamale recipe at Christmas time based upon who will probably show up. Another one gave some examples from his dad's landscaping company. The math didn't always fit with the standards from 8th grade, but it had them seeing the value of math.

I've tried to give them scenarios and have them decide what the problem and the approach is, but I admit that authenticity is still a struggle. However, the clip art word problems in our textbook are a joke:

Pseudo-Context #1: "Real-World Connections" - Which trail is longer? (Page 107)
This one seems to make sense at first, right? I mean, you would want to know how long a trail takes. Except, as a formerly avid hiker, I can tell you that I would always look at a topographic map and consider shelter and water instead of sheer distance. I also know that maps tend to show total distances. The notion that they would just "leave it out," is ridiculous. This is the type that strikes me as incredibly dangerous, because it sounds so real at first.

Pseudo-Context #2: Page 135
This one required students to look at the time that five students went to a movie, if they stayed in line in succession, and we only knew when the first, third and fifth student arrived.
This is a joke for a few reasons:
1. It wouldn't matter who got there first, second and third.
2. No one's watches are ever that synchronized. Cell phones, perhaps, but again, why? If my students bust out a cell phone, it's to text.
3. The whole situation is a joke. If we're all going to watch a movie, we'll either wait for one another or get in line with the crowd. The notion that we would each get in line one after another and that no one else would get in line in the process seems a little fantastical if it truly is the "opening day" of a vague movie that's not even stated in the problem.

Issue #2
My other issue with the book is the "connections" to other subjects. As someone who knows social studies content really well, I can see value in statistical analysis. For example, my students used some pretty high-level math to answer the question, "What was the cost of the Civil War on the nation?" They looked at lives, property, finances and compared statistics from then and now.

I can see huge connections to the teaching of economics. Why not ask the question, "Is the check cashing store worth it?" I guarantee compound interest will make more sense when this occurs.

Finding the thickness of the tablet on the Statue of Liberty, however? A bit superfluous.

A Solution: 

So, one of my students came up with his own solution.  Instead of real-world problems, why not go with a fantasy world problem.  "What if we had dragons, gnomes and furry-footed beer drinkers instead? I mean, yes, I want to know how I'll use math in life.  But how would Hermione use it when she is trying to find a horcrux?"

Brilliant.

The San Francisco Forty-Niners have a talented club.  I suppose "club" isn't the right word.  It makes it sound like they sit at a card table and trade stamps.  They have a phenomenal team.  But team isn't the right word, either, because honestly they don't play as a team.

I'm not sure why they suck this season, but I have a hunch that it has to do with leadership.  I'm not sure what to think of Mike Singletary pulling pants down.  I hope the story isn't true.  However, I know that it's wrong to publicly bench a player who you believe is acting lazy.  It's also wrong to get in the face of someone and scream after they make a mistake.

What I know of football is minimal.  I knew only two football players in high school who were good friends.  The others liked to slam me into lockers. But I now know something I didn't know back then: even football players are human and fear doesn't lead to motivation.  It can lead to compliance (for awhile at least) and maybe even effort.  However, when people are scared they either freeze up or they make mistakes or they silently rebel.  Judging by the assistant coaches on the team, I get the sense that the rebellion is there.  Judging by the number of fumbles last game, I get the sense that they are freezing up and making mistakes.

All of this to say that I've acted like Mike Singletary as a dad and as a teacher.  I ripped into students who made mistakes or who were acting "lazy" when in fact they were scared or confused or bored.  But the good news is that there's a solution.  Apologize.  Humbly admit that you've been a hardass and watch how people respond. If the 300 pound athletes are anything like 130 pound fourteen year olds, Singletary might just lead the team to a winning season and a division championship.

Note: This is an expansion on a blog post I wrote before.

I have written before about being anti-homework and I need to clarify this.  I don't grade homework.  I don't make it mandatory.  My students know all of this.  However, I believe that learning should continue throughout the day.  When I cut off homework and the notion of homework, what I am really doing is creating a false dichotomy between school life and real life.  I want a bridge between the two.

Therefore, I have my students use the following approach to homework:

1. It is not optional.  If you are too busy with extracurricular activities, I understand.  If your family requires you to babysit, that's fine as well. I'll give you some class time to keep a journal about your sports or your babysitting time and you can consider these activities a part of your homework. I might ask you to keep a log of what you are doing or a short journal where you write a few paragraphs as a reflection, but I will be respectful of your personal time.
2. It is not graded.  I'm not going to punish you or reward you for homework.
3. It is open: Homework is a chance for you to extend the learning from school into your life and from your life into the classroom. I would love to have you bring in your work and share it with the classroom community somehow.  I'd love to have it on our website and allow you to do in-class activities based upon what you worked on at home.
3. It is assessed: I will provide feedback on any homework you provide:  If you do a drawing and want some help with shading or perspective, I'll meet with you and help you.  If you do a video and want help editing it, I'm here as well.  If you are choosing to do community service for homework, I will give you a chance to do a reflection and I will leave a comment on it.  If it's writing you are choosing, I'll edit it.
4. It is not time-bound: I do not need you to do one assignment per week.  If you want to write a book over the course of a year or do a History Day project or Science Fair, these are all great options.  Run with them.  I support your decision to think long-term.  If you'd rather go short-term, that's fine as well.
5. Technology is optional: If you have access to a computer at home, I fully support a tech-integrated project. If you don't, that's okay as well.  You won't be punished or rewarded for what gadgets you own.
6. There is accountability: The students create a plan for themselves with specific goals and a time frame.
7. It extends to class: Students have a set aside time each week that they work on their homework-based independent projects.

So, what has this looked like this year?

• A group of students are meeting for a Banned Book Club
• Seven students are painting a mural in our class
• A student is writing his own comic book
• Four students have made flash cards to practice vocabulary to improve their English
• A student is creating a History Day project
• A small group of students are writing and illustrating children's books for kids in the children's hospital
• A student is doing a photographic survey of Maryvale
• A girl is learning how to fix cars and then writing poetry about it and delving deep into gender stereotypes
• Two students is doing interviews for a monthly podcast show

What has been the reaction from students?

At first they struggled with this concept.  It was too free, too confusing and too bizarre.  But the contract helped give them structure and they seem to be running with it.

The following are five easy reforms that wouldn't necessarily change education, but would make my life easier. Nothing huge, but well worth it:

1. Institute a time limit on how long someone can talk at a professional development. Every school has "that guy" who uses staff meetings as a chance to practice his filibuster technique.  I'm not saying we censor him, but at least cut him off with a whistle.
2. Ban comic sans.  Really.  Just ban it. I am the only one at my school who dislikes the font.   
3. Rename the Woodcock Johnson Test.  Does this need an explanation?
4. Add skylights.  Okay, this one really is expensive.  However, I thrive on natural sunlight.  It's almost like we were created to live outdoors or something - as if the design for humanity wasn't 76 degrees under a florescent bulb.
5. Have students create at least one meal a year from start to finish - from gardening all the way to what's on their plate.  Then test them with a true/false question: Is there such thing as fast food? 

