I had a stimulating conversation last week with a representative from a Waldorf school with a healthy elementary school enrollment that is interested in starting a high school. Here are some of my notes--slightly expurgated to protect the privacy of all involved.
In my experience one group—parents, teachers, or trustees—usually drives change at a school. It’s better if 2 of the 3 are ready to initiate change. The first step is to identify which group is ready to move forward. If no one group is leading and each group is somewhat split, you may have to adopt a slightly different strategy, one which may be stronger in the long run, and form a coalition of the willing among parents, teachers, and board members.
A high school committee that includes representatives of all constituencies, with a clear mandate to plan (and return to the community at each step to collect information and inform everyone of progress and possibilities), may well be the way to go. One key to our success, I believe, was our willingness to hear criticism, concern, and anxiety, and to acknowledge and deal with them as well as we could.
This group may be the same as—but doesn’t have to be the same as—a study group on adolescence. The study group, for instance, may be more teacher-centered, while a planning committee might be a joint board-faculty-parent group.
Then the question is, how to get others on board? For trustees and parents, reassurance regarding minimizing risk and forwarding the benefits—I believe, for instance, that a HS will slow middle school attrition—will work. Identifying a target class, raising money in advance, and good planning are all helpful. Teachers mostly want to be reassured that a HS won’t mean more work for them. Sorry to by cynical, but it’s often true…
(Our biggest mistake by far occurred early on. In planning, we discussed two possibilities. One was growing the school only to 9th grade for a few years—private schools in our area often have grades through 9th grade; students then transfer to boarding school or another prep school for high school. The other was to carry on adding grades (as we did) until we had a full high school. The 9th grade, as I mentioned, had a good enrollment of 13 students, and then the bottom dropped out of the school with the con man I mentioned. And some of those who had been ready to move forward then recommended stopping at 9th grade to regroup. The trustees waffled through the spring, and students who would have stayed or enrolled in a new 9th grade left to find other schools. The uncertainty was crippling. In the end, it made greater financial sense to have a combined 9th and 10th grade—with more students than 9th alone—and that’s what we did. But the hesitation and uncertainty, born of a lack of clarity, nearly killed us.)
Identify a pioneer class, then inform them and their parents with articles, talks, etc., about the value of the HS you’re planning. Make them part of the process. I think 15 students is a good goal, but it’s a bit high—10-12 might be more reasonable and attainable; crunching numbers will show what’s possible.
Given demographics in our area, we are committed to a school of no more than about 50 students; other areas could support a larger school in the long run. We believe there’s a “deadly middle ground” between about 60 and 150 students—depends on your revenue and expenses—and we’re trying to avoid it. Most Waldorf high schools fall solidly in it, which I believe is a perennial challenge—they need teachers and facilities and resources for a school that could support 200 students, but they only have, say 90 students to pay for it…
Don’t count out local homeschoolers and other feeders—it’s fine for students who haven’t been in Waldorf schools to join in 9th grade, and you may be surprised how many allies you find among those disenchanted with their options. (Many students who had left the Waldorf elementary school returned to us for high school—a year or two at other schools taught them that the grass wasn’t as green as they thought!)
Another strategy—used in Freeport, Maine, for instance—is to identify two lead classes. Graduate the 8th grade and send them off to another school for a year with the promise that they can return to a 10th grade the following year. The next year’s 8th grade then becomes the 9th grade, and you open the HS with 2 classes. Ta da!
One of the hardest things, beyond your control, is creating something where nothing exists. You have no track record, no college acceptances, no happy students, nothing to sell but a good idea and commitment…
I believe it is good to have a paid planner or consultant for a couple of years to move you from idea to reality. Other schools have used this. We didn’t and we probably should have; things came to fruition very quickly for us, and we grabbed the opportunity we had. This was less than ideal, but, given that Great Barrington had closed a high school in the late 80s, may have been our only chance.
I can hardly emphasize enough how much depends on the quality of teaching. You have to have at least one amazing high school teacher, a tough cookie with a warm heart and a good head who can lead a faculty, guide students through the years of a pioneer high school, and reassure parents that their students will be prepared for college and for life. It’s a rare elementary school teacher who can make this leap, but maybe you have one. If not, the search for one is an essential part of your planning. If everything else is in place, and parents and students don’t trust the quality of the teaching and don’t value their relationships with their teachers, it won’t work.
Planning will also include a lot of high school-appropriate topics that elementary school teachers don’t like to deal with—dress, plagiarism, substance abuse policies, and on and on and on. Maintaining school spirit in the face of all this can be challenging. You can easily find out what other high schools do, but you also have to authentically make these things your own.
A final point to emphasize, perhaps prematurely, is that a Waldorf high school is as different from the elementary school as the elementary school is from the preschool. If students perceive that the Waldorf high school is “just more Waldorf,” they won’t want to come. “Selling” the differences—a voice in making some of the rules, choosing elective courses, travel and work opportunities, challenging courses with different, expert teachers, sports, mastery in the arts, etc., etc.—has helped us a lot and continues to be a challenge for us.
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Monday, May 16, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
Main Lesson or Seminar Teaching in a Waldorf School (...or Anywhere You Care to Teach)
Waldorf schools begin each day with what has come to be called a “main lesson”—an unfortunate term in that it subtly denigrates all the other classes of the day, although this was not Rudolf Steiner’s intention.
The high school at which I teach calls these classes “seminars” because that’s descriptive of the way we teach them, it doesn’t connote elementary education, and it doesn’t denigrate other classes.
Many of the ideas and practices recorded here have evolved over my twenty-six years of teaching; what seems simple and obvious to me now in some cases took more than ten years to become so. But slow learning is better than none at all, and it is sometimes deeper than faster learning.
I wrote the following for my teacher education students, and I share it here for the reason I initially started this blog—to provide access to things I had written for which I occasionally get requests. It saves time if they’re here to read or copy—no offprints or email attachments. This document presents main lesson primarily as a middle school history teacher might approach it because the course in which I present it is Teaching History in a Waldorf School, Grades 5-8. Teachers of other grades and other subjects will make their own adjustments.
Finally, I refer in here to doodling and to note-taking, both of which I've written about elsewhere on this blog.
Business
I begin by calling the class to order and getting business out of the way—announcements, attendance, and so forth. To say the morning verse before this—as I once did—now strikes me as bizarre. The verse prepares us to learn. So why prepare to learn and then spend ten minutes on trivial matters?
Morning Verse
Once business is accomplished, I usually say the verse with my class, although, given that many of them often arrive half asleep and malnourished, I sometimes ask them to walk or run around the school building (I used to teach in a room that had a running track just outside the back door, and a lap around this—even if calmly walked—usually brought the students back to me calmer and more alert). Then we say the verse together.
I ask politely for quiet before we begin. I never insist that students say the verse, only that they are quiet and respectful to those who do. If necessary, if no one chooses to say it, I say it myself and students listen. That’s fine. It happens perhaps once with a new group, but usually not again.
I also usually ask a student to begin the verse. If I begin it every morning, I am the one with initiative, my voice is heard, and I may be the only one who utters the word “I” that begins the verse—students joining gradually, “…into the world,” leaving off the “I look.” There are other ways to accomplish this—through regimentation and discipline—but I’ve chosen this different way. I believe this practice is fine to use with students beginning in roughly sixth grade. Before this, I wouldn’t call on their “I” so much.
