Teaching as Soulcraft

I have so many ideas running around my head. I don't think I could ever synthesize it all into my own "grand unified theory". I say this with tongue partially in cheek. But I don't have a fully consistent philosophy to house all of my all over the place thinking. Among other things, I'm influenced by the spiritual writings of Catholic monk Thomas Merton who has given me a new appreciation of Eastern thought. I have a contructivist pedagogy. I read Kohn and Williamson. I like Dweck and Stevenson. I read Richard Rohr and love his spirituality yet I'm also attracted to Richard Rorty's realist philosophy. (I can't square that circle.) I appreciate the new mindfulness movement. I also have strong opinions about politics. On what is the the liberal to conservative spectrum in the United States, my beliefs are scatterplot. Except for being pro-gay marriage, I'm somewhat conservative on social issues and on economics I'm in Bernie Sanders territory.

At the end of the day I really only want to live a meaningful life. I don't have grand ambitions for myself. I want to be a good husband, dad, and teacher. I used to have much more ambition regarding my career. I've made peace with the fact that I'm not going to be a head of a school, President of the United States or Major League Baseball Player. But I've also come to learn that it isn't outside achievements and getting stuff that make me happy. For my own children, I really wish them a meaningful life beyond anything else. It isn't about money and things. It isn't about power and possessions. It certainly isn't about status. It is about peace of mind, serenity if you will, and helping others. I've also found I'm happy when I'm intellectually engaged. The craft of teaching deeply engages me. I love learning about new ideas- with and without technology- in teaching. 

Almost ten years ago, my brother-in - law gave me Matthew Crawford's, Shop Class as Soulcraft. This book has moved me closer to my "grand unified theory." Crawford is a renaissance man. He grew up on a commune, worked as electrician, went to college and eventually the University of Chicago where he earned a PhD. He left his high earning career to open a motorcycle repair shop after only five months in a high powered executive position. (This article is the genesis of what became his book) 

I gave the book a half-hearted read upon receiving it. I confess to admitting that I just didn't get it yet. Since getting it, two things have changed me and thus have changed how I see the book. One is a deep-seated spiritual awakening that I can only explain by saying that something profound happened to me and that I didn't do it. It was done to me and I can only say that it was by a power greater than me. I choose to call it God, but that's really because I don't have any better words. The other is my interest in the Ed. 2.0, Ed. Tech and the Maker Movement. Reading it again almost ten years later, I'm in a very different place.

Like me and like most of us, Crawford also is searching for a meaningful, purposeful existence. He finds it in his motorcycle shop. Crawford finds purpose in the kind of work that requires mastery of real things. 

This book is engaging and wide ranging. Many ideas jump out on issues ranging from class, work, education, and culture. Crawford argues something essential is missing in our culture. We've lost our ability to do and make. Consumer culture has pushed on in this direction. He points out several times that the newest Mercedes models come without a dipstick and this serves as a metaphor from our disassociation with doing. He writes about the customer service representatives who serve as the interface between the people who do the work and the consumer. We no longer even go into the shop where our cars are fixed. We are that far removed from fixing and making. Yet this work of fixing and making is often more intellectually challenging than much white collar work. His book also presents a full throated challenge to consumer culture and our society's values. 

Marketers realize that something essential has been lost and that we like to "make" things. The mall-based build a bear phenomenon of several years ago was a whisper in that direction even though the "building" consisted only of picking several options on a computer screen before the store built the bear. Yet, this "displaced agency", as Crawford calls it, moves us the right directions as marketers perhaps are realizing that it is, "not the product but the practice that is really attractive." When Betty Crocker Inc. invented the cake mix in the 1950's, it realized that the mix would sell far better if they let the baker feel they had some agency, some control. Thus, the baker still had to crack an egg into the mix. 

