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

When I was in the seventh grade, I had to do a science fair project.  I first wanted to test what actually happens to flame-retardant pajamas when burned.  My teacher wouldn't let me, so I decided to see how music affected plant growth.  Sadly, the results were inconclusive.  The plants grew at about the same rate, leading me to believe my experiment had failed.  

My response? 

I made up the results.  I created a fictional conclusion where the plants listening to gangster rap all killed one another while the ones listening to classical argued about books and snuck into the house to drink wine.  The country music plants grew depressed and the classic rock plants began to use acid and were complaining that the fence was attacking them.  

My teacher was not amused.  Or, more likely she was at least mildly amused, but she still gave me a D on the project.  What she failed to tell me was that my fictional scenario was unnecessary.  A failure in hypothesis and in procedures are a part of the scientific process. For all the talk of a scientific method, science is often times messy and any notion of "control" we have is held loosely at best.

Right now, my students are getting frustrated with their independent science projects, because of their inability to create the situations they had hoped.  For the most part, they have always had teacher-directed experiments that are based upon an "if you do this then this will happen" mentality.

They have to walk a mystery now.  There is no guarantee that their hypothesis will be correct, nor is there a guarantee they will have true validity.  For the first time in their academic experience, they are having to modify procedures, develop new experiments and create a new hypothesis as a result.  It's messy.  It's science.



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

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

Robot Teacher is rebuked for having "low growth" despite high achievement levels:

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

Based upon a conversation I had in my first year of teaching (though at the time, we had computers rather than netbook). This was inspired by this video.

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

The math book chooses some strange examples for percent increase and decrease.  The first involves a friend who loans $200 to her friend at 6.9% interest (what kind of friend does that?) and the next example involves finding the original cost after looking at the sales cost.  Finally, there is a problem involving finding the percentage of change in the state population of Illinois.

So, for the first problem, I show two store sales (buy one, get one half off versus get 30% off any purchase over forty dollars), but I add the twist of "Was it worth it two have to buy an extra shirt you didn't need?"  

A student answered the question, "Do we really need more clothes in the first place?  Do we really need to use shopping to fill the spiritual void of a consumer culture? Both sales seem like a way to manipulate our need to find something special that's missing."  

For the next problem, students had to find the stock prices of Apple and Microsoft fifteen years ago and today and explain what changed and predict whether or not either company will continue on that path.  They also had to describe what they thought had caused the change in stock price?

Most of them described the iPhones or mentioned the iPod Touch.  However, the previously mentioned student wrote, "While Steve Jobs was convincing us that we needed touch screen phones, Bill Gates was busy trying to save the world with mosquito nets. While this sucks for Windows fans, I think there are people in Africa who are pretty happy with Gates."

The end result?

Students practiced thinking critically, summarizing (our reading standard), reading informational text and finding percent increase and decrease.   Did they suffer in math as a result of the reading, writing and social studies integration?  Not at all.  On our common assessment, the students aced percent increase and decrease problems.

One of my favorite parts of teaching self-contained is that the subjects blend with one another.  True, I have only forty minutes for social studies, but I get into social studies in math and reading.  Meanwhile, they found the percent increase or decrease in Afghan approval ratings of the United States when we did a quick prior knowledge activity on a story we had to read.

It's for this reason that writing a schedule and objectives on the board becomes a challenge.  We don't have a rigid format of subjects.  They connect, just like they do in life.





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

In my ideal world, we would have no grades.  I would offer authentic feedback on student work and they would keep a portfolio of their progress.  Then again, in my ideal world, the Yankees would never make the playoffs and mayonnaise would not exist and people wouldn't pass out those antacid candies on Valentines Day. Alas, I am stuck with reality.

So, with reality in mind, I prefer standards-based grading to traditional grading for the following reasons:

• It is about progress toward learning rather than work completion.  Yes, I would love my students to work hard.  However, I am not after hard work for a prize.  Instead, I want them to learn so that they can think better about life. 
• Standards-based grading considers homework to be practice (and often times optional or non-existent) while traditional grading makes it a specific arbitrary "weight." 
• Standards-based assessments do not punish a kid who fails to turn in an assignment.  This allows for more differentiation, formative feedback and quality learning. 
• Standards-based grading should provide honest feedback to students rather than ranking and sorting them into an A, B, C, D
• While traditional grading treats the grades as a motivational tool, standards-based grading is more about feedback and less about behaviorism. 
• It measures the most recent learning rather than a composite picture of the whole semester.  This makes sense to me, because the goal should be to see what they know in the end.  
• It is less about being time-bound and more about mastery.  In other words, a student who fails to finish something or learn something one week still has a chance to figure it out later.  To me, that's how learning in life actually works.  
• Standards-based grading looks at learning rather than work, which means you can find alternative methods of assessment instead of simply multiple choice tests

With that in mind, it angers me to input the district report cards.  After spending the quarter using standards-based grading, I am stuck with the following:

1. I have to use one test for sixty-percent of their grade in each subject
2. Rather than using the specific standards, the report card is broken into the strands, which forces me to use averaging (which goes against standards-based assessment) and then I average these into a final grade.  
3. When I input the final grade, I still have to use A, B, C, D and F in addition to the standards-based grades.  Thus, we are using two different measuring tools. 
4. I have no place where I can write in authentic comments.  Instead, there is a pre-set list of comments that have nothing to do with academics and are more about playing nice.  Some would argue that this is about "citizenship."  Wrong.  Citizenship is about democracy, critical thinking, love and fighting injustice.  "Completes work carefully" and "follows directions" should not be a part of a report card.  Just for fun, I tried using the comments with Martin Luther King Jr. and Adolf Hitler and sadly, I'd have to give Hitler a higher score in citizenship.  There's something wrong with that picture.  

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

My students toured one of Edison's film studios.  They saw firsthand how something so lifelike is actually a production.  

Production.  

The filmmakers chop up bits and pieces of captured, vital life and reproduce it into something new.  

