When solving a word problem, I often give my students a scenario (rather than a word problem) and have them develop the problem through a narrative format:

• Conflict: What is the urgent need being addressed by the scenario?  What type of conflict could exist?  
• Setting: Where does this problem occur within the world?  How have you seen a problem like this in your world?  
• Plot: What are the different ways that people would try and address the conflict? Which methods would work best?  
• Characters: Who, in life, would actually have to solve this type of a problem? 
• Climax: What happens in the end?  
• Resolution:  How can the ending be communicated?  How can you prove that this solution works? Why did this problem make sense?

At the beginning of the year my students tend to hate word problems.  Some hate them, because they struggle with the vocabulary.  Others hate them, because the word problem was always this long, laborious ending to a thirty-problem set of algorithms.  A bit like finishing a sprint with a marathon.

Most, however, didn't hate word problems.  What they hated were poorly constructed stories.  Phony stories.  Not so much unrealistic stories.  My students would have enjoyed a few wizards or dragons or drunken wood gnomes.  What they hated were the stories that went against the human condition, like the fire fighter who uses the Pythagorean Theorem to choose a ladder or finding the surface area of a pyramid that you'll be adding to your backyard.

A parent gives me a dirty look when I drop Brenna down the slide at the park.  She's too young.  She could fall.  I'm letting her take a risk and it seems like insanity to them.  Another parent shakes her head in disapproval when I let Micah jump off the top of the "bridge" into the sand.

I'm not all that scared of the park.

I am, however, afraid of the computer.

I don't allow Brenna to use my computer. However, she's figured out that if she moves the mouse, she can hit the red icon and take pictures. Photo Booth is magic to her. Then again, so is a mirror. Either way, they offer her an imperfect image of herself (someday it will be pop culture giving an ever more magical, artificial and dangerous body image instead).

It's mechanical, but to her it's magic.

Joel has figured out how to work iTunes so that he can listen to the song "Richard Manuel is Dead." He doesn't understand audio compression, digital storage and the spinning hard drive of a MacBook.

It's mechanical, but to him it's magic.

As long as we focus tech integration on "how to use tools" we allow a mechanical process to remain an act of magic and the problem with pseudo-magic is that it inhibits kids from experiencing the majestic mysterious of what they can actually see, smell, taste, hear and feel.  My children will some day use a computer, but not until they can strip away some of its magic.  

I want Joel to trust his handwritten letters and experience the magic of forming, by hand, words and sentences and stories before he ever taps away at a keyboard.  I want Micah to bang a bongo drum and play a harmonica and tap the keys of a piano before "making" songs on Garage Band.  I want Brenna to learn to draw a sketchy self-portrait before playing around with a picture on Photoshop.

Perhaps I am too much of a Luddite, but I am terrified of having a child who grows up to be more impressed by a small screen than the vast canvas of a night sky.

For about as long as my children have been talking, I've been telling them stories. Truthfully, I began the story-telling when were simply abstract sounds. At some point, each of them began telling their own stories (Brenna's not quite there yet).

Yesterday, Micah told me a story:

"Once upon a time there was a rabbit named Jemdi who lived in the forest. He was playing with his friends Larry and Biffer. They were bored and couldn't decide what kind of game to play. So, they decided to ask Jemdi's mama. They looked all over the forest and couldn't find her. So they looked all over the city and couldn't find her. Then they found her and asked her what game to play. She told them, 'You've been playing a game the whole time. It's called hide and seek.' So they laughed. The end."

I remember learning about the "stages of development" in my college education classes.  The professor warned us not to use sarcasm, irony or figurative language because little kids see things literally.  After watching both Joel and Micah at the age of four, I'm noticing that it's not quite so rigid.

It has me thinking that maybe a child's mind is more mysterious than what can be measured in a lab.

If someone says they want to change education, I’m open to it. I see that the system is in need of change and I will include my school within this. However, first, I need to know the following:

1. When was the last time you were wrong? When was the last time you changed your mind?

If you can’t answer this question within a minute, I can’t listen to you. Don’t bother talking to me. I can’t trust someone whose chief attribute is hubris.

2. Where are your biggest places of ignorance?

If your answer is too vague and contrived (I work too hard, I trust people too easily), I can’t listen to you. Don’t bother talking to me. I can’t trust someone guided by faux expertise at the expense of paradox, nuance and mystery.

3. Will your own children be participating in the system that you will be reforming? If you don't have children, would you trust your nieces, nephews, neighbors or grandkids to attend the type of place you are trying to create?

If your answer is “no,” I can’t listen to you. Don’t bother talking to me. I can’t trust someone who won’t treat my students in the same way as his or her own family or friends.

4. When was the last time you used a drinking fountain, a public library or a public park?

If it’s been over a month, I’ll assume it was the weather. If it’s been over a year, I can’t listen to you. Don’t bother talking to me. I can’t trust someone to run a public institution who does not participate in the most rudimentary public institutions.

