The Newman Experience

Laura Deisley’s response to my previous post got me thinking. Here’s an excerpt:

What would happen if we allowed students to have more freedom with their learning? What would they create, and if they made a mistake would we/they be gleeful even while cleaning up the mess?

Curiosity. Where do we allow for that in today’s educational/societal structure?

Indeed, allowing students to make messes is worthwhile and many of us probably don’t do it enough. I know with my own writing assignments, for example, I’ll often give graphic organizers or share student examples or write my own. I think in most cases it helps more than it hurts. They still have to come up with the ideas. They still have to develop their own voice. My support is intended to give them some sense of my expectations as well as the attributes of a meaningful piece of writing. Obviously, one could debate the meaning of meaningful. One could also debate the line between nurturing, generative support and stifling support. For example, if I want my students to include rich details in their writing I try to show them examples in literature or in my own writing. Where on the line does that fall?

This past year Melissa Fay Greene was the writer in residence at Lovett and in preparation for her coming I had my students read an article of hers (”A Writer’s Life in a Household of Children”) that, among other things, argues the merits of letting her own kids pull things off shelves in the playroom, dump things on the floor, and embrace the chaos. She happened to be using the parenting technique as a metaphor for writing (brainstorming and drafting=letting go and not cleaning up as you go). I like it both on the metaphorical and literal level, as a parent and as a teacher. When I share my own writing with my students I try to show original drafts, webs, notes scrawled on a torn sheet of paper. I don’t always do this and I wonder if that compromises the “modeling” experience and leads them to believe that I produce final drafts spontaneously, like Zeus giving birth to Athena from his head. They don’t see the mess in the creative process, the evolution, the change, the redirection, the narrowing down, the opening up, the adding here, the taking away there, the essence emerging from the chaos.

I think introducing technology is going to require me to let go a bit (a lot?) and try things out, perhaps sending dog food everywhere. Who knows? A pattern might emerge from the chaos.

Checked out a post at Students 2.0 that was a response to an earlier post about the benefits of doing nothing. In the earlier post Arthus praised such actions as reading a random paragraph in a book, writing “letters to yourself in the future,” and “getting a crazy idea, then forgetting it.” Obviously, each of these activities is not doing nothing. They may seem pointless in the grander scheme of things, but that is their allure to him. They have a very clear point in NOT having a clear point. Arthus writes,

In our fast-paced society, we do a bit too much of everything. As the long days of summer approach, now is the best time to do nothing.

I can identify with this. I offer the following example. At the beginning of the summer I read “Of Love and Other Demons” by G. G. Marquez and then “The History of Love,” by Nicole Krauss, which is one of my wife’s favorite books. Because the whole summer was ahead of me, I was able to read books that had absolutely no possible use for my teaching (they weren’t about pedagogy, they weren’t faculty summer reading books, they weren’t student summer reading books, they weren’t books that I was planning to teach) without the slightest bit of guilt. Now the fact that guilt was involved at all in the process of choosing a book to read during the summer might be my own problem—I’m just THAT dedicated of a teacher! Go me!—but it might also have to do with that “fast-paced society” Arthus spoke of and the belief that if we aren’t doing something that will have a clear benefit for our job, our family, etc. then we’re shirking our responsibilities.

Anyway, I finished the books (quite excellent—will certainly be able to recommend them for an outside reading selection (yikes! Maybe it did have a purpose beyond me own personal reading enjoyment (which by the way we’re trying to inculcate in students!))) and then was left to decide on my next one. I hit The New Yorker to buy some time. I was going to start “Water for Elephants” but then the voice in my head spoke up: “It’s July. You have the faculty read and the adviser read. You could reread the summer reading books you’ve taught for the past five years and have reread each summer. You could go out and buy the novellas you’re considering using in a literature circle book choice unit.” I fought the voice and started “Elephants.” It’s my summer! I told myself. And it’s a book! It’s not like I’m deciding between “War and Peace” and catching up on old episodes of “Who’s the Boss?” I found the opening chapter of “Elephants” very intriguing. And then it happened. I went downstairs to the bookshelf and grabbed “All Quiet on the Western Front.” Another tenth grade teacher uses it. I’m not planning on teaching it this year but might next year. It’s a classic. Now, I happen to be enjoying “All Quiet” very much (in the way you enjoy a story about war and death) but I wonder if I somehow compromised myself by choosing it.