For Middle School Only
After the verse, perhaps 10 minutes of singing, recorder playing, or speech. I don’t do “mental math” unless we are in a math block. If I did happen to decide to do it, I wouldn’t do it on the same day as recorder or singing or anything else. I don’t find anything about “circle time” in Steiner’s work, and I believe that his request for economy in teaching asks me to get on with my history lesson. (Math requires extra practice, it’s true, but this can be scheduled at a different point in the day, not during main lesson.) In high school classes, I don’t even do any of this, but proceed right to the lesson.
Main Lesson or Seminar
First review (feeling, judgment, discussion), then new material (thinking—but warm and interested thinking), then, if time remains (which I believe it should in middle school, perhaps less in high school), work (will).
Review
The review has three functions. The first is to come to some judgment, conclusion, or opinion regarding the material of the previous day (or previous days; there are clearly times when a “summing up” involves matter learned over several days—observing the changes in form and feeling as we pass from Egyptian through archaic Greek to classical Greek postures in sculpture, for example). This may take five minutes, and it may take nearly an hour. It’s good for me to have a plan for the day, but I am almost always willing to stray from it if student questions (legitimate questions) ask for a longer discussion or review.
A more mundane function of the review is to give notes from the day before, which I put on the board and then answer questions while students copy them. I developed this technique as I became increasingly aware of the strangeness of the process of asking students to pay careful attention to what I am saying while also remembering and writing down what I just said fifteen seconds ago. This splitting of consciousness, I believe, works against actual learning (it’s a necessary skill in college, but can be developed quickly late in high school). By giving notes the day after a presentation, we cover the material twice, and students can listen without interruption to new material.
The third function of the review is to address a question with which I have left the class on the previous day (see below). Again, doing this may take a couple of sentences, shedding a little light in the darkness, or it may yield a full-blown discussion.
(Steiner: “When they return on the following day they again have the spiritual photographs of the previous day’s lesson in their heads. I connect today’s lesson with them by a reflective, contemplative approach—for example, a discussion on whether Alcibiades or Mithradates was a decent or an immoral person.
When I make an objective, characterizing approach on the first day, followed on the next day by reflection, by judgments, I shall allow the three parts of the threefold human being to interact, to harmonize in the right way.” Education for Adolescence, p. 52)
New Material
Following the review, I present new material. I ask students to listen quietly. I ask them NOT to take notes (see review above).* I ask them to hold all questions, and to jot down any questions while I am speaking in order to ask them at the end of my presentation (which my students have taken to calling “Story Time with Steve”). Student questions can turn a twenty minute story into an hour’s drudgery as they ask about what I was just about to address, or they ask interesting but digressive questions. I resolve not to digress too much or to interrupt myself during this time, too. Unless behavior absolutely requires it, I won’t stop the class for an elbow bump or a giggle. The start-stop of “regular” discipline can lead to greater chaos than overlooking small slights. If necessary, I can make a note and address it later. If I can and need to, I can calmly walk over to a student without breaking my speech and turn him around, or remove a note from her hand, or otherwise indicate that a behavior is unnecessary.
I allow students to doodle, to knit, or otherwise to quietly, privately occupy their hands. I fought this for more than ten years before I awoke to the fact that I had been a good, attentive student my entire life, through graduate school, and had doodled incessantly, despite all attempts to make me stop. As long as my students are listening and not distracting each other, their quiet activity doesn’t bother me.**
A history presentation involves four basic elements:
1. Creating distance in time, a sense of time;
2. Creating a sense of space—how far is it from here to there; how would you travel in those times? And of place—what is the geography, how would someone living then experience it, how did it influence these people? What is the climate?
3. Creating a sense of character—what we often call “biography,” although really I’m simply telling stories of different lives (birth dates, father’s occupation, and other such trivia are usually inconsequential and the students and I know it; or these things can be included easily in notes on the following day if it is necessary to have some record of them).
4. And creating a sense of an event or happening. Any more than this is unnecessary in middle school, and much more than this is not even necessary in high school; discussions bring out 5. the larger themes—I don’t “teach” them, we discover them in conversation, usually in review. (See Steiner’s work for specific indications for themes and topics for each year, including approaches to history in high school years.)
(Steiner: “Let us take another example, a history lesson. In the teaching of history there is no apparatus, no experiment. I must find a way of again adapting the lesson to the life processes, and I can do this as follows. I give the children the mere facts that occur in space and time. The whole being is again addressed just as during an experiment, because the children are called upon to make themselves a mental picture of space. We should see to it that they do this, that they see what we tell them, in their minds. They should also have a mental picture of the corresponding time. When I have brought this about, I shall try to add details about the people and events—not in a narrative way, but merely by characterization.” Education for Adolescence, p. 52)
Questions
Following story time, I ask for questions. Sometimes there are none; students bask in what they have just heard. Other times, I haven’t said what I thought I said, or been heard as I meant to be heard, and I have to explain or present something again. I generally try to answer all questions, but, if necessary, I end the section by promising to answer questions privately or address them in the future.
Details, Recapitulation
If there are details I need to add that weren’t central to my presentation—a perspective on life in those times, an anecdote that isn’t central but that illuminates something relevant, and so on—I add them at this point. If we’re short on time, I keep it short. If the review and presentation have gone quickly, I can “digress” and add a lot. This time also allows me to briefly recapitulate or synopsize the material I have presented.
(Steiner: “I now describe and draw the children’s attention to what they heard in the first part of the lesson. In the first part, I occupied their whole being; in the second, it is the rhythmic part of their being that must make an effort. I then dismiss them.” Education for Adolescence, p. 52)
A Last Question
I complete my presentation in two important ways, ways that, although they may take only a few seconds of time, lay the foundation for my future teaching, give the students something to chew on overnight, and lay the ground for good discipline (which is to say, good behavior, which is to say, an attitude of wanting to learn, to hear what I have to say). I ask an open-ended, discussion question, such as, “You learned today about all the different characteristics of cave paintings. What do you make of these? In particular, why is it important—I’ll tell you that I believe it’s very significant—that these paintings have a black outline around them?” Students may leap to answer immediately, but they know I won’t say more until the next day. They can talk on the playground, ask mom and dad at dinner, or forget the question until I remind them the next day, but they’ve heard it and taken it in. The question previews the next day’s review.
Anticipation
I also make a statement about what we’ll learn the next day. It may be prosaic—“Tomorrow we’ll move on to the study of ancient Egypt”—but it’s better if I can make it slightly mysterious—“Tomorrow you’ll learn about people who gave coffins as great gifts.” Whether they remember or not, these questions work in the students overnight and they enter the classroom ready to learn (and ready not to misbehave). I believe these few seconds are the single greatest discipline technique I know. I also know that if I don’t write down my question and topic, I will likely forget them until the class is dismissed. Even if I can conduct the lesson without notes, I write down these items in order to remember them.
Work
Then we get to work on essays, drawings, or paintings. We may go to the library to do research. The longer I teach, the less necessary I believe homework to be, and I try, especially in middle school, to have students complete their work, or at least the bulk of it, in class. We clean up our work (“Mr. Sagarin, can I keep working during recess?” “Yes, you may”), stand quietly behind our chairs, and are dismissed for snack and recess.
Attention
So this is what I aim at. It rarely goes as planned and never perfectly. But more important than anything listed above is attention to the students. Do I need to shorten my presentation because the students are exhausted? Fine. Does something I read inspire them, and I keep reading for an extra twenty minutes, and continue the next day? An example: One year I read a portion of Voltaire’s Candide to a class, simply to give them the flavor of his writing and thinking. They were so taken by it that we read a chapter a day for the rest of the block. I had not intended to do anything like this, but see great value in attending to students’ actual interests. Does my review fall on deaf ears? I’ll cut it short and spend an evening thinking about how to present it in a way that these students can hear.