5. When was the last time you had a personal conversation with the custodian? When was the last time you asked a bus driver or a cafeteria worker about how to reform the schools?

If your answer is “never,” I won’t listen to you. Don’t bother talking to me. I can’t trust someone who doesn’t believe in democracy and collective wisdom.

I love getting to teach idioms.  Given my high ELL population, it's something we cover throughout the year in small doses.  However, for two days, we get to find obscure and random idioms.  I typically show them a cartoon from The Oatmeal about using "literally" and they respond by showing the figurative and literal definition of an idiom. They have to draw a picture of both the figurative and literal meaning with the goal of finding humor in the literal.

With the netbooks, this proved easier than I had imagined.  Every student could name at least five new idioms they had never heard of before.

Some of my favorite literal pictures (pictures will be on our class blog soon):

• Rule of Thumb: a giant thumb saying, "Did I stutter?  I'm in charge." 
• I give you my heart: a man talking to the surgeon saying, "I could buy her a ring, but a heart transplant will really show her that I love her."
• Explosive Offense: a scene of Lambeau Field with a mushroom cloud rising from it 
• Pretty penny: first picture is a woman at a car dealership saying, "Is this penny shiny enough?" The next one is Penny from Inspector Gadget saying, "You're selling me into slavery so you can buy a flatscreen?" 
• Stuck in my head: a man with an iPod lodged inside his head
• I lost my better half: a half-woman walking around
• I'm tired of your crap: a man sleeping next to a toilet
• Chip on your shoulder: Chip Kelly (apparently the head coach of the Oregon Ducks) sitting on a guy's shoulders
• I lost a part of me: A friend yelling at his other friend who had moved, "Dude, you can't just go to California and take my nose.  I had planned on using it." 
• Blood Is Thicker Than Water: a scientist stands there with a beaker and says, "So, we checked the density and it turns out blood really is thicker than water." 
• Never Cry Wolf: (perhaps the geekiest of all) a picture of Wolf Blitzer saying, "Did you call?  Seriously, did you call?  Because if this is some prank again, I'm going to be pissed." 

I typically hate puns, but this activity is so over-the-top and allows students to create some of the most random cartoons that it makes for an hour of solid laughter.  

We're considering creating a 500 Idiom ebook with an illustration for each idiom demonstrating the literal versus figurative meaning.  It might be a fun project.

Television has degenerated into a series of really bad reality shows.  Let's run a show on a bunch of teen moms and then mock their own personal crises.  Whatever happened to the good ol' days when we would create comedies based upon soothing positive racial stereotypes, drunkards escaping their lives or aliens who were trying to eat cats?  Pop culture has degenerated since the eighties.

Movies have become a jumbled mess of special effects.  Do we really need to remake Tron?  We can't let that one fade from public memory.  I miss the days when we had deep-thinking movies like Flight of the Navigator that dealt with the time-space continuum paradox.

Who's to blame?  It's certainly not the audience's fault.  Social context has nothing to do with it.  After all, I've seen some nice anecdotal evidence that some people love thoughtful indie films.  Is it the fault of the executives who push drab entertainment on an unsuspecting public?  No, the power brokers are wise executives whose acumen should be emulated in other social institutions.

I blame the Screen Actors Guild. If they would stop protecting such mediocre writers and actors, we wouldn't be in this mess.   It's the fault of the socialist entertainment regime that we end up with such horrible blue-state comedy shows as 30 Rock while Palin's propaganda show is relegated to basic cable.

I know, I know.  It's not the union's job to change the quality of the work.  But we're past the days of sweat shops and mangled arms on a factory floor.  The union seems more interested in ensuring that some half-baked, low-quality ten-liner gets a working wage than in preventing movies like Tron to get past the cutting room floor.

It's clear that the union continues to protect the sub-par, mediocre actors at the expense of the audience.  How else could one explain the barrage of bad Brendon Fraser movies?  It has to be tenure.  Someone has to protecting that man's job and it sure as hell isn't the public.

Meanwhile, the rising cost of hiring actors has led to quality jobs being outsourced by technology.  Take a look at all three Matrix movies.  You can't possibly expect the audience to believe that someone so choppy and wooden is actually human.  But with the right amounts of CGI and a few decent explosions and we convince ourselves that maybe Keanu Reeves might not be an android.

So, for the sake of humanity and the recovery of the American, patriotic ideas, it's time we stand up and demand the demise of the Screen Actors Guild.

Photo Credit - Flickr Creative Commons - Hal Dick

My son colored ten pages in his coloring book.  He improved in shading and in understanding the colors of shapes.  Beyond that, though, he didn't learn much.  It was a decent escape and a lot of fun, but it wasn't particularly creative.  Most of the deeper thinking had been manufactured in advance.

