reading ruined already?

I'm sitting here helping my 2nd grade daughter with her homework.

She is to complete three story maps, each on a book from her shelves here at home that she has read and knows well. This task has paralyzed her.

And that's what I find fascinating.

With as natural as stories are to us as human beings, how is it that a task to map out a story paralyzes my child? How is it that identifying the characters, the setting, the problem/solution, and the important plot details is making my child believe that she is unable to succeed?

Normally my child whips through her homework. But tonight, she had to take a five minute break under a blanket on the couch. Now that she's been back at the table she has written down three plot details in about 15 minutes. Not the usual pace for a kid who can complete a week's worth of homework math story problems in about a half hour.

She's sitting next to me, whiny, doodling on her page. "What happens next in the story?" I ask her.

"I don't know. I forgot," she says very sadly. "You told me but I don't remember."

We had just read the story together. Surely she has not forgotten the details of the story yet?

"What if there's a right and wrong?" she asks me. "My teacher writes A LOT when we do these at school. We copy down what she writes on the board."

"Are you worried that you aren't writing enough?" I ask.

She finishes with another plot detail and asks me what's next. She has just flipped through the book again but asks ME what's next. She asks me to write it even. Or at least to tell her what to write. When I make a suggestion, she tells me that it's too long, too many words (this from a child who has handwritten several pages of her autobiography in one sitting, a child who read about eight Magic Treehouse house books in one weekend and has no problem with stories).

I worry that already school is teaching her that there is only one set of right answers about a story. I worry that already she is learning that what the teacher says about a book is right and her job is just to copy it down neatly on her story map. I worry that she is learning already that the purpose of reading a story in school is just to identify its parts and pieces, not to say what she thinks about a story.

I ask her if she would rather write about what she thinks about the story. She says the story map never asks her to do that.

I ask her why she picked the book she used for the first story map--and she said it was because it was short and she thought it would be easy to work with.

Oh my. Already? Choosing a book for a school task because it's short? How did this happen?

I'm certain her teacher means well and does not intend for any of this to happen. In fact, I have been quite impressed by what I know of my daughter's classroom. I know that the literacy approaches taken there are all informed by researched best practice.

But it's absolutely fascinating to see my child struggling already with a task in school that boils a book down to its mere components, separated from pondering what the story has to say about our life as human beings. She's so worried about not writing enough and not writing the right details that she's paralyzed.

Well, we just agreed she could have some chocolate if she finished another story map... now she's somewhat more motivated. Good in the short term for getting the homework done. Bad in the long term for her love of reading?

No wonder so many of my high school students aren't readers.

Signing off--
M. Shelley

What if?

You'll be seeing a lot from the book I'm currently reading, Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, edited by Kylene Beers, Robert Probst, and Linda Reif. This book is becoming highly relevant to the work I need to do to contextualize the pilot the district has supported me in running next year with my seniors. In short, in order to more effectively differentiate to meet my students' needs, I'll be able to work with attendance in a flexible manner. There will be some days where not all of my students will need to be in class, thus making it possible for the ones who work well independently to do so and giving me more time to work one-on-one with the students who need more of that kind of support. It will be a hybrid online/face time course with a strong web presence to keep everyone on the same page.

I'm excited about this, but I want to approach it well. I want to know exactly WHY I think this might work. I want to know what to look for to see if it is working. And in the end, I want to be able to say with some certainty whether or not it's an approach worth repeating and exactly why. I've got a student teacher this semester and a bit more time on my hands to read, so hence my obsession with this book. I imagine I'll be using this space here to capture some of the passages and thoughts from the book that strike me as critical in my thinking about this pilot project.

So here's today's contribution (actually, I had intended to post it on Tuesday--but as F. Scott already indicated we had a crazy week here with state testing AND parent/teacher conferences). Kylene Beers wonders:

What if students sometimes worked independently and other times worked with others in their school community, local community, state community, or across the globe? What if schooling valued multiple intelligences and the curriculum were dependent on technology and multimedia? What if authentic assessments were more important than multiple-choice state tests? What if asking the probing question were valued more than providing the correct answer? What if students were required to do some sort of service project or community work and what if learning content in the textbook were not substituted for figuring out what to do with that content? What if school were the place where students found their voice, discovered how to think, and saw that what they did and believed and thought mattered? What if school were where students learned a lot (not all, but certainly a lot) about being a part of a democracy, a contributing part? What if school were a place for figuring out, where trying mattered at least as much as adequate progress, where learning proceeded at each student's level and pace instead of lock-step pace? I think if those things happened, then a high school diploma might mean something, and the something it would mean would be far different than what it meant in 1986 or 1996 or even today in 2006. (11)

So yes, what if? I love this vision of the potential the high school education. This vision might better engage more students, thus making school something real and relevant and worth their time.