Also, and this is tough to write about clearly, I try to be specifically aware of each student—I’m not good at this, but I try to make sure each student speaks at least once in each class (and that some students don’t speak too much). I try to pay attention to those who need attention and leave alone those who seem to need to be left alone. Also, if something I’m teaching relates to the circumstances of one of the students, directly (parent dies in real life; parent of historical figure died young) or indirectly (this student is obsessed with fairness, and someone I’m teaching about was known for being extremely fair), I keep the student in mind. I don’t blurt out, “Oh, and Johnny, didn’t your father die young, too?” In fact, I’m likely to try to be more tactful in discussing the historical circumstances, rather than less, given what I know. These may not be the best examples, but I think the point—lessons meet real life, we hope tactfully, in a classroom—is clear.
“Typical” Main Lesson (That is, one that never actually occurs)
10 min.: Class business.
3 min.: Verse.
15 min.: Music, but not in high school (I still wonder how necessary this really is in a main lesson period).
20 min.: Review (highly variable; and I increasingly think of this as the period of “real” learning—new material is an introduction…); discussion; note-taking.
20-30 min.: New material, including questions and added description (longer in HS).
1 min.: Question.
1 min.: Preview.
30-40 min.: Work; giving and collecting assignments. If everyone’s doing well, I can get some work done, too. (Shorter, but still present, in HS.)
Dismissal.
The high school at which I teach calls these classes “seminars” because that’s descriptive of the way we teach them, it doesn’t connote elementary education, and it doesn’t denigrate other classes.
Many of the ideas and practices recorded here have evolved over my twenty-six years of teaching; what seems simple and obvious to me now in some cases took more than ten years to become so. But slow learning is better than none at all, and it is sometimes deeper than faster learning.
I wrote the following for my teacher education students, and I share it here for the reason I initially started this blog—to provide access to things I had written for which I occasionally get requests. It saves time if they’re here to read or copy—no offprints or email attachments. This document presents main lesson primarily as a middle school history teacher might approach it because the course in which I present it is Teaching History in a Waldorf School, Grades 5-8. Teachers of other grades and other subjects will make their own adjustments.
Finally, I refer in here to doodling and to note-taking, both of which I've written about elsewhere on this blog.
Business
I begin by calling the class to order and getting business out of the way—announcements, attendance, and so forth. To say the morning verse before this—as I once did—now strikes me as bizarre. The verse prepares us to learn. So why prepare to learn and then spend ten minutes on trivial matters?
Morning Verse
Once business is accomplished, I usually say the verse with my class, although, given that many of them often arrive half asleep and malnourished, I sometimes ask them to walk or run around the school building (I used to teach in a room that had a running track just outside the back door, and a lap around this—even if calmly walked—usually brought the students back to me calmer and more alert). Then we say the verse together.
I ask politely for quiet before we begin. I never insist that students say the verse, only that they are quiet and respectful to those who do. If necessary, if no one chooses to say it, I say it myself and students listen. That’s fine. It happens perhaps once with a new group, but usually not again.
I also usually ask a student to begin the verse. If I begin it every morning, I am the one with initiative, my voice is heard, and I may be the only one who utters the word “I” that begins the verse—students joining gradually, “…into the world,” leaving off the “I look.” There are other ways to accomplish this—through regimentation and discipline—but I’ve chosen this different way. I believe this practice is fine to use with students beginning in roughly sixth grade. Before this, I wouldn’t call on their “I” so much.
For Middle School Only
After the verse, perhaps 10 minutes of singing, recorder playing, or speech. I don’t do “mental math” unless we are in a math block. If I did happen to decide to do it, I wouldn’t do it on the same day as recorder or singing or anything else. I don’t find anything about “circle time” in Steiner’s work, and I believe that his request for economy in teaching asks me to get on with my history lesson. (Math requires extra practice, it’s true, but this can be scheduled at a different point in the day, not during main lesson.) In high school classes, I don’t even do any of this, but proceed right to the lesson.
Main Lesson or Seminar
First review (feeling, judgment, discussion), then new material (thinking—but warm and interested thinking), then, if time remains (which I believe it should in middle school, perhaps less in high school), work (will).
Review
The review has three functions. The first is to come to some judgment, conclusion, or opinion regarding the material of the previous day (or previous days; there are clearly times when a “summing up” involves matter learned over several days—observing the changes in form and feeling as we pass from Egyptian through archaic Greek to classical Greek postures in sculpture, for example). This may take five minutes, and it may take nearly an hour. It’s good for me to have a plan for the day, but I am almost always willing to stray from it if student questions (legitimate questions) ask for a longer discussion or review.
A more mundane function of the review is to give notes from the day before, which I put on the board and then answer questions while students copy them. I developed this technique as I became increasingly aware of the strangeness of the process of asking students to pay careful attention to what I am saying while also remembering and writing down what I just said fifteen seconds ago. This splitting of consciousness, I believe, works against actual learning (it’s a necessary skill in college, but can be developed quickly late in high school). By giving notes the day after a presentation, we cover the material twice, and students can listen without interruption to new material.
The third function of the review is to address a question with which I have left the class on the previous day (see below). Again, doing this may take a couple of sentences, shedding a little light in the darkness, or it may yield a full-blown discussion.
(Steiner: “When they return on the following day they again have the spiritual photographs of the previous day’s lesson in their heads. I connect today’s lesson with them by a reflective, contemplative approach—for example, a discussion on whether Alcibiades or Mithradates was a decent or an immoral person.
When I make an objective, characterizing approach on the first day, followed on the next day by reflection, by judgments, I shall allow the three parts of the threefold human being to interact, to harmonize in the right way.” Education for Adolescence, p. 52)
New Material
Following the review, I present new material. I ask students to listen quietly. I ask them NOT to take notes (see review above).* I ask them to hold all questions, and to jot down any questions while I am speaking in order to ask them at the end of my presentation (which my students have taken to calling “Story Time with Steve”). Student questions can turn a twenty minute story into an hour’s drudgery as they ask about what I was just about to address, or they ask interesting but digressive questions. I resolve not to digress too much or to interrupt myself during this time, too. Unless behavior absolutely requires it, I won’t stop the class for an elbow bump or a giggle. The start-stop of “regular” discipline can lead to greater chaos than overlooking small slights. If necessary, I can make a note and address it later. If I can and need to, I can calmly walk over to a student without breaking my speech and turn him around, or remove a note from her hand, or otherwise indicate that a behavior is unnecessary.
I allow students to doodle, to knit, or otherwise to quietly, privately occupy their hands. I fought this for more than ten years before I awoke to the fact that I had been a good, attentive student my entire life, through graduate school, and had doodled incessantly, despite all attempts to make me stop. As long as my students are listening and not distracting each other, their quiet activity doesn’t bother me.**
A history presentation involves four basic elements:
1. Creating distance in time, a sense of time;
2. Creating a sense of space—how far is it from here to there; how would you travel in those times? And of place—what is the geography, how would someone living then experience it, how did it influence these people? What is the climate?
3. Creating a sense of character—what we often call “biography,” although really I’m simply telling stories of different lives (birth dates, father’s occupation, and other such trivia are usually inconsequential and the students and I know it; or these things can be included easily in notes on the following day if it is necessary to have some record of them).