It's magic to us. We're mesmerized by the dancing light and the larger-than-life figures haunting us in their "not-really-here but not-really-gone" since of permanence.  Everything is smoother, grander and more seductive than the terrestrial reality of a school yard.

Yes, I know it is about light hitting a photograph and moving.  "Motion picture" sounds tame.  But given the nature of light, the paradox of ray and particle, I can't help but see the magic of the motion picture.  When they perfect the art of phonography, we'll have talking motion pictures.  Perhaps a century from now we'll have it all at the palm of our hands - the ability to pick apart and edit life and present it as something new and magical.  

*     *     *

"Why can't we get a film studio on campus?" a student asks me.  

"I'm not sure about the medium," I tell him.  

"So, just teach like you normally would and add some motion picture parts.  I bet it would be fun. Imagine what we would produce."  

Fun.  

Produce.  

I'm thinking of the Roman notion of bread and circus.  I always assumed bread was the more powerful element.  I'm now understanding the pull of circus.  It's not that I am opposed to fun, per se.  It's just that often "fun" is the cheap replacement of "intriguing" or "meaningful" or "beautiful" or "life-changing."  Edison's studio is, in fact, a fun factory.  I cannot and should not reproduce it.  

*     *     *

Educators often believe that they have the power to wield each tool to fit their own purpose.  They assume that a lesson can remain virtually unchanged when a new medium is added.  Often, the metaphor is one of a tool - though, they would never use a tool in this way.  Who would ever say, "We need to screw this in with a hammer?"  

There is something inherently dangerous about taking every technological device and applying it to learning without ever asking the intended meaning of a medium.  A pencil, for example, is inherently individual, deliberately vague (shades of gray, ability to erase), intellectual, portable and text-based.  A film is, by contrast, visual, collective, emotional, geography-bound, visual and non-linear.  

If I begin with a lesson plan and simply pick a tool based upon "fun" or "productivity" or "student engagement," I am running the risk of teaching something entirely unintended.  If I introduce a telegraph as a source of knowledge, we send an implied message that knowledge should be portable, consumable and in small increments. 

I am not opposed to adding new tools to learning.  I simply want us to recognize that whatever tools we choose will reshape learning in ways that we often fail to recognize.

Dear John,

So about school.  I know you feel like a failure, but you're doing better than you think. You sometimes feel guilty about hating school while liking your teachers.  Sometimes you even do the assignment just because you feel bad for teachers who internalize your apathy and think it's their fault.  Don't beat yourself up over this.  You think that FOIL is irrelevant to your life?  You're right.  You feel that the Periodic Table of Elements won't change how you live?  Again, you're onto something.

One of the greatest insights you have into life is that it's a vapor.  I think you've always had it, but Lynn's suicide certainly drove that point home.  On most days you get frustrated and ask the question, "How will this help me live better?"  Don't let school beat that question out of you.  

You yearn for something real.  The bad news is that you'll only get it in bits and pieces along the way, but when you do, you'll be amazed.  You'll have some of the most life-changing teachers who speak truth into your soul in ways that others can't.  

There's nothing wrong with loving language.  Being poetic isn't unmanly.  Un-macho, perhaps, but not unmanly.  Real men are warriors and poets who dream and act and listen.  Embrace your desire to write.  I know, I know, it feels like you're wasting your time reading books and writing stories, but these will serve you well in ways that you cannot predict.

Don't think that you suck at math simply because you don't memorize algorithms.  Math is more than memorizing. Don't assume that science isn't your thing, just because you don't like to rip apart an animal in class.  Some day when you have your own children you'll rekindle your love of science and realize it was never really all that dormant in the first place.  Your penchant for staring at the sunsets or walking barefoot in the moonlight will never cease.

With regards to being geeky, I can't help you.  I know it seems like the girls aren't that into you and it's true.  They prefer pricks at this age.  Quit trying to learn how to throw a ball through the hoop.  You and I both know they were lying to you when they said, "You can be anything you want to be."  You're never going to be a star basketball player and thus the jocks will get the attention of most girls in your high school.

The good news is that someday character will matter more than brawn and your acne will clear up and you'll find someone who is beautiful and intelligent and intriguing.  You'll wake up next to her every morning and feel like the luckiest man in the world.  And, yes, I know your junior high brain; you'll have plenty of sex and yes, it's all that it's made out to be.  You won't call it sex, though.  You'll call it making love and none of that will make since until you find that woman who will change your world.

In terms of your emotions, they never go away.  You have moments when you lose your temper and you get frustrated with how easily you are hurt. You can't escape that. It is a part of who you are.  Except, here's the neat part: they are redeemed somehow.  I'd say God is a part of the process, but I remember what you were like in the eighth grade.  That agnostic part of you laughs at the idea of God and for now that will do just fine. But someday that will be shaken.  It's what happens when you ask too many questions.

Your anger will transform into this strong sense of social justice and you'll fight for what you believe in.  Your sensitivity will move from something self-centered to others-centered and you'll find that your ability to listen and to empathize will make you a great dad and husband and teacher (permission to laugh at this - I know you can't believe you'll ever want to go back to school when it's over).

I know that life feels pretty awful.  The cliques seem cruel.  The kids seem fake.  The subjects seem irrelevant.  Trust me, even at thirty, I cannot look back on fourteen nostalgically.  But I understand your hope that things will get better and I want you to know that your hope isn't wrong.  Things get better.  Way better.  You'll spend most days feeling like the luckiest guy on the planet.

I won't end with a trite phrase like "be true to yourself" or whatever.  I just want you to know that you'll be okay, John.  You'll be okay.

Love,

John

I'm not a great teacher.  I'm not winning awards and standing on podiums and pontificating on the power of pedagogy in a TED talk.  However, I'm not a bad teacher, either.  I'm proud of my students' Social Voice Blog and our documentaries and murals and various creative ventures.  I work hard and enjoy teaching in the process.

