Learning is Change

Comforting Skin

 

The following is an essay written as an example for my Core 4 students. Their essays, as well as mine, is part of a multi-cultural novel unit and persuasion unit focused on the concept of change. My essay is a work in progress, and should be treated as such.

Identity is art. It is craft. It is make-believe. There is truly no such thing as a personal identity, only one that we have constructed to look like someone we would want to be. In reality, we are all swirling around within our own skin, looking for something to hold on to long enough to call our own. Comfort is a luxury we do not have when it comes to identity. We must exist in a constant flux as to who we are and what we want. Race, sexual orientation, personality: these are the things that complicate this process. Discomfort in our own skin is the constant state of our lives because of pressures from each other, ourselves, and our societal environment.

Relationships affect action. The connection made with another person requires a deliberate change in identity. You must shift into your mode of friendship with this person, remembering all of the things that you have done with this person, all of the things that this person doesn’t like, all of the things that will be of value only to this relationship. This creates discomfort within the skin you were born into, chafing against the way you must act with other people. In the book, Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, Jeremy Simms never feels comfortable within in his own skin because he is constantly having to change his identity for his white family and his black friends. This change is most obvious in a passage when he must try to live within both identities at the same time. In talking to a black friend he must stutter out, “She d-did, Pa. R-right now, ‘fore y’ll come, she did–” His white father cuts him short with “an angry gaze upon his son” causing Jeremy to “falter” and “[hang] his head.” This stutter is emblematic of the discomfort that Jeremy feels when talking to his father in the presence of his black friend. He is so uncomfortable that he cannot speak clearly. When forced to get back to his “white” relationship, he can no longer say the words that he most desires to. His relationship with others is directly responsible for paining his identity.

12.11.06

Cores 1-4:

  • Vote on the next Guest Blogging questions:
    • What’s more important: social or academic experiences?
    • Who was the teacher that had the greatest affect on you, either good or bad? (Or, other stories from classroom)
    • What do you see as the biggest factor in the generation gap?
    • Which is better: work or school?
  • Take a look at the Authenticity Awards

Core 1:

  1. Chapter 8 Comprehension Question: How did the school board members know to come in to Mrs. Logan’s classroom and look at the pasted-over front pages of the textbooks?
  2. Discuss-On: Who should decide what gets taught in schools?
  3. Discuss Chapter 8:
    • What is the worst type of coercion displayed so far?
    • Why does T.J. “turn” on the Logans?
  4. Read Chapter 9:
    • What are the major conflicts that are arising in the story?

Core 2

  1. Write-on: Are there such a thing as good guys and bad guys?
  2. Read “Entire City Put on War Footing.”
    • How can we maintain the moral high ground?
    • How is our current situation reminicent of this period?

Core 3:

  1. Write-on: how can laughing at a bad situation help to change it?
  2. Write our mini-satires.

Core 4:

  1. Analyze our discussion, looking for questions that are provable and thought-provoking.
  2. Choose a question to write an essay about either from the discussion or from my list. (and #2)

Teacher 2.0

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A lot of edubloggers are focusing on what School 2.0 should look like. I really like the idea of looking ahead (and hopefully planning ahead) for the inevitable progression of modern education. But the more that I think about what a technologically and pedagogically progressive school should look like, I am struck by the thought that my job as a teacher must change as a result. Now, I am not talking about the change from lecturer to co-learner, from “sage on stage” to “guide on the side.”. I think that I have already made that shift. The change I am talking about is in terms of job description. Whatever changes I may be making in my career, I’d like to think that I know what I want out of my vocation. So, I am going to attempt to write the ideal job description for teacher 2.o as well as the job description would feel trapped inside of and never be able to fulfill the obligations of.

Teacher 2.0:

Impassioned secondary teacher wanted to create high-level small-class learning environment in a diverse school dedicated to reflective pedagogy, thoughtful technology integration, and teacher leadership.

General Job Responsibilities for all teachers at our school:

  • Collaborate with team, department, and greater teaching community via both synchronous (essential question directed in-person discussion, Google Documents-style collaborative lesson planning, real-time chatting) and asynchronous methods (wikis, non-mass e-mails, Personal Learning Network reading and linking).
  • Maintain a reflective teaching blog, podcast, and/or wiki which is focused upon finding solutions for classroom problems, creating more student engagement or acheivement as shown through authentic assessements and teacher anecdotal evidence rather than state-wide assessement scores, or generating new ways to connect to students, teachers, or other members of the education community.
  • Read and interact with a Personal Learning Network made up of a few administratively selected educators and a vast majority of personally selected teachers, authors, and students who challenge you to become a better teacher.
  • Create your own professional development objectives for the year based upon your passions and your readership of your PLN. The majority of the professional development time throughout the year will be based upon your own objectives.
  • Create curriculum that can be shared, edited, and reproduced through creative commons licenses.
  • Use non-graded e-portfolios as the exclusive means of assessment and personal student reflection.