4. And creating a sense of an event or happening. Any more than this is unnecessary in middle school, and much more than this is not even necessary in high school; discussions bring out 5. the larger themes—I don’t “teach” them, we discover them in conversation, usually in review. (See Steiner’s work for specific indications for themes and topics for each year, including approaches to history in high school years.)
(Steiner: “Let us take another example, a history lesson. In the teaching of history there is no apparatus, no experiment. I must find a way of again adapting the lesson to the life processes, and I can do this as follows. I give the children the mere facts that occur in space and time. The whole being is again addressed just as during an experiment, because the children are called upon to make themselves a mental picture of space. We should see to it that they do this, that they see what we tell them, in their minds. They should also have a mental picture of the corresponding time. When I have brought this about, I shall try to add details about the people and events—not in a narrative way, but merely by characterization.” Education for Adolescence, p. 52)
Questions
Following story time, I ask for questions. Sometimes there are none; students bask in what they have just heard. Other times, I haven’t said what I thought I said, or been heard as I meant to be heard, and I have to explain or present something again. I generally try to answer all questions, but, if necessary, I end the section by promising to answer questions privately or address them in the future.
Details, Recapitulation
If there are details I need to add that weren’t central to my presentation—a perspective on life in those times, an anecdote that isn’t central but that illuminates something relevant, and so on—I add them at this point. If we’re short on time, I keep it short. If the review and presentation have gone quickly, I can “digress” and add a lot. This time also allows me to briefly recapitulate or synopsize the material I have presented.
(Steiner: “I now describe and draw the children’s attention to what they heard in the first part of the lesson. In the first part, I occupied their whole being; in the second, it is the rhythmic part of their being that must make an effort. I then dismiss them.” Education for Adolescence, p. 52)
A Last Question
I complete my presentation in two important ways, ways that, although they may take only a few seconds of time, lay the foundation for my future teaching, give the students something to chew on overnight, and lay the ground for good discipline (which is to say, good behavior, which is to say, an attitude of wanting to learn, to hear what I have to say). I ask an open-ended, discussion question, such as, “You learned today about all the different characteristics of cave paintings. What do you make of these? In particular, why is it important—I’ll tell you that I believe it’s very significant—that these paintings have a black outline around them?” Students may leap to answer immediately, but they know I won’t say more until the next day. They can talk on the playground, ask mom and dad at dinner, or forget the question until I remind them the next day, but they’ve heard it and taken it in. The question previews the next day’s review.
Anticipation
I also make a statement about what we’ll learn the next day. It may be prosaic—“Tomorrow we’ll move on to the study of ancient Egypt”—but it’s better if I can make it slightly mysterious—“Tomorrow you’ll learn about people who gave coffins as great gifts.” Whether they remember or not, these questions work in the students overnight and they enter the classroom ready to learn (and ready not to misbehave). I believe these few seconds are the single greatest discipline technique I know. I also know that if I don’t write down my question and topic, I will likely forget them until the class is dismissed. Even if I can conduct the lesson without notes, I write down these items in order to remember them.
Work
Then we get to work on essays, drawings, or paintings. We may go to the library to do research. The longer I teach, the less necessary I believe homework to be, and I try, especially in middle school, to have students complete their work, or at least the bulk of it, in class. We clean up our work (“Mr. Sagarin, can I keep working during recess?” “Yes, you may”), stand quietly behind our chairs, and are dismissed for snack and recess.
Attention
So this is what I aim at. It rarely goes as planned and never perfectly. But more important than anything listed above is attention to the students. Do I need to shorten my presentation because the students are exhausted? Fine. Does something I read inspire them, and I keep reading for an extra twenty minutes, and continue the next day? An example: One year I read a portion of Voltaire’s Candide to a class, simply to give them the flavor of his writing and thinking. They were so taken by it that we read a chapter a day for the rest of the block. I had not intended to do anything like this, but see great value in attending to students’ actual interests. Does my review fall on deaf ears? I’ll cut it short and spend an evening thinking about how to present it in a way that these students can hear.
Also, and this is tough to write about clearly, I try to be specifically aware of each student—I’m not good at this, but I try to make sure each student speaks at least once in each class (and that some students don’t speak too much). I try to pay attention to those who need attention and leave alone those who seem to need to be left alone. Also, if something I’m teaching relates to the circumstances of one of the students, directly (parent dies in real life; parent of historical figure died young) or indirectly (this student is obsessed with fairness, and someone I’m teaching about was known for being extremely fair), I keep the student in mind. I don’t blurt out, “Oh, and Johnny, didn’t your father die young, too?” In fact, I’m likely to try to be more tactful in discussing the historical circumstances, rather than less, given what I know. These may not be the best examples, but I think the point—lessons meet real life, we hope tactfully, in a classroom—is clear.
“Typical” Main Lesson (That is, one that never actually occurs)
10 min.: Class business.
3 min.: Verse.
15 min.: Music, but not in high school (I still wonder how necessary this really is in a main lesson period).
20 min.: Review (highly variable; and I increasingly think of this as the period of “real” learning—new material is an introduction…); discussion; note-taking.
20-30 min.: New material, including questions and added description (longer in HS).
1 min.: Question.
1 min.: Preview.
30-40 min.: Work; giving and collecting assignments. If everyone’s doing well, I can get some work done, too. (Shorter, but still present, in HS.)
Dismissal.
Friday, December 3, 2010
Learning to Think in High School
We learn with more than just our heads. Lots of us, not just those in Waldorf schools, agree with this.
In 1956 (and after), to take a prime example, Benjamin Bloom described a taxonomy or hierarchical organization of learning within a threefold context of cognition (thinking), affect (feeling), and psychomotor behavior (will). Based on continuing research, his taxonomy has since been modified and now includes these six levels, from the highest to the most basic: creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding, and remembering.
Based on the work of John Gardner at the Garden City Waldorf School in the 1950s and 1960s and Douglas Gerwin since then, Waldorf schools approach each grade of high school differently in terms of assignments, expectations, and the development of thinking.
Looking over their work recently in preparation for a faculty meeting, it occurred to me that John Gardner almost certainly took Bloom’s work and compressed it—six levels sandwiched into four years of high school. And it makes sense to do this. Bloom’s work was based on higher education, on students who had largely passed the developmental stage of adolescence. For those teaching adolescents, a gradual introduction to more sophisticated thinking makes sense.
Interestingly, Gardner had the insight to move the synthesis required of creativity to the head of the list before a reassessment of Bloom’s research in the 1980s that did the same thing—earlier, “evaluating” was higher than “creativity.”
Our high school Core Teachers study education at each of our faculty meetings, and use the concepts outlined below in creating assignments in literature, history, science, and other subjects based on this understanding of thinking, learning, and mastery.
Ninth graders focus on accurate observation and description.
• Key words appropriate for 9th grade assignments include these: Observe, describe, note, summarize, re-tell, sequence, depict, illustrate, name, report, specify, and state.
• Questions for 9th graders might begin: What…?
Tenth graders focus on objective comparison.
• Key words for 10th grade assignments include these: Compare, contrast, difference, similarity, equation, equivalence, inequality, analogy, affinity, relationship, balance, weigh, connect, correlate, match, and proportion.
• Questions for 10th graders might begin: How…?
Eleventh graders focus on metamorphosis or transformation (building up) and analysis of a whole into parts (taking apart).
• Key words for 11th grade assignments include these: Analyze, abstract, theory, growth, transformation, metamorphosis, change, interpret (parts), make-up, essay, dissect, test, influence, involve, estimate, scrutinize, divide, and cause (and effect).