However, for one week each quarter I become a nervous wreck.  The students participate in a drill-and-kill test designed for people to judge me and to judge them.  (Students in our district spend five weeks a year on testing) I turn edgy and find myself snapping at people during testing week.  I grow impatient.  I struggle to teach in the afternoon after students sit silently for the first half of the day.

After the first round, my class scores are high on both the achievement and the growth level.  In math, the numbers are a bit lower, but they are above district average.  In reading and science, the students outscore the district average by a long shot and six of my students go from Falls Far Below to Meets.

I should be able to breath, right?  Instead, I feel the pressure to have my kids repeat this first quarter results.  I can almost guarantee that people will come in and observe, not because I am doing poorly, but because they hope to see something magical. Meanwhile, anything magical will remain hidden, because as long as the clipboard people are visiting, a student will not be vulnerable about his own father while connecting to the myth of Icarus.

It's a double-edged sword.  If they had done poorly, I would have felt like a horrible teacher and ended up in a much more depressing level of self-scrutiny.

In the meantime, I don't even believe in standardized tests.  I try and teach with an authentic approach.  Our test results are a bit of an anomaly, because I told my students outright that the system is more rigged than Chuck-E-Cheese games and that no one wins in the process, but that huge transnational conglomerates want to feast on their minds like zombies.  Perhaps the latent fear of zombies motivated my students or maybe they had some pent-up childhood anger at Chuck-E-Cheese.

I have a hunch I'm not the only teacher who feels this way.  I'd love to conduct a poll on the attitudes, emotions and fears of "high performing" teachers.  Chances are what I am describing - the combination of fear and hatred toward the tests would be a common factor.

It doesn't help when people say, "You're fine.  You have nothing to worry about."  Wrong.  If I have "nothing to worry about," then what would happen if the scores were low?  Last time I checked, teachers with low scores received "additional support" in the form of experts who walked in with clip boards and left notes telling them how to spend more time using the resources in the basal curriculum binders.

I realize that in some jobs the pressure causes people to rise to the occasion.  Except, I'm not so sure that the added pressure ever helps people.  Even in professional sports, the best athletes rise to the occasion only by ignoring or diffusing the pressure - that or turning it into adrenaline they can use to knock down a quarterback.  My job is a little different.  I don't tackle people for a living.  My motives have nothing to do with a trophy.

At least once a week, I find myself having to do a ridiculous self-talk of, "John, your value as a teacher is more about how well you know your students and whether you have designed quality learning experiences than anything you find on a test."  The point is that I shouldn't have to give that self-talk.

I'm fascinated by the posts on Bound Staff Press.  The artist part of my soul gets it, but yet it's so foreign.  The sheer amount of experimenting and waiting and process-thinking involved has helped me see the artist's mind on a deeper level.

My friend Quinn wrote a work of fiction that was both beautifully written and yet not overly sentimental.  It forced me to revisit a memory of a miscarriage and I was reminded of how the term itself prevents us from mourning the child we never had the chance to know.

A master of metaphor, Michael Kaechele described his affinity for concrete in a way that forced me to rethink my distaste for this industrial element.  Go read it.  Now.  

I've been lesson planning, which I have a hard time doing without music. The following is my lesson planning soundtrack for this year:

1. Resurrection Fern (Iron and Wine): Helps me think about the natural, earthy side of teaching
2. Majesty Snowbird (Sufjan Stevens): Gives me the larger perspective on why I'm doing this whole teaching gig
3. Eet (Regina Spektor): Reminds me of the ambiguity of decisions, the confusion of youth and the mystery of human identity
4. Eskimo (Damien Rice): For no other reason than the fact that it's beautiful.  
5. Woman at the Well (Sufjan Stevens): The song always makes me think of redemption and hope and if I step back from my lesson plans for a moment, I am reminded of what I believe about the brokenness and the hope of the human condition.
6. Time and Time Again (Counting Crows): Something about this song is able to transport me back to the eighth grade and it stirs up the complex feelings of being that age.  If I'm not careful when I lesson plan, I forget what it's like to be that age: the loneliness, the mood swings, the confusion, the excitement.  
7. Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow (Fleetwood Mac): Yes, I know the song is trite and poorly written and poppy and all of that, but it makes me smile and it reminds me that ultimately the lesson plans will be acted out in the moment. 
8. Lonely Security Guard (Hayden): It's a quirky song, not for everyone.  But it reminds me that there's always more to the story than it first appears.
9. Star, Star (The Frames): Sometimes I'll just stop, move away from the computer and go outside when I hear this song.  I lesson plan early in the morning, so there are always a few stars that haven't been covered by our suburban light pollution.  I'll think about the profound moments when the universe seemed to make sense and so many of them involved being bathed by the moonlight - holding Micah on the Fourth of July, holding Christy's hand under the moonlight when I proposed to her, going on walks with Joel, watching Brenna point to the moon.  Nothing unusual about the events, but in the moment it felt like I got this glimpse of the beauty of the people whom I love.  
10. We Will Become Silhouettes (The Postal Service): Nothing profound here.  Sometimes I switch it out with "I'll Follow You Into the Dark" or Sufjan Steven's version of "Come Thou Fount."  

I don't think of each theme each time, but it's amazing to me the way that the music tends to remind me of a particular idea I'm missing at just the right time.

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   

It has nothing to do with the teacher.  He adores his teacher. It has little to do with his peer group.  He generally gets along with his classmates.  However, school has been difficult for my son.  Here is a snapshot of what he has said:

#1: No Science
"Don't you guys learn science?"
"No, we just read about it and hear about it.  But we don't do science."
"What do you mean?"
"It's not like the backyard where mom showed us how camouflage works when we held the lizard."

#2: Food
"We have to eat at the same time every day and there's no time to eat it."
"We have lunchtime at our house."
"Yeah, but it's when we're hungry.  We have lunch time when it's not even hungry time."

#3: Art
"They don't let us do art in art class."
"What do you mean?"
"We just follow the steps of the teacher.  We don't even decide what we make. That isn't art.  That's crafts."