We need more people wondering what if? and imagining other possible worlds for our students' lives in school.

For now, signing off--
M. Shelley

Quantify this!

In a week where I spent a good chunk of my working time watching 9th graders take a state mandated test that does not help them and tells us very little that we didn't already know, maintaining a positive attitude is tough (we had conferences as well- so additionally an exhausting week).

So I smiled this morning to read this great vignette from Joe Bower at for the love of learning.

I won't repost the whole thing, but the end is perfect:

This quick, light-hearted interaction with these two boys initiated a relationship that engaged them in learning for the remainder of time they spent with me. And in the end, they needed the relationship more than the math.

Can you test for that? How do you quantify the master teacher's judgement that the relationship is more important than the curriculum at that moment? Would you penalize Mr. Bower for failing to focus on the math (his ostensible job). Would you fire him because he's 'not a good teacher?'

Or would you PRAY, to what ever power you believe in, that your kid has teachers like that.

It's always the relationship first.

'No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.'

-F. Scott

What I am really interested in...

Both M. Shelly and I saw Diane Ravitch speak this past week. It was moving, hopeful and profoundly disturbing. It was great to see someone so articulate outline what many of us practitioners have known in our guts for a while now- the current tide in education is taking us places we don't want to go, and I believe will have profound consequences for education and our nation- none of the consequences being good.

Currently in Colorado we face an initiative that is in pursuit of RTTT monies. SB191 attempts to tie teacher and principal evaluation to student test scores. It would eliminate 'tenure' for K-12 teachers in favor of performance evaluations that don't exist yet and haven't been funded. Sidestepping the question of teacher accountability for a moment, one fundamental problem is that this bill (and others like it- see SB6, recently defeated in Florida) is an attempt to impose a large scale solution with little to no evidence to support the efficacy of its methods. Too much of our education policy right now is being driven by 'theories' that have no evidence to support them. See today's article on charter schools in the NY Times for more.

But that isn't what I really want to talk about. I want to talk about education practice that does work, and has evidence to support it. I asked a colleague of mine to join one of my classes this week to discuss a subject on which he is an expert. It was really great to listen to another excellent teacher engage with my students (I only got to hear his discussion with one section, I was covering his class during the other). And it reminded me that we need more collaboration. The power of working together is so much greater than whatever I can muster on my own. The richness for students of their teachers working in concert is an evidence based strategy that has a profound impact for students across several different measures- and has the added benefit of making teacher's working life even more meaningful and rewarding.

So often though, the structure of schools gets in the way. I had to cover my colleague's class so that he could talk to my students. I didn't mind at all, but I wished for a more flexible structure. Even within my department we are so disconnected that true collaboration happens only as a result of extreme effort or dumb luck. I made this moment happen because I felt it was important and worthwhile, but nothing about the way our school is set up encourages this type of work. I have a tough enough time just having a conversation with colleagues from my own department. Trying to work closely with colleagues from other departments is nearly impossible. And I am embarrassed to admit there are new teachers in my building this year whose names I do not even know. One of the things that would really help us in collaborating is time- more time in the day, more unstructured development time, and support and direction. Frankly, I'd like more time just to get to know my fellow teachers. So often the structure of school has us buried in our own little worlds, ignorant of what is happening around us, or worse, competing against each other for resources and support. Collaborating for the benefit of students is unlikely to happen in such an environment.

To come full circle here, collaboration is even less likely if I'm living in fear for my job. What we do for our students is so much more than what gets reported on standardized tests (thank god- have you seen those tests? I have). It's taking a moment to make sure my students hear from the best sources I can muster- especially when one of those sources is only two floors away. Bills like SB191 are really frightening. Ravitch really hammered the point last week that there are fundamental changes happening right now, the effects of which are sure to be deep and long lasting. I am afraid for the future of my students and my colleagues. If you are reading this and you are a voter in Colorado, please take a moment to contact your state representative or Governor Ritter, and voice your opinion. So I bought Ravitch's book, and I am trying to stay positive by doing positive things. Like sharing my classroom with my colleagues, and my colleagues with my students. Which is what I really want to talk about...