Which is why I bristled at Anthony Chivetta’s response to Arthus’s post, entitled “Never Stop Doing.” He allows for time spent thinking and tinkering but he suggests that this can lead to the “intellectual void” where presumably people fall forever past spinning clocks and hourglasses. Ultimately I agree with Chivetta’s premise that we should lead a purposeful life of action and take advantage of every (or almost every) opportunity to create, learn, pursue and discover. Chivetta allows for wandering, but he feels we should wander somewhere. Now Chivetta himself wonders (as do some of those commenting on the post) if they’re actually arguing two sides of the same coin. But it’s when Chivetta writes about “working towards some end” that I think he and Arthus separate. I think the implication is that at the end of an activity there should be some clear outcome that has practical applications or relevance. And here’s where “Water for Elephants” vs. Book I Should/Need to Read comes in. In the end it may be that I love all the books I should/need to read. But I have this gut sense that choosing “Water for Elephants” would have been the healthier choice. It may also be why required summer reading should be a subject for debate.

A related (?) story…

I was sitting at the computer yesterday trying to quickly check email (school email at that!). I had put my son down on the floor in the hallway and figured he could entertain himself for a few minutes. I heard him crawl off to the kitchen but then got caught up in reading and responding to a particular email. A small voice in my head said, “Make this quick, dude, do you have any idea how much trouble that little one could get into in five minutes?” Still, I sat there and continued my reply. In the distance I heard the sound of a splash and knew that he had made his way over to the dog’s water/food bowls.

Here’s the thing. My son holds up a finger and makes the “No-no” sign when he approaches the bowl, but there seems to be a disconnect between the concept of “Touching the dog’s food is a no-no,” which I do think he grasps, and the reality of it being very fun to make a mess, watch the kernels expand in the water, and take an occasional bite. This is what I knew he was doing as I continued to sit at the computer. Still, I didn’t get up.

Was I tired? Not really. Was I being stubborn? Maybe just a bit. Stupid? Certainly, as the longer I waited the longer it would take to clean up the disaster zone. Was I feeling naughty? Perhaps. I like to think that I was being curious, that I was putting a positive spin on the proverbial “good man doing nothing.” And really, how many times had I pulled him away from the bowl? How many times had I made my life easier and his life less fun by saying “No-no.”

I kept on reading as I heard a splash here, a crunch there (hopefully my dog taking advantage of his good fortune and not my son dining on kibble), a laugh here, another splash there. I do think I hung my head and groaned when I heard the sound of food being dug from the bowl and cast across the floor. It sounded like he’d knocked over a box of Mardi Gras beads.

Finally, I decided to check out what my son (and I) had wrought. I walked slowly into the kitchen, passed the island, and turned the corner. There he was. Sitting on the dogfood bowl like an emperor, hundreds of kernels surrounding him like his minions. It was a veritable aureole of lamb bites. I laughed, because he had such a satisfied grin on his face, and for all the other obvious reasons. I lifted him up and his entire bottom was soaked because he’d obviously tried the water bowl first before deciding on the food bowl as a more comfortable throne. It was only when I put him in the highchair and strapped him in that he started to cry. Hopefully he wasn’t anticipating a long and boring future where you don’t get to sit in dogfood unless you’re pledging a fraternity or you’ve had too much to drink at the company party. Perhaps I should have comforted him by saying there are other fun things to do in life that are a bit naughty and not entirely socially unacceptable. It was a real mess, I have to say. Took me about fifteen minutes to clean up. But it was worth it. The sight of my little boy sitting on his dogfood throne. I felt like I’d come down on the side of tactile wonder. Of absurdity. Of freedom.

I tell you. It wasn’t nothing.

I only wish the camera hadn’t been in my wife’s purse.

The bowls a day later? Such neatness! Such cleanliness! Such quiet desparation!

Spent about an hour exploring 3 web tools. Here are a few thoughts…

GLIFFY: Online Inspiration: it takes some time to figure out the formatting, but it’s great that people can collaborate on a brainstorming document.