Specific Job Responsibilities for the English Language Arts position:

  • Create and maintain a digital authentic writing community, in which students are responsible for reflecting upon their own work, linking and commenting on others’ work, and understanding and controlling the direction of their own writing progress/process.
  • Conduct project-based learning that asks students to address real-life issues through authentic writing and media creation.
  • Use inquiry-based lessons to teach the conceps of textual analysis, considering all types of text (visual, auditory, and performance.)
  • Model the creation of touchstone-texts and resources that produce well-balanced viewpoints of our world, and help students to do the same.
  • Ensure that each student can question the validity of statements made in writing or in speech by verifying sources constantly.
  • Cultivate each student’s unique writer’s voice so that the intentions of their writing meet the impressions of the reader. This process must include constant feedback, grammatical and conventions mini-lessons, and constant question asking as to the purpose of the choices that the student author has made.
  • Conduct in-depth digital and conventional discussions on the nature of read and writing, user-selected texts, and thematic issues related to other curriculum.
  • Model higher-level thinking skills in writing and verbal remarks to the class and expect the same high-level thinking from students.

I know that I will be adding to both of these lists quite a bit as my thoughts keep coming, but I thought that I would start off with these. Please let me know what you think of they way things truly should be in schools. Oh, and if anyone knows of a job like this out there, please let me know. I would love to be a part of a school that is this perfect. (I know that this doesn’t exist yet, but I suppose I can dream.)

11.08.06

Core 1:

  1. Chapter 7 comprehension question: How does Mr. Granger plan on getting the land back from the Logans?
  2. What is a white ally? How can we be white allies.
  3. Read Chapter 8 and look for new forms of revenge.

Core 2:

  1. Take Maus Quiz.
  2. Answer the following comprehension questions on your own sheet of paper in order to earn your AR points (you must turn in your book before you attempt these):
    • What two diseases has Vladek had?
    • What are the names of Vladek’s two wives?
    • Name one concentration camp that Vladek went through.
    • List two of the jobs that Vladek had in the concentration camps.
    • List at least five different animal types that Art Spiegelman uses and what ethnic backgrounds these animal types represent.

Core 3:

  1. Write-On: What are the things about technology that make you mad.
  2. Read computer story and discuss how humor can be an organizing factor for a piece of writing.

Core 4:

  1. Go over the rules for online discussions.
  2. Model question asking from previous discussion.
  3. Go to the computer lab and discuss your multi-cultural novels.

12.07.06

Core 1:

  1. Chapter 6 comprehension question: How did Uncle Hammer react when Cassie told him about the “incident” with Lillian Jean in Strawberry?
  2. Discuss-On: What is the difference between respect and fear? (pg. 109)
  3. Read chapter 7 and discuss:
    • How change affects all parts of the racial hierarchy.

Core 2:

  1. Discuss-On: What was Art trying to get across with his depiction of the falling pictures and joined frames on page 115 and 116.
  2. Read the last chapter:
    • How do you put your life back together after such tragedy?
    • What are the lasting effects of war/genocide?
    • Is it a happy ending?
    • What is the significance of the last line?

Core 3:

  1. Analyze the threaded discussion for a pattern.
    • Question
    • Initial Answer
    • Question about Initial Answer
    • Example from text addressing Questions or Answers.
  2. See if you can reconstruct that pattern in your head and on paper when you read something new. (The Chase by Annie Dillard)

Core 4:

  1. Discuss-On: How do the characters in your book attempt to change an established hierarchy?
  2. Model tracing through a book for words, ideas, themes
    • Struggle
    • Hope
    • A Search for Truth
    • Acceptance
    • Growing Up
    • Hate
  3. Trace through your book for so that you will be answering in tomorrow’s online discussion session:
    • What is the one thing that this book made you think about that you had never thought about before? Why is this an important thing to think about?
    • What is the author trying to prove to you in writing the book?
    • What are the important issues which affect the cultural group represented in this book? In what ways are these issues common to all groups? In what ways are they specific to the single group?
    • How is the central issue/problem of the main character developed and resolved?
    • What qualities of the main character do you most admire? Why?
    • How does this book help you understand and appreciate cultural differences?
    • Which character/poem reflects your cultural outlook/view of the world? Why do believe that both you and this character are right? (or, if you can’t find any characters/poems that reflect your thoughts, find one that is the absolute opposite of your cultural outlook and discuss why you think this character is wrong).

12.06.06

Core 1:

  1. Write-On: Do you believe that each person has a place in life?
  2. Read Chapter 5 in class and discuss Cassie and Stacy’s “Place in life.”

Core 2:

  1. Discuss-On: How is war like a disease?
  2. Discuss chapter 3 and its use of trains as torture.
  3. Read chapter 4 and discuss the following:
    • Fragile Safety
    • Pictures as memory.

Core 3:

  1. Go over expectations for Online Discussion.
  2. Start discussing the short story using conversate.

Core 4:

  1. Discuss-On: Why is it important to look at literature and life in a hierarchical manner?
  2. Continue discussion of Cresthill hierarchy.
  3. How do we subconsciously advocate a certain hierarchy?
  4. How can we change an established hierarchy?
  5. How do the characters in your book attempt to change an established hierarchy?