-F. Scott

Out of the office, into the classroom

A great moment today at work (in a day that REALLY needed a great moment).

I was writing a paper to use as a model for my students in a fairly traditional 11th Grade class. They are working on an assignment in which they have to analyze a passage from a play by Shakespeare. So I chose a passage from a different play (one of my favorites- yes I am a literature geek). I wrote a paper (about 750 words- these are very short papers), and handed it off to my teammate to give it a read. We were sitting in my office and my office-mate (M. Shelly) joined in the conversation (I wasn't trying to cut her out, we just don't teach the same classes). Soon we were all involved in a conversation about not only my paper, but what we thought a paper like this should look like. What qualities made a paper like this good? We were, in essence, fully engaged in a writing conference, with my writing as the center of attention.

It was a really interesting experience from several different perspectives. First, writing this paper was tough. And I am a professional in this field, I know the play I was writing about, I know the passage cold (mostly have it memorized), and most days I am a pretty good writer. Even so, this is a tough assignment. It isn't tough to think about the passage, but to convert that thinking into a cogent, articulate and extremely focused piece of writing was really challenging. It was a good reminder that what we ask our students to do every day is hard. Even for our good students (and most of my students are very good at being students).

Second, it was interesting to have my writing worked over in the same way that I do my student's writing. I am serious about both writing and thinking about literature. I am a veteran of writing workshops, have my own committed writing practice, and have the toughest editor I know close to hand (I am married to her). It is tough to take criticism, even from people I know like and trust, in a neutral setting! And I really trust both the source of the criticism and the nature of the comments. I have no doubt that following my colleague's advice will improve my paper, and I still wanted to fight about it.

My students are worried about being 'right,' worried about what I will think of them, worried about what their peers will think of them, and all too often they don't really understand why I care about their writing, because they don't. They just want a grade and to move on. Or they want to know how to get to the 'right' answer- and that is tough when studying literature. For many, English class is a perennial mystery, where they never really get a grip on what it is we are doing, no matter how hard my colleagues and I try to make it transparent (yes, I know that there are just as many who love this class, but I am not as worried about them for immediate purposes). What must it be like to have a conference with me?

And third, in the middle of a really engaged conversation about my paper and papers like this in general- a thought struck me. I said to my colleagues, "Wee need to stop doing this in here (here being in our office) and do it in our classrooms." We need to model what it really takes to get good at writing, which was all the things we had in play in my office. I was genuinely committed to the writing (my geekiness knows no bounds), my colleagues we genuinely committed to helping me, and we had the freedom to have a real conversations because we had an already established relationship of trust and respect, making the office a safe place to float my writing.

So I guess the tough question is really, how do I get students to that place. That, of course, is a pretty complicated question. It would be great if the intertube out there had some answers. I am not sure it does. We did talk about how to arrange our schedules so that we could model these kinds of discussions for our students. That is a start.

I am actually not going to show my students a revised draft of the paper, at least not right away. I want them to see it in its raw first draft, without the benefit of the revision process. I took some notes, and Shelly wrote some things on the back of my draft, and I think I will take some suggestions from my students as well.

It was, far and away, the best part of my day.

F. Scott

Ed Sec Speaks- it can't be good.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will be speaking at Columbia Teacher's College tomorrow- according to CNN. He will apparently be calling for overhaul of teacher preparation to better "prepar(e) teachers for the realities of the 21st-century classroom." Given the initiatives of the Obama Administration in education policy, which have read like an uninterrupted continuation of the Bush administration, Arne Duncan talking about the 21st Century Classroom is a bit like the CEO of Hormel talking about animal rights. Though I am pretty sure that if the CEO of Hormel claimed to know something about pigs, and even claimed to like them, I would believe him. Whereas when Duncan claims to know anything about real students in the real world, it's awfully tough to buy his rap.

Over and over again, from our district to the Secretary of Education, we hear politicians make noise about 21st century education while pushing agendas that from a more nuanced perspective seem only designed to return us to the 18th century (at best).

Alfie Kohn had a great piece in District Administration in the February issue that said it way better than I.

-F. Scott

A curve ball today

Something surprised me today and still leaves me somewhat unsettled.

Whereas I feel like the reading is going pretty well so far (see my previous post), the group project that I debuted today is not leaving me with quite as much confidence.