• Questions for 11th graders might begin: Why…?
Twelfth grade aims at individual synthesis; that is, forming an argument using the methods of grades 9-11 to present a coherent point of view that represents a student’s own view.
• Key words for 12th grade assignments include these: Synthesis, meaning, interpretation (whole), judgment, contemplation, reflection, integrate, assemble, combine, unite, unify.
• Questions for 12th graders might begin: Who…? (in the sense of a student’s relationship to the material; and, ultimately, who am I?)
In 1956 (and after), to take a prime example, Benjamin Bloom described a taxonomy or hierarchical organization of learning within a threefold context of cognition (thinking), affect (feeling), and psychomotor behavior (will). Based on continuing research, his taxonomy has since been modified and now includes these six levels, from the highest to the most basic: creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding, and remembering.
Based on the work of John Gardner at the Garden City Waldorf School in the 1950s and 1960s and Douglas Gerwin since then, Waldorf schools approach each grade of high school differently in terms of assignments, expectations, and the development of thinking.
Looking over their work recently in preparation for a faculty meeting, it occurred to me that John Gardner almost certainly took Bloom’s work and compressed it—six levels sandwiched into four years of high school. And it makes sense to do this. Bloom’s work was based on higher education, on students who had largely passed the developmental stage of adolescence. For those teaching adolescents, a gradual introduction to more sophisticated thinking makes sense.
Interestingly, Gardner had the insight to move the synthesis required of creativity to the head of the list before a reassessment of Bloom’s research in the 1980s that did the same thing—earlier, “evaluating” was higher than “creativity.”
Our high school Core Teachers study education at each of our faculty meetings, and use the concepts outlined below in creating assignments in literature, history, science, and other subjects based on this understanding of thinking, learning, and mastery.
Ninth graders focus on accurate observation and description.
• Key words appropriate for 9th grade assignments include these: Observe, describe, note, summarize, re-tell, sequence, depict, illustrate, name, report, specify, and state.
• Questions for 9th graders might begin: What…?
Tenth graders focus on objective comparison.
• Key words for 10th grade assignments include these: Compare, contrast, difference, similarity, equation, equivalence, inequality, analogy, affinity, relationship, balance, weigh, connect, correlate, match, and proportion.
• Questions for 10th graders might begin: How…?
Eleventh graders focus on metamorphosis or transformation (building up) and analysis of a whole into parts (taking apart).
• Key words for 11th grade assignments include these: Analyze, abstract, theory, growth, transformation, metamorphosis, change, interpret (parts), make-up, essay, dissect, test, influence, involve, estimate, scrutinize, divide, and cause (and effect).
• Questions for 11th graders might begin: Why…?
Twelfth grade aims at individual synthesis; that is, forming an argument using the methods of grades 9-11 to present a coherent point of view that represents a student’s own view.
• Key words for 12th grade assignments include these: Synthesis, meaning, interpretation (whole), judgment, contemplation, reflection, integrate, assemble, combine, unite, unify.
• Questions for 12th graders might begin: Who…? (in the sense of a student’s relationship to the material; and, ultimately, who am I?)
Friday, November 12, 2010
Notes on Starting a Waldorf High School
What follow are answers to questions posed by Douglas Gerwin in research on starting a Waldorf high school (so far unpublished, I believe). I thank the half-dozen or so of my colleagues who helped me come up with these answers a couple of years ago.
What helped the most and least in preparation and founding?
Most:
• A years-long anthroposophical adolescence and high school study group of teachers and parents.
• Students who wanted to continue in a Waldorf school and asked their parents to help make it happen—not many, at first, but a couple with real initiative.
• Steadfast and enthusiastic parents, teachers, and trustees.
• The attitude that we’re going to do this even if we have to meet in someone’s living room to save money; that my child will be there in September even if she’s the only one.
• An experienced lead teacher to inspire students and parents (who had taught the lead class in 7th and 8th grade).
Least:
• A “wait and see” or “prove this is worthy” attitude from some trustees, teachers, and parents.
• Antagonism from elementary school parents concerned that their money would support others’ children’s high school education.
• Selfishness and resentment about “lending” elementary school teachers to the high school.
• That the elementary school had been established for more than 30 years—no pioneer spirit left.
• That the elementary school had “lost” a high school in the 1980s—had started one and then had to close it fewer than four years later.
• Presence of Hawthorne Valley School—including a Waldorf high school—c. 25 min. away. (Although we believed—and still believe—that two healthy elementary schools can support two healthy high schools; that there’s room for healthy cultural variation among Waldorf schools—more choice is better; and that, like gas stations clustered near the center of a town, people will go where the education is.)
• Culture among elementary school parents; expectation that 8th grade “graduates” will go on to prep school.
What were the big surprises, miscalculations?
• The whole thing has been a surprise... That we’re still here and have grown through the nation’s recession, that we’ve had a balanced budget for the last three years, that our students and parents are happy and that the students are accepted to excellent colleges means we haven’t miscalculated too badly...
• That we had a fantastically successful 9th grade year (first year of high school) and then were told that others had misgivings about moving ahead with grade 10. (To be precise, some of us remember agreeing to see how 9th grade went before deciding if there would be a 10th grade—like many prep schools, we could imagine being a K-9 school for a few years before moving to a full high school; others remembered an agreement that we were not adding a 10th grade, no matter what. The lack of clarity here—no minutes or written Board decision—hurt us.)
• How difficult it was to have part of a high school (9th grade, 9th and 10th, and 9th, 10th, and 11th) without a senior class. Seniors are real leaders, and the school didn’t really start to feel complete and entirely happy until spring 2006, just before our first graduation.
• Skepticism of supposedly committed elementary school teachers.
• Economic hardship—more than one teacher worked for a year for nothing. Nothing.
• Community involvement has been spectacular.
• Exceptional visiting teachers.
What were the biggest obstacles, hurdles?
• The sheer difficulty of the operation, top to bottom. The infinite detail.
• Initial lack of money and students. The high school “paying for” a crisis in the elementary school at the time of founding with reduced enrollment. Little money for PR; low visibility...
• Perception that we were “just” a continuation of the elementary school; that we would use elementary school understandings of students and teaching methods. (Which is like assuming that elementary school teachers will use early childhood understandings and techniques…)
• Perception that, because another Waldorf school is 25 min. away, our work was unnecessary or redundant.
• Faculty turn-over. Several teachers miscalculated their commitment or the difficulty of starting a school and left for greener or at least more predictable pastures.
• No tuition remission for our teachers. We couldn’t afford it. Now we don’t support it because not giving remission is a signal to our community that we’re all in this together. Teachers can enter the tuition assistance pool just like everyone else.
What do you wish you had done that you did not do? What would you do differently if you had it to do over again?
• Emphasize value of small school from the start (we spent a couple of years apologizing for our small size before our parents correctly pointed out to us the many benefits of our size): flexibility, motivation of students, caliber of work, focus, structure.
• “Sell” to students in grades 5-8. (We started with the belief that parents should make the decision about their children’s high school, even if we knew that students were making it. And we found each year that including 7th grade families wasn’t enough, nor 6th... “marketing” needs to include the whole elementary school, and targeting events—open houses, plays, etc.—needs to begin with 5th grade families.)
• Emphasize the need for confidentiality among colleagues as we go through the “birth pangs” of starting a school—specifically, for example, when we missed a pay period, it was harmful to the school (and didn’t help anyone get paid any faster) when teachers complained to parents or others.