WRITEBOARD: I set up a document that could be used by multiple people to take notes on an “outside reading” source. For example, if three kids read a short story, they could share opinions and favorite quotations; debate points; and collect all the ideas they might need for a presentation. The document can be downloaded. The kids would have to learn the site’s “coding” in order to format the text, but I imagine they could be very informal, export the document as a text file, save it in Word, and then format to their heart’s content. It seems the most useful aspect is being able to collaborate and see old versions of the document. Not sure how this is different from creating a Wiki or a Google document.

WEEBLY: Within ten minutes I was able to begin to set up the basics of a website that would allow me to put my assignments on the web and update the site very easily. Options are somewhat limited but that’s a good thing if you’re mainly interested in an easy way to publish your thoughts, assignments, projects, and media. I suppose I still need to check out moodle because I don’t want to run too many sites. I could see maintaining a blog and a website for classroom purposes (not including whatever sites my students create and maintain). If moodle helps to streamline any or all of this, so much the better.

Konrad Glogowski’s presentation “Initiating and Sustaining Conversations: Assessment and Evaluation in the Age of Networked Learning” was very thought-provoking. Many of my assignments are indeed teacher generated with students working independently on the same basic task, however challenging. I do love the idea of students pursuing their own inquiry (like my interview project or the source choice project or the multi-genre theme project) and moving out on their own and creating a blog with a voice and a diversity of topics. Personal entries, entries about books, entries about movies and music, entries about articles they’ve read. And I certainly like the idea of being more involved during the process and having a better sense of their thinking as they go along. Obviously I still have questions about responding to all of my students blogs. And I wonder how this jibes with a curriculum loaded with core texts. Is there a way to balance self-directed blog entries with entries and conversations about core texts? I assume there is. In any event, all of this resonates. I can see my students choosing big themes, collecting sources, responding to them, making connections, communicating with each other and me. I can see how this could lead to students being more independent and self-motivated. It was a cool presentation.

I created a video slide show with Rock You and embedded it into my wiki page. I actually think I might be able to use it when I teach “A River Sutra.”

Well, as you can see from the sample above, I’ve collected photos to use with my “A River Sutra” unit. The book takes place in India and several of the chapters refer to naked ascetic monks. This is one of the few pictures I found where you can’t see any wieners. I still think it will give the kids a vivid sense of what these ash covered men look like. It certainly was useful to have a purpose in mind when searching Flickr and helped me begin to understand what I might use Flickr for. Of course, I assume this is a fairly primitive usage – collecting photos to show students. Nevertheless, it’s a start and at the very least I could have students do a similar thing, adding captions perhaps, or presenting their collection to the class or in small groups. I could also see students approaching Flickr with more abstract purposes in mind, finding photos that connect more thematically than literally. (I clicked on the Flickr poetry page and that was cool. I assume the assignment was to find a photo and write a poem inspired by it. Could do that with a short story as well.) From a technical standpoint, I goofed…I pasted links in my Wiki page and backed out of it before saving. Had to do some recreating. Yuck. Learned a lesson, for sure.

Copyright. Yeah. I was reading copyright and fair use guidelines and I didn’t have to scroll down too far to find rules that get broken by teachers all the time at my school and others (nice use of passive voice right?). The rules do allow for some on the fly usage of poems, etc. but then we’re not supposed to use them again next year? I get it, though. Dude writes a poem. Gets it published in a magazine. Dude and magazine might not want it handed out to classes in perpetuity. But maybe they’re cool with it. I guess that’s where creative commons comes in.

So far I haven’t shared content on the web, and my use of materials has been limited to the occasional This American Life or other podcast I tie in to a piece of writing or literature. But I can certainly see how having students use many of these web applications for projects could lead to students needing/wanting access to content that may have varying copyright hassles attached to them. At assemblies or with some Powerpoints this past year I’ve seen photos used and attributions given at the end, but reading this material suggests to me that this may not have been sufficient.

As far as limitations go, in looking just a bit at the suggested Commons websites my first reaction is how is this going to help me with some article I find in The New Yorker magazine? Perhaps there’s an answer to that question. Perhaps not. Perhaps I’m thinking too old school. Perhaps all of this Commons stuff will quickly shepherd in a new era when magazines will have to decide how they want my students to be accessing their material and all the rules change.