The group project was one of the required forms that I presented at the beginning of the unit (that and the compare/contrast paper that is a common assessment across all eight sections of the course I'm teaching, taught by a total of three different teachers). My requirements on the project were few--draw on the stories of your own life experiences to teach us something. Create something to share with us what there is to learn from your life experiences. Integrate into project and/or presentation some text you find that connects in a meaningful way to Into the Wild.

To help explain why I was leaving this all so open, I showed them two youtube videos that both I think make essentially the same argument: schools do not line up with who our students are today. They are not presented with relevant, meaningful classrooms that actually engage their interests and thinking. "A Vision of Students Today" was created by a cultural anthropology class at Kansas State University two years ago. "A Vision on K12 Students Today" is similar but focuses on K12 students. As a teacher, I look at both of these videos as a direct plea to me to make my classroom meaningful, to give them room to design classroom experiences that will have relevance to their lives. That was my initial intent with the group project described above--a few general parameters but then lots of space for them to design something meaningful and interesting to them.

What surprised me was this: my students came up with a few readings of these videos I did not anticipate. Once young man said that the videos showed how lazy students are. If they would only focus and pay attention in class instead of Facebooking, they would be more successful. This interpretation never even entered my brain. I saw the detail about the KSU students Facebooking through class as an indication that the class wasn't relevant and meaningful, not that the students were lazy. Another interpretation from another young man in my class was that education is being ruined by technology, that clearly all these students are distracted by technology and if it just wasn't there they would be doing fine in school. I saw all of the mentions of technology as a plea to teachers to pull that world into the classroom world, to make what we ask them to do in our classrooms better merge with what they do in their lives outside of school. I firmly believe that if we don't do this, school could become obsolete in the minds of our students.

I was not prepared for these responses from my students. Not at all.

And I'm not feeling so much confidence in this group project to achieve the aims that I had for it. I don't see the excitement that I hoped for. I'm not seeing the outside-of-the-box projects developing that I thought would surface when I stepped aside and said, "create something." I'm not sure if I actually ended up directing its focus too much and something that is intended to provide space for students to build relevance to their lives is actually one more teacher-centered endeavor. Or maybe I didn't give enough direction and my students are already flailing?

I just don't know.

But I'll write later to describe how it has gone.

And I have my first discussion planned for tomorrow over the first chunk of reading. I would like to do what F. Scott did by sitting down in the back of the room, taking attendance, and letting them figure out that they better get discussing, but I'm not sure that would work (I don't have here the same kind of super-motivated students that he has in the classes he wrote about). But I do want to think about maybe doing it that way.

Signing off. M. Shelley.

Reporting on that homework of the weekend before last...

And it's been a blur since I (M. Shelley here) made that last posting. Funny how a teaching life will do that.

I did complete the homework I assigned to myself, to cobble together an argument for my students about why they should care to read. I started with explaining to them the concept of procedural display, that it looks like learning, but it's not. I gave them examples from my own schooling (like how I got through AP English Literature with a B without reading a single book), and they shared their own examples. Just as they were accusing me of telling them how to slide through school without actually doing anything of consequence, I asked them if they ever engage in fake reading where you read the words but don't construct any meaning from them. The words just slide on by, for pages even, and you have no clue what you've read once you stop and look back. I admitted (to the shock of several of my students) that this happens to me all the time and that I have to work hard sometimes to avoid it. They talked about their own adventures in fake reading as well.

Then I asked, "what is literacy?" Right away students blurted out responses about being able to simply read and write. I let them keep suggesting ideas until I heard someone say something about "understanding." Aha. It's more than being able to decode the words on the page--you have to be able to construct meaning from them.

I presented a few ideas about literacy--one from here that reviews Paolo Friere's ideas on literacy: "Literacy, [Friere] insisted, is an active phenomenon, deeply linked to personal and cultural identity. It's power lies not in a received ability to read and write, but rather in an individual's capacity to put those skills to work in shaping the course of his or her own life. [...] Friere's view of literacy is at once practical and all-encompassing. It refers to the ability to manipulate any set of codes and conventions--whether it is the words of a language, the symbols in a mathematical system, or images posted to the Internet--to live healthy and productive lives." I used this to talk about how they possess all kinds of literacies--like that the football players in my class have football literacy: the ability to manipulate the set of "codes and conventions" specific to football in order to "shape the course" of their own lives (i.e., to win a game). I talked about how this view of literacy makes the argument that it is so much more than mere reading and writing, but the ability to use those skills to write one's life, and a "healthy and productive" one at that.

