Bud the Teacher

I think it’s very important to be in conversation with people with whom we disagree.  That’s one reason why I like the Bridging Differences blog so much.  In Deborah Meier’s latest post, she suggests some “overarching agreements.” I can live with these:

Meanwhile, let’s you and I play with the range of “overarching” agreements that might allow for the degree of incompatibility that is actually out there to coexist. Some examples are perhaps intended to seem absurd and I may—over time—decide I don’t agree with them all:

(1) That regardless of what other purposes schools serve they must justify their curriculum choices and assessment systems (at a minimum) as serving to prepare young people for the day they become eligible voters, jurors, and full-scale members of the larger political society.

(2) That for this and other purposes (e.g. employment and enjoyment of life) every one should have a basic level of competence (maybe something like Seymour Papert’s definition of fluency that I’ll describe at another time) in reading, writing, speaking, arithmetic, basic algebra, and statistics/probability. Can we agree on a single measure for defining and assessing this? No, but maybe we can agree on a set of ways?

(3) That all schools demonstrate that students have had a variety of opportunities to explore deeply at least one field of science, with a focus on understanding the nature of science. But that we not try to mandate any course specifics or define levels of competence. That should be left close to the action.

(4) That all schools engage in a study of the foundations and underlying assumptions of a democratic polity, the U.S. Constitution, its origins, the trade-offs, balances/tensions, and how they are reflected in contemporary politics; plus, familiarity with alternate systems of democratic and undemocratic governance. Again, with the details and assessment left to those closest to the students.

(5) That provisions exist in every locality for students to have access at public expense to public schools or programs that provide for a deeper and heavier focus on one or more specialization, where doing so does not impact on racial or class segregation.

(6) Importantly: That the public system provide after-school, summer and, above all, post-graduate educational experiences for all citizens so that the ideal of “life-long learning” is available at any and all ages at a modest fee or none! Let’s stop trying to ram everything into kids by age 18.

(7) And finally, that the details of such arrangements be overseen by publicly selected laymen—oops, off topic.**

You?  What’s missing?

Students at Burlington Elementary School slept over at the school last night to watch the sky.  For the last time, alas, due to a curriculum change, according to the article.  I sure hope there will be other opportunities like this one.  Heck, I’ll volunteer to chaperone, if that helps. I love that stuff.

My favorite line from the article:

“I think there’s a big ‘wow’ factor for the night sky,” Warren said. “It’s the show that never ends. There will always be something to look at.”

We need big wow factors.  All of us.  They help us learn and keep us going.  What’s wowing you right now?  Me, I’m learning about how to capture light for the benefit of preserving moments and memories.  Fascinating.

I read banned books

Originally uploaded by Bud the Teacher

I wonder if there’s a button with the slogan “I surf an unfiltered Internet,” or “I read filtered blogs.” Maybe “I read blocked blogs,” is better - more alliterative.

Along another line, perhaps a button with the message “I’d trust my kids in Al Upton’s classroom,” would be a good slogan, too.
Any graphic artists out there? I’ll buy in bulk.

Clay Burell’s challenged me (or tagged me, or whatever) to engage a meme that he’s passing along.  I might.  I’m bad about memes.  I don’t mean to be.  (And I am thinking about a good passion quilt image and will post one.  Eventually.  Thanks to all who tagged me.) But I did want to encourage you to read his post.  Mostly because of this idea about teaching Lolita:

I think I can say they all love it. I also think I can say they can handle it - and if they can’t, they should learn to, now more than ever.

As a high school language arts teacher, I encouraged my students to pick many of their own books in consultation with me and other trusted adults.  I would encourage you to do the same.  But that’s another post.

But when you do decide to read a book together, I’d ask that you never insult the intelligence of your students, emotionally or intellectually, by hiding the world from them through picking “safe” books.  Safe choices are pretty much always about you (or your administrator, or your school board) and not about your students.  They live in the worlds being represented in literature.  Many educators live in these worlds, too.  Let’s not pretend otherwise.  Instead, let’s challenge students to engage ideas and concepts that are weighty, essential and enthralling.

Let’s ask them to dream and to dare and to risk by talking about difficult ideas in safe places.  Let’s ask them not to agree with the stance of a particular author or book or teacher or administrator or board policy, but instead to struggle through finding their own way.  With help, of course.

Most good teaching is all about finding balance.  Safe and scary.  Old and new.  Today and tomorrow.  Child and adult.  Easy and hard.  Choice and “have to.” Too often in schools, we lean way hard on one side of the teeter totter and completely avoid the other side.

What fun is that?  And what good is it for anyone?