Crawford argues convincingly that people like and want agency. We want to be useful. We don't want to feel like cogs in a machine. When Henry Ford introduced the assembly line into his car factory, only 1 in 9 workers brought into his factory to work stayed. This lack of feeling useful and of having a useful skill meant something to men raised in the 19th century. To keep his workers, Ford had to double wages. Then he and other industrialists promoted credit and a consumerist mindset in his workers via the installment plan. It worked and this was a transition moment in our history and in our society's relation to work. Workers eventually became habituated to the assembly line. "Apparently," Crawford writes, " it inspires revulsion only if one is acquainted with more satisfying modes of work."  A century later, we are at an impasse. Schools aren't helping us out of this box we've put ourselves into. For instance, in math problem sets where the chapter is about "systems of two equations with two unknowns", the student knows exactly what methods to use. "In such a constrained situation, the pertinent context in which to view the problem has already been determined." It is the perfect assembly line metaphor. The problem is framed for us. We just have to use the right predetermined "tool" to solve it. 

In response to the assembly line a hundred years ago, the Arts and Crafts movement was born. An aesthetic of craft was a response against the machine age. The Maker Movement shares this response. It promotes constructivist thinking. It wants students actively making. However, I feel that in most schools, the Maker Spaces are peripheral. They are almost dilettantish spaces. We use these spaces a little bit here and there. But that's it. How do we shift the Maker Movement from the margins to the center?

It was this paragraph from the book that jumped out at me and prompted this bumbling attempt at a (excuse my grandiosity) grand unified theory, “...if we follow the traces of our own actions to their source, they intimate some understanding of the good life. This understanding may be hard to articulate; bringing it more fully into view is the task of moral inquiry. Such inquiry may be helped along by practical activities in company with others, a sort of conversation in deed. In this conversation lies the potential of work to bring some measure of coherence to our lives.”  I want to be happy, I want to live in relationship, and I want to be useful. 

The Maker Movement and Design Thinking don't advocate for themselves in this moral sense.  They promote themselves more via a practical sense/ "this is where the jobs will be" rationale. Yet for me, it is this moral sense and its potential for creating un-alienated happy people who aren't trying to fill the void left by soulless jobs through mass-consumption, food, status-seeking, drugs, alcohol and sex that excites me. I wasn't able to articulate that before.

I could never say all of this at school as I'm already seen as loopy enough and I doubt I've said it well here. But Crawford's book really gave me a framework which holds my political, spiritual, and pedagogical views. I highly, highly recommend it. 




Other observations
-Crawford points out the outsourcing of jobs is going to hit white collar workers hard and soon. Blue collar service jobs such as plumbers, electricians and motorcycle repairmen are more likely to keep jobs than a radiologist. 

-Crawford also writes about rewards which reinforces to my longtime opposition to grades. “There is a classic psychology experiment that seems to confirm Brewer's point. Children who enjoy drawing were given marker pens and allowed to go at it. Some were rewarded for drawing (they were given a certificate with a gold seal and a ribbon, and told ahead of time about this arrangement, whereas for others the issue of rewards was never raised. Weeks later, those who had been rewarded took less interest in drawing, and their drawings were judged to be lower in quality, whereas those who had not been rewarded continued to enjoy the activity and produced higher-quality drawings. The hypothesis is that the child begins to attribute his interest, which previously needed no justification, to the external reward, and this has the effect of reducing his intrinsic interest in it. That is, an external reward can affect one's interpretation of one's own motivation, an interpretation that comes to be self-fulfilling.” 

Columns!

Good news! Google Docs finally introduces columns! No longer do you have to do the weird add hidden table workaround. I really like docs. This one was strangely a long time in coming.

More on Google Classroom "Glitches"

Once a teacher attaches  a document in Classroom, the teacher loses the ability to go back in and change the sharing settings to "make a copy" for each student. Several of the teachers at my school have told me that they are losing the option "make a copy". I likely gave them a puzzled look as I have not seen it myself. I'm pretty certain that this is what has happened to them. If folks forget to "make a copy" when first attaching the a document, they will have to start the whole assignment over again.

This is cumbersome when trying to share multiple documents. One has to attach everything before sharing anything with the students. The video above says that this is intentional on Google's part. I can't see the benefit.

I'm still really liking the tool. But I'm starting to find interesting glitches.

update: you don't have to start from scratch. Thanks +Kyle Beatty for showing me "reuse" post. This will still allow you to make a copy, even if you didn't have it as a copy in its previous iteration.

https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6272593?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en

Maximizing Docs

I've spent a lot of time these past two weeks trouble-shooting Google Classroom. Many teachers in my school have recently started using it. Many of these folks really like it. They find it intuitive and easy to use.