Yesterday he drew monsters: hairy monsters, angry monsters, lonely and misunderstood monsters.  Some had three eyes or four eyes and one had none eyes and had learned how to see by feeling the temperature of things around him.  The monsters had names and stories and occasionally a setting or two.  Mostly plot, though.  The monsters were actively engaged in creating and destroying and saving and losing.  Joel shifted from creative thought to analytical thought in a constant ebb and flow that simply doesn't happen on a coloring book.  

The monsters weren't as pretty as the coloring books.  I guess monsters aren't supposed to be pretty, so it's okay.  They were raw and honest and unfiltered.  The coloring book felt like Celine Dion.  The monsters felt like Iron and Wine.  

*       *       *

My friend Javi asked his class last year to brainstorm a list of social issues within the Maryvale community. Students began tracing their hands, drawing big bubbles and trying their best to remember how they were supposed to brainstorm.   A list would have worked well. What he didn't need was a bunch of hands or bunnies or boxes.  "They were recreating worksheets, John.  And that was the problem.  Teachers had heard about graphic organizers, so they started trying to find as many as possible and so many of them were simply worksheets.  Nothing that engages the learner in actually thinking.  The creative and critical thinking had been done for them."  

I'm not against graphic organizers.  However, the litmus test of a graphic organizer should be:

• Does it provoke students to think deeper about the subject?
• Does it enable students to organize their own thoughts without having to learn a new structure?

If the answer is no to either question, I won't use the graphic organizer in my class. 

Sometimes I think the most hyped-up technology seems to be a computerized version of a coloring book.   Xtranormal videos are neat, but sock puppet theater might actually provoke deeper thought.  Wordle has its place, but asking students to analyze word count on a spreadsheet might force them to be a little more analytical. Prezis can be pretty, but if there aren't the right inquiry questions, it simply becomes an online version of a poster board.  It's not that any of those tools are inherently bad.  However, they often fail to lead to learning, because the the program has already done the thinking for the students.  

Sometimes a shared document, a podcast, a from-scratch video (using cameras) might look a little less flashy, but they empower students to take ownership of their own learning.  Something as uncool as a spreadsheet can be powerful, because it reduces the time spent on rote skills and allows students to analyze data.  A concept map might not buzz and beep and talk to the students, but it mirrors the way we make mental connections. 

Ultimately, the question guiding all technology integration should be, "How does this change the way students think?"

If the organizing and creating are all prefabricated, it's a worksheet and a coloring book - sometimes a very slick version, but still a coloring book.  If, however, the medium allows students to think deeper about life than it's worth using.  

Adam Duritz explained a song this way:

"This is called 'When I Dream of Michaelangelo.' I finally figured out that the interesting thing about reaching for something divine and trying to do something extraordinary in art and never quite being able to reach that . . . the really messed up thing about that wasn't the idea that you can't reach something perfect. It was the idea that you spent all your time reaching for something perfect and you forget about touching the human being around you. You kind of lose your humanity, which was the big problem you run into."

"Achieve more" seems to be the mantra of current education.  We see it on the movies.  Just stand and deliver.  Liberate the students through freedom writing.  Just learn the fifty-two magic rules and teach as though your hair is on fire.

Reach for the stars, they say.  But what if we did?  Kids would either crash down in flames, Icarus-style or hit the atmosphere and rotate above others in a lonely self-propelling satellite state.  Or maybe they'd reach the nearest star, being obliterated by the sun.

Maybe better advice would be to tell kids to go out, alone for awhile, and take in the stars.  Watch.  Observe.  Listen to the light.  Contemplate.  Slow down.  Experience the mystery.  Do all of that and then go out and do something that really matters.

Do more.

Be more.

Achieve more.

Go further.

Those were the values of Wall Street that led to the cheating and overinflation and the explosion of a housing market where people I love are still trying to pull out the shrapnel.  It's the values of hyper-competitive athletes who literally lost their balls in the desire to win.   Whether it's super-athletes or the super-wealthy or even super-teachers, it's next to impossible to reach for the stars without losing a part of one's humanity.

I'm not against achievement.  I'm proud of the documentaries my kids create and the murals they paint and the poetry they analyze.  I'm proud of the way they handled the challenging "I Have a Dream" speech last week and the ways they connected linear equations to authentic situation.

And yet . . .

. . . this blog post is a warning to me.  Don't lose sight of the humanity in the drive to achieve.  Don't forget that the only way to do something truly great is to be someone truly humble.

photo credit - flickr creative commons  jwgustavson

I read a quote from CNN:

"Wisconsin is ground zero," said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. "I think it is going to determine largely whether the pampered nature of these public employees is finally reigned in."

It got me fuming.

