Once Harry Kretz asks a question, he stands and he waits. You can see that he is willing to wait while civilizations rise and fall, oceans dry up, stars die and fall from the sky, the universe rumbles to an end, bang or whimper. He’s present, attentive, with his students, but waiting. He has asked a real question that a real student needs to answer for a real reason. Not to prolong a class, or to demonstrate knowledge, or to be pedantic, but because he’s teaching young human beings and it’s necessary for them to exercise themselves, to rouse their minds to activity, to make connections for themselves. Mr. Kretz asks a question that requires students to engage, to think, to draw new connections, to make an insightful leap across a previously uncrossed gap.
Mr. Kretz, one of the finest teachers I have known—patient, respectful, humorous—will tell you that many teachers, especially young, smart ones, don’t really know how to ask questions. “Don’t ask a question that you don’t actually care if the students answer,” he might say. And, once you’ve asked a question that you believe students should answer, don’t do what too many of us do. We wait a couple of seconds and then, impatient, the onrushing momentum of an un-taught curriculum or the threat of silence or of boredom upon us, we answer it for ourselves. And our students relax back into watching the teacher’s show.
“Er. Um.” A student hazards a guess, voice rising at the end, questioning. Mr. Kretz absorbs this answer and asks another question.
(Speaking of leaps, Helen Keller compared leaps of mind and dancing. Here’s Merce Cunningham from Russell Friedman’s biography of Martha Graham: “[I] felt [Helen Keller’s] two hands around my waist, like bird wings, so soft. I began to do small jumps. Her fingers, still around my waist, moved slightly as though fluttering. I stopped, and was able to understand what she said to her companion: ‘So light, like the mind.’” Sometimes, poetic truth and literal truth are the same thing.)
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label teaching. Show all posts
Monday, August 1, 2011
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
Giving a Test 101
Among the reasons for high school and middle school students to lose confidence in their teachers are simple things—organization, preparation, clarity, attention. A lack of these may become particularly evident in times of stress, and there may be no more acute case in the everyday life of a school than during the administration of a test. I believe I can hand identical tests to different teachers who will walk into classes that have been identically prepared and, depending on how the teachers handle the test-taking, from beginning to end, student attitudes and results will vary widely.
An organized, clear, attentive teacher will elicit the best behavior and results—the room will be calm, the test fair. A disorganized, unclear, inattentive teacher will elicit bad behavior—including cheating—and worse results.
So I thought I’d walk through test-administering 101.
An organized, clear, attentive teacher will elicit the best behavior and results—the room will be calm, the test fair. A disorganized, unclear, inattentive teacher will elicit bad behavior—including cheating—and worse results.
So I thought I’d walk through test-administering 101.
Write a test that is fair and that allows students to demonstrate what they know. It could even be fun… Start with a cartoon or a joke (maybe an “in” joke that you and the class share). The test should should be difficult to get a perfect score on but also difficult to fail. It should test students on what they should know—what is important in your course, what you have reviewed.
Frankly, in most cases, you should be so confident of your students that giving or taking the test is just about beside the point—you should know the students well enough to know what they know, to know how well they will do on your test. (In which case, you don’t have to give it at all.) Or, if you give it, you can make it, too, into part of the learning for your course. Ask them to synthesize information in an essay. Don’t insult their intelligence. Don’t waste your own time.
Begin, perhaps, by telling the story of how you cheated in high school and how bad you feel now. Or how you got caught and learned your lesson. Or about the girl who plagiarized a Spanish paper in senior year of college and got un-accepted to law school, wrecking her life. Make it clear how seriously you take cheating. Tell students they will fail if caught cheating, and stick to your decision.
Give clear instructions for taking the test and for what to do when finished (For example: read it over, hand it to me, face down, with all essays or scrap paper stapled in order, with your name on each sheet, sit down without speaking and read a book until everyone is done).
Separate students as much as possible. Move tables and desks as necessary to create space.
Have students clear their desks except for test-taking essentials. (If they need scrap paper, you give it to them.)