Google Classroom falls down, or doesn't work as well, for teachers who wish to use the Google Classroom iPad app. It is a more than a tad slow. I have tried using it myself and they are right. When grading a stack of papers, one doesn't want lag time. Also, a couple of teachers have told me they've lost comments they've written while using the Google Classroom app on their iPads. Likely this happened because they forgot to save, but in a Google world where we rarely save anything any longer, this will be a common error. Still other teachers don't like that students immediately see their feedback. They like to hold work and return in all at once. So, they don't like that students can see edits and changes on the work itself. They thoughtfully point out that sometimes they go back and change comments and grades on a paper after reading a whole stack. What a teacher may think is a great paper may change if they later read several papers that are even better. I get that. 
(For a workaround to this problem, use the  "comments" feature and use suggestion mode. These keep a teacher's comments invisible until the students get their "ownership" back when their work is returned to them.)

Google Classroom is only going to get better. I can't help but thinking if teachers knew more about the Suggestion Mode (but not at my school- we have iPads- no suggestion mode) and how to use the comments feature, some current complaints would disappear. 

I propose a paradigm shift. I understand the reasons why we want to hold our feedback until we are ready to return work to everyone. But think about the benefits of students being able to see feedback in real time. I know that I have a hard time accessing my thinking after a while. I don't remember what I was thinking when I wrote it, thus the feedback is not as powerful as it could have been if it had been returned sooner.

I always let students re-write essays. I have students journal weekly and these they cannot change. But for an essay, I've found that students are far more likely to learn from the corrections I make on a paper if they can write it again. I let them write it for full credit and a new grade. If that's too big a leap for some teachers, maybe these teachers can average the new and old grade. 

 Of course, I also urge teachers to return work as soon as they finish it. That means students will receive returned assignments at different times. But if we vary the order in which we assesses the work, it would balance out. In short, why minimize learning for all students instead of just for some students?

Google Classroom and shared Google Drive folders can let us view student work while they are working on it! Why not "drop in" on a work in progress and help the student in real time when they actually need it? Tell students, "From 8-9 tonight, I'm going to be helping you write your essays. Please use the comment feature to ask me questions."

Okay, this takes time and effort. It will also save time and effort when grading the finished assignments. Mistakes in thinking and writing will already have been corrected.

In a similar vein, did you know that there is an app for docs called Draftback? (See video and picture.) Draftback creates a "movie" of the paper being written in real time.  Besides being a plagiarism detector, it is a powerful teaching tool. Imagine watching a paper being written by the student with the student. As a teacher, I could see exactly when and how a student struggled.  

Traditionally our model has been to teach before and after students do an assignment. Technology now allows us to give instruction while a student works on an assignment. 

More fully utilizing some of these features of Google Docs and taking advantage of tech tools that allow us to teach while students are in progress will minimize some of the Google Classroom frustrations while increasing student learning. 

Padlet, Comic Life 3 and Lucidpress in the High School Classroom

Update: I wrote this last year. I'm back to the same project and finding similar experiences. I'm still looking for the Goldilocks spot, where it is "just right". Still, I am committed to this assignment. Because technology, as used in this assignment, still enhances the narrative

I have some terrific 12th graders. Great kids. They are complaining that I'm working them too hard. I am. Kind of. They give lie to the idea of "digital native". They struggle with tasks my 5th graders were quite facile with. But that's not a surprise, or at least it shouldn't have been. They've never done some of the tasks I'm asking them to do. And my 5th grade students had a year under their belt with me. Tech needs to be like water. Normal. For them, it isn't and I now know better.

For instance, yesterday I showed the students how to use the Research Tool on a Google Doc. They were blown away.  I write this not to disparage my students or colleagues. Growing up with technology doesn't mean that a person knows how to do anything other than consume it.

In my first assignment, I asked the students to read the brilliant, powerful and sad, Fractured Lands, which was published recently in the New York Times Magazine. The story follows six people from six different countries in the Arab world.

The assignment:
You will read that there are six people the author follows in Fractured Lands. You have one of two choices presented below.