We take a few pictures with the Kodak we got last year.  The students keep a serious pose, because this is the Guilded Age, very serious times and all.  What with the rise of industry, might as well look industrious.

"Mr. Johnson, do you think people will confuse us when we're gone?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, when we're all dead, will people look at the pictures and get the wrong picture?"  Kids say some of the most confusing and morbid things.

"I'm still not seeing your point."

"I mean, after we're dead and our children are dead.  Not that we should be having children since we're children.   But generations from now, will people look back at the scowls on our faces and think that things were more serious back in the day?  I mean, will they think kids never through a paper or slammed a slate down or smiled when they hit a home run or told a joke?  Will the picture be telling a lie?"

"Like Jesus," another girl adds.  "It never says he smiled, but I don't know, I guess . . . I guess I just always pictured him smiling when the kids ran up to him."

I stop the class at this point as we discuss what we record, the artifacts we leave behind and the huge gaps that are missing in history as a result.  Sometimes it seems that technology itself creates a narrative of a whole people group and its an image, but a very incomplete image.  It's what society wants people to think of itself rather than who the people actually are.  It has me thinking that maybe that's the tragedy of technology and the pitfall of posterity.  It always leads to selective memory.

I read a horrible review of Obama's Race to the Top plan in Newsweek.   I need to avoid that type of propaganda, because it only leads to anger.  I listened the other day to NPR toss softball questions at Arne Duncan.  I expect better out of Robert Siegel. I've watched every media outlet, especially the "progressive" papers like The New York Times rail against unions and teachers and anyone who has a constructivist framework.

Somehow it's all my fault.  That and the immigrants.  Not the Wall Street executives or the banks.  Nope.  The economic collapse is the fault of the people who grow your food and educate your children.

What's bizarre is that I've watched the same media become enamored with a calculus teacher who sings and dances or a teacher who abandons the textbooks to help inspire freedom journals or a fifth graded teacher who has kids do Shakespeare instead of passing out basal readers.

There is no clarity in public perception.  It's all hype and gloss and glamor.  It's all new projects and catchy buzzwords and trendy schools like KIPP who siphon off the top and then experience insane student attrition rates. (I'm not saying that KIPP schools are bad or that TFA is wrong, but that, like everything else in this world, there are pros and cons and nuances that don't fit into a five minute segment before a thirty second sales pitch for chemicals we are supposed to rub on our face to find true beauty)

So, really, I'm not surprised Oprah doesn't understand education reform.  Imagining that she can fix education with six million dollars is tantamount to claiming she is fixing poverty with handing out free cars.  I can't stand her.  Not Oprah personally, but the televised Oprah - the image created by the media who somehow crowned her the Pope of All Things Shallow.  She has book clubs even though she knows nothing of literary criticism.  She makes bold pronouncements about spiritual things when she has no experience that gives her any real expertise. She runs a marathon and thereby gains the right to tell suburbanites how to eat.

I sent Oprah a tweet inviting her to spend a week, cameras off, to my classroom.  Perhaps she would see the beauty and learn to speak less and listen more. She won't ever see it.  Indeed, I doubt that any of her assistants will read it. And that's probably best.  Phoenix is hot and Oprah lives an air-conditioned life and our classroom is pretty crowded anyway.  Where would she sit? We have no throne or cushy couch where celebrities tell dull stories and plug movies.

Meanwhile, my class will paint murals and film documentaries and write a book and publish their voice in a blog and volunteer to make books for the children's hospital and donate food to the food bank and give up a Saturday or two to help out at St. Vincent de Paul.  Amazing things will happen in my classroom, not inspite of the lack of media coverage, but because of the lack of media coverage. And here's the deal: I'm not an exception, either.  Amazing stuff is happening across the hall and next door and all over the supposed bastions of mediocrity.

Loud voices will dominate education reform, but under the industrial carpet, seeds will be planted and some of them will contain life.  Something deep will grow and years from now I will look back at my life and smile as I recall my students.  Lives will be changed, mine included, because of the community of a classroom. And here's the deal: the reward will be more valuable than any amount of money a daytime talk show host can throw at me.

Joel came home upset about his art class.  "We don't get to choose what we make," he pointed out at one point and at another point he mentioned, "We have to be silent.  Not even a peep.  Not just when the teacher is talking.  All the time.  She makes us be quiet."

So to de-stress a bit, he built a castle.  "Look at my art," he called out to Christy.  Vocal.  Voice.  No one was telling him he had to be silent.  The truth is he loves creating.  Yesterday he drew figures that had a real Tim Burton quality - not because he is a talented artist, but because The Nightmare Before Christmas has a strong resemblance to a child's drawings.

This evening, as he stood on the swingset, he stopped for a moment and pointed out, "The light is best at this time of day."  At first, I wondered if he picked it up from someone.  It wasn't spectacular, but the light did seem to break into very visible rays as they hit the dust and the shadows seemed stronger.

I can see why people home school and unschool and deschool and rethink school. It's not the decision I make, but I get it.  I want my son to observe.  I want him to create.  I want him to be a scientist and an artist without having to believe that the two are mutually exclusive.  

After spending some time with his cousins, Joel asks me, "Daddy, why can't I have a girl friend?"

"What do you mean by that?"

"Why can my friends only be boys?"

"You can make friends with whoever you want."

"But boys are only supposed to be friends with boys, because boys like to play chase and wrestle.  But sometimes I just like to talk and I think girls are better at that."

It leaves me wondering where kids learn these messages, how they spread and how they wrestle with gender stereotypes and gender identity.  Joel is a little off, but also a little perceptive.  Most girls do seem more verbal at that age and one thing I sense that he's trying to express is the desire to play and be rough and have action and at the same time, the desire to talk and to listen and to discuss.

I'm not entirely sure where to go with this conversation except to tell him that boys and girls can both talk and play and be friends and that the pressure from others to exclude people is one of the most dangerous lies we end up believing.  I want to get into homogeneous versus heterogenous grouping and the impulse to crush those who are different, but for now the conversation remains pretty short.

It forces me to think about my own homogenous grouping, including my awkwardness around the wealthy, my desire to meet with people who are at least somewhat geeky and my generally introverted nature that keeps me from getting to know my neighbors.  I start to realize that I might talk Joel through some of these issues, but it will be the example he sees in Christy that will ultimately show him the way. She has an amazing way at gently crushing gender stereotypes and embracing diversity in ways that are often very subtle.  Let's hope Joel picks up on the subtleties.