One hundred percent of my family is technologically literate. No, really.  I’ve got the numbers to back that up.

Here’s how I would report that to the Department of Education:

Number of members of my family: 4

Number who are technologicaly literate: 4.

If you know me or my family at all, I suspect that you would challenge my numbers.  Why?  Because two of the four members of my immediate family are children.  Young children.  One’s three.  The other’s a ten-month-old.  How in the world are they technologically literate?

See, what I did back there, and what most folks who collect statistics do all the time, is that I got to define my terms.  For the purposes of this data reporting, I have defined technologically literacy as the ability to turn the TV in our living room off with the remote control.  Everyone in my family has accomplished this action - although not all of them deliberately so.

I was reminded today, as I sat through a conversation about data reporting now and data reporting to come, that reporting a number in a column or a data field seems like such a simple thing.  How many computers do you have?  (Easy to answer - you can count.)   How many 8th graders do you have?  (Easy to answer.)  How many of them are technologically literate?  (Um.  Well.  That one’s harder.)

That last one all depends on how you’re defining technological literacy.  And how to assess it.  And we’re not all in agreement about the best way(s) to do that.  The devil continues to be in the details.  (Oh, and while we’re kind of on the subject, here’s an analysis of many of the different definitions of 21st Century Skills, which Nancy White happened to tweet along while I was in the other conversation. We’ve got lots of definitions, and now definitions of the definitions, but we still don’t know how to teach the blasted things.  Nuts.)

When you see a statistic, I hope that you are looking past the number and seeking the definitions and the methodology.  I hope you’re teaching your students to do so, too.  I continue to be worried that, for all the data we’ve got, it isn’t any good.

The Reflective Teacher, one of my favorite reflective practitioners, left his blog behind recently.  But now he’s back with another:

Anyway, I figured it was time for a reinvention as a teacher. I see in myself a different person than I was when I became a teacher, and therefore have moved things over to another place. What’s here will be erased but not forgotten. This place is invaluable to me, but I must let it go.

The kids always call me “Mister,” and when they address me, it’s as “hey, mister.” Therefore, you’ll find me at heymister.

Worth subscribing.

As a complete aside, I find the decisions that folks make about what’s public and what’s private, and how they create (or recreate) and negotiate their digital identities completely fascinating.  The rhetorical and practical decisions that go into everything from creating a screenname to deciding what and where to post are really interesting.

I’d love to facilitate a roundtable or panel discussion about this at some point in the future.  Lots worth exploring.  And, of course, for those of you who blog anonymously (which I can understand but not quite condone), we’ll provide brown paper bags and electronic voice scrambling.  Or something like that.

Would you attend such a conversation?

One of the frustrating bits about working in technology rather than in language arts for the last ten months is that I haven’t really had a good reason to keep up on all the great YA literature out there.  I’m not in a position to recommend books to students at the moment - so I’ve gotten a little bit out of touch with the YA world.  I was reminded of this this morning when Phil tweeted that he was headed off to a teen literature conference. I love going into the libraries in our schools and spending time with the displays of new and popular books.

But I really miss book talks with students. Those conversations in front of bookshelves where we try to match their interests with the right book or books are wicked intense and always a fun challenge.  Talk about a rush.

While I can’t necessarily meet my need to talk books with teens at the moment, I can at least catch up on my reading.  I happen to have a book store gift card and a desire to make a donation to a school library (after I read the book, of course).

So, dear readers and teachers of reading, what should I purchase?  I’m looking for something newish - the last six months or so - and I’m aware of Twilight and the Uglies.  I’d love something a little unconventional, perhaps ARG-ish (And I know that the sequel to Cathy’s Book, Cathy’s Key, comes out in May - so I’ll be getting my hands on a copy of that, too, I hope.), or a good graphic novel (I really enjoyed the Invention of Hugo Cabret, as did the students I shared it with.).

Please share your recommendations.  What are you reading with students?  To them? For you?  Can’t keep on the shelves?  Wish you had a copy or two of?  I’ll buy the book that I like the best and tell you how it goes.  Thanks!

I’m seeing lots of opportunities lately, to connect my learning network(s), offline and on.  Here’s one - a request from NCTE.  Write away, whether you’re an NCTE member or not:

We’re interested in how your teaching has changed�in how you have altered, adjusted, or shifted your habits and expectations�since the time you began teaching. For example, what has changed in your approaches to reading? Writing? Evaluation of students? Use of technology? Confidence level? Rapport with parents? Balance of personal and professional life?