Option 1) Follow one of the character's stories in its entirety. That is whenever the person's picture appears in the left-hand margin, read their story. Then you will write a story using the app ComicLife (iPad app the costs 5 bucks) or Lucidpress (browser-based and free) explaining their story. The comic should reflect details and quotations from the story. It could also include an additional panel that reflects an imagined future for the character. The cartoon should be 12-15 panels. Lucidpress should be about 5-6 panels (pages) long. TRY THESE. YOU"LL LIKE IT. Regarding Lucidpress- make sure you choose the digital option. I don't want you making something for you will print out. I have a short tutorial included in this lesson. 

Option 2) Follow two of the character's stories in their entirety. Then write a page long dialogue (single spaced) between the two characters. What might be a circumstance where they would meet? What would they talk about? What might they want, and how could they be working to get what they want in the scene? Be sure to include relevant details from the story in your scene.You may tech it up if you wish and make an iMovie or Lucidpress or yes, ComicLife.

Below, I've included a comic-life presentation made by one of my students last year. Though she should have cited her pictures, otherwise I think it is excellent and it is worthy of a model. I think it would be really powerful to read one of the characters' stories through this media.

Here are their results. For a first try, some are quite good. Be patient if some of the projects aren't loading quickly.  Here is the link if you are having trouble viewing. I like how ComicLife enhances the narrative. I want my students to see that these are real people. Paraphrasing Stalin who once said an accident that kills four is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic, I know that numbers numb us. The genius of the article is that it personalizes the story. I wanted my assignment to allow students to fully understand this. Here is a Padlet of some of their work.

Created with Padlet

Teaching with 20% Time

I'm an avid follower of +AJJuliani. I've followed him for about a year. Based largely on his writings, I'm going to try 20% Time in my elective International Relations course. This is my first time teaching this course. Readers of this blog may know a little of my story. After teaching Middle School for 22 years, I then left to teach upper elementary school- 5th grade to be exact. After doing that for two years, I shifted to teaching high school last year. Though an experienced pro, I have had my fair share of new these past four years.

This year, I will be teaching 12th graders for the first time. Nothing is more real in traditional schooling and grading than the upcoming marking period for my students and they know it. They know the game of school and they are close to the final inning. They are going to resent these changes if not handled carefully and they may resent them anyway. I dream that they'll feel relieved and unburdened as I present them the freedom to learn about whatever they want. In actuality, I know that for some this may feel like a chore and burden.

It's a hard thing at times this teaching business, especially hard if you want to do a bit differently. I've read widely about education and pedagogy. Though firmly in the constructivist camp, I've always taught in a traditional school that has a slightly progressive flavor around the edges. (forgive me as I know I'm mixing metaphors all over the place and then whatever that last sentence was) Basically, what I'm getting at is that I've taught enough in the traditional method to know it and at times 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. My point is that when teaching differently from the traditional sage on the stage method that we sometimes feel that we are not teaching.  At least I know I have and that's with a firm philosophy and years of teaching experience behind me.

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! I reject this while being seduced by it at the same time.

Today, a brand new teacher at my school with years of experience in the Maker Movement came to me worried about not being seen as a teacher if he didn't teach via direct instruction from the front of the class in a computer science class he will be teaching. I have no easy answers to combatting these feelings. I urged my colleague to continue to do what his Maker training has taught him. I hope he does.

Also, it is worth noting that progressive pedagogy is an easy target for parents. They were raised with grades and homework and standards and RIGOR and they equate all of that stuff with learning and they want it for their kids. 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'm not going to cave on 20% time. Juliani tells us to celebrate our failures. I perhaps will be doing just that 5 months from now. To anyone thinking about trying to do this teaching thing a little bit differently, hang in there. I know it isn't easy.

Google Classroom

Whenever I write about Google, I feel obligated to say most of what I've learned is from Rich Kiker and Alice Keeler. Thus, if what I write seems reminiscent of something one of them has already written, it is not a surprise. I'm not purposefully taking what they make. It is only that most of what I know they've taught me. So forgive me....

I'm leading a Google Classroom training today. Most of my faculty used to use Hapara to push work to students. That no longer exists. So, I'm going to get a full house.

Google Classroom is not a full LMS. Among other things, there is not a gradebook function. But what it does it does so very well.

Here is a Slide show I've made for my teachers who are just getting started.