Nevertheless, I wonder about my OWN material. My own unites and projects and assignments. I could put some of my own stuff out there. But I’ll have to do some thinking about what that means. I’ve shared material with colleagues. But not ALL of my material. But really, what’s the harm in some teacher down the block or across the country trying out one of projects. Perhaps the fact I ask “what’s the harm” suggests the necessary mental shift. Shouldn’t I be asking, “What’s the benefit?” And if we all think that way…wow, I suppose we might be further along the path to the Siddhartha moment. You know, when Govinda looks into his old friend’s face and sees…everyone and everything?

1001 Flat World Tales seems to reach for the brass ring of collaborative online work. Students in schools from different nations are writing stories, providing feedback, revising their own pieces, conferencing about the project, choosing the best stories, uploading podcasts of their readings, inviting other schools to participate, and setting up a seemingly endless project which they themselves call a historical first. It is very cool for sure and would seem to offer many incentives for students to participate fully and thoughtfully.

In one of the blog pages, a teacher (or was it a student?) makes some comment about how during one Skype call, the line between teachers and students was blurred so that those roles mattered far less than the ideas being shared and debated. I will say that the Wiki itself was a bit hard to navigate and it took me awhile to figure out where the actual stories were. (Turns out the Wiki links to an edublog where the best stories are published. I would have liked to see how the works in progress are managed. Perhaps if I had spent a bit more time I might have found that place.)

In the “rubric,” there is talk of students being evaluated for their own writing and revising, for giving feedback, and for using that feedback. I’m curious how the evaluators kept track of all that for each student. It’s time-consuming enough just to read a student’s paper that’s been printed out and put in my hands. Nevertheless, I can see the merits of a “document” that can be worked in numerous locations and commented on when the reviewer has time, with all the information kept safely in one location with its entire history preserved. Off the top of my head, I could see adapting the 1001 Tales for House on Mango Street where the students are writing their own poetic prose tales linked perhaps through Lovett—“A School on West Paces Ferry!” (Fun!!!) Or perhaps we come up with the name of a street and then the students create stories that might be autobiographically driven and give a sense of the community of students in my classes, their collective experiences and perspectives.

I actually found the first video’s example of planning the camping trip to be enlightening, especially the advantages of the wiki over email. Everyone going to one place to add and manage information. Would work well, for example, with students planning a presentation on chapters of a book. If the students had different jobs they could add their pieces from home. I suppose there’s something primitive about that example because it still has the tasks divided up instead of students bringing their own perspectives and ideas to the SAME task and creating a Wiki that somehow reflects a synthesis of their ideas while also reflecting the process and unique ideas that went into that synthesis. I could see possibilities for a wiki debate.

I’m also curious about somehow using wikis or blogs as part of the interview project or the sophomore honors multi-genre project. For the interview project they could create wiki pages for their different questions and students could contribute their own anecdotes and personal stories and opinions. I wouldn’t want to eliminate the face to face interviews entirely, but I could see this as potentially generating SO much more information for each student to draw on for the papers.

For the multi-genre project the students would still maintain their own pages but they could use them to take notes on the many sources they are using. For example, as they read their novel they could add notes and reflections. Then when they listen to a podcast they could add notes for that source and perhaps link to their notes from the other sources to make connections. When it comes time to outline and write the paper, they could draw on thinking they have already done.

For my “Outside Reading” ongoing projects (20 tasks to choose from, from reading a novel to going back to old favorite children’s novels to watching a great movie to visiting a new place…and then writing a short reflection paper) it might be cool to try having a few of the “sessions” be collaborative (last year, the students worked individually). In other words, a few students could agree to watch a particular movie and they could collaborate on a Wiki page with their reflections, favorite scenes, differing opinions about quality, etc.

Just read Vicki Davis’s blog on Wiki Wiki Teaching. Seems like she was excited about her first foray. I will say I was a bit confused when I clicked on one of the links at the English wiki pages and found myself at CliffsNotes.com. Not interested in debating CliffsNotes. Just wondering about whether we should be aiming for the content to be student produced (or at least repurposed and cited from another source) or whether this brave new world includes linking to whatever gets the job done. I assume, like with everything else, it depends on what the teacher’s goal is. Nevertheless, I like the idea of students collaborating on the review and production of idea and info.