The second view on literacy that I presented to them comes from The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, a definition that I found in the Wikipedia page about literacy: "the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute, and use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning in enabling individuals to achieve their goals, to develop their knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in their community and wider society." I repeated the list of skills: identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute, and use. I asked them how confident they felt with these skills and their abilities to use them to build the lives that they imagine for themselves. I asked them if they considered themselves literate in all these areas.

They were pretty quiet for a few moments.

Next I argued that whereas I knew that they each possessed skilled literacies in many areas of their lives, there was one particular area that I was most worried about for all of them. The key I saw to the type of literacy I want them to work on is engagement. As learners, they need to be thoughtfully and meaningfully engaged in the learning. What I meant was that they needed to practice the kind of sustained engagement you can practice when you really, truly read a book (something that many of my students have admitted to not have done for several years).

I asked, "when was the last time you practiced this kind of sustained engagement?"

I asked, "do you know the tricks of successful reading?"

I told them that it takes work but that working on their reading and sustained engagement in this way is critical to their future success in our evolving world.

I reminded them that the most complex, difficult book they will ever read is their own life. This practice now will help them later.

From there, I gave them a letter I had written to them explaining the tricks of successful reading as described in Cris Tovani's book. I asked them to write me back to tell me which of those tricks they already employ, which they want to work on, and which they don't understand. I asked them to tell me what kind of readers they are, what kind of readers they want to become, and how my class can help them get there. I've collected and read these letters, which I found to be candid and real. I will give them back to them at some later time and ask them to re-evaluate and look for growth in their reading goals.

And then the next day we started reading Into the Wild together. They were taking it pretty seriously. We stopped often and talked about it, asked questions, made predictions, pointed out what seemed important, told connected stories from our lives. We did that for a couple of classes to round out the week. On Monday then, it was dedicated reading time--individual silent reading, group directed reading (with either the sped teacher that I team teach with for one class or the education student I have working with me in the other two classes) or small pairs or triads of students in their own reading groups. This was the best used reading day I have ever had in my class--even the groups that sat out in the hall and read to each other actually read and discussed what they were reading.

I'm anxious to see how the first chunk of the book will go--the first reading deadline is tomorrow (the first seven chapters of the book). One idea that came up in our negotiations about what should be on the unit calendar for this book was the no-penalty reading quiz. They suggested that they get extra credit for correct answers and no points lost for wrong answers.

Now think about this for a minute: what my students proposed is an incentive system for reading instead of the kind of punishing quizzes that we often end up enacting. I was willing to forgo the reading quizzes altogether since most students in our first pass through of negotiations on the calendar for the unit said that they didn't want them at all. But when I asked them what they really, truly NEEDED to inspire them to get a particular range of reading done, they came up with this idea, and pretty much everyone (in all three of my classes) loved it.

We will do this for the first time tomorrow and we'll see how it goes. Groups of students will each draft one question for the quiz and submit the question and answer to me. I will then type the questions up one at a time on the screen and students will write their answers on paper and submit. We'll then review the questions (which will be the start of our discussion for the day over the first seven chapters).

Do you see what will be happening here? LOTS of discussion about the reading! The no-penalty reading quiz will be an occasion for discussion, for students to check their own understanding of what they read. For students to help each other capture the details.

Of course it won't work so well if after all of our conversation about this students didn't read. I'll add one more question to the quiz: did you read? If so, how much? If not, why not? I'll remind them that there is no penalty on this one either--their honesty is what I'm searching for.

So I'm feeling like I did something right (so far) to establish a positive beginning for a reading experience in school. But like I said, what will be interesting is how many of them will actually read.

More on that later.
M. Shelley

Actually 'Making the Shift'- Update 2

Oooooof. A week or so into this experiment. There are a lot of things I could comment on here, but the main thing to think about right now is my own reaction to the change in dynamic. I (we?) are so used to having not only the control, but also the responsibility, for what our students do. I was really feeling a lack of both this week. I wanted to jump in and start telling them what to do. My teacher brain was screaming, "Oh no, they might do the wrong thing!" The impulse to be the one in the room 'making things happen' was pretty powerful. As much as I was able, I refrained.

In both sections the students had planned to 'have discussions' this week. Both groups decided that they did want to read from the text as a way of gathering some background information, and then have a discussion in class. On the day of discussion, I came in to the room, and rather than taking 'center stage' as I might normally do, I just sat in back and took attendance. The students sitting near me in both classes we watching to see what I would do, but for the most part the group happily ignored me.