For awhile now, I've generally avoided mentioning politics on this blog.  I lose followers and subscribers and nobody ever changes their mind anyway.  And yet . . .  I have a few thoughts in response to the events in Wisconsin:

1. I'm not pampered.  If I had a Master's in business instead of education, I'd probably be making a minimum of seventy grand.  I don't pretend teachers are a horribly mistreated group.  I do, however, believe that we are not pampered.  It's not an easy job and it doesn't pay a great salary.  Yet, it has it's rewards and we cannot grow bitter in light of the times we get to impact a child's life.
2. Like most teachers, I didn't enter the profession for the money.  However, I still want to earn a living wage.  
3. Complaining that public employees are earning too much in a bad economy ignores the reality that when the economy is good, we don't get massive bonuses and inflated salaries.  Where was the large conservative outcry about how low teachers were being paid from 2000-2009?
4. Unions are a part of democracy and they are a part of capitalism.  It's the idea that by manipulating the supply, they increase the price paid for workers.  The right to strike is what creates a check on the right to fire at will.  Like anything that works in America, unions and employers both need to find a balance.  Right now the debate lacks nuance. 
5. For all the times that a union supports a lousy, lazy worker, there are at least a dozen times that it protects hard-working employees who are being screwed over in a power play.  I've seen it firsthand in my own district and I've experienced it when the district wouldn't pay me my correct salary.  My district has much better working conditions than nearby districts because we have collective bargaining and a very active NEA membership.
6. People who get angry that they "have to be" in a union fail to understand that it's a social contract. It's like complaining about having to pay taxes.  Quit whining if you benefit from it.  You don't want to be in a union?  Fine, there are non-union jobs out there.  But here's the hitch (generally): they don't pay as well or offer the same benefits.  Arizona teachers experience much worse conditions than Wisconsin teachers.  In fact, union-based states tend to have higher levels of achievement.
7. It was Wall Street and greedy investors who screwed over America.  Let's be straight about that.  When they were making gazillions on make believe loans, I was teaching kids how to read, write and think critically.  I'm not the enemy.  If you want to be angry about government spending, take your Tea Party protests to the corporate offices of Bank of America or Chase.  
8. It's not simply about budgets.  The true war is a war on public institutions.  Democracy fails without an educated public.  Period.  When citizens are uninformed, society shifts toward plutocracy. The media has done a horrible job with this.  The debate has been framed as a "budget repair."  Fine, I get that.  Sometimes people face a pay cut.  However, taking away things like collective bargaining or the right to strike moves past the issue of budget and into the question of workers' rights. 
9. Amazing how Obama suddenly supports unions, but pushes education policies that are anti-public, anti-teacher and anti-union. 
10. I agree that putting off debt for the future generations is a bad investment.  Then again, I also think that putting off their education in the name of debt-reduction is equally ridiculous.  

Bonus Thought:

It's fun to see things so heated in Wisconsin.  For some reason, I always imagine the place as a very polite mostly cheese-eating and hot dishing baking utopia where everyone is pretty much well-behaved.  Go Wisconsin.  Nice to see a little rage once in awhile.

I don't (openly) listen to country music. However, I must admit that the songs are often catchy, clever and comforting (so hooray for alliteration).  I've been exposed to enough country tunes that I think I've figured out how they' write them.  With that in mind, here's a formula for writing country songs:

Option 1: Brag About Being a Redneck
This type of song must have pop culture references and poor grammar.  It works best if it's a "let me brag about my wife" kind of song.  I like to start with the references. We'll make fun of Oprah, tai chi, chai tea and Starbucks.  Then we'll promote NASCAAR and beer.  For my poor grammar, I'll choose "she don't."

She don't watch Oprah Winfrey
while drinking chai tea
and doing tai chi

She don't like to go to Starbucks
she'd rather hit the big trucks
like Chuck Norris nunchucks

She's been known to scream at NASCAR
and then we head to our bar
we end up going real far
if you know what I mean

Option 2: Sappy Religious Song
This one typically doesn't have bad grammar.  It just needs to have references to Jesus (explicitly -- it can't be Brahma or Buddha and certainly not Allah) and maybe a clever hook.  In this case, we'll write about drinking iced tea.  Oh, and it needs at least one out-of-date idiom.  In this case, we'll choose "I don't cause a stink."

I don't cause a stink
but when I drink
I always have to think
yeah, I think of Jesus

Because when I drink
I have a tea
it's not for me
it's just iced tea
iced tea for Jesus

Because I love my wife
and I found new life
and it's free of strife
So I drink for Jesus
Iced tea for Jesus
Yeah, I think of Jesus

*Follow this by a story of recovering from alcohol addiction, finding Jesus and loving your family and it's a hit in both Contemporary Christian circles and country circles.

I'm not sure how I became acquainted with quoteflections, but I've enjoyed how the site has gradually shifted toward a deep, eclectic mix of "what's going on in the world."  I enjoy the connections that Paul makes and the way he seems to sift through a ton of news sources to summarize, analyze and, most importantly, start a dialogue with his blog.