Once you hand out the tests, face down on each desk, no talking. Talking gets a reduced grade.
Anyone who has a question can walk over to you and whisper, one at a time.
Sit in the back of the room, behind the students. They can’t see you, you can see them—head swivels, desk searches…
Do not talk unless absolutely necessary. Do not leave the room. Do not turn your back on the students.
Give time or progress updates if helpful; “You have ten minutes until the end of the period.” “You should be at least halfway through the test by now.”
If you are tough but fair, students will feel secure, they will perform better, results will be indicative of what you want them to be indicative of, and your life will run more smoothly.
Teachers usually don’t fail, in my experience, because they don’t know the subject they are teaching, or because they aren’t committed to the job. They fail for one of four reasons. (I teach in a small private school; teachers in other schools may amend my list.) First, young or inexperienced teachers may discover that they simply are not teachers—that their dream of teaching was a romantic one, and that the realities of teaching are simply not for them. This can be a hard lesson to learn, but one better learned sooner than later. In most cases, teachers and schools part ways peaceably and with mutual respect in circumstances like these.
The other three reasons for leaving teaching do not always results in peaceful partings. Teachers may lose the confidence of the parents of the students in their class; they may lose the confidence of their colleagues; and they may lose the confidence of the students in their class. This last may be expressed in different ways depending on the teacher and the age of the students—lack of control or discipline, disillusionment, disdain, complaints, insecurity… the student behaviors that signal that a teacher is not up to the job are myriad. And parent or colleague confidence is almost always tied to student confidence and security, which is made acutely visible when taking a test.
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Hard Work for Teachers and Students
Students wrote poems and then illustrated them in the style of William Blake. E., a high school English teacher, showed me the students’ work. It was awful. I was their art teacher. “I know she can do much better than that. He can too…” Were talented students just lazy, willing to make beautiful art in art class and then shrug it off in English class? A mystery.
E. showed up at school the next morning with a sample of what she had wanted from the students. She had written her own poem and then, not a natural artist, illustrated it painstakingly. Wow.
“How long did that take you?”
“Four and a half hours.”
A hah.
Students had each spent less than an hour on an assignment that took a teacher four and a half hours to do to her own standards and expectations. They had homework for other classes, they even had other work for English, and they had been given only one night for the assignment. It wasn’t a surprise that none of them, talented or not, spent the hours necessary to fulfill the teacher’s (unspoken) expectation for the quality of the work.
E. showed the students her work, told them how long it had taken her, made her expectations for the assignment explicit, and gave them several days to complete it. Their work was beautiful.
***
Z., a bright, motivated student who seemed interested in everything in the world, one of the few teens I have taught who was willing to say publicly that something academic—the quadratic formula or the defenestration of Prague—was cool, handed in his first essay for me. It was intelligently written but brief and almost illegible. I handed it back to him with this comment: “Brief. Sloppy. Seems hastily written.”
Turns out he wrestled with dyslexia and no one had told me. He had worked as hard on his essay as anyone in the class, it just didn’t show.
I generally grade essays with a check mark if they’re acceptable, a rare “check-plus” if they’re exceptionally good, and a check-minus if they’re unacceptable and should be re-written. But I edit them, correcting every misused comma, spelling mistake, awkward phrase, poor word choice, or lack of proper paragraphing.
(One of my fundamental beliefs as a teacher is that students generally enter high school capable of writing a perfect, simple English sentence and can then, with teachers’ assistance, learn to write more complex but still perfectly grammatical sentences. They will make mistakes along the way, but these can be minimal and instructive, rather than evidence of laziness or apathy.)
The content of Z.’s essays was often excellent, but other factors, most probably due to his dyslexia, kept him from getting check-pluses.
A year later, in a different course (one of the beauties of a small school is that we teachers get to know and teach students over several years), Z. handed in yet another essay. I read it through, pencil poised. Not a single correction. Thoughtful content, as usual, and no errors. Cool!