In my first class (a bit smaller and harder to hide in), a student asked me after a moment, "aren't we having a discussion today?" I tried to keep my response as neutral as possible. I think I said something like, "I believe that's what you had put on the calendar." She got the point and immediately enlisted some of her fellows in organizing the class (the classes are filled with motivated honors students, so their willingness to take initiative is pretty high). That class launched into a discussion that lasted almost an hour.

On the whole they stayed pretty on topic. I noticed that, especially given the nature of the topic they were discussing (the formulation of knowledge in the social sciences), they raised and discussed some pretty complicated ideas. This class has been doing this with my direction for almost a year now, so they have had practice and some modeling and coaching, but it was still pretty cool to see them try it on their own. After a few minutes they realized that

I just wasn't going to say anything, so they ignored me.

It was really tough to keep my mouth shut, especially when I heard things that were factually incorrect or not well though out. Several times the group shied away from engaging an idea because the voice asserting it was particularly aggressive, even when I could see some pretty significant disagreement in the group as a whole. It was tough not to play 'referee' or my normal role as devil's advocate, especially in the face of ideas that deserved more interrogation than they received.

I kept track of how many members of the class participated- in a group of 22, six voices carried the majority of the conversation, nine participated at some level, and seven did not speak. Of those who did not talk at all, I would say four of them were engaged, but just chose not to speak, and the rest seemed outwardly disengaged (though it can be very tough to tell- just because they look like they aren't listening does not mean they aren't tracking the conversation.

Other than my own struggle to keep my mouth shut, I actually found it quite relaxing. On the whole the discussion was at least as good as an average discussion led by me, and in some ways perhaps more genuine. While it was hard not to immediately jump in when I heard something I thought was 'wrong' the group seemed to work through those moments on its own, more or less, and I almost always heard the 'right' or more accurate information at least raised. I also found that I had the time to observe the class much more carefully than I do when I am leading the discussion. I was much more aware of who was engaged, who was participating, who seemed totally checked out.

When there were only a few minutes left in class, and the conversation was winding down, several students turned to me and asked essentially 'how did we do?' I shared some of what I wrote above, and then asked them how they thought it went. On the whole they seemed pleased. I told them that I would be asking them for ideas on how they could make it even better when we were done with this unit.

Trying this experiment has raised what I think is a major issue in education (for me). When we talk about teaching/learning, are we talking about what occurred in the classroom, or are we talking about what the students take with them when they leave. We all know the dynamic of 'covering the content' in which we make sure that whatever material we feel beholden to is exposed in the room. But we also know that there is a great distance between that and what students actually retain. Engaging my students in their own sense of responsibility for learning certainly seems like it will up their level of learning. But my urge to make sure everything is 'covered' in class is pretty powerful.

I will have to wait and see how they demonstrate and difference understanding on the next assessment, which is next week. They, of course, is the real proof here. I plan to video the presentation so we can digest them as a class. But so far I have to say that the class experience seems a lot more genuine. There is less 'playing at school,' on all our parts. That has to be good, I think.

This weekend's homework

How do you convince high school students that it's important to read? That's my homework this weekend. I want to cobble together an argument to make to my students--seniors, the often unmotivated type--on Monday as we head into our first book together. I will also give them a letter that includes Cris Tovani's tricks of successful readers and ask them to write me back about which they already do, which they need to work on, which they don't understand. Essentially, I want to know about what kind of readers my students are, what kind they want to become, and how my class can help them achieve that. But I want to frame the letter with a strong argument as to why they should even care about what kind of readers they are. An argument with a Truth that speaks to them. An argument that makes them care about their lives as readers, that makes them care to improve. An argument that will send some of them into the first book they have actually READ in high school.

So we'll see what I come up with, but that's my self-assigned homework for the weekend.
Speaking of weekend, let's get that started. Signing off now to go pick up my kid from school.
--M. Shelley

Looking ahead at my focus, form, frame experiement

So F. Scott is blogging every so often about his current experiment with this focus, form, frame framework. He's got me thinking about how to apply this to one of my classes, starting next week when we launch into a new unit reading a nonfiction book together.

The thing is that this framework is very much in line with what I have been working toward as a teacher for years. I have taught very much in this way before--had my AP Lit students in a previous school coming up with discussion topics for our novels and facilitating discussions. Had my Advanced Comp students making more of their own decisions about which modes of writing to study when depending on what angle they wanted to take in responding to a particular topic. Even had them determine our list of topics for a semester.

