Stand and Deliver

I've been working with the terrific Godfrey Lee School District in Grand Rapids, Michigan as they work on incorporating the 6c's and themed based teaching into their K-12 instruction. This work has had me reading the works of a lot of different folks but also had me reflecting on the praxis of teaching. 

This teaching business is hard, and it's especially hard if you want to do a bit differently.  Though firmly in the constructivist camp, I’ve always taught in a traditional school that has a slightly progressive flavor around its edges.  I’ve taught enough in the traditional method to know it and I’ve been told I did it well. I once prided on being a very good lecturer. At least that’s what my students told me.  As I've moved away from the model, at times I still feel its pull.  I sometimes feel that I am not teaching and that’s despite a firm progressive philosophy and years of teaching experience telling me my way is better for most kids.

What Teaching is Supposed to Look Like? 

In our culture, good teaching is Mr. Chips. It is Robin Williams in Dead Poet’s Society. It is Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver and Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds. These dynamic teachers are the show! The movie and the class narrative is always about them! We celebrate these cults of personality- some rife with boundary violations. I reject this while being seduced by it at the same time.

I know a teacher with years of experience in the Maker Movement who was worried about not being seen as a teacher if he didn’t teach via direct instruction from the front of the class in his computer science class. I have no easy answers to combating these feelings. I urged this teacher to continue to do what his Maker training has taught him.

One must also acknowledge that progressive pedagogy and themed based learning is an easy target for parents who were raised with grades and homework and standards and lecture and RIGOR and they equate all of that stuff with learning. Years ago, one boy’s parents blamed my lack of giving grades for their son’s refusal to do any schoolwork. Of course, this boy wasn’t doing any schoolwork in any other teachers’ classes either and these teachers all graded him. My teaching was singled out.

I will encourage the great folks at Godfrey to celebrate and learn from their failures and to acknowledge what they are trying to do is brave. Constant reflection and self evaluation will be important for them.  To anyone thinking about trying to do this teaching thing a little bit differently, hang in there. I know it isn’t easy. But your students will learn more in all sorts of ways. 

Google Forms Update

Yesterday, Google announced  updates allowing users to customize Google Forms to a greater degree than previously allowed. Besides uploading pictures and colors as background, there wasn't much to customize within Forms.

It's not earth-shattering. And I'll probably waste time finding the perfect font instead of just sending out a form. But it's a nice touch.

Vocation

A colleague and I were speaking recently and in the midst of our discussion she referred to teaching as a vocation. I've heard this term more than a few times before, but she had me thinking about it again as I close out my 27th year of teaching.

A vocation is a calling. For many, the term evokes religious overtones. Is teaching sacred work? It gets at something very essential and very very important. There's not much work in the world that is more important- though I cede that other work may be equally important.

As I said goodbye to a woman who taught me and my son and with whom I've taught with for now 27 years, it is clear that teaching is, in some ways, sacerdotal. There are rituals, there's a sense of self-sacrifice, and we can when we're lucky affect profound and seemingly miraculous changes. This woman helped do that for me. She made me feel I belonged at a school where I was struggling terribly as a young 9th grader.

But before I get so high-falutin, I also should state it plainly that I don't always do this job for such noble reasons because for me there is no rush quite like it. I had classes this year that were simply exhilarating and I know that I had both everything and nothing to do with it. I'll admit that as a younger teacher, my ego was also very wrapped up in being seen as an excellent teacher. It's less about that for me now as I purposely try to keep my ego deflated. But the rush, ah... it definitely keeps me coming back.

The pay ain't great. The hours are lousy- any teacher worth their salt knows this job takes hours and hours of work beyond the school day. We're not especially respected by society and my fellow teachers in public education are punching bags for the politicians. I'm still waiting for the day when they put a committee of teachers together to solve the problems of business instead of the reverse. 

I'm the dad of triplets who graduated from high school on Saturday and I'm so very grateful to their many teachers who felt vocations to enter this profession despite these downsides. They've helped shape my kids in profound ways.

Sitting by/ in council/ as assessor

http://latin-dictionary.net/definition/5139/assideo-assidere-assedi-assessus

I've had the privilege of being taught by classicist, Dr. Erika Harnett every year of my high school career. This year, 30 years later, she taught my youngest child in her final year of teaching at the school in which I now work. Erika made me feel like I could " do it" at a time in my life when school was difficult. She was and is a no nonsense, but she also makes her students laugh and they know how much she cares for them. We will really miss "Doc". 


 It's also exam time at my school. I've shared my frustrations with one size fits all traditional assessments before, I'm not really going to do that here, at least not directly.

Doc's classroom is next to my office. In these last weeks of school, I've been thinking about her Latin class and the Latin I've mostly forgotten. I do remember one of my favorite activities in her class was when she would put a Latin word on the board and our task was to figure out the many English words came from that Latin root. I was and still am fascinated by the journey of language. I thought it so cool that the Latin word for room, camera gave us the words "chamber" via the French which retained its original meaning and our word camera because the original cameras of the 19th century were little rooms. I still like to look at the roots of a word.

The word assideo is the root for our word "assessment". The third definition as seen above is where we get our word. And yet, as I sit here at exam time I wonder if the first definition, "besiege" isn't really what we are doing.

One can never assess fairly because assessment is fundamentally a human activity. How do we really know how well a student understands history or literature? We can't. I know some will answer that we are really assessing a students ability to express that understanding, not if they have an understanding. This is true. But still, can one really distinguish an A- music composition from a B+ composition? The same holds true for a art project and yes, an essay. I propose to bring our assessments back to the root. Let's "sit by/in council/as assessor". Let's find ways to really bring assessment back to one of being in council with the learner. Let's move assments from being sorting exercises to learning exercises.