Note from a Pirate:

You might find our trade to be immoral, unless you are at Disneyland and then it's just kitsch or if it's Johnny Depp, it's just fun.  I suppose it's scary, but understandable if you live in the most underdeveloped nation in the world. Robbing from the rich to give to the poor is only cool if it's Che on a t-shirt or a children's cartoon. However, if you're on a cruise and Somalian pirates rob you in the buffet line, it's a bit traumatic.

Nonetheless, I want to remind you that another pirate still exists: the Pittsburgh Pirates.  We are one of the few remaining teams with alliteration behind our names and yet we are so often forgotten.  We don't play great ball, I admit, but it's hard to compete against the teams with mega-salaries and huge budgets.

So, hooray for our .338 percentage. We've considered taking our same team colors and replacing the jersey with a Charlie Brown styled zig zag striped collared shirt.

With that in mind, I would like to propose an idea: make us America's Team.  We're not asking for bailout money.  (Perhaps Detroit can do that)  Instead, embrace us for who we are.  We are the Pirates, named after a process of plundering what others have earned.  In light of the current economic crash, can we find any more suitable mascot for Wall Street?  We are a team with a glorious past, but we're currently underperforming.  Is that not the narrative of the United States? We can't compete, because we live in a city where our natural resources are being exploited and our industry has gone overseas.  Is there anything more American than outsourcing?

Yes, we'd love to believe that the Saints success last year can be symbolic of the rebuilding of America.  And  that's fine. Perhaps America needs hope, but I would like to believe America also needs a dose of realism. Like like the game of baseball itself, let us by the yin to the Saints yang.  Let America embrace us in all of our failure, not to root for us or even to grieve with us, but to relate to us.

America, we are you.

Sincerely:

The Pirates

Note: This does not in any way represent the Pittsburgh Pirates, its team, affiliates, Major League baseball or anything else like that.  It's simply a short, poorly constructed satirical piece.

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

"What are these doing here?" a student asks.

"Yeah, they're slates.  You've used them, correct?"

"But this is a pencil classroom.  We have paper.  What are we doing with individual slates?"

I explain to my students that there are times when students will use paper and times for pencils and times for slates.

"But slates are so old school!" the student explains.

"True, but so is the human voice.  Don't we still discuss things in class?"

"I thought you believed in the twentieth century classroom?" the student points out.

"I believe in learning. Ultimately, that's what it's all about."

I am taking a break from writing Pencil Me In. The narrative needs some space and I don't know what direction to take with it.  However, I just thought I'd give you a teaser about my next book:

1. It's fiction
2. It's young adult - in fact, it's aimed toward my students.  My goal is to write a book my reluctant readers would want to read.
3. It's urban, but it has nothing to do with gangs or violence.  There's more to the urban experience than thugs and wannabe thugs. 
4. It's a work of fiction
5. I won't even try to publish it traditionally.  I'm going self-published with it.  
6. It's loosely based on the story of Icarus.
7. I'm only about ten pages into it so far.  

Wish me luck.  It's an adventure.  

As I walk around, I hear a student articulate, "I think it's a story of change. It's not a bad change. Just change."

At another table, a student explains, "It's a story of a native population wiped out and replaced by a singular supervillain."

As I walk by the third table, they are discussing who secretly has a crush on whom and which party they will go to this weekend. I redirect them, but it's hard for them to care about a story that does not yet feel like it is their own. They leave in twenty minutes and it's hard for them to have a teacher who can be a bit of a hardass in terms requiring learning at all times.

The students seem to understand, at a vague level, adaptations and cell division. They'll pass the test, so long as they memorize the vocabulary and read the charts. But on a deeper level, only a few of them are interested in the story of human-environment interaction. While their case study is Hawaii, it feels as distant as Narnia. I should have chosen the desert.

Another group argues, "The native plants are necessary for medicine and crap like that."

"But trying to get in the way and save it might do more harm than good. If the antagonist tries to become the protagonist, the story might just take a nosedive."

At another table, a girl asks me, "Why are we talking about reading stuff? Can't we just do science." The word do there feels significant. Yes, science is a process. It's about action. But it's also about observation and sometimes observing means seeing a story unfold.

"So where are we on the story?" I ask.

"I can't tell if we're still in the rising action or if we're living out the resolution."

*     *     *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it as a book, as an e-Book or as a free download.

I'm on my way to school today and it hits me that, although my students are learning about narratives, I have yet to share my favorite stories, much less mention my favorite storytellers to them. I'm not even sure I've mentioned this in my blog for that matter.  So, here are my favorite story-tellers in different media:

1. Radio: Ira Glass is my favorite.  I love the twists in story and the irony and the way that he draws out the story and finds threads that loosely connect seemingly unrelated events and characters.  If he would stick to the News from Lake Wobegon, I'd add Garrison Keillor.  However, as long as he plays an annoying private eye, he remains simply okay. 
2. Music: Sufjan Stevens blows me away in his ability to tell a story simply, using mostly quirky details and a few implied metaphors.  Listen to "Romulus" and tell me if you don't get a sense of the loss of innocence in a broken family.  It's beautiful and it's tragic and that's what makes it great music.  
3. Blogs: I'm placing this one as a tie between Dr. Doyle and Jabiz Raisdana. Michael Doyle writes poetically and honestly in a way that draws out the setting and the internal story that occurs over a lifetime. Jabiz, on the other hand, writes short stories, tons and tons of them.  Even his prose has a narrative quality to it. Reading his blog feels a bit like stealing the journal of a great writer - like I should be paying for what I read, but I'm not.
4. Movies: The Coen brothers manage to pack a strong moral paradoxes into character-driven stories without coming across as preachy or too indie/artsy
5. Books: I love a good short story from Saul Bellow.  He's my go-to guy for story-telling.     

So, I go back to my list and realizes something depressing: every one of those figures is a male.  Sad.

I slept in on Friday and Brenna was difficult on Saturday morning, so I knew I still had social studies, writing and reading lessons to finish.  She fussed for awhile, so I held her until she calmed down.  When I set her in her crib, she got up and fussed.  It was more of a scream than a fuss.  I repeated the process and this time tried to fool her with a blanket, but she wanted me.  She wanted my chest and my shoulder and my body warmth and maybe even my smell.

If I hold her for awhile, her breathing synchronizes to mine.  I'm not sure if it's intentional or an accident of nature. Her tiny body takes long, deep breaths until she falls asleep. It makes me understand why the ancients used "breath" to describe the spirit.

If I set her down again, she will cry for a few minutes and then sleep. I'll finish my lesson plans and she'll cuddle up to her special blanket. Right now, though, this forty minute interruption feels like a gift.  She already started walking last night.  Soon she'll be sleeping until six thirty or seven.  Blink twice and she'll be driving.

The lesson plans aren't finished.