Even in my current school where F. Scott and I teach, I started out in my first year (I'm now in my third year there) intending to do even more of the kind of teaching I had been working toward where I would involve my students in as much decision making as possible about the what, when, how of our classroom. I believe strongly that we teachers should turn over decision making to our students whenever we can in an effort to more fully engage them in what happens in our classroom. Why should I be the one spending hours with a novel or short story deciding how to engage my class in a discussion of it? Can't they do some of this work? And wouldn't they get something significant out of it?

But pulling off this model in my current school turned out to be quite difficult on many levels. The student population F. Scott is working with on this (extremely motivated advanced level students) is not the same population I attempted it with (not as motivated regular track students). There were also some issues surrounding me as a new person in the building trying to enact something that went across embedded and sometimes unspoken norms about teachers' roles, students' roles, what happens in language arts classrooms, etc. My desire to share authority with my students in my classroom in ways that would work to really engage them in what we were doing was uncomfortable for some of my colleagues.

So in short, I strayed from my roots so to speak. And F. Scott is reminding me of that.

Next week I will attempt to get back to that. I'll start off with a blank 4-week calendar, a book, and a frank discussion with my seniors about their stances toward reading in school. We'll talk about procedural display, what it looks like, why we want to avoid it, how we can inspire them to work to avoid it. I'll ask them what they need in order to want to read the book (some of them have already told me that they have read not one single book in their years of high school language arts classes). Our focus will be the text as it pertains to the big essential question for the course, the frame will be four weeks, and the form will be two-fold: a compare/contrast paper (an agreed-upon assessment for the course) and a group presentation about an issue connected to the text. Other than that, they'll have to help me figure out the details: do they want reading quizzes to motivate them to read? Do they want lots of discussions in class? When should the paper be due? How much in-class time do they want to work on it? When should we watch the film interpretation of the text (if they want to watch it)?

I really believe that just engaging them in the conversation is powerful. My dad always taught me that people have the right to a say in decisions that affect their lives. If I want my students to engage in my course in such a way that it does have some meaningful effect on their lives, don't I owe it to them to help me figure out how to make it some worth their effort and engagement?

Actually 'Making the Shift'- Update 1

So- two days in. What an interesting experience! I teach two sections of the same course, and the most startling part of doing this so far is that the two classes have VERY different characters. Not really a surprise, but still interesting. One class is very gung-ho- move ahead, what do we need to do next. The other class wants to spend more time ruminating on data from their last assessment (I gave them scores from their lat presentation as part of our planning today).

I really like just asking them what they want to do. I expressed in both classes that it might be really easy to decided not to do anything, and take the consequences (Luckily, there are honors level classes with highly motivated students- ultimately they do care about their grades quite a bit). I told them I would let that happen if they wanted, but expressed concern about the consequences to them. Since they have almost a years worth of experience in this course, they understand much of what we do and how it relates pretty clearly. As I said in my original post, this is also the class that is closest to this model already.

Both classes wanted some time to work as a large group, obtaining a deeper understanding of the larger subject, and both groups wanted time to work independently on their particular topics in the larger subject. They asked me to do some direct instruction as it relates to the concepts embedded in the rubric, but after that they wanted to direct their own learning in the form of discussion and some looser classroom activities.

By far, the best moment for me came yesterday, at the end of the second class. A student who is generally pretty quiet, though always very engaged was leaving the room after the bulk of the others had left. As she slung her over-large backpack over her shoulder she looked at me and said, "this is actually the hardest thing you've asked us to do so far, isn't it?" I nodded an affirmative, but inside I was jumping up and down. Yes!

Actually 'Making the Shift'

I have been reading a series at The Edurati Review called "Making the Shift," by Kevin Washburn. I posted about it a week or so ago. He just published part 4, "From Target Future to Teaching."

I have really been interested in the way he conceptualizes what we might do in the classroom. His view has really spoken to me, and to the needs of the young people who show up in front of me every day. But blogging about a new idea doen't mean much. So feeling inspired by the 4th installment, I am going to take a shot at doing it. We are starting a new unit in a course I teach tomorrow. Rather than having a filled in calendar of things was are going to do, read, discuss, and produce, I am going to had out a blank calendar of the next four weeks.