#4: Not Enough Reading
"Dad, we have to go to stations where we just play games."
"Sounds like fun to me."
"It's fun, but it's not learning."
"I'm sure you're learning."
"No, we just go to a pretend kitchen.  It's not even real.  Or we practice coloring."
"What would you like it to be."
"We should just read and write.  All day we should read and write.  I want to practice letters, draw pictures and read.  That's what we should be."

Poor guy.  He is way too much like his dad.

So, why don't we "unschool" him?  Why don't we send him to a Waldorf or Montessori school instead?

Because ultimately, it comes down to a paradox.  I want him to learn to be in the world and not conform to it.  I want him to learn to be assertive and independent and yet learn to serve and to listen to others.  I want him to learn what he wants to learn and learn what he doesn't want to learn but ultimately needs to learn.

Yes, the system isn't perfect.  However, I want my son to know what it is like to be in an imperfect system and navigate the conflict within it.  I want to have honest conversations that don't include "just do it because you're told to do it," but that also helps him see that there are other viewpoints outside of his.  



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

I'm in the process of reworking and editing Pencil Me In (I'll probably release it at the beginning of January, with fewer grammar and spelling mistakes than my last book.)

So, in an effort to create a similar cover style to the last two, I tried this one out:

"I don't get it," Javi says. 

"It's a person looking into the concrete reflection.  It just seems to fit the idea of industrialization and pencils and all of that."  

"I'm not trying to be mean, but it looks like you decapitated him.  Kind-of creepy, actually."

Moments like this remind me why I can trust Javi.  If he can speak up and criticize me, I can trust his integrity when he offers a compliment.

We all had to fill out a sheet of paper (you should have seen the complaints teachers made about having to use pencils in professional development) describing what type of workshop presentation we want to deliver in our monthly district professional development.

I don't mind the notion of a monthly professional development, despite the reality that the best skills I have learned occurred in a relational context, within the process of teaching and only among a small number of people.  That and it usually involved a pint or two.

I simply don't have anything to teach, which makes it a dangerous venue for me.  I play Icarus with the group and take the wings they offer me and then sail beyond my area of expertise.  I get arrogant.  I put on an act.  It's not that people dislike it.  In fact, they are often enjoying the show.  It's just that it's dangerous for me when I fall into the sea and I'm left in isolation to tread water with my arrogant self.

So, when I filled out my application, I wrote the following answers as a joke:

1. What is the most important element in a thriving economy?
The human element.

2. What do business leaders use to create economic growth?
They use humanity.  All of us.  Those who figure out how to manipulate people learn how to manipulate systems and create revenue for personal gain.

3. What is the most necessary skill needed in an industrial economy?
For those at the bottom, it is obedience and conformity.  To those at the top, it is figuring out how to get people who are naturally inclined to freedom and individuality to sacrifice these ideals to serve the needs of the company.

Yeah, I realize it had an anti-capital streak to it.  I'm a bit of a civil libertarian myself.  More of a Thoreau  than an Emerson than a Marx or a Tolstoy. (Though I was involved in the Haymarket Square protests back in the day)

Then again, it was a joke.  So, I was a bit surprised when I received the telegraph explaining that they would love me to give "The Human Element" as a PD explaining the dangers in being obsessed with education-for-job-growth and missing out on the notion of education-for-life.  Perhaps I could even go in character as a representative of a robber baron and force the audience into deconstructing the satire.

It will be interesting.

I'm thinking "The Human Element: Ten Ways to Teach Students to Use People for Personal Gain."  I heard people love lists and numbers at PD.

About a year ago, I fell into the Superman Mythology.  I fell into the mindset that I had to do more, try harder, prove myself and live up to someone's (though I couldn't define the elusive They) standards.  This is the note that Brad the Philosopher sent me.  I re-read it today at the close of the quarter, as I started to move into that guilty feeling of not doing enough:

Dear John,

Last night I went to the school play, “Guys and Dolls.” It was a lot like school plays and I was pretty uncomfortable, bored and glad when it was over and we got home. We went because our neighbor was in the play. (She was really great!). Funny thing is it stirred in me the great desire to be part of a school again.

A bad play, complete with all the mistakes and nervous lines made me miss the imperfections of teaching. I really missed being on the “inside.” I so clearly remember going to the end of the year arts presentation where “my kids” sang, played their instruments and I was trying so hard not to cry. I cried of course but I was trying to be discreet and professional about it.

I remember days when I felt like I was doing a really good job. The lessons were creative, I was connecting and it was really great. I also remember days when everything fell apart, like the day we set the school on fire. I know that during the semester I taught I didn’t get much sleep and I was doing the best I could, but it was so hard to tell if I was doing a good job or not because like you I could see that there was more to do that I just couldn’t do. I am so human.

So… John, what you are doing is special because you care so much. It's hard to believe that some people live for Fantasy Football and teach in their spare time.  I've been through times in my life when the caring felt like a burden and I wished for a touch of the shallow. But alas, life is a vapor and I'd rather feel the pain of caring and trying and hurting.

You’ll probably never feel real good about what you do because you can see so much more that could be done if you were God or just had superhuman powers. Sometimes it seems like people are looking for Superman, but the truth is, we are mortal and can only do so much. Think about it for a second.  How many people did Superman love?  He saved many, I know.  But how many people could he actually love?  The only woman he ever tried to woo, he pushed aside.  You can waste your life saving people and never knowing love, John.

You and I both know this life is a prequel. I'm glad you're happy.  It's just that you yearn for more of what is good.  But like you I am not in heaven yet so we’ll never feel like we are.  When we live out of shame, we try to chase an imaginary perfection that cannot exist in this life.  So, relax.  You've got eternity to tie up the loose ends.  I know this sounds trite, but your best bet is to look at what is done and not what is undone.  Observe it and you'll see that the work you do is powerful.

Press On,

Brad

"Mr. Johnson, I think you need to talk to your class about pencil bullying," a district office representative explains to me.

"Can you elaborate on this?"

"Well, there was an incident where a student pinned up a note on the wall of another students' home."

"Was the wall private or public?"