So, I was excited over a year ago when he began the 365 Quote Quest, where he would provide a quote and offer some insightful questions to guide the readers toward reflection.  He's now turning the blog into a book aptly titled 365 Quote Quest.  What impresses me most about this little books is that he is thoughtful in which quotes he has chosen and intentional in the kind of questions he asks.  It's not simply another wall calendar type quote lister.  Instead, it is a true quest for wisdom, spurred by vital quotes and insightful questions.

I don't often plug books and I assure you that I'm getting no kickbacks from this.  However, I just thought some of my readers who love wisdom might enjoy picking up the book.

My students often go through school internalizing a lie that the only questions that matter are the ones that can be answered.  Some of them move beyond this to a belief that the only questions that matter are the ones that can be answered quickly.  The result is a learning experience stripped of mystery, paradox and oftentimes philosophy.

I'm not sure why this happens, either.  Perhaps teachers feel the need to accomplish something measurable, so they give work with questions that elicit a uniform response.  Or maybe the school system likes rigid categories for the purpose of efficient management and a kid asking the question, "Would flying cars be more or less dangerous?" doesn't fit nicely into a history lesson.  Perhaps it's a throwback to Newton and the clockwork universe and the men in tights who crushed magic with logic.

I asked my students at the beginning of the year, "Is a question worth asking if there is no answer?"  Most of them argued that it was a pointless endeavor, because it was not practical.  I'll ask the same question at the end of the year.  We'll see how it goes.  

More recently I asked my students to come up with a question that could not be answered in each of the subjects that we learn.  I defined an unanswerable question as one that is speculative and allows for more than one correct answer.  Some of my favorites (each one is different student's response):

• Math: What is the best way to approach a situation? Why can multiple people use different methods to get the same answer? If independent variables didn't exist, would we develop another method besides trial and error?   
• Science: Can trees be happy? What makes humanity different from the rest of the Animal Kingdom?  Do other organisms have ethics?
• Reading: How would the main character react differently if placed in a new setting?  Which is more significant: the way we are shaped by our setting or the way the characters change the setting?  
• Writing:  What happens if I lose my voice?  Does technology lead us to refine our voice or does it push people into having the same voice?   
• Social Studies:  How would history be different if Hitler had been shot?  How does using violence create peace?  

It turns out to be an easy activity, because just minutes ago they had argued over whether fear or hope lead to more change and whether violence is justified in fighting for Civil Rights. They had asked discourse questions during math and wrestled with the best times to use graphs, tables and equations only to realize that sometimes multiple perspectives are right.

It's not that I'm a New Age Hippie or anything.  It's just that I want students to learn how to ask hard questions and to feel safe with the reality that often the best questions don't have a correct answer.  One of the reasons I love teaching this year is that I get my students all day and I have the chance to watch them grow into critical thinkers who aren't afraid of the unknown. 

For those of you who think I should go with a hand-drawn sketch, here's a new option. Thank you to everyone who has been providing feedback:

Or try this for a whirl:

One of my breakthroughs this year involved the story of science. It was the notion that students needed science to make sense out of character and setting and conflict and plot - even the themes (though many scientists scoff at science getting into that dangerous place of why instead of how).  The blending of subjects has been a beautiful, messy process.

A kid pointed out the class taking all of our recycling bins and how they looked so proud and how we all pad ourselves on the back for recycling and yet we never ask why we had to consume so much in the first place. He said that sometimes his family goes out to McDonalds and there's more wads of paper and pieces of plastic than there is food and he wonders why it has to be that way if the food has so many preservatives that it would last for years anyway.

He pointed out that our class had almost no paper and he said it with a smug grin.  Then he looked at our netbooks and our lack of paper and said, "It's scarier when you never see what's been destroyed."  He asked me if we could find out how much energy our netbooks actually use.  I told him he could choose it as an enrichment option, but after he tried to look at all the variables, he gave up.  Sometimes it's easier to  stop thinking than to pull yourself into the messy contradictions of reality.

Was it science?
It definitely had observation.

Was it social studies?
It connected to civics

Will it be on the test?
Nope.

Are these the vital questions students need to make sense out of a tech-shaped world?
Yep.

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons - davipt

Joel asks me about a story he'd recently heard involving the Israelites marching around Jericho and  the walls tumbling down.  Perhaps it was church or maybe it was a troop of irritating singing vegetables. Either way, he'd learned the story and was trying to make sense out of it.

"Was it the noise they made or was it the marching that knocked down the walls?"

"What do you think?"

"I think it was both.  I think that if enough people march and yell then walls come down."  He means it literally, but it forces me into a place of metaphor and as my mind moves to the events in Egypt and to the moment from my childhood when I watched the Berlin Wall fall until Joel adds his final thoughts.

"Maybe we should all march and yell and the walls in our neighborhood would come down and then all the kids could play without having to ask permission."  