I provide my students with the challenge of creating a non-electric, solar-powered coffee maker.  At first, my highest-achieving students panic (by this I mean the ones who tend to do well on standardized tests -- achievement is an arbitrary term to me).  They go online to find samples and get frustrated by the lack of examples.  They try switching search engines and it still doesn't work.

Meanwhile, three groups begin asking questions.

"What if we had copper wires and a tin sheet?  Or maybe a black sheet?  Which would absorb the heat better?" They argue rather loudly until they decide they'll develop an experiment to see how hot each sheet gets. "Then we can hook it up to one of those church-styled coffee makers."

I walk to another group where the students develop an idea of three mirrors aimed at one another and a large empty gallon of water.  On the side, they'll use the water and once it gets hot enough that it boils, it will go to the glass ceiling and drop down into the coffee filter.  "Or will the water cool off by that point?"  They're being too complicated, but they have an intriguing idea.

Another group uses a magnifying glass to hit the surface and heat the water.  "Where will the coffee come from?" a student asks.  "We'll do instant.  It's what we use at home."  I feel bad for the kid. What kind of example are her parents setting?  They then discuss different colors, textures and options that they'll test.

"Can we find out if cold water or warm water boils faster?"

"The warm water will.  We don't need to test it."

"I heard that hot water will freeze faster than cold water."

"That's just an urban legend."

Next week the students will develop experiments and build prototypes.  The class is engaged during our Extension Time on the two days that we tried this project. We hit various standards in math and writing (they have to use functional and persuasive text). It actually hit some science standards, too.  However, I'm not sure if it's "real" science.  By that I mean, it seems more like engineering than science.  So, I'm curious what my readers think.  Is this science?

*     *     *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it as a book and an e-book or you can download it for free as a PDF.

I know that I teach older students and therefore Show and Tell seems a bit like child's play.  However, I allowed my students to choose one item and then use our snazzy new set of pencils to sketch the item and describe each one in a few paragraphs.  Students took home the paper and pencils, finished the activity and then brought the item into class.

At first, students were reluctant to talk about the items they had brought. In kindergarten, the children nearly bludgeon one another to death with their swaying hands and "ooh, ooh, ohh, pick me."  Yet, here I ran into a wall of apathy.  

"Why do we have to present if we can just publish this to our plogs and read about it?" a girl asks. 

So, I begin with my item.  I share the red rock from the western frontier where I was born.  I talk about how I kept it as a child so that I wouldn't forget it when we moved back to the flat, dull land of Kansas.  I mentioned what the land represented, how I had been shaped by the sense of the wild freedom out west and why I get depressed in this urban enclave when the smoke stacks and the gray terrain makes me feel trapped.

This opens the door for the students.  A boy shares a deck of cards that he used when his dad was in the hospital and since they had little in common to talk about, the cards became another language for them to speak.  A girl shares a stack of recipes her grandmother wrote out with the note, "This is my legacy.  Don't lose it.  I know you've committed this to your mind.  I know you will modify these meals to make them your own.  But if you ever feel yourself pulled to far by the city, look back at these recipes."  

When it's all over, a student says, "Why can't all school be show and tell?"  

It has me thinking that maybe he's right.  What if it was always this personal?  Or at least, what if there was always a personal element that they could hold onto in each subject?  And what if, instead of "judge and label," the model was "show and tell?"  What if the goal was to demonstrate their knowledge with a tangible item that they could show the world and talk about in a one-on-one conversation.

The beauty of pencils and paper is that it's permanent.  Sort of.  At least more permanent than a slate.  It's portable, too.  Kids can publish on plogs and write on shared documents.  What this means is that the potential for a classroom based upon show and tell becomes more feasible.  

Tom, a fellow blogger who teaches high school suggested that Show and Tell can work for people of any age. I scoffed at first glance and then thought about what I would bring. I thought about the Homer Simpson toy my son got from Burger King. It had been a late Parent Teacher conference night and Joel hugged me one-handedly. When I asked what he was hiding, he pulled out a plastic-wrapped Homer Simpson toy and smiled. It was unexpected, unprompted and thoughtful.

The class, in unison, adds the "ahh's" which resemble the soundtrack of a "live studio audience" on a Golden Girls re-run.  A little cheesy, but perfect for the age.

Still, as the students begin, most of them hide their items. It’s the opposite of kindergarten, with students refusing to speak up in front of their peer group. I think some of them realize just how personal their item was. Finally, an outgoing student jumps out of his seat and flips out a football. ”It’s the first one I ever caught in a real game.”

Slowly, they begin to open up. ”When my mom was sick, she couldn’t get a babysitter to watch us. So, I watched them while she stayed at the hospital. She said the blessed Virgen de Guadalupe would watch over us. I’m not sure where superstition meets religion, but she handed me a sacred or lucky or whatever necklace.”

Another girl says, “Our tribe has been conquered, but the jewelry and the stories are our inheritance.” She then begins telling the story of how her family makes the necklaces and earings and what it means to be adorned by the earth and how you can't buy it at Wal-Mart and that's what makes it special.

“This is a key from my hometown in Mexico. My parents knew they were risking it to cross the border and cross back. But they wanted me to see that the place I come from is beautiful. People think Mexico is all ugly, but this place is real pretty.”

The essays accompanying the items are thought-provoking and personal, but it is the convergence of the public and the personal that helps us understand community in a way that we never had before.

*     *     *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it as a softbound or an e-book or you can download it for free as a PDF.

I don't know about the term gifted and what all of it means.  But I have to say this: many of them say some of the funniest intelligent things at the most inopportune time:

Benjamin Franklin
"What if Benjamin Franklin stole his ideas in that almanac thing?  What if he was just the Carlos Mencia of the Founding Fathers?"


Franklin Reconsidered
"No, he was original. That kite experiment was like an old school Myth Busters." 


Progressives
"Have you ever noticed that liberals tend to want progress and conservatives have a hard time adapting to change?  But then it's the liberals who want to save all these animals who haven't adapted to their environment?  Let's be honest: it's not our fault if the whale just isn't that progressive."

Revolutions
"Mr. Spencer, when you had us analyze case studies, you forgot the most powerful revolution of all.  How could you miss Dance Dance Revolution?"

Adaptations
"When we research our animals, can it be a mythical creature? I really think gnomes would be an interesting case of descent with modification."

Graphic Novels
"I had a teacher who used to call graphic novels silly comic books.  So I started calling math 'that silly number subject' and the social studies book 'that silly propaganda book.'  And I was the one who got in trouble."


The President
"Saying Obama is black without recognizing that he's also white is like looking at a dalmatian and saying 'what a beautiful black lab.'  Oh my God, I just compared the most powerful man in the world to a dog."  


Voting
"I think we should have Simon from American Idol moderate the debates.  Let him critique each candidate with snide remarks and I guarantee we'll have a higher voter turnout." 