(Basing my assignments on those I found most meaningful when I was a student, I have students write many brief essays in most of my courses; I would rather read 1-2 really well-written pages than 5-8 pages thinly cribbed from Wikipedia and then padded with adverbs and adjectives.)
I returned the papers to the students. Z. came to see me, grinning. “I decided I was tired of your corrections. I wanted to write an error-free paper, to see if I could do it.” We chatted for a bit. It turns out it had taken him time to achieve his goal, but not quite twice as much time as he normally spent on assignments.
“You’re in trouble now,” I said.
“Why?”
“Now that I know what you can do when you try, you’ll have to do this every time.”
I can’t say that he rose to the bait completely, but the standards to which he held himself did change for the better, dyslexia or no dyslexia.
***
Will, work, and time. Aren’t these the keys to mastery, for teachers and for students, regardless of personal challenges?
E. showed up at school the next morning with a sample of what she had wanted from the students. She had written her own poem and then, not a natural artist, illustrated it painstakingly. Wow.
“How long did that take you?”
“Four and a half hours.”
A hah.
Students had each spent less than an hour on an assignment that took a teacher four and a half hours to do to her own standards and expectations. They had homework for other classes, they even had other work for English, and they had been given only one night for the assignment. It wasn’t a surprise that none of them, talented or not, spent the hours necessary to fulfill the teacher’s (unspoken) expectation for the quality of the work.
E. showed the students her work, told them how long it had taken her, made her expectations for the assignment explicit, and gave them several days to complete it. Their work was beautiful.
***
Z., a bright, motivated student who seemed interested in everything in the world, one of the few teens I have taught who was willing to say publicly that something academic—the quadratic formula or the defenestration of Prague—was cool, handed in his first essay for me. It was intelligently written but brief and almost illegible. I handed it back to him with this comment: “Brief. Sloppy. Seems hastily written.”
Turns out he wrestled with dyslexia and no one had told me. He had worked as hard on his essay as anyone in the class, it just didn’t show.
I generally grade essays with a check mark if they’re acceptable, a rare “check-plus” if they’re exceptionally good, and a check-minus if they’re unacceptable and should be re-written. But I edit them, correcting every misused comma, spelling mistake, awkward phrase, poor word choice, or lack of proper paragraphing.
(One of my fundamental beliefs as a teacher is that students generally enter high school capable of writing a perfect, simple English sentence and can then, with teachers’ assistance, learn to write more complex but still perfectly grammatical sentences. They will make mistakes along the way, but these can be minimal and instructive, rather than evidence of laziness or apathy.)
The content of Z.’s essays was often excellent, but other factors, most probably due to his dyslexia, kept him from getting check-pluses.
A year later, in a different course (one of the beauties of a small school is that we teachers get to know and teach students over several years), Z. handed in yet another essay. I read it through, pencil poised. Not a single correction. Thoughtful content, as usual, and no errors. Cool!
(Basing my assignments on those I found most meaningful when I was a student, I have students write many brief essays in most of my courses; I would rather read 1-2 really well-written pages than 5-8 pages thinly cribbed from Wikipedia and then padded with adverbs and adjectives.)
I returned the papers to the students. Z. came to see me, grinning. “I decided I was tired of your corrections. I wanted to write an error-free paper, to see if I could do it.” We chatted for a bit. It turns out it had taken him time to achieve his goal, but not quite twice as much time as he normally spent on assignments.
“You’re in trouble now,” I said.
“Why?”
“Now that I know what you can do when you try, you’ll have to do this every time.”
I can’t say that he rose to the bait completely, but the standards to which he held himself did change for the better, dyslexia or no dyslexia.
***
Will, work, and time. Aren’t these the keys to mastery, for teachers and for students, regardless of personal challenges?
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Teaching 8th grade history in a Waldorf school in a nutshell…
I produced the following BRIEF outline for my adult students. I have others on other grades that I'll post soon. Hope it's helpful to some; if it's not, ignore it!