We will do presentations at the end of the unit (form), there is a subject we need to cover (focus), and we have about four weeks to deal with this topic (frame). In this particular class there is already a rubric for presentations which focuses students on the skills of the course. I didn't write the rubric, though I think it is a good one for the course in question, so rather than re invent the wheel, I am sticking with it.

But tomorrow I am going to ask my students, "given that you will have to do a presentation with some of your colleagues in four weeks, and understanding the rubric as we do, what do you need to do to be successful in that presentation, and go from there. In consultation with Shelly on Friday afternoon, I am putting together a list of suggestions for things that might be useful to them, and I have some concerns that they need to address in their plan, but other than that, it is up to them.

I am going to give them a copy of Washburn's Part 3 article, so they know why we are doing what we are doing, and I will present them with the data from their last set of presentations, so they have a sense of why I might have concerns about how they use their time and what they do, but mostly I am going to try to turn it over to them.

And than I'm going to write about it. Not every day, but regularly over the next few weeks. So we will see what unfolds. Stay tuned...

F. Scott

Procedural Display

I recently had the opportunity to attend a talk by researcher and theorist Kris Gutierrez, and she brought up an idea that I have been mulling over ever since. It's a concept that has heavily influenced my teaching, but until her talk, I hadn't yet put a name upon it.

She challenged us to teach in ways that eschew procedural display. This is when students look like they are learning but aren't actually. This is when students play the game of school and give us exactly what we are looking for, doing the absolute minimum necessary for the grades that they want to get. On the surface, their grades, their demeanor in class--everything about them suggests that they are learning what we are asking them to. But the truth is that they are not actually engaging in the material in any meaningful way. They are not actually LEARNING in ways that are long-lasting and life-altering. They are not learning to THINK, only to demonstrate the procedures in our classes that make it look like they are learning.

I was the master of this as a high school student and as a college student during my first few semesters as an English major. By all outside appearances, I looked like a successful AP English Literature student. I earned a B in the class. I did fine on the exams and essays. I participated in class discussions and group projects. I earned a 5 on the AP Lit exam. But the nasty truth is that I didn't read a single book that year. Not a single one. I was able to "succeed" and get the B (which didn't hurt my GPA at all because it was a weighted class) by listening very carefully to the teacher and giving back her interpretations on exams and essays. I learned how to look like I was reading, but I wasn't. I was engaged in completing the work with a minimal amount of effort. To this day I regret the great works of literature that I didn't experience in that class. I only read what other people said about the works but never built my arguments around my own genuine response to a text. And this continued several semesters in to my English major in college (until I read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, which blew my mind, and everything changed for me).

Now, the question here for me is how to get my students out of the mode of procedural display? I have thought a lot about my AP English lit class and why I was so disengaged. I take it back to the moment that my teacher told me I was wrong because I disagreed with her interpretation of the Brobdignagians in Gulliver's Travels. I learned in that single moment that my ideas about literature didn't have space in her classroom, so I promptly ferreted them away, never to be seen again until they were pried out of me by an astounding piece of literature. As a teacher, I share this story with my students and ask them not to let that happen to them, to call me on it when I shoot down a student's interpretation, to understand why I run my class the way that I do in order to quiet my voice so that theirs have room to speak. But still I'm not totally convinced that I have worked my students out of the mode of procedural display.

I plan to engage them in a conversation about it soon as we start reading our first book together. Procedural display doesn't just show up in Language Arts in conjunction with the study of books, but that is where I think I'll engage them in the conversation to begin with as what I hope will be some kind of inspiration for them to read. Several of them have already told me candidly that they have NEVER read a book assigned to them in school. NEVER. That is daunting. How will these students ever develop the critical thinking that is a necessary literacy skill in our changing world if they aren't READING?????

This brings up a conversation that F. Scott and I had the other day in the office--he'll have to give you the source, but he read recently an argument that the United States is breeding a new generation of illiteracy. People can read/decode anything, but they can't THINK. Those who can't think are doomed to be controlled and swayed by all sorts of nefarious forces in our society, never questioning anything. I'm not sure if I totally agree with this premise, but if it's true, if our school systems are only breeding these critical thinking illiterates who are highly skilled in procedural display, we are in trouble, folks.

And with that I will sign off. I've decided that I do not want to grade on the weekends anymore. I want weekends that are real weekends. The path to that is working my butt off in the week nights to get the grading done. I have 15 more personal narrative essays to get through before I go to bed--working to provide feedback that is real and genuine and not teacher procedural display. That kind of grading takes longer. So I better get to it.

M. Shelley