Another spontaneous idea: GRAMMAR! Having students contribute to Wiki pages with their own examples of multi-structure sentences, or even building cool sentences collectively. A page just for sentences using absolute phrases. A page for students to add sentences that have at least three of the grammatical structures we’re studying (eg. Adjective clause, participial phrase, adverb clause). Clearly they could also be collaborating on larger pieces. Could somehow bring the short-short story contest into the 21st century (though I could also see keeping that old school).

I checked out the FHS Wolves Den, which I believe is an English teacher’s wiki space. She seems to be using it as the central place for all of her classroom activities. From handouts to videos her students produced, it’s all there. I like this model. I actually don’t see too many examples of the collaborative aspect to Wiki-ness. What I did find were some pretty cool projects. One required students to produce 1984 inspired videos (not reenactments but stories and montages based on the book’s themes). She gives lots of links to the web and software based resources the students could use to produce their videos. Here’s a link to the assignment. And then I found myself at a link to another project requiring students to use a website called Our Story, which seems to be a timeline based application that allows you to keep track of multiple threads of events over time. Another link took me to an essay organizer hosted on the NCTE website.

Good grief, there are A LOT of tools out there!

I was looking for a blog by an English teacher and so I latched onto huffenglish. In my first pass through her posts I noticed two about the importance of writing along with your students. As it is something I try to do as much as possible I enjoyed “hearing” her riff on the topic. Apparently there’s a book on the subject called “Write Beside Them.” (Stellar pun!) She quotes from the book the “literacy biography” of one of the writer’s former students. In short, the student had lost his love of writing over the years because there was so little freedom and time to write for pleasure and be creative. (So many assignments in so many subjects!) It’s the reason why I strive for a balance between more creative assignments and more analysis type pieces. I’m fairly certain the students appreciate it. Love for reading could be thrown in here as well. What do we do about the fact that so many kids only read for school? Can you love an activity when your main associations with that activity are grades and papers and notes? No matter how passionate a teacher you are, you’re going to have a hard to building life long readers if those students aren’t finding their way to books of their own choice and interest. Of course, they’ve spent the day in school, the afternoon in sports practice, the evening doing homework. Is it any wonder that a tiny percentage will pick up a book on their own? But hey, maybe they’re reading blogs, or Facebook pages, or TMZ.com. I’m not trying to be sarcastic (OK, maybe a little), just wondering out loud about what constitutes real reading in the 21st century. I’m working on “Of Love and Other Demons” by Marquez right now. Does that make me a better person? A snob? A dinosaur?

On another note, I haven’t read too much of her blog yet, so I haven’t figured out whether she has some bright ideas about practical tech usage in the English classroom.

Well. Here’s another thing I can’t believe I didn’t know about. Makes perfect sense the aggregators exist of course. (And one of the extra readings suggested using them to keep track of students’ blog posts, which answers the question of how to keep track of those once I start using them.)

I scanned some of the Students 2.0 pieces and continue to dig the vibe of that blog. I keep reminding myself I’m getting insight into the high school mind and am equally annoyed and inspired by their excited, frustrated and chastising tone. They’re making things happen and they’re waiting for their schools to catch up. It is daunting and while I don’t get the impression these kids think we have nothing to offer them, I do get the impression they’re going to become increasingly suspicious of what we have to offer if it does not come to resemble the other ways they take in and share information. I do think that many of my students are not really aware of many of these possibilities (I could be wrong). But as time passes and more and more teachers are harnessing the power of connectivity and shared learning (assuming that power truly exists and is not a hoax), it will become incumbent upon all of us to get with the program.

As for the particular posts I read, one was about teacher bias towards written language, perhaps at the expense of giving more time to oral communication (and those students who may have particular strengths in that area.) Obviously, it’s debatable exactly how much time one should spend on each and how important each method is, but the key thing for me is hearing that young, frustrated voice editorializing about something on his mind. It got me thinking, for sure.

Not to beat a dead horse, but as I scan the 3 education blogs, I am absolutely dumbfounded at how much I don’t know about. I know this is about baby steps. But holy cow!