12.05.06

Cores 1-4:

  1. Read my Weekly Authentic and discuss Critical Mass.
  2. Write your Weekly Authentic, Nominate for an Authenticity Award, and Celebrity Comment.

The Critical Mass of Ideas, Engagement, and Writing.

 

 Although this post isn’t in direct response to Hockey90’s Thinking About Thought, I believe it accents my post quite well, so I suggest you read it too.

The concept of critical mass has always been intriguing to me, but until recently I never saw the application to thought, teaching, or writing. For those of you who may be uninitiated, critical mass is the idea that there is some number of things (atoms, people, ideas, uproar, etc.) that it takes in order to create a desired action (attract more people, create a revolution, etc.). This means that it is very hard for one person to change the outcome of an election, but it is pretty easy for 10,000. This is a critical mass of people.

Well, I began thinking of what the critical mass of ideas was. If I think about the problem of world hunger for a minute, I probably won’t come up with any lasting solutions. But the question is: how many minutes do I have to think about it for me do so? How many different ideas do I need to have in order to create a critical mass, finding a path to a true answer that will actually work. For most of us it probably takes quite a few minutes and quite a few ideas to actually come up with answers. We have to consider all of the different possibilities and then pick the best one (and even then we are often wrong). It is my belief that only a true genius can see an answer from one idea. They are the only people who have a critical mass level of one idea or thought. The rest of us need more, and that is where other people come in.

If other people are not in the picture, if they do not put forth their ideas, drawing out more thinking from us, then very few things would ever get done. This is why teamwork and group participation is so important. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen a discussion be born and die with a mere two comments from students. On the other hand, there are just as many discussions that reach a critical mass of comments, and every hand goes up. What is the critical mass of a discussion? I believe it is at least 3 hands up at a time, with at least one different idea. This is, however, just a working theory.

As for engagement, its critical mass is much harder to determine. I have been in many classes (Spanish in middle school) that I feel truly bored in. When I feel this way, it is very hard to become engaged in what is going on. How many thought-provoking moments does it take to draw me back in? How many times do I have to relate to the subject for it to work its way into my brain and take hold? The critical mass of engaging ideas is probably different for everyone, but for me it is considerably more than one. It also helps me when I have the tools at my fingertips to engage. If I have pen and paper at hand, I can better engage. If I have a laptop and a wireless connection, I can be looking up what we are talking about. I can be writing up notes. I can be making comments about the stupid things that people are saying around me (to myself). All of these things are aids to my critical mass of engagement. I wonder what this would be for each of my students.

I have talked quite extensively about memes and viral ideas and books, but I think that a critical mass of ideas is much bigger than one for writing. I have to hear/read about something a few times or at least be thinking about it a few times before I can comment on it, or incorporate it into my way of thinking. Blogging is the easiest format for creating critical mass that I have ever seen. You can collect ideas, aggregating them in your head, until the time when you have amassed enough of them to start writing about them. If you are running out of things to write about, start reading. Create a critical mass for yourself. Look around you, all of the ideas are staring right at you, waiting to be collected.

12.04.06

Cores 1-4:

  1. Spelling Bee information and initial entrance test.

Core 1:

  1. Chapter 4 Comprehension Question: What is the real reason that Mrs. Logan didn’t want her kids to go to the Wallace store?
  2. How do you find out about a character that is silent, or nearly silent?
  3. What forms of resistance do (can) the Logans use to avoid servitude to the whites?

Core 2:

  1. Write/Discuss-On: How does Art’s drawings of the camps help to define the Nazi psychology?
  2. How do the flies interact with the modern characters? What is their true symbolic value at the end of the chapter?
  3. Read Chapter 3 and discuss trains, disease, and war.
  4. Homework: Read to the end of Chapter 3 and answer the following question:
    • How is war like a disease? (Use specific examples from chapter 3.)

Core 3:

  1. Write-On: Look for the best question that is on the other person’s short story. Write why you think it is a good question?
  2. Discuss the best question.

Core 4:

  1. What is the hierarchy of names at Cresthill?
  2. Why is it important to look at literature and life in a hierarchical manner?

12.01.06

Cores 1-4:

  1. Look at and discuss first guest blogs.
  2.  Congratulate the Authenticity Award Recipients for the past two weeks.

Core 1:

  1. Write-On: When is revenge the sweetest?
  2. Discuss Chapter 3:
    •  Explain the trail of headlights that haunts Cassie at the end of the chapter.
  3. Chapter 4 in partners.

Core 2:

  1. Discuss-On: How do relationships change when your biggest worry is survival?
  2. Finish time flies looking for the traits of survival and further significance to the flies.

Core 3:

  1. Discuss-On: What should you be thinking about when you finish reading a short story?
  2. Continue asking and answering questions about “After I was Thrown in the River and Before I drowned.”

Core 4:

  1. Should Paul Dawson be fired?
  2. Making the N-word History.
  3. What is the Heirarchy of names in your book?