Tell stories of cultural changes—in the arts, science and technology—from 1600 to the present. This focuses on the Industrial Revolution and Romanticism (which, of course, should be considered not only as an anti-industrial response, but as the seed of everything from the environmental movement to anthroposophy, not that you’ll tell the students this—see Barfield’s “Romanticism Come of Age.”)
NOTE: Many schools call this a “Revolutions” block and focus also on the American, French, and even Soviet Revolutions. This is fine, but this topic can also wait for 9th grade. (I believe that because many Waldorf schools do not have high schools, they seek to push some high school material—especially cultural history—into the 8th grade curriculum. This may not be a bad thing.)
NOTE: Many schools teach U.S. history in 8th grade. If this is done according to the theme of “human transformation of the world”—the inner world of human consciousness and, more important for 8th graders, the outer world of politics, economy, and technology—and not as “mere” U.S. history, then this is fine (but not an ideological necessity). From this point of view—the cultural—wars are less important than they would be from a different point of view.
Depending on the direction you choose you will have an endless supply of fascinating biographies from which to choose (and you can create a longer list from which students may choose projects). Because you have honed your techniques in teaching history in grades 5, 6, and 7, the practice of using human lives to narrate events and illustrate themes will come easily to you. Whittle down the number of lives with which you will contend and don’t belabor any too much (presentation and review for each; no need to spend days and days on John and Abigail Adams, for goodness sake; but, if you love John and Abigail Adams, then have at it).
The lives of inventors and industrialists point to the themes of urbanization, industrialization, transportation, and communication. The world moves rapidly from a perennial simplicity to the acceleration we experience today (Henry Adams, tongue in cheek, saw such an acceleration in human use of energy that he predicted the end of the world in 1926. He was right.) But be on the lookout for the quirks and foibles of your characters (the quirky, foible-full eighth graders love them)—James Watt was so terrified of steam power that he never built an industrial steam engine—he worked on table-top models.
Revolutions, again, point to a larger question about teaching history to youth in general. Life has always been brutal (nasty, brutish and short, in Hobbes’s formulation), from ancient slaughter through torture to modern genocide and holocaust. You can easily acknowledge this—and other forms of human suffering, as in the story of Buddha—without indulging it. Please choose biographies that inspire by example, and mention brutality matter-of-factly in passing. An experienced teacher I know assigned Schindler’s List as a class reader in 8th grade; I believe this is wrong—not that individual 8th graders won’t pick up such books on their own, or that students shouldn’t read exactly this in a few years—because we shouldn’t expose students to the brutality of human existence before they can contend with it in their own emotional lives. To ask them to do so stunts their inner growth, and may—in the presence of other life-factors—express itself in unhealthy, risky behaviors like cutting, drug abuse, or eating disorders.
Tell stories of cultural changes—in the arts, science and technology—from 1600 to the present. This focuses on the Industrial Revolution and Romanticism (which, of course, should be considered not only as an anti-industrial response, but as the seed of everything from the environmental movement to anthroposophy, not that you’ll tell the students this—see Barfield’s “Romanticism Come of Age.”)
NOTE: Many schools call this a “Revolutions” block and focus also on the American, French, and even Soviet Revolutions. This is fine, but this topic can also wait for 9th grade. (I believe that because many Waldorf schools do not have high schools, they seek to push some high school material—especially cultural history—into the 8th grade curriculum. This may not be a bad thing.)
NOTE: Many schools teach U.S. history in 8th grade. If this is done according to the theme of “human transformation of the world”—the inner world of human consciousness and, more important for 8th graders, the outer world of politics, economy, and technology—and not as “mere” U.S. history, then this is fine (but not an ideological necessity). From this point of view—the cultural—wars are less important than they would be from a different point of view.
Depending on the direction you choose you will have an endless supply of fascinating biographies from which to choose (and you can create a longer list from which students may choose projects). Because you have honed your techniques in teaching history in grades 5, 6, and 7, the practice of using human lives to narrate events and illustrate themes will come easily to you. Whittle down the number of lives with which you will contend and don’t belabor any too much (presentation and review for each; no need to spend days and days on John and Abigail Adams, for goodness sake; but, if you love John and Abigail Adams, then have at it).