I nagged my class multiple times yesterday.  I shamed them and chided them and talked to the entire class instead of the individuals acting up.  I spent valuable learning time on disciplinary issues and did so with a tone that was mostly, "listen to me, because I'm more powerful than you."  I was nice, but I wasn't kind.  Like Mr. Rogers on steroids.

I've had moments in my career when I screamed at the students.  I don't mean yell, but really scream, with an embarrassing red face and veins sticking out. I've had times when I reduced a child to tears with a sarcastic remark.

I mention all of this, because I don't want people who read this blog to think I've got it all figured out.  I claim to believe in non-coercive discipline, but then on days like yesterday, I made threats like, "I'll just add minutes after school for the whole class."  I claim to want authenticity, but then I have days when it's all notes and short algorithms in math.

Sometimes I fall into this perfectionism trap.  If I'm not careful, I develop this mask that I wear whenever I write about teaching.  I present my classroom as some type of ideal and my approach as something innovative and real and better.  The scary thing is that I don't deliberately tell this lie.  It's something I've internalized myself.

I know that there are certain teachers out there that we have deemed as superstars.  They win awards and they give speeches and they stand up at a TED conference and I suppose all of that is great. But that's not me.  These will always be musings from a not-so-master-teacher.


Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

Pencils often lie, erasing mistakes in the gray matter of memory, turning stories, once etched in ink, into new shades of half-truths.  Pencils promise perfection. Keep erasing the mistakes and slowly we evolve (or is it "descend with modification?") into something stronger and more efficient.  The word "efficient" is, in itself, deceptively inefficient with vowels and double letters reminding even the most ardent linguist that form sometimes trips up function.

I yelled at a student today after he told me to "fuck off." For the record, I don't think he literally wanted me to fuck off. He just wanted to win an imaginary battle he was having with me or with the system or with whatever the Universe throws at a twelve year old enough to cause an unprovoked "fuck you."  

I didn't "raise my voice."  I screamed.  Red faced, eyes bulging, monster in the classroom.  I scared him.  I scared the classmates.I scared myself.  When it was over I cried.  I think my crying scared him even worse.  Then I apologized. I think the apology was the scariest part. I get the sense he wants to believe that grown-ups aren't as vulnerable as this.  

Pencils promise perfection, but as long as I'm around, imperfection abounds.  If I were a sentence, I'd be a past progressive turned imperfect tense.  Always imperfect.  Sometimes tense. Pencils provide a mythology that the education factory can turn out a series of codified best practices and with just the right amount of training, we'll never screw up again.  

This evening, my daughter, now three, threw a temper tantrum when I tucked her doll in wrong.  I tried to comfort her, but she kicked me in the stomach and slapped my face.  I cried like a baby, feeling broken down by a broken world.  She stopped me and said, "It's okay, daddy.  It's okay."  I'm supposed to be strong here and prove that I'm her protector and here I am holding a child who gets angry for no particular reason and I cannot help her. "I love you even when you cry," she says. 


That's always the right answer. Not much is permanent anymore, but I'll etch that one in India ink. 

"I love you even when you're angry," I answer.  

I go to bed tired, but I'm not sleepy, so I light the gas lamp and pull out the paper.  Edison is promising to replace teachers with motion pictures and phonographs.  At some point, we'll have no purpose.  A lesson is much more efficient when produced by a corporation.  Some day learning will be customized to every student and teachers will be obsolete. Gray films, gray lines, gray matter expanding with the march of industry - a concrete tabula rasa etched with steel.  Either embrace the machine or become the machine. And I'm too tired and yet too resilient to do either. 

I am not a Teacher of the Year.  I am not an award-winning mega-star.  I will not have my picture on the gray print newspaper or star in a monochromatic motion picture.  But I'll be here, in my classroom, vulnerable and broken and ready to cry and apologize and forgive.  I can't offer progress.  I can't offer perfection.  But I can offer myself, inefficient, sometimes even ineffective, but always real.  

"I've never been to a bookstore before," a boy mentions while we're in a guided reading group.

"Never?"

"No.  I've even wanted to go to one, but I've never been there."

"Neither have I," a girl adds.

"What about you?" I ask the two other group members. They both shake their heads.

"I don't think we have any around here," someone adds.

"We have adult bookstores."

"Those are porn shops."

"Really? I thought they were just books for grown ups."

"I don't think they're meant for reading."

I've worked for a non-profit in the inner-city.  I've taught in a low-income area for over six years.  I should have paid more attention.  In our school's zip code we have tons of check cashing stores, tire shops and restaurants, but we have no bookstores.

I'll be posting a podcast about it on our class blog at some point tonight.  It's an interesting reflection.

*     *     *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked . You can buy it or download it for free.

I check out a book written specifically for ELL readers.  It's a supplementary package to go with the prepackaged curriculum we are supposed to use for reading.  In all honesty, I don't mind the textbook stories - who could complain about reading Edgar Allen Poe or Maya Angelou? (I don't, however, like the mismatched pictures, the barrage of vocabulary on the side and the pages of nonsense directions and "skill building")

I tried it for a day.  I'll return the books tomorrow and find my own age-appropriate readings for my ELL students.

In reading the books geared toward ELL students, a few things become apparent:

1. There is a lack of academic language that students actually know.  In many cases, the Spanish cognates that come from Latin might appear too academic, but my students tend to know these words.  
2. There are too many idioms without any explanation.  My ELL students will get more confused by "go the extra mile" than a word like "altruism" or "philanthropy."  
3. It is written at a lower cognitive level.  The stories don't deal with complex characters, deeper themes or social issues.  Instead, it's a lot of poorly pasted together stories about Jennifer Lopez or Sammy Sosa - raw tokenism, pure ice berg lettuce dressed up nicely with some deceptively empty croutons. 
4. The visuals aren't age-appropriate.  I know this sounds lame, but in the literature book you'll see a Monet painting with a poem by Emerson.  In this book, you get a ten year old skateboarding.  Kids pick up on this. 
5. There is nothing that really connects with their collective experience.  I expected an excerpt from House on Mango Street or an essay from Rudolfo Anaya.  I thought there would be something about the questions of culture and assimilation and power.  Perhaps even a piece dealing with language and how it marginalizes.  Nothing.  I thought maybe we could get beyond the use of entertainment icons, but it's mostly just Shakira and Roberto Clemente.  Sad, really.

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

I read a first draft from a girl whose brother died a few months ago.  A drunk driver hauled into the sidewalk and crushed him.  The story was deep and profound and personal.  She'll probably post it to our Social Voice blog after she edits it.

I couldn't edit it, myself.  It was too much like a gift.  I'll handle a later draft, but when I'm holding the paper in one hand and a snoring Brenna in the other, all I can do is cry huge, convulsing sobs for the girl and her family and the universe that feels so broken.