"It was private, I suppose. But the point is that it was a clear act of pencil bullying."

"So, what would you like me to do about it?" I ask.

"Talk to your class about the severity of pencil bullying.  Let them know that this type of behavior will not be tolerated."

Zero tolerance.  Bad behavior.

We're missing the point. Our lack of tolerance and militaristic mindset is part of what causes bullying.  When we fail to create a safe space for children, bullying increases. Furthermore, our obsession with behavior rather than the human condition only enhances the problem, because it fails to question why students choose to bully other students.

Is it the social capital they gain?  Is it their own insecurity?  Is it what they have seen modeled for them?  Is it the result of being bullied?

I don't have the answers to any of those questions.  However, I do know one thing: bullying is not a result of pencils.  Yes, a public note can amplify the bullying.  Yet, information spread verbally is just as devastating.   A rumor can move just as quickly as a pencil-based message.  However, it doesn't have a paper trail, making it stickier and more organic.

What if pencils do not change bullying so much as help us see that it is a part of the reality of childhood?  What if the paper trail is now the collective voice of all the students who live in fear on a daily basis? Is it possible that bullying is not a new trend so much as it is a part of our public memory that we have deliberately forgotten in order to perpetuate a myth of the innocence of childhood?  What if the deeper reality is that humankind can be dark, even at an early age?

Perhaps the answer isn't a classroom chat about pencil etiquette.  Instead, the answer might be that we truly ask what it means to be human and what it means to love one another in the context of community. Instead of obsessing over pen pal networks and sharpened pencils, we might want to think about the nature of humanity and the darkness that we all share.

As I leave his office, he hands me a stack of fliers and a curriculum for pencil bullying entitled "Let's Erase Bullying."  It has a smiling pencil giving a thumbs up.  I'm doubtful that peppy propaganda will change things.  I'm skeptical that Zero Tolerance will fix it as well.  In fact, I don't have the answers on how to fix it at all, but I suspect it might be more simple and more complex than we imagine.  It might just be that the only solution to "pencil bullying" is love.

The following is my cover redesign for Sages and Lunatics 

 

Here is the cover redesign for Teaching Unmasked:

I rarely watch television.  However, I watch just about every Giants game that's available in Arizona on free t.v.  Free is a misnomer.  The reality is that it's subsidized by alcohol and technology and driving, which are probably not meant to be used together.

One commercial for Blackberry really bothered me.  A peppy couple wanders a fictional city, snatching the collective experiences and loading them into a "smart" phone.  (If intelligence is defined in binary terms, it's not bad nomenclature.  If intelligence means thinking well about life, I'd argue it's a Damn Stupid Phone).

Thus, the acoustic guitar player is replaced with Pandora.  The art house theater is replaced with Net Flicks.  The coffee shop where they meat is replaced with Facebook or Twitter or some other social media (which, in the context of the fictional city seems like an oxymoron).

By the end, I wanted to shout at the television, "Drop the damn phone!  Experience your children in your memory, through your senses, rather than on your phone.  Go to the art house and watch an indie film and talk, in person, flesh and blood, rather than waiting for it on Net Flicks.  Listen to something acoustic  and hope that your life experiences are better at providing a play list than the pre-determined algorithms of Pandora. Make love to one another, because it's better than porn.  Make a meal together, because it's better than Food TV.  The good life isn't found on a screen."

Then I spent the next few hours living vicariously through my favorite sports team (they won) and now I'm staring at a screen writing about my experience.  I'll probably tweet this link as well.  But if the commercial was effective at all, I'll do each of those things a little more reluctantly, knowing that technology has a way of sucking the human out of humanity.

Incidentally, if you want a fictional zombie's perspective on a techno-world, check out a short piece I wrote on Friday.

I allow my students an hour of free time at the end of the quarter.  Most of them go online to play games, while a few of them scramble to finish bits and pieces of projects they hadn't finished.  However, one student, a "low achiever" by test results, walks up to me.

"Mr. Spencer, is it true that you can't believe in God and science at the same time?"

"Why are you asking?"

"I read it online yesterday.  I heard the man with the computer voice who is really smart said that God can't exist if you believe in science."

"What do you think?"

"I'm not sure how believing in a creator makes science impossible or how believing in God makes science impossible.  We all came from a big bang, right?"  he smiles. "Get it?"

"Yeah, let's keep it school appropriate."

"I don't really believe science is about beliefs.  It's about what you observe.  It's about what you prove.  Religion is about things that are too big or too confusing or too personal to prove."

"I'm not sure what I believe.  I guess I believe in God, but only because I'm supposed to.  And I guess I believe in science, because it's what I'm supposed to believe in.  Church and school aren't really a choice."

"So, what do you believe in?"

"Love.  Right now that's about it.  Maybe someday God?" he asks with a thick question mark at the end.  "Maybe it will all make sense.  But right now it's all too confusing for me."

He walks away in silence, places the earphones in his ears and watches a comedy routine of George Lopez.

I don't know where he'll go with the conversation, but I know this much: he might fail the AIMS and Galileo tests, but if he keeps asking questions, he'll get a decent education.




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

Joel: Micah, get off the bookshelves.

Micah: No!

Joel: Santa's watching you.

Micah: So is Jesus.

Joel: But unlike Jesus, Santa doesn't love you know matter what you do.

Yes, Joel, Santa tends to utilize market norms while Jesus tends to utilize social norms.

*     *     *

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

I give the students a problem:

"You're running a marathon, so where is the best place to train?"  Kids argue about the streets and the canal and finally agree that, though there are more homeless people on the canal and they may feel more scary, the chances of being injured by a car are probably higher.

I explain that I'll start my route at 43rd Avenue and Peoria and take the canal to wherever it stops.

"What is the problem?"

"How far will you run?" a kid asks.

"How far is the canal compared to how much you need to run?" another student adds.

So, we decide I'm training for eighteen miles and I'll need a route that is all canal-based.