• Establish a more structured relationship with our Elementary School to allow for greater clarity in planning for the future. We had an ad hoc joint committee of teachers and trustees, but this functioned reactively; we would have benefitted from a more durable, proactive group.
• Devote more energy to educating our elementary school teachers (especially in grades 5-8) about who we were and what we were doing. Like many parents, they assume that a Waldorf high school is “just” a continuation of the elementary school, not a transformation of it...
What are you grateful that you did do?
• That we started (instead of waiting).
• Engaged resources in the community—artists, studios, internships, Simon’s Rock college athletic center, lab, library, and, especially, the “language” trips that we instituted to Germany and Peru every other year.
• Stuck to our strong substance abuse policy. We lost a couple of valuable families by sticking to our guns, but, in the long run, we’re stronger and healthier and our enrollment has grown.
What was most helpful in generating enrollment, philanthropy?
• No annual appeal, just informative letters and requests every other month or so. Relationships with major donors.
• Success of pioneer classes—college acceptance, graduation speeches, general student presentation convinced many parents and students that we were worthwhile.
• Positive student attitudes and supportive students (and these developed more strongly from our 4th year on...)
What best persuaded 8th graders to join high school?
• Visiting days. Skeptical students were usually “wowed” by spending a day with us. Even those who went elsewhere recognized the quality of the school.
• Our annual play, too.
• And the possibility of travel and exchange.
• Also our flexibility—willingness to add courses or, for example, a darkroom and photography to curriculum based on student requests.
• The high quality of our teaching—a Core Faculty experienced in Waldorf schools; 2 PhDs; four of six Core Faculty members attended Ivy League schools and the others are also exceptionally well-educated.
What is essential in starting? What can you do without?
• At least one “real” Waldorf high school teacher, whatever that is, and enough committed families to create a pioneer class—our smallest number in the school has been 12 (our smallest class has been 3, if you don't count the year we had senior class of 4 and a junior class of zero).
• Passion, unity of purpose, and a mission shared among colleagues.
• Everything else, we’ve demonstrated so far, is extraneous, or at least can be jerry-rigged year-to-year.
How did you handle elementary school anxieties?
• Primarily by incorporating separately, not because we wanted to, but because it was the only way we could continue.
• Openness—willingness to meet, to answer questions, to allow visitors to classes, board meetings, etc., etc.
• As more and more nearby Waldorf schools founded high schools, however, the argument that, although it is risky to start a high school, it may be riskier not to, gained some traction among thoughtful parents and trustees.
How did you seek and secure “buy in” from community?
• By quietly representing ourselves openly and honestly. We had open board meetings from the start (and were followed a year later by our elementary school!).
• We try, with limited resources, to make sure that all our families, high school and elementary school, get the student newsletter, our fundraising letters (which we try to make as “meaty” as possible), etc.
What helped the most and least in preparation and founding?
Most:
• A years-long anthroposophical adolescence and high school study group of teachers and parents.
• Students who wanted to continue in a Waldorf school and asked their parents to help make it happen—not many, at first, but a couple with real initiative.
• Steadfast and enthusiastic parents, teachers, and trustees.
• The attitude that we’re going to do this even if we have to meet in someone’s living room to save money; that my child will be there in September even if she’s the only one.
• An experienced lead teacher to inspire students and parents (who had taught the lead class in 7th and 8th grade).
Least:
• A “wait and see” or “prove this is worthy” attitude from some trustees, teachers, and parents.
• Antagonism from elementary school parents concerned that their money would support others’ children’s high school education.
• Selfishness and resentment about “lending” elementary school teachers to the high school.
• That the elementary school had been established for more than 30 years—no pioneer spirit left.
• That the elementary school had “lost” a high school in the 1980s—had started one and then had to close it fewer than four years later.
• Presence of Hawthorne Valley School—including a Waldorf high school—c. 25 min. away. (Although we believed—and still believe—that two healthy elementary schools can support two healthy high schools; that there’s room for healthy cultural variation among Waldorf schools—more choice is better; and that, like gas stations clustered near the center of a town, people will go where the education is.)
• Culture among elementary school parents; expectation that 8th grade “graduates” will go on to prep school.
What were the big surprises, miscalculations?
• The whole thing has been a surprise... That we’re still here and have grown through the nation’s recession, that we’ve had a balanced budget for the last three years, that our students and parents are happy and that the students are accepted to excellent colleges means we haven’t miscalculated too badly...
• That we had a fantastically successful 9th grade year (first year of high school) and then were told that others had misgivings about moving ahead with grade 10. (To be precise, some of us remember agreeing to see how 9th grade went before deciding if there would be a 10th grade—like many prep schools, we could imagine being a K-9 school for a few years before moving to a full high school; others remembered an agreement that we were not adding a 10th grade, no matter what. The lack of clarity here—no minutes or written Board decision—hurt us.)
• How difficult it was to have part of a high school (9th grade, 9th and 10th, and 9th, 10th, and 11th) without a senior class. Seniors are real leaders, and the school didn’t really start to feel complete and entirely happy until spring 2006, just before our first graduation.
• Skepticism of supposedly committed elementary school teachers.
• Economic hardship—more than one teacher worked for a year for nothing. Nothing.
• Community involvement has been spectacular.
• Exceptional visiting teachers.
What were the biggest obstacles, hurdles?
• The sheer difficulty of the operation, top to bottom. The infinite detail.
• Initial lack of money and students. The high school “paying for” a crisis in the elementary school at the time of founding with reduced enrollment. Little money for PR; low visibility...
• Perception that we were “just” a continuation of the elementary school; that we would use elementary school understandings of students and teaching methods. (Which is like assuming that elementary school teachers will use early childhood understandings and techniques…)
• Perception that, because another Waldorf school is 25 min. away, our work was unnecessary or redundant.
• Faculty turn-over. Several teachers miscalculated their commitment or the difficulty of starting a school and left for greener or at least more predictable pastures.
• No tuition remission for our teachers. We couldn’t afford it. Now we don’t support it because not giving remission is a signal to our community that we’re all in this together. Teachers can enter the tuition assistance pool just like everyone else.
What do you wish you had done that you did not do? What would you do differently if you had it to do over again?
• Emphasize value of small school from the start (we spent a couple of years apologizing for our small size before our parents correctly pointed out to us the many benefits of our size): flexibility, motivation of students, caliber of work, focus, structure.
• “Sell” to students in grades 5-8. (We started with the belief that parents should make the decision about their children’s high school, even if we knew that students were making it. And we found each year that including 7th grade families wasn’t enough, nor 6th... “marketing” needs to include the whole elementary school, and targeting events—open houses, plays, etc.—needs to begin with 5th grade families.)
• Emphasize the need for confidentiality among colleagues as we go through the “birth pangs” of starting a school—specifically, for example, when we missed a pay period, it was harmful to the school (and didn’t help anyone get paid any faster) when teachers complained to parents or others.
• Establish a more structured relationship with our Elementary School to allow for greater clarity in planning for the future. We had an ad hoc joint committee of teachers and trustees, but this functioned reactively; we would have benefitted from a more durable, proactive group.
• Devote more energy to educating our elementary school teachers (especially in grades 5-8) about who we were and what we were doing. Like many parents, they assume that a Waldorf high school is “just” a continuation of the elementary school, not a transformation of it...
What are you grateful that you did do?
• That we started (instead of waiting).
• Engaged resources in the community—artists, studios, internships, Simon’s Rock college athletic center, lab, library, and, especially, the “language” trips that we instituted to Germany and Peru every other year.