I didn't go into the whole Christianity thing lightly.  I read tons of books and made Venn diagrams comparing the world's religions and I thought about the logic of pantheism and animism and yet I kept going back to the whole Jesus story.  I kept thinking about the man who wept for Lazarus and who could have fixed it all instantaneously and who had every right to tell Martha to lay off him, because it's not easy having the crushing crowds and the naysayers and the folks who want a quick-fix miracle all clamoring for attention while he just wants an hour away, alone, because even the Son of Man could use a nap every once in awhile.

An hour later, I'm in my classroom again and I can't shake the story of the boy and the thought of the student who works hard and acts like nothing happens and who probably yearns for her days to feel normal and to think about little crushes and fashion trends and whatever else will take her mind off of her brother that she won't ever see again. Maybe she feels guilty for this desire for normalcy.

I start to think that it was unfair for me to start the year with a personal narrative, because narratives are, by nature, way too personal for casual acquaintances.  I should have started with mix-ups and Extreme People Bingo and how was your summer and what are your goals.  It's always been a fault of mine that I don't do casual talk really well, but right now I'm feeling like I've walked into someone's pain with nothing to offer.

I want so badly to fix it.

Then I begin to want God to fix it. Then, for awhile I get really angry at a God who lets all of this happen and I feel comforted by the freedom that I'm allowed to get angry, even if I don't understand the universe.  I can't pretend to make sense out of the mystery of it.

So, I turn on Majesty Snowbird.  It doesn't help me make sense out of the mystery, but it does help me embrace the beauty of the paradox and the a knowable and unknowable God. I remember that the best thing I can be to that student is truly present. I can't play Atlas or I'll become Icarus or worse yet Sisyphus.

(You can feel free to mock my song selection if you would like.)

So, get this: On a daily basis, I drive five miles above the speed limit.  I do it out of convenience.  I do it because really, forty miles an hour feels a little sluggish and forty-five makes more sense.  I'm not sure what it means that I'm an illegal driver. I imagine if a cop is really picky, I'll get a ticket, but I won't feel as if I have done something morally wrong simply because it is illegal.

I would drive even faster if my family was starving and there was only one grocery store and they were hogging all the food so that we had no access.  I might even driver faster than that if I was planting and sowing all of the food that the folks in the gated community ate while my family starved to death.  I might, at that point, just say "screw the law, my child's survival is more important than the speed limit."

If I was a slave, I might have broken the law, too, despite the fact that Congress had passed the Fugitive Slave Act.  I might have snuck away with Harriet Tubman and tried to move to Canada (before the days of free health care, nonetheless).  As crazy as this sounds, if I believed that I could provide my family a chance for freedom and stability, I might have deliberately broken the law at the risk of being labeled illegal. And all of that with a free conscience.

*     *     *

I lose Twitter followers and blog subscribers whenever I mention my views on immigration.  Good thing I'm not looking to win a popularity contest.  Immigration is a deeply personal issue for me.  It's wrapped up around my faith (God's heart for the immigrant is a constant in the Bible), my social beliefs (in particular, my belief in justice and equity), my knowledge of history (we were founded as a nation of immigrants), my relationships (in particular, my students and their families) and my experiences (seeing the sheriff and his goons use brown shirt tactics, chasing mom's with strollers all in the name of law and order).

If I'm ever silent on the issue, it is only because I know that this blog is not the best place for political discourse.  Neither is Twitter.  But if anyone wants to forward me a racist e-mail or call my students "criminal invaders" or claim to support the Constitution and then demand that we revoke the 14th Amendment, I simply ask that you would spend a year with me.  Sit down with my students.  Visit the homes.  Eat some carne asada from the man who works twelve hour days to provide your family with decent food.

Maybe your beliefs will not change.  Maybe you'll still be against amnesty.  Maybe you'll still believe in deporting people. But maybe, just maybe, you'll be slower to use pejorative language when referring to the people whom I love.

At first glance, my classroom looked "set up."  I had a half-circle set up with netbooks, a solid amount of walking room and my one enrichment table where students could go when they had finished with their work.  I had the six traits and reading process canvases my past students had painted and I had already painted a few sketches on my wall. 

However, a tweet from a fellow blogger suggested that I leave it open a bit.  Let my students help guide the space that we would share all year. As it is, I allow students to help plan our projects.  However, letting go of the physical side of the classroom was harder than I had thought.

So, here is a list of a few changes I made based upon their requests:

1. Move from the horse-shoe shape to tables.  It sort-of brought us in closer together and helped provide a meaningful outlet for group and partner interaction.  
2. Add more enrichment tables and actually schedule time when students could use the tables as a replacement for the current activity.  This has forced me into a more built-in model of differentiation.  Now we have a reading center, an art center, a service area (where they do things like make cards for Veterans at the hospital or write advocacy letters), Primary History (where I have primary sources that date back to the 1850s) and two multimedia stations (one designed for video and audio editing and one designed as a larger screen for Prezis, slideshows and concept maps) and a reading area with a cushy chair
3. Painting a mural along the back side of my classroom - in this case one involving World War II 
4. Adding some lamps and other side lighting and turning off the overhead lights when they come back from lunch
5. Re-designing my board - a student came up with a simple way for me to display assignments where I would use a graphic organizer that has the assignment, the grouping and a list of additional help or enrichment
6. A math tutorial bulletin board that has things like multiplying integers or the order of operations
7. A hanging file folder system that allows students to store work that is turned in

At some point, I might interview Joel and post it as a podcast.  The conversations about school can be hilarious.
Joel is in kindergarten. He has a great teacher who uses some excellent strategies on a daily basis. When asked why he likes kindergarten, he mentions his teacher.
Lesson #1: The teacher matters. No matter what technology one uses, it's all about how

Joel thinks that it's crazy that he has to color in four pages every day.  To him, it would make more sense if they could choose what they draw and spend more time making a drawing look nice.
Lesson #2: Autonomy matters.  Kids thrive on a little creative control.
Lesson #3: Sometimes quality needs to trump quantity.

Joel doesn't particularly think that phonics work is fun, but he does it anyway because he wants to learn.  He points out that it isn't quite like PE, but at least he's learning how to read.
Lesson #4: Kids will do something "boring" if they know that it's helping them to learn a vital skill for life (incidentally, I know how they do phonics work and it's actually fun and involves lots of movement)

Joel wants more time to eat and to talk to his friends and to play.  He thinks they should have more recess and more PE. He also thinks it's crazy that he doesn't get to be with anyone who is younger or older than him.
Lesson #5: School is fundamentally a social institution and being social, we need to allow them more opportunities to be social and more chances to interact in a more natural setting.