Photo Credit: Flickr Creative Commons - Amanda M. Hatfield

A Story from Four Years Ago

I stood at the Wal-Mart painting area trying to express my anger through pantomime.  It had been, at this point, twenty-five minutes.  I had approached two associates (a name typically reserved for attorneys) and asked politely if I could get some service, because it was a teacher work day and my students would be expecting to have some paint for our project and so I'd be quite pleased if someone would just pull out a few gallons and do that magical color dripping ritual that turns the bland white gallons into the origins of art.

Each associate told me that they'd send someone my way and now at forty minutes I am pacing, throwing my hands in the air, doing an attention-getting dancing screaming nonverbally "Get me some effing paint if you know what's best for you."

They didn't know what was best for them.

So, I began rearranging the paint brushes, first taking whole rows and placing them in the wrong categories and then eventually alternating brushes in the most chaotic way possible.  It was my chance to screw the happy faced faceless entity that screwed over underdeveloped countries in the name of a "a good life at a great price."

An hour later, I tossed a few brushes on the floor and walked out calmly.  Not entirely content with my  act of passive-agressive defiance, I chose to flip off the elderly "greeter" (who apparently held the power to abandon the fourth amendment and check people's possessions at random).  How do you like that for a greeting?

I stopped by another Wal-Mart, bought the paint and went back to school to salvage my work day.  Somewhere around three o'clock, I stopped by the QT across the street from the Wal-Mart and listened to a Wal-Mart associate talk about her day to the cashier.

"Is she still in intensive care?"

"No, she passed away this morning at hospice.  I thought about taking the day off, but my manager had told me that we wouldn't have anyone to cover the paint department if I left."

"Sounds rough."

"It was awful."  She cried for a minute and then continued, "Then I get to work and find out that someone played a prank.  I had to skip my lunch just to try and fix the inventory."

"What did they do?"

"They rearranged all the paint brushes.  Everything was out of place.  Everything.  I mean, there was no vandalism or theft, but it made my day that much worse."

"Sounds like a bad day."

"Maybe the worst ever."

I didn't have the courage to tell her it was me, but it helped me to see that, as corrupt as a company might be, there are human faces behind it,  but the next day I wrote an apology letter and awkwardly handed it to the manager - still too scared to face the painting lady.  The greeter scowled at me, but this time I was able to manage an "I'm sorry for the other day."

It taught me that passive-agression is still agression.  But more importantly, it taught me that I never know the whole story and that I'd be better of going through life assuming that people have good intentions for some of their bizarre behavior.

I have a student who struggles with English.  It's not that he's brand-new to the country, either.  It's just that he's immersed in a world with very little language (in English or Spanish) and given his past behavior (often labeled as a miscreant for talking out of turn), he began the school year far behind.

Something clicked, though.  Perhaps it involved his peer group.  Maybe it has to do with how he and I interact.  Or maybe it's the class climate.  Or simply an issue of maturity.  It's a mystery to me.  However, despite his growth, he rarely excels in school work.  I watch him focus intently on the math problems only to attain the concept later than those around him.  I see him struggle with reading comprehension.  

Look at his standardized test and he seems to have moved from Falls Far Below to Meets.  And yet . . . 

The kid is a genius in design.  Call it past experience or learning style or motivation, but this student has a way of designing things that often surprise me.  Case in point:  He worked with two other students to design an eco-friendly house.  His design included:

• Solar panels
• Solar ovens 
• A green house garden that also functions as a "winter room" 
• A split level design that allows the house to be partially submerged to increase insulation
• A basketball court
• No hallways, but instead a central area where each room connects (to save wasted space)
• A place for "humanure" (he researched it himself, often asking hard questions about the vocabulary)
• Ways to re-use gray water

I watched him look up ideas on various websites and then try and see how he could tweak it.  I've watched as "design time" has become his chance to apply what he's learning in other subjects (testing a hypothesis, researching, writing functional text, calculating volume and surface area) in a way that is creative and hands-on.  

One of the reasons I love teaching self-contained is that I get to see this student as a whole person.  I get to watch a student who is yet to score "exceeds" on a test exceed my expectation on holistic design projects.  

Here's a glimpse of his finished product, by the way:

When I first began reading education-related blogs, I felt drawn toward "twenty-first century learning" blogs that had a way of blending the New Economy with technology and an idealistic view of education reform.  This was at a time when I taught tech-related professional development while earning a master's in educational technology.

After awhile, though, I found that my experiences never quite matched those of the ed tech elite.  I'd read something like, "I'm having my fifth graders Skype with doctors in an elite medical school.  Next week they'll be performing open heart surgery in underdeveloped nations while controlling a robotic arm via satellite feed."  Then I'd slump my shoulders, hang my head down low and say, "I'm having my kids edit the poetry they wrote for an audience of mostly their own peers."