The kids have to piece together what they know of the north side of town, what they understand about the distance of the roads and what information they can get from Google Maps.  They then move toward finding the length of the canal (roughly estimating, though, knowing that the canal is not entirely a straight-shot line - this becomes a meaningful side conversation with a pair of girls convinced that precision has to be key to decent athletic training)

So, in the end, the students find it and apply what they already know about the Pythagorean Theorem to the problem.  The students were engaged in the learning, sharing information and tutoring those who were lost in one of the steps.  Each pair seemed genuinely excited when they discovered the answer. One group was so sure the answer was wrong that they pulled out a ruler and compared sides of the triangle and seemed even more excited when their work was correct.

*     *     *

Here's the hitch:

They all thought that it was a crazy way to find the distance.

"You wouldn't actually do that, would you?"

I explain that before I knew of Map My Run, this was how I estimated my routes.

"Wouldn't you just take a cell phone with a GPS.  There's got to be an app for that," a student responds.

It hits me that the only context I can think of when I've actually used the Pythagorean Theorem is one that is so antiquated that it seems entirely irrelevant.  It's the same thing that happens when I create mental algebraic equations to determine tips or estimate hours on a road trip.

Then an opposite thought hits me: the cell phones and websites and GPS are great.  They really are.  But I wonder if maybe the real Pseudo Context is the Context of Pseudo Reality we create with our gadgets. Perhaps I'm crazy for using Pythagorean's Theorem to determine a distance.  Perhaps I'm also crazy for looking at the moon to see the phase (as opposed to getting a widget).  But perhaps I'd be just as crazy to take an electronic leash with me when I run and to confuse pixels on a screen with the lunar satellite orbiting in my terrestrial reality.

*     *     *

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

"Hey dad, throw the ball to me. Make it high so I can hit is easier," Joel explains in the waning moments of  the evening.  After a bit of cajoling, he's convinced me that post-sunset is still an acceptable amount of light for a quick game of two-man baseball.  Man.  It strikes me that he'll be a man in a blink.  The newborn who slept on my chest and gripped my index finger with his entire fist will someday grow up.  Nothing profound, I guess.  It's just that the beginnings of autumn stir up the reality of life-as-a-vapor.

I lob an high, easy change up and he swings just in time to knock it into our cat's claw.

"Look at that, dad."

Something has changed in him.  He's spelling words and reading more.  However, that's not it.  He's asking deeper questions, too.  The figures he draws have eye brows and lips and a tongue and teeth.

It's the word "dad."  I'm not sure I'm ready for this transition.  I know it sounds overly emotional and sentimental, but I assure you that I didn't cry on his first day of kindergarten and I don't dread the thought of the teenage years.

I just thought it would last longer.  Christy doesn't have the same transition.  Joel will probably always call her "mom" and "momma."  But the transition to "dad" feels a little more permanent.  It feels more like a clean cut.  On some level, I'm already not his "daddy."

"Daddy" comes with a whole set of memories and unspoken expectations and rituals that began over five years ago.  "Daddy" is what I whispered to him when he clutched my finger and fell asleep on my chest.

"Dad" is a word for camping and baseball games and talks about philosophy.  Dad is the word he'll use when he graduates and when he gets his first car and when he tells me about the love of his life.  I'm excited about being his dad, but I'm still getting used to not being called "daddy."



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

I call Javi the Hippie on a frustrating afternoon.  My students aced the high stakes reading assessment and did well on the math test, but I feel empty when I should be excited.  The truth is that I'm second-guessing so much of how I approach teaching and I need a little clarity.

"Javi, I'm realizing how little I know about how to teach my students.  They're a lot less productive than when I just taught social studies.  Sometimes it feels like it takes twice as long for them to finish a task."

"You're right.  They are less productive.  But it's not about productivity.  It's about learning.  Is their work any worse than your previous classes?"

"No, it's actually been better, I think."

"So?"

"I also feel like I discipline my kids more often.  I've yelled more than in the past."

"It only feels that way, John.  You probably raise your voice, what once or twice a week?"

"Yeah."

"So, that feels more frequent only because it's one class.  But in the past you might have distributed that yelling over six classes and so it would have felt like it was really, really rare for you to yell."

Javi then tells me why middle school is like a city.  We ran effeciently and students were productive and, as a team, we had some huge results.  I could run my class like a small non-profit in the midst of this big city.  I rehearsed lessons by teaching them to five or six groups.  I became the expert in my area.  In essence, my classroom became somewhat iconic in the midst of this bustling city.

And yet . . .

Students weren't known.

Teaching self-contained is more like a small town.  The pace is slower, but the conversation is a little more personal.  There are moments when we bicker, because we have seen too much of each other.  It might even mean that I yell a few times, but it's a small community and that's what happens in small communities.  So, math class might look less like a fast food joint and more like a local mom and pop shop.  It's less productive, but it's unique and it tastes better.

I leave the conversation thinking about my own middle school experience.  I think I would have preferred a small town to a big city.

*      *      *

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

Every student in my class had to write a folktale.  Here's mine:

Florbit McCorbitt was pretty much average despite his unusual name.  He lived an ordinary life in rural Nebraska, but he always yearned for something greater.  Maybe he would fly to the moon or discover a star or get a reality show portraying his perceived stupidity of small-town life.  Or maybe he would develop his musical skills and sing trite pop songs in front of the three judges and he'd pretend to be humble win the British guy says, "Everything so far has sounded like drunk karaoke, but this sounds professional."

Or maybe not.

Maybe he would just till the land and attend the potlucks and grow old and die a bitter and angry man who curses his parents for naming him Florbit.

On his sixteenth birthday, Florbit found a genie. It was really just a Diaper Genie, but he rubbed it for the sake of irony and sarcasm and the juxtaposition of good luck and crap that seemed to make the economy work in rural Nebraska.

Diaper Genie explained to him, "You might think that I'm full of crap, which I am.  But I'll give you three wishes, anyway."

"I want to get past my name.  I hate it.  I hate it.  But if I'm going to be Florbit, let my name be important.
I want to be one of the wealthiest men in America.  I also want lasting fame based upon huge accomplishments."