Joel points out that kids are nicer to teachers than to the cafeteria workers and that the cafeteria workers don't talk to the teachers.  The teachers just talk to each other.
Lesson #6: Kids are learning issues of prejudice and social justice in ways adults often miss.

Joel thinks the school should allow kids to be barefoot and that they should have a garden and that there should be more windows inside.
Lesson #7: We've really lost some of the natural side of education.  It's kind-of tragic.

Despite the brokenness of the system, Joel loves going to school and thinks that it's fun.  He points out the games they play, the songs they sing and the dances they do.  He talks about his friends and his teacher and you get the sense that it's really a warm place.
Lesson #8: Ease up a bit on the reform talk.  Yes, the system is flawed, but there's beauty happening within it.

I want my students to do inquiry and find answers to their own questions.  I want them to use multiple intelligences to demonstrate their knowledge in creative ways.  I want my students to use multimedia platforms as they engage in service learning.  I want them to bring in guest speakers and do a project where they collaborate with students in another location.  I also want them to read classic literature, have a chance for art inclusion, take the time to go in-depth in their editing process, read independently, participate in literature circles, work on their own science fair projects, engage in meaningful labs and simulations, practice and learn the basics of math while also engaging in deeper exploratory math projects.  I want them to write a play together and go through the whole theater process together.  I want them to do longer, thematic podcasts and to write an e-book together.

My problem is not that I need professional development.  It's not that I need more nifty strategies to lead me on the way toward becoming a better teacher.  I don't need another conference or seminar or workshop or TEN TOP WAYS TO USE TWITTER in my classroom.  I don't need more hyperbole.  I need more simplicity.  I don't need more, I need to learn to do less. I don't need another binder.  I need an anti-binder crusader who will help remind me of the essential questions that really are essential - someone to nudge me back toward the question, "Does this help us to live well?"

The problem is that I get about 320 minutes a day.  After "intervention" it drops down to about 275 minutes (I know, it sounds like a term for drug users admitting their problems, but it's really just a chance to help kids learn to divide fractions and sound out multisyllable words).  

My issue right now isn't that I have a hard time planning, it's that I am having a hard time figuring out what to cut from my plans, what to postpone for another quarter and what to do for the entire year and really perfect together as a class. I have all these ideas I want to run with, but I feel stuck with the fact that I have to pull back.  In the physical realm I am as minimalist as it gets - no watch, no jewelry, no alarm clock, no cell phone.  I have journals I wrote that I'd like to throw out, but Christy convinces me that keeping some tangible objects is still valuable.

On an intellectual level, I wonder if I hold on too tightly to ideas.  Like the vacationer who grabs shards of glass and bottle caps and napkins from Hawaii, I wonder if I've collected too much mental junk over the summer and now it's time to let go.  I wonder if I create an emotional attachment to, say, mock trials, because they worked in the past or to journaling, since I loved it as a kid or to documentaries, since we did those in the past. I wonder if I am so attached to the ideas that I am not allowing my students in on the process of project planning.

Have I become an educational hoarder?  Have I become too crowded in my imaginary tool box?  Is it time for me to scrap this list of what I want to accomplish and simply focus on the current projects at hand?

Perhaps it's time for an intervention.

Once upon a time, there was a group of pencil pioneers who pushed their way into the Slate Land and conquered it in the name of education.  All was well for the Pencil People, who changed the name from Slate Land to the rather uncreative Pencil Land.  In fact, they grew rather giddy over the prospects of raising Pencil Natives in this brave new world they had created.

So, they decided it wasn't important to show a kid how to use an eraser or use blending and shading.  In fact, it wouldn't be important that they learned how to write at all, because being a native automatically made one a perfect citizen immersed in the culture.

The Pencil Natives wandered aimlessly, never knowing how to use the tools of their own culture.  Some teachers pointed this out and wondered if these children had actually been born in Pencil Land at all.  They missed the reality that the Pencil Natives were comfortable with pencils and had, indeed, internalized the value system of a Graphite Globe.  They were creating a world that was ambiguous, confusing, gray.  They were erasing any remnants of history and replacing it with every-changing, bite-sized information.

Others said that the old folks were simply clueless and that they should delight in the fact that the Pencil Natives spent their days making paper gliders and paper balls and playing Hang Man instead of writing poetry.  After all, this was their world and we should learn from them. We should let them be our mentors and tutors and guides, because they knew more about pencils than the Pioneer Generation.

The two sized polarized the issue into a binary reality that missed the nuances of the argument.  Instead of asking, "How do we help Pencils Natives make sense out of a graphite globe?" or "How do we get Natives to criticize the tools they use and use the tools they criticize?"  they focussed on the question of, "Why aren't they getting it without our help?"  Instead of asking, "What does citizenship mean and how can pencils be used to sharpen critical thinking?" the adults obsessed for hours about whether or not pencils were luring in creepy outsiders.

So, the Pencil Natives grew up with the dual reputations of Saviors of the Graphite Globe and Dumbest Generation Ever and all the while they secretly yearned just to be kids with pencils, trying to make sense out of their world and their place within it.

 

A former student visits after a rough afternoon. He’s here to pick up his younger sister from our community service club (we tried calling it Impact, but mostly it's just called Community Service and that's fine by me). I’m struck by how strange it is to know students in the context of families.

“You remember when we read Farenheit 451? I’m re-reading it again. I love it.”

“That’s really cool,” I respond.

“Do you remember what you said about falling in love with reading? Remember how you said a character can become like a friend, not a real friend, not a best friend, but a friend who you would cry for when they died?”

“Yeah, I guess I remember saying that.”

“I experienced that this year.”

“What book?”

“It was a short story from Salinger. It was ‘A Perfect Day for Banana Fish.’ I know it was bizarre, because it wasn’t even very long, but I felt like I knew him and then he was just gone and it made me think about life and I just cried.”

His sister laughs.

“No really, I cried. Some day you’ll see what I’m talking about too. It’s not crazy. It’s what happens when you love reading.”

It's a rare gift.  I have days when students return and they remember me and appreciate me and quite honestly it feels good to be appreciated after a two-thirty wall of apathy during an explanation of descent with modification (which the best writers tend to spell as "decent with modifications," which seems to be the goal of a "life of quiet desperation").  I have days when students remember a fun activity or even a project.  It's rare, indeed it might even be a first, that a student actually remembers an offhand comment during a typical reading lesson.

Some teachers keep stacks of student notes and others have scrapbooks with pictures.  I'll keep the memories and replay them on my hardest days.

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Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   You can download it for free or you can buy it.  Either way, I hope you enjoy it.