Whether you are a 30-year classroom veteran or a new teacher, you have a story, and we’d like to hear it!  Email us 150 words or less describing changes you have made in your teaching and your teaching life. Please include your full name, school name, years of teaching, and a preferred email address or phone number in case we need to contact you. Send stories to chronicle@ncte.org.

We’ll consider stories for a future issue of The Council Chronicle, and will inform you and send you a complimentary copy if your story is published.

I‘d love for you to leave your blurb here in the comments, too.  Would be fun to read them.

I didn’t want to let too much time go by before responding to Doug’s post, and the others that have followed it, but I haven’t have time for a thorough response.  There’s plenty of thoughtfulness in the posts and comments, but I did just want to state, again, that I’m pretty sure an awful lot of the “conversation” on the post(s) is based on a bad assumption, which is this:

There isn’t one “edublogosphere.”  Never has been and never will be.  So to ascribe universal characteristics to something which isn’t (universal) is problematic, to say the least.  Here’s how I said it in November:

Mostly, the assumption that’s troubling me so much is that there’s one group (community - whatever) out there that exists for educational conversation via electronic media, and that we should all try to engage and involve everyone in that one (fallacious) group so that we’re all friends and reading and commenting each other.  And that we’ll all agree on where that group should go, when they should meet, and what we’ll all do when we get there.  Or that we ever agreed in the first place.

Ain’t going to happen.  Not now, not ever.  Never did happen, in fact.  We all construct our blogrolls, our Twitter friends, or our other social networking relationships for our benefit and to meet our own unique needs.

Would I prefer to see more reflective or data-driven posts around teaching and learning practices?  Yep.  But me (or anyone else) not seeing them doesn’t mean that they’re not there.  I’d encourage you to read the rest of that November post for more explanation of my position.

Last week, I received a review copy of Relentless Pursuit: A Year in the Trenches with Teach for America.  Thought it was worth taking a minute or two to say that I’m definitely a fan of the book.  I’m impressed with the way the author, Donna Foote, has captured the different teachers, students,  administrators, and classrooms and painted them as actual human beings dealing with complex issues and feelings as opposed to one-dimensional cogs in the educational machine.

While the book’s set in Los Angeles, I recognize many of the folks, or at least the types, she’s written about.  Kids who disappear.  Teachers who will do anything to see their kids do well.  Teachers who burnout.  Administrators who try too hard - and aren’t successful.  The folks who show up because they’re supposed to, but who’ve given up.  I appreciate the portrait.  It’s real and honest and captivating and certainly not pretty.  A fine example, one with which I’m more familiar than I’d like to be, is this paragraph, a stream of consciousness from one teacher struggling to figure out how to help a student he noticed was cutting herself:

Who am I kidding?  I don’t know what I’m doing.  The fact that it’s left to me to identify a girl who is on the verge of killing herself is ridiculous.  You can fake the teaching, but when it comes to this stuff, you can’t.  How can it be that I’m the one diagnosing or even realizing that this girl is in trouble?  I don’t even know who her guidance counselor is.  If something happens, I could be held liable.  I don’t know who to go to.  And if I don’t write it on my hand, I won’t remember to even report it.  It’s crazy.  Oh God, I hope she’s okay.

I’ve been there.  Ignore the TFA aspect of this book - it’s an eye-opening account of what it means to be a teacher in a dysfunctional school in the United States.  Or maybe in any school in the United States.

As for TFA - any alumni out there want to comment on the program?  While I dig their goals, it doesn’t seem to me like the program is necessarily going to result in systemic education reform.  Although, I might be getting cynical on the whole idea of education reform - small group of committed citizens, right?   And perhaps TFA, as only a 20-ish year old organization, isn’t mature enough yet.  Foote, in this interview with U.S. News & World Report, talks about the “two-pronged” approach of TFA as a reform group:

TFA has a two-pronged theory of change. In the short term, it will send smart, energetic, committed young people into these terrible schools. But the longer-term vision, and the one that is most likely to bear fruit, is the idea that, because TFA has culled so carefully for leaders and because these young teachers will be so informed by this unbelievable experience of teaching in underperforming schools, they will go out and make big changes.

Now that the early corps members are approaching their early 40s, we’re starting to see signs that these leaders that have been embedded in society are starting to rise up. If you troll the education reform movements, the big nonprofits, and philanthropies, you’ll see TFA alum[s] in their ranks. I think a real marker was laid down last spring when TFA alum Michelle Rhee was named chancellor of the D.C. schools.

I’d be curious to hear from anyone with TFA experience.  And I’m looking forward to the rest of the book.  Not because I suspect the ending’s a positive one - but because I so appreciate the humanity of the story.