"What else?" Diaper Genie inquired.

"Oh, I thought fame and accomplishments were separate."

"Not so much separate as much as cause and effect.  It gets blurry at times.  It's a rather contentious issue among most genies.  I err on the side of generosity."

"Well, in that case, I want to make people laugh."

So, it happened.  Not all at once, mind you, but it happened over the course of his lifetime.  He inherited a sum of money, invested it wisely and grew to be a wealthy investor. Don't get me wrong.  He worked for it, but he knew that it was money he had never earned.

During this time, he gained quasi-rock star status with his own reality television show called Gold Digger, where he pretended to be a senile octogenarian to the chagrin of bottle-blond twenty-somethings.

He paid a handsome sum to go into space and he smiled at the papers that read, "Florbit McCorbitt Goes Into Orbit."

When the money grew tiresome, he tried to save Africa with nets and the school system with grants and he held ginormous checks in front of cancer patients at the hospitals.  People saw him as a saint and on certain days he was able to convince himself of this as well.

Yet, he grew bitter at his lack of ability to make people laugh.  Truth be told, he scared small children, especially when he played a magician or donned the clown make-up.  He couldn't even get out a decent pun when he visited his Nebraska hometown.

Eventually, he gave up on the thought of humor.  At the age of seventy-five, he turned to his wife and said, "I have lived a good life.  I have a lasting legacy.  I outgrew my town and I got past my awful name."

"Will any of it last?" his wife asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the buildings named after you will someday crumble.  The company you own will eventually be run into the ground by a careless CEO.  No one will care about the billionaire in space.  It won't last. None of it."

Minutes later, he experienced a heart attack.  On the hospital bed, he realized that nothing would continue.  The idea of a legacy was simply a story he had told himself to avoid the notion of mortality.  So, he grew even more bitter and terrified at the idea of death.

Then he died. Not there in the hospital, but at home.  He choked on an apricot pit and nobody noticed, not even his young trophy wife number three, who was at a spa getting a facial, trying to convince herself that life held more meaning than looking pretty.

Over time, the buildings named after him were torn down and replaced by strip malls and Super Wal-Marts. The school he founded became a joke until a newer, brighter charter school paid a hefty sum to buy the building and name it the Pinnacle of Excellence Academy. Meanwhile, the company he founded lost market share and eventually became irrelevant.  MTV didn't even bother to run re-runs of his show and only occasionally did someone on YouTube reference the show.  His wife remarried and didn't mind too much, because she felt, on some level, that she never knew him.  He had been a minor character in her story.

So in less than a score, he was forgotten and all that remained was a headstone in a cemetery.  His body had decomposed and his accomplishments had crumbled.  All that was left was his name, his cursed, awful name: Florbit McCorbitt, the man who added humor to an otherwise solemn place. In his death, he had learned how to make people laugh.

The rainclouds gather and the class grows antsy in anticipation.  For all the brick and concrete and steel of the school, the natural element has a way of awakening something primitive in every student.  It's not that primitive is bad, either.  It's simply deeper, more human, more earthy and real than dividing fractions.

The claps of thunder disrupt my monologue.

I let go.

Students gather near the windows and watch, studying first the drops and then the hail.  A few brave souls venture outside and experiencing the pummeling of a lifetime, but the fist-fulls of atmospheric ice are a prize they relish.

"Is it safe to eat?" one asks.

A girl pulls out her paper and begins to draw.  Her twin sister slaps her hand away and says, "Not yet.  You can sketch later.  Right now we can watch."

A boy standing by our class camera takes the twin's advice and sets down the machine.

When we study conflict, we study Man versus Nature and Man versus Machine.  Today, though, we are watching Nature versus Machine and though the war may be lost, this battle belongs to the clouds.

I pick my students up ten minutes early from lunch.  Most of them are jumping in puddles, dancing in the rain (some of them perhaps too suggestively) and a few are simply looking up at the sky.  None are in the covered awning, though.  None of them want to march in rows.

It's as if the natural element breaks something loose within the industrial confines of a school building.  I gather them up, walk into the classroom and ask them to be quiet.

"Listen.  Try not to talk.  Avoid the chatter of your own voice.  Just listen.  Listen."  I tell them.

They talk.

A few of them begin to shout when the hail storm starts and the power turns off.  "You're missing it.  You're so busy talking that you're missing it."  Until I realize my words should be directed at me.  They're not missing it at all.  Some kids will sit in silence and listen intently with the rain.  Others observe it in dance and in puddle-splashing and some of them want to talk about it.

Release.

We all walk outside and observe it in our own way.  My kindred spirit introverts find a few corners of solitude and close their eyes and open them, finding something powerful in the experience.  My extroverts pick up the hail and ask one another how it happens and if the water is pure and whether or not it could break a window.

I later have students paint pictures and either write poetry or scientific observations.

Rain feels peaceful to me.  So, I get this picture:

For others, it feels like a carnival.  I have to get over my own desire to get them to experience what I feel.  So, I smile when I see these two pictures (painted from students in opposite sides of the classroom)

And then I also have to respect those who avoid the metaphorical and simply paint what they see.  That, too, is observation. If I truly believe that science is the observation, then this girl gets it:

Later, students go to Photojournalism and take pictures:

Later, when I'm out at duty, a student says to me, "It was fun to have free time."

"But I gave you assignments," I explain. 

"Yeah, but it was still free time." 

Perhaps she's right.

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

When I read my walk-through evaluations, I seem like a super-teacher.  "Almost the entire class is actively engaged," one reads.  Another explains, "I look forward to your class for the higher-level questions you ask."  If you read my evaluations, I look like I have it together, as if my teardrops cure leprosy.  However, walk into my classroom and it looks a little different.  I have moments when I yell.  I have lessons that drag on too long.  My projects often do not have enough broken-down tasks and so students get frustrated by the lack of direction.

So, where do I go?