• Stuck to our strong substance abuse policy. We lost a couple of valuable families by sticking to our guns, but, in the long run, we’re stronger and healthier and our enrollment has grown.
What was most helpful in generating enrollment, philanthropy?
• No annual appeal, just informative letters and requests every other month or so. Relationships with major donors.
• Success of pioneer classes—college acceptance, graduation speeches, general student presentation convinced many parents and students that we were worthwhile.
• Positive student attitudes and supportive students (and these developed more strongly from our 4th year on...)
What best persuaded 8th graders to join high school?
• Visiting days. Skeptical students were usually “wowed” by spending a day with us. Even those who went elsewhere recognized the quality of the school.
• Our annual play, too.
• And the possibility of travel and exchange.
• Also our flexibility—willingness to add courses or, for example, a darkroom and photography to curriculum based on student requests.
• The high quality of our teaching—a Core Faculty experienced in Waldorf schools; 2 PhDs; four of six Core Faculty members attended Ivy League schools and the others are also exceptionally well-educated.
What is essential in starting? What can you do without?
• At least one “real” Waldorf high school teacher, whatever that is, and enough committed families to create a pioneer class—our smallest number in the school has been 12 (our smallest class has been 3, if you don't count the year we had senior class of 4 and a junior class of zero).
• Passion, unity of purpose, and a mission shared among colleagues.
• Everything else, we’ve demonstrated so far, is extraneous, or at least can be jerry-rigged year-to-year.
How did you handle elementary school anxieties?
• Primarily by incorporating separately, not because we wanted to, but because it was the only way we could continue.
• Openness—willingness to meet, to answer questions, to allow visitors to classes, board meetings, etc., etc.
• As more and more nearby Waldorf schools founded high schools, however, the argument that, although it is risky to start a high school, it may be riskier not to, gained some traction among thoughtful parents and trustees.
How did you seek and secure “buy in” from community?
• By quietly representing ourselves openly and honestly. We had open board meetings from the start (and were followed a year later by our elementary school!).
• We try, with limited resources, to make sure that all our families, high school and elementary school, get the student newsletter, our fundraising letters (which we try to make as “meaty” as possible), etc.
Friday, June 12, 2009
High School Matters: Turning Convention On Its Head
Conventional wisdom around Waldorf education is this: Early childhood "matters" the most--if all you can afford, let's say, is an EC program, that's great. Elementary education "matters" next most; if you can afford to get your children through eight elementary grades at a Waldorf school, you've given them an immense blessing. And, especially given the small number of Waldorf high schools, it's okay for those who can afford it or who are so zealous about the education that they'll make it work for another four year, but it's somehow not essential to the humanizing, imaginative, creative promise of Steiner's educational ideas.
But, when I think of those I know who are active in Waldorf education as teachers, parents, or trustees, and who themselves attended a Waldorf school, I reach a surprising conclusion: High school matters most. At the two Waldorf schools closest to me, of those involved who attended a Waldorf school, almost all attended at least one year of high school. They may have attended elementary school, too. But those who attended only through eighth grade are virtually absent and uncounted. When I think of those I correspond with at other schools who attended Waldorf schools, they, too, overwhelmingly, were present for high school.
I had lunch with a former (Waldorf high school) student of mine today who had this to say: If he had been given the choice in 8th grade, he would have chosen public school for social reasons, primarily. Looking back--he graduated three years ago--he not only recognizes the value of his high school education, but is interested in discussing how such an education can be made available to more and more students. He went through 14 years of Waldorf education, by the way, and recognizes that it was only in high school and afterward that he became conscious of its work on him. He went so far as to say that he believed it was "lost" on many of those who left after eighth grade.
I don't mean at all to demean Waldorf elementary school or those who leave after eight years of it. Far from it; my wife and I sacrificed a lot to make sure our children received this benefit. But there is no way, in my experience, in that of my children, in that of my former student, and in that of many friends, that the full benefits of a Waldorf education are reached after elementary school alone.
But, when I think of those I know who are active in Waldorf education as teachers, parents, or trustees, and who themselves attended a Waldorf school, I reach a surprising conclusion: High school matters most. At the two Waldorf schools closest to me, of those involved who attended a Waldorf school, almost all attended at least one year of high school. They may have attended elementary school, too. But those who attended only through eighth grade are virtually absent and uncounted. When I think of those I correspond with at other schools who attended Waldorf schools, they, too, overwhelmingly, were present for high school.
I had lunch with a former (Waldorf high school) student of mine today who had this to say: If he had been given the choice in 8th grade, he would have chosen public school for social reasons, primarily. Looking back--he graduated three years ago--he not only recognizes the value of his high school education, but is interested in discussing how such an education can be made available to more and more students. He went through 14 years of Waldorf education, by the way, and recognizes that it was only in high school and afterward that he became conscious of its work on him. He went so far as to say that he believed it was "lost" on many of those who left after eighth grade.
I don't mean at all to demean Waldorf elementary school or those who leave after eight years of it. Far from it; my wife and I sacrificed a lot to make sure our children received this benefit. But there is no way, in my experience, in that of my children, in that of my former student, and in that of many friends, that the full benefits of a Waldorf education are reached after elementary school alone.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
My Name is Steve, and I'm a Cheater
“Surveys show that cheating in school… has soared since researchers first measured the phenomenon on a broad scale at 99 colleges in the mid-1960s.”
—Maura J. Casey, “Digging out Roots of Cheating in High School,” NY Times, Oct. 13, 2008
In high school—I went to a Waldorf high school—I cheated all the time. I gave out lots of answers, and received plenty, including in a German class that consisted of two students and an excellent teacher.
We loved Dr. Macht, his warmth, his war stories. But when it came to testing, he was terrible. He’d doze off, or leave the room. He wouldn’t notice that we’d written all the answers on the blackboard and then patted the eraser lightly over them. The board looked clean, but it was filthy with vocabulary.
I acknowledge my moral failing in cheating in his class. But Dr. Macht didn’t really care, so we didn’t care. The whole thing seems to have been a collusion between Dr. Macht and us—“I have to test you, but this won’t really do much to improve your language skills, so I’ll disengage myself, and you can do what you like.” I learned German anyway, passing a translation exam for my doctorate fifteen years later without studying. But the learning and the testing were clearly in different categories.
In middle school we taught each other cool ways to cheat. You can take a penknife, carve a bit of the paint off a pencil, and write a few helpful answers in tiny letters on the bare wood. You can tape a cheat-sheet to the back of the chair of the student in front of you. You can write on the white rubber of your converse sneakers, or on your jeans, or on your hand, although that’s the first and, often, only place a teacher will look. This was before cell phones and texting.
In high school we were just brazen—we whispered or mouthed answers across the rows, exchanged papers or tests, or just talked to each other when a teacher left the room. We prepared answer sheets in advance, then slipped them into our test booklets or piles of scrap paper.
Not everyone cheated, but most did, regardless of intelligence. I’d say more boys than girls cheated, but, then, I was a boy.
After high school, I went to a college that had a strict honor code. To this day, I remember it—we had to write it and sign it on every exam: “I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination.” I didn’t cheat in college, I wasn’t tempted to, and I never witnessed anyone else cheating. Professors placed piles of exams at the front of the room, then left. We students took the exams in the allotted time and handed them in. We could stretch out in the hall, return to our rooms, do what we liked, as long as the exam was in on time.