It's as if, after reading about a Techno Utopia, I would walk into my class every day and reality began to feel more and more like a dystopia.  Do I allow students to move whenever they feel like it?  No?  Then I must be a prison guard harkening back to an industrial economy.  Are my kiddos stopping climate change by collaborating with students in Tanzania?  No?  Then I'm not using my netbooks to their full potential.

It's not that I don't like the 21st century stories.  It's just that they make me feel tired and overwhelmed and sometimes even a little hopeless.  I can't see the context.  I miss all the struggles.  It's tons and tons of fast-paced plot and I'm unable to get a sense of the character development.  It's not that I believe people are lying about what they're doing (or what they think people should be doing).

It's just that on a very deep level I don't feel that I can relate if it's simply a string of perfection.  I still love a good success story (Paula White and William Chamberlain both come to mind), but what I'm struck by in both cases is a tone of humility and an honesty about the struggles.  I can't buy into a story if there are no failures.

Perhaps it's jealousy.  Perhaps.  More likely it's the subtle shame of the message that says, "If you really want change, if you're really going for innovation, then you'll push the boundaries with . . . " and, I don't know, I guess I'm just too low-capacity or too lazy or more likely to attuned to the paradoxes and the conflict and the fact that my kids still need to learn English to launch a project where my students develop genetically altered monkeys that they send to a lunar colony.   If I'm not careful, I start trying to emulate an 21st century ideal that I hardly understand.

Over time, I've dropped most of those blogs from my feed, realizing that the utopian dream is a powerful hallucinogen that will prevent me from seeing the often humble reality of my own classroom.   Today I saw a kid fall in love with a Shakespearean sonnet.  It's the first time ever that it's happened in my class.  Compared with robotic surgery or solar-powered monkey lunar colonies, it's not a big deal.  And that's why I can't read those stories.  I need to be at least a little myopic to understand when big things happen.

I asked the students to challenge me to write haikus that dealt with nature and with any other topic they could conjure up.  I'm not one for haikus, especially because it is a Western misinterpretation to go 5-7-5 in syllables.  However, I've found that if I get excited, perplexed or nervous about the process myself, the students get more involved and I become more empathetic.

So, a student asked me to write about forgetting someone who died.  Here it is:

Fog
Sweet cotton candy
smothering desolate graves
transforms memory

Another student asked me to write about our local economy recovering:

Sunrise Economy
Blood-born explosion
once mellowing violet-blue
Phoenix emerges

Finally, a student asked for one about the American Revolution.  I missed it by one syllable, but I'm still happy with what I came up with. It's actually my favorite.

New Growth
newfound special tea
thus abandoned royal tea
patrician attrition

The crazy part is that all of the students finished their poems as well and I was still able to conference with them and offer feedback.  Taking eight minutes to bust out three poems had a real pay-off for me.

Satire Saturday

This year's Papyrus Conference 0029 was a bit of a bust. I had assumed that with the newest developments in mathematics and in literature, we might have had a few higher-level workshops. I had also hoped for a few more workshops providing a more critical perspective (perhaps something about marginalized people groups and Roman imperialism).

Low Points:
Handwriting: Beyond Cuniform - Turned out to be an absolute bore. The man droned on an on about proper technique and we never even practiced it.

Proper Payprus Care - Even more boring than the handwriting workshop. "Always remember to save your drafts." Really? Is that the kind of advice we need?

High Points:
My favorite workshop turned out to be from a guy who actually was a carpenter. It was about how to engage the reluctant learners with the use of violent stories (which he called parables). Fascinating speaker with a great deal of humility. Oh, and when someone in the audience died, he brought her back to life. How's that for a workshop trick?

I was also fascinated by a professor in Babylonian Sexagesimal Number Systems. It dealt with dividing time into sixty (nifty concept) using fractions and decimals (great idea - I think I'll use those) and in measuring angles.

Hey friends and blog readers, feel free to check out an excerpt of my book at http://drawnintodanger.blogspot.com/. I've posted my first three chapters.  I'd love comments (haven't had any, despite mentioning it on Twitter) or e-mails (socialvoice@gmail.com).

I'm really excited about this.  It's been my favorite thing to write so far and so I recognize that my judgement is clouded on it.

Thankful Thursday: I am thankful for books.

I'll never understand e-books. I need to feel the pages on my fingers. I need to build the anticipation with the weight beneath my hands, grasping for that final moment before resolution. I need to smell the fermentation of ideas making mental wine, reminding me not to go to fast, lest I get drunk.

I love books. Real books.

E-books feel like the  p r 0 n   of  print.

(Sorry if that ruins your filters, fellow teachers.  WebSense has a hard time with common sense. I'm hoping it also has a hard time decoding code words.)