When I look inward, I grow increasingly self-critical.  I create a Utopian ideal that I will never attain.  I create tables with strengths and weaknesses and then I begin chipping away at the "cons" table until it becomes a whack-a-mole game where I can't knock things down without something else popping up.

If I want to find the expert opinion of my classroom, the best solution is a student survey.  After all, the students are the ones who spend hours in my room and they are the ones who are actually responsible for learning.  So, with the potential for a self-doubt spiral, I had my students take a survey.

On the plus side:

• The entire class sees the students as "mostly well-behaved" to "very well behaved."  
• Fifty four percent of the students felt that they learned more than they had expected and the remainder felt that they learned what they expected. Seventy-seven percent described me as "strict but fair."  
• The top descriptors for the class assignments were meaningful, challenging and interesting.  
• The top descriptors for me were funny, caring and knowlegable. 

And yet . . .

• Six of the students described me as mean.  
• Four of the students believe I pick favorites.  
• Four believe that I am often angry.  
• Two of my students believe I don't care.  

I can write these up as bitter students, but the reality is that I have a group of four to six students who I've hurt.  These won't show up on my staff evaluations.  However, they are there - a clear reminder to me that I don't have all the answers.  I don't have it all together.

The student surveys don't prove anything new.  Instead, they suggest what I already know: that I am a caring, compassionate, hard-working teacher; that I strive to make learning meaningful and challenging; but that I am also broken and that I sometimes get angry and that even when I try my hardest I just my show some favoritism.

In other words, the student surveys confirm the tagline of my blog: that I am an not-so-master teacher who feels grateful to be doing this gig.


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 think we should ban a book with gay penguins or with Tom Sawyer using the "N word" or for a main character who attends a magical British boarding school.  I don't think we should ban poorly written literature either.  If a kid wants to read John Grisham then so be it.

However, from my experience banning books can be good for children.  It allows them to see how power and irrational fear drive the political process.  Call it an introduction to the Tea Party movement. If a book is banned and a child is rational enough to pick up on this, we've unintentional raised a "small d" democrat, "small r" republican and "small l" libertarian. All improper nouns.  And sometimes impropriety is precisely what a democracy needs.

In addition, banning books also allows children to see that literature is controversial and dangerous.  It seems that many students have experienced bribery and basal readers and end up with a misconception that reading is a bland chore that only the nerdy enjoy. They trade the joy of reading for something more tangible and more likely to lead to a cardiac arrest. (I've often thought that the best way to get kids to stay away from drugs would be to offer free pizza coupons to any child who tries a narcotic. Drugs would become horribly uncool. Maybe the Ad Council could even create cheesy advertisements promoting the use of heroin)  

Don't get me wrong.  We should be outraged that schools ban books.  But we should be more outraged that schools have done something far worse with literature.  They've made it a chore.  They've made it worse than a chore.  They've turned it into a punishment.

I've done it, too. I've been guilty of taking amazing books, stretching them out over an insanely long time and adding "strategies" that simply slowed down the reading flow. Meanwhile, the textbooks have chopped up quality literature, ripped apart the stories and then handed us a piece of dead, fleshy writing in a seventy-pound Lit Book covered with "graphic features" to take away the need to think.

Want a child to read To Kill a Mockingbird? Ban it, like some schools do.  Want a child to catch the subtle sarcasm of Mark Twain? Ban it from the school library and let it rise up on the playground.  Let teachers sneak good literature into the classroom and play the rebel role of supplier.  Watch what happens.  In fact, close the library and cover it with caution tape.  Let the librarians set up a less-than-orderly dwelling place for students daring enough to venture in.  Create a Decelerated Reader program where students caught with good books lose points from their final grade.

Overall, reading might diminish in schools. However, the few who are bold enough to grab a book won't complain that reading is boring.

Movies are best suited for telling fictional stories.  They require a long-term commitment from the audience who demands an emotional experience packed with character development and intriguing plots and deeper themes. Or a ton of explosions.  Moreover, movies are our cultural mythology in a post-literate society.  Watch a philosophical discussion among grown-ups and see which is quoted first: a respected philosopher (anyone from Aristotle to Erasmus to Hegel or Wittgenstein) or a movie.  Chances are they go to The Truman Show before Plato's Cave.

It's not that movies are a poor way of telling the truth, either.  It's just that they aren't well suited for telling non-fiction, nuanced narratives of complex social issues.  We can watch a documentary on Rwanda and leave saying, "I'm not so fond of genocide," and in the process cry a little for the loss of life.  But we need to talk to people, real people, over time and in context if we want to understand the issue at a deeper level.
Television is worse.  It's essentially a fast-paced conversation broken up by interruptions.  It's like speed-dating the cinema.  True, it's possible for a series to captivate the hearts of the audience.  However, this takes years to develop an extended narrative with true character development and subplots.

Movies are most dangerous when they try to be serious and persuasive.  A documentary on a short, human story comes close enough to the place of human narrative that it can still be redeeming.  For example, I'd love to watch the documentary about the teenage paparazzi. And for what it's worth, I still want to make a mocumentary called Yard Sale People.

However, a documentary that attempts to unravel the systemic ills of an entire social institution while simultaneously offering a solution within an hour will resort to dishonest analysis and propaganda.  The problem with Waiting for Superman isn't that it's a poorly produced film.  It's that it's attempting to tackle a topic in a medium that isn't suited for a large-scale discussion.

Similarly, television is most dangerous when it tries to be serious as well.  The problem with Education Nation goes beyond the bias and misinformation.  The real problem is that you cannot have twenty guests, a studio audience, commercials and a moderator who knows little about his subject matter all crammed into a few hours.  Television is designed to entertain.  Arguing policy and pedagogy requires interaction and intelligence - two things the television simply isn't suited to do.

So, I'll watch Goodwill Hunting and smile at the dialog and enjoy the story.  I'll watch The Office and enjoy the satire of the workplace.  And in doing so, I'll continue to avoid "serious" television and large-topic documentaries.

*     *     *

Hey, check out my book Teaching Unmasked   You might enjoy it.