What was the difference? I was older in college, possibly more mature (although, living away from home, possible less), and the stakes may have been higher. But, really, the difference was in school and teacher expectations.
The consequences for cheating in high school were minimal—warning, admonishment, a lower grade. In high school, teachers—even good teachers, of which I had more than my fair share—were too self-involved or too careless. If they didn’t really care, neither did we. Why did they give tests? To appease parents or colleagues? Because it was something that teachers do? Usually, their hearts weren’t in it.
Those teachers who cared made it clear, and, for the most part, we took them seriously. “Hey. You really have to study for Mr. Madsen’s tests.” We did study, and we didn’t cheat, and we respected Mr. Madsen.
In college, it was clear, we could be expelled for cheating or plagiarizing. In college, the teachers weren’t necessarily less self-involved or careless, they didn’t necessarily believe in the educational efficacy of testing. The institution, the community of the school, however, made expectations and consequences clear, beyond any idiosyncrasies of our (sometimes very) idiosyncratic teachers. The school cared, so the individual teachers didn’t have to. The community of the school—teachers, students, administrators—took the question of cheating seriously, wrote a simple code, empanelled students and teachers to deal with violations, and secured “buy in” from everyone.
Today I work in a tiny high school of twenty students. It’s easy to police a test or exam, but I suspect some students still cheat. I tell my students about my high school experience, however, and also about my college experience. I let them know that I take cheating seriously, and that I will fail them for the course (not just for the test or the assignment) if they cheat. I also tell them that if I give them a test it will be designed fairly to allow them to demonstrate what they know, not to trip them up or to require cramming irrelevant facts. I also sit in the back of the room, behind them, so I can see them and they can’t see me. This makes illicit behavior easier to spot.
Writing a “real” test, one that fairly assesses knowledge and ability and that makes cheating difficult, is a chore, but it’s a worthwhile chore. If the answers aren’t things that can be whispered between students, or copied onto a crib sheet, students will find it harder to cheat, even if they want to. If they know that their teachers respect them and their mutual educational work, they’ll be less prone to cheating. If they know that teachers and school take cheating seriously, too, they’ll be less willing to risk the consequences.
The Internet has made it easier to cheat on papers—copying and pasting replace thinking and writing—but it’s also made it easy to catch cheaters. A few years ago, one of my students wrote a biography of Che Guevara. I suspected that the work wasn’t the student’s own. I chose five words from his paper that seemed like words he might not use, typed them into Google, and was directed instantly to the obscure paper, posted to the web, from which he had copied. It took me about fifteen seconds. I tell my current students this story, too.
I don’t know for certain that my students don’t cheat on tests, but I’m pretty sure they’re better behaved than I was at their age. Part of my teaching today is to avoid the mistakes my own teachers and I made a long time ago.
—Maura J. Casey, “Digging out Roots of Cheating in High School,” NY Times, Oct. 13, 2008
In high school—I went to a Waldorf high school—I cheated all the time. I gave out lots of answers, and received plenty, including in a German class that consisted of two students and an excellent teacher.
We loved Dr. Macht, his warmth, his war stories. But when it came to testing, he was terrible. He’d doze off, or leave the room. He wouldn’t notice that we’d written all the answers on the blackboard and then patted the eraser lightly over them. The board looked clean, but it was filthy with vocabulary.
I acknowledge my moral failing in cheating in his class. But Dr. Macht didn’t really care, so we didn’t care. The whole thing seems to have been a collusion between Dr. Macht and us—“I have to test you, but this won’t really do much to improve your language skills, so I’ll disengage myself, and you can do what you like.” I learned German anyway, passing a translation exam for my doctorate fifteen years later without studying. But the learning and the testing were clearly in different categories.
In middle school we taught each other cool ways to cheat. You can take a penknife, carve a bit of the paint off a pencil, and write a few helpful answers in tiny letters on the bare wood. You can tape a cheat-sheet to the back of the chair of the student in front of you. You can write on the white rubber of your converse sneakers, or on your jeans, or on your hand, although that’s the first and, often, only place a teacher will look. This was before cell phones and texting.
In high school we were just brazen—we whispered or mouthed answers across the rows, exchanged papers or tests, or just talked to each other when a teacher left the room. We prepared answer sheets in advance, then slipped them into our test booklets or piles of scrap paper.
Not everyone cheated, but most did, regardless of intelligence. I’d say more boys than girls cheated, but, then, I was a boy.
After high school, I went to a college that had a strict honor code. To this day, I remember it—we had to write it and sign it on every exam: “I pledge my honor that I have not violated the Honor Code during this examination.” I didn’t cheat in college, I wasn’t tempted to, and I never witnessed anyone else cheating. Professors placed piles of exams at the front of the room, then left. We students took the exams in the allotted time and handed them in. We could stretch out in the hall, return to our rooms, do what we liked, as long as the exam was in on time.
What was the difference? I was older in college, possibly more mature (although, living away from home, possible less), and the stakes may have been higher. But, really, the difference was in school and teacher expectations.
The consequences for cheating in high school were minimal—warning, admonishment, a lower grade. In high school, teachers—even good teachers, of which I had more than my fair share—were too self-involved or too careless. If they didn’t really care, neither did we. Why did they give tests? To appease parents or colleagues? Because it was something that teachers do? Usually, their hearts weren’t in it.
Those teachers who cared made it clear, and, for the most part, we took them seriously. “Hey. You really have to study for Mr. Madsen’s tests.” We did study, and we didn’t cheat, and we respected Mr. Madsen.
In college, it was clear, we could be expelled for cheating or plagiarizing. In college, the teachers weren’t necessarily less self-involved or careless, they didn’t necessarily believe in the educational efficacy of testing. The institution, the community of the school, however, made expectations and consequences clear, beyond any idiosyncrasies of our (sometimes very) idiosyncratic teachers. The school cared, so the individual teachers didn’t have to. The community of the school—teachers, students, administrators—took the question of cheating seriously, wrote a simple code, empanelled students and teachers to deal with violations, and secured “buy in” from everyone.
Today I work in a tiny high school of twenty students. It’s easy to police a test or exam, but I suspect some students still cheat. I tell my students about my high school experience, however, and also about my college experience. I let them know that I take cheating seriously, and that I will fail them for the course (not just for the test or the assignment) if they cheat. I also tell them that if I give them a test it will be designed fairly to allow them to demonstrate what they know, not to trip them up or to require cramming irrelevant facts. I also sit in the back of the room, behind them, so I can see them and they can’t see me. This makes illicit behavior easier to spot.
Writing a “real” test, one that fairly assesses knowledge and ability and that makes cheating difficult, is a chore, but it’s a worthwhile chore. If the answers aren’t things that can be whispered between students, or copied onto a crib sheet, students will find it harder to cheat, even if they want to. If they know that their teachers respect them and their mutual educational work, they’ll be less prone to cheating. If they know that teachers and school take cheating seriously, too, they’ll be less willing to risk the consequences.
The Internet has made it easier to cheat on papers—copying and pasting replace thinking and writing—but it’s also made it easy to catch cheaters. A few years ago, one of my students wrote a biography of Che Guevara. I suspected that the work wasn’t the student’s own. I chose five words from his paper that seemed like words he might not use, typed them into Google, and was directed instantly to the obscure paper, posted to the web, from which he had copied. It took me about fifteen seconds. I tell my current students this story, too.
I don’t know for certain that my students don’t cheat on tests, but I’m pretty sure they’re better behaved than I was at their age. Part of my teaching today is to avoid the mistakes my own teachers and I made a long time ago.
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