I try to wrap my brain around why I cried after watching the first eleven minutes of Up. It had very little dialog and not a particular emotional musical score.  It had very little exposition and a climax that was, quite honestly, predictable. Theme, perhaps?  It dealt with the best parts of life, the beauty of love and the reality of our mortality.  Joel and Micah didn't get it.  They couldn't.  Not yet.  I have a hunch the Pixar folks created it for us and perhaps even for themselves - a reminder to live well under the sun.  It's Ecclesiastes without the cynicism.

I get up this morning with a list of jobs to accomplish.  I have lesson plans to write and papers to grade and blog posts from students and e-mails to answer and all I can think about is the question of what actually endures.  The most essential questions aren't written on my lesson plans and won't be written on the board.

I am really loving my teaching gig this year. I have one group of students all day. I've yelled at them twice, which is more than I yelled at my classes last year. I've really botched a few lessons in ways that I never did while teaching social studies. It's unpolished.  It's feels more human than ever before.

I have a window this year. I forgot how much I need light to keep me sane.  I have a hunch that I'd be depressed in any other place.  It's why, as much as I might mock my governor (which was honestly a little low-balled, because I'd get just as nervous if I were on a PBS debate) and rail against our Nazi sheriff, I love it here.

As I enjoy teaching and parenting, I'm finding myself caring less about my blog and even less about Twitter - despite the fact that my number of subscribers and followers and retweets all increase.

I like to read Doyle's blog, even though he inhabits a foreign universe. I don't have a bay to go to. Words like sea and waves can start to sound entirely inaccessible, but if I get a little saline in my mouth memories of a California childhood flood back (not that we lived near the bay, but visited enough for some vivid memories) - but on most days those words don't resonate.

But a back yard and sunsets and swing sets and laughter are ultimately what pulled me away from my screen time. When I go a few days without a tweet, no one cares. It's not bad, but it's a reality that few of my thousand-plus followers actually follow. When I don't go outside, someone notices. Usually two someones.

I don't really know much about Facebook or Twitter. To be honest, the back yard and the swing set and the sunset and my kids and my wife and my classroom can all be just as mysterious to me. It's just that when I'm with them, I can tell the difference between magic and illusion.

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Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

I yelled at my class today.  It was hot and I was tired and we were all a little worn out from standing in a hundred and twelve degree heat.  I apologized, but it was still humbling. For almost two hours we bumbled around the math lesson where I actually screwed up an example on the board and we struggled through science and all the while the students silently cursed me and cursed the school and cursed the incompetence of a horribly botched lesson.  At that moment, I might have been the worst teacher on campus.

I also had a great discussion about human nature in "The Tell-tale Heart" and the students expanded their vocabulary by writing using context clues and spreadsheets.  We analyzed the Declaration of Independence together and it just felt like everything fit together the right way.  I felt like a Teacher of the Year.

Even in the lowest moments, there were times of redemption, like the moment when students seemed to get adding and subtracting negative and positive integers with an activity that required them to walk across the room.  I saw a boy whisper to his friend, "Subtracting a negative is just like adding.  Look at it.  It's just like adding!"

I don't believe my test scores will prove if I'm a good teacher.  Observe me and you can see.  Judge me.  Score me. Rank me, even.  But you can't do any of that unless you know me.  I get it.  There are some really awful teachers out there who need to be fired and some great ones who need to be recognized, too.  But for a guy like me, it's a little more muddled.  On a day like today, I can't even figure out for myself if I'm a good teacher.

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.

I don't care where you stand on the political spectrum, but she sort-of makes George W seem eloquent. Yes, this is my state. The woman who is opposed to all things bilingual can't even manage to be lingual.

I think all kids should have a set aside time to play with Plato; a time to meander through the deeper existential questions and engage in Socratic conversations. Let them run around on the playground of course, but also let them ask, not for the sake of asking or learning or even growing, but for the sake of searching for truth. If it turns them a little agnostic, that's okay. If it leads to paradox, I'm comfortable with it. I have a hunch it would help them avoid indoctrination.

With that in mind, I'm always repulsed by The Republic. It's like reading Ecclesiastes and then sitting through the pithy Solomon Sound Bites of Proverbs (yes, I know Proverbs are inspired, but I just can't seem to connect with them). I want to believe, on some level, that it's a different author. It's Paul McCarthy with Wings instead of the Beatles.

Where did Socrates go wrong?

I think it's what happens when we move from open dialog to dogmatic models. I see it happen on both ends of the educational reform spectrum. It starts with the change from "What does it meant to learn?" to "What should we fix?" It seems sane at first, but slowly with shift into a psychotic Bob the Builder mentality where we are speaking to the systems and structures and machinery rather than conversing with humanity.

If I taught an educational class, I would tell students to create an education utopia (I believe Edutopia is already taken, so I might have to use a different set of nomenclature). Afterward, I would ask them to write a dystopian narrative of a child who lives within this imaginary environment. I would ask them to expose the weakness of their educational beliefs by delving deeper into the human psyche.

A reader e-mailed me with the comment, "I can't believe you posted a student's work that had such bad language."

A few points in response to it:

1. I don't ascribe to the Victorian notion of vulgar language created to stratify classes and mock those who had less education.  Coarse and vulgar were originally class-based rather than moral distinctions.  It was akin to picking one's nose in public, which I have done on occasion.  I don't want to get into a theological argument, but I firmly believe there is no Biblical basis for the particular "cuss words" being sinful.  Instead, it seems to be more about the condition of one's heart.

2. I don't publish student work on our Social Voice blog with "cuss words," not out of a moral objection, but out of a desire to stay within academic language. Similarly, I don't encourage cuss words in class, not because I see it as a moral issue, but as an issue of being polite; not unlike saying "bless you" when a child sneezes when in fact, I have very little spiritual authority to bless.

3. With regards to language in my class, I have a few words students can't say in my presence. These are the words that will draw a remark out of me, because of how they are used to marginalize a group of people.  I realize they fit within the vernacular, but I don't let students say "that's retarded" or "that's gay" or refer to one another as "nigga. "  By the end of the first month, those words are absent in the classroom, perhaps out of compliance and perhaps out of respect and maybe even, every once in awhile, out of a recognition of how they wound.

Students rarely cuss in my class, though they know it will get a strange look rather than a verbal confrontation. I can't prove this, but I have a hunch that they don't cuss because the semantic environment tends to be pretty academically-oriented.  I'll correct their language in the same way that I correct their grammar. I also have a hunch that when a word loses its taboo status, it becomes bland.  If I don't believe in cursed words, they lose their magic.

4. When focusing on language, I want my students to develop a philosophy of language that involves understanding the denotative and connotative aspects of language, to understand both the logical and affective layers of their lexicons.  I want my students to see how people use language to manipulate and to love and to provoke and to ponder.  Getting side-tracked by a few socially unacceptable words is like obsessing over whether or not young artists can color within the lines.  It's simply not that important to me.


Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   I'm selling it at-cost or you can download it for free as a PDF.