I used to spend hours hunched over a computer grading papers. I'd pass them back only to have students ignore the final grade. I would print a progress report out each week only to realize that the hard workers who were doing well were the only ones who took the reports home. I gradually began to take a more realistic look at the meaning of assessment:

Paradigm Shifts

• From grades to assessments. I now view all feedback as "assessment," meaning I check student work often but I don't record a numerical grade. 
• From keeping the standards to myself to demystifying the standards for students.  By writing the standards in student-friendly language, they find that it's less complicated than it first appears.
• From averaging to mastery.  In other words, if a student didn't understand a concept in week one, but aced it in week four, I change the grade to "meets" or "exceeds" 
• From anti-test to someone who sees tests as occasionally necessary for measuring discreet skills. The DRA helps me know reading level. AIMSWeb is decent for testing fluency. I now see these as diagnostic rather than judgmental tools.
• From isolation to holistic assessment. In other words, I see all work that a student does as a part of the learning process. Assessment is relational and by getting to know a student, I can better tailor lessons to fit that student's needs.
• From a management to a leadership perspective - For example, I won't walk around to "manage" a class and see what they are doing. I'll spend that time having one on one student conferences. The result is that I know students better and I trust students to get work done without me nagging them.
• From either product (behavioral) or cognitive process to a combination of both. I want to see what a student knows by what they think and how they can demonstrate it (though I do cringe at the word "product," because it assumes a certain business-like element to it).
• From testing knowledge to drawing out wisdom. I want to see how students use knowledge to make decisions. I want them to think about what they know, but also understand what they don't know.

How I Organize Assessment:

1. For projects, I have students help develop a rubric and we tend to keep it vague (unpopular, I know, but it's all about a system of feedback)
2. I comment on every student blog post, literary analysis, etc. 
3. Self-Assessment: students write reflections on what they are still struggling to understand and how they can access the knowledge in the future.  This is especially helpful in math.
4. Every two weeks, in each subject, we do a common assessment and I try and keep this authentic (create a concept map for the Cold War, write a letter to one of the characters about his or her decision-making process)
5. Student conferences: I keep a table with the standard (written in a student-friendly objective), a spot for student assessment, a column for teacher feedback and a negotiated grade. 

Here's a sample of what a math report card looks like for my students:

Math Report Card

A simple glance at history demonstrates that technology shapes the economic, social and political forces in a complex web of reciprocal relationships.  Thus the television both reflects the escape of a post-war culture while helping to shape the culture and redefine the world into a monolithic, binary worldview.  Television doesn't thrive on nuance.  

Similarly, the printing press helped lead to the notion of national identity through linguistic expression and eventually the development of the modern nation-state.  Thus the rational, linear, Enlightenment worldview is less a product of the Copernican Revolution or a humanist renaissance as it is the reflection of a print-based culture.

Television struck a hard blow on national identity, accelerating multinationalism and large conglomerations in the social, economic and political sphere.  Whether it was Leave it to Beaver or Camelot in the White House or the miltiary-industrial complex, television helped shape the metaphor of a broadcasted, interconnected, monolithic world.

Enter the internet and a world free of national boundaries.  Here, the ultimate battles are those of fragmentation (intranationalism) and globalism (transnationalism).  Whether it's the free market currency exchange or Diet Coke in India, technology pushed our world toward globalization.

*      *      *

I can't explain any of that to my students.  Not quickly, at least.  It has to happen when they ask themselves why the jobs left in the eighties and why they don't fit into the American or Mexican culture and why, when they visit another country, it's so similar to our own.

It happens when we ask whether Google has more power than our own government (Google knows more about me than Uncle Sam) and whether technology becomes religion when it defines our identity, our methods of organizing information and ultimately our purpose for most actions.

Perhaps I'm a crank.  Perhaps I'm a young curmudgeon.  But I can't see the events in Egypt or Tunisia as evidence that democracy is spreading through the Arab World (a misnomer in its own) as much as the evidence of global movements and micronationalism.

Think of the violence in recent times:

War on Terror: a war against factitious groups and global terrorists (Al-Qaeda)
Georgia vs. Russia: A nation trying to support a breakaway micro-nation
Wars in Sudan: breakaway micronationalist groups
Violence in China: most of it over the question of Tibetan national identity

*     *     *

Whether it's wacked-out extremists in Arizona or Tibetan-loving hippies at trendy rock concerts, we're missing the reality that the largest forces at work are the technological forces of globalization.  We're all connected in a web that sometimes feels like a safety net and sometimes resembles a spider web.

Still, I rarely hear a discussion of technology and our world when I read about current events.

When I listened to NPR, no one asked how the Massey mine disaster or the BP Oil Spill connected to our thirst for power and the transnational corporations involved.  When I read the newspaper, I never once read about the connection between globalization and the movements in Egypt and Tunisia (both positive, in my opinion, but also both aimed at reducing national power).

The crazy thing is this: for a media that's so well-connected, that supposedly has information at their fingertips, I am shocked at how much better a bunch of eighth graders are at making connections between the forces of globalization and the current events that are shaping their technocratic world.