The lives of inventors and industrialists point to the themes of urbanization, industrialization, transportation, and communication. The world moves rapidly from a perennial simplicity to the acceleration we experience today (Henry Adams, tongue in cheek, saw such an acceleration in human use of energy that he predicted the end of the world in 1926. He was right.) But be on the lookout for the quirks and foibles of your characters (the quirky, foible-full eighth graders love them)—James Watt was so terrified of steam power that he never built an industrial steam engine—he worked on table-top models.
Revolutions, again, point to a larger question about teaching history to youth in general. Life has always been brutal (nasty, brutish and short, in Hobbes’s formulation), from ancient slaughter through torture to modern genocide and holocaust. You can easily acknowledge this—and other forms of human suffering, as in the story of Buddha—without indulging it. Please choose biographies that inspire by example, and mention brutality matter-of-factly in passing. An experienced teacher I know assigned Schindler’s List as a class reader in 8th grade; I believe this is wrong—not that individual 8th graders won’t pick up such books on their own, or that students shouldn’t read exactly this in a few years—because we shouldn’t expose students to the brutality of human existence before they can contend with it in their own emotional lives. To ask them to do so stunts their inner growth, and may—in the presence of other life-factors—express itself in unhealthy, risky behaviors like cutting, drug abuse, or eating disorders.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Thinking about Scientology's "Study Tech"
According to Lawrence Wright, in a New Yorker profile (Feb. 14 & 21, 2011, pp. 95-96) of Paul Haggis, “The Apostate: A former Scientologist speaks out,” and corroborated on a Scientology FAQ, education in schools established by Scientologists is based on three principles, together known as “study technology” or “study tech.” According to the Scientologists, “the impediment to students’ ability to retain and effectively use data [prior to L. Ron Hubbard’s discovery of ‘study tech’] was the absence of a technology of how to study.” Study tech rests on three principles: the use of clay or other materials to model concepts that are otherwise abstract or difficult to understand; the use of dictionaries and other sources to clarify precise word meanings; and the teaching of a topic as completely as possible to avoid “too steep a gradient” in learning.
These principles sound innocuous, but I believe reflection yields some reservations.
In the article, Haggis’s daughter is cited regarding the helpful use of clay to model an atom. But this takes a complex, easily misunderstood and still not completely understood phenomenon—an atom—and renders it in crude material terms. Clay cannot hold an electrical charge, or act like a wave and a particle simultaneously, or evince entanglement, or demonstrate statistical probabilities or quantum states. Most of what’s important or interesting about atoms is necessarily left out, glossed over, or caricatured. Like those annoying silver balls and hoops on the credits for the amusing TV show, The Big Bang Theory, the clay is just sort of “there,” reinforcing our lack of understanding of the matter of the universe, or, more worrying, reinforcing a false materialism.
Similarly, dictionaries, while helpful, offer only a low-level consensus on conventional meanings with, at best, a historical look at word origins and usages. Definition is among the lowest order of understanding and interpretation, often necessary but rarely enough. Taken to an extreme, a dictionary or definition-based approach to learning yields knowledge as a sort of butterfly collection, each specimen pinned and identified. Something is missing here: life.
The concept of “too steep a gradient” seems the least objectionable; Vygotsky’s concept of a “zone of proximal development” may apply here, the idea that we start from where we are and then, with the guidance of teachers or of experience, move beyond our current state at a rate that is not so slow that it causes boredom and not so rapid that it causes confusion. There is probably “too steep a gradient” for each of us. On the other hand, we are only capable of learning “completely” within the limits of our developmental stage. How much science can, say, a 3rd grader learn completely? Clearly, very little, and with very little understanding of the actual creative work of a scientist. Effective learning clearly builds on what comes before, but, also, on anticipation of what is still unknown.
These principles sound innocuous, but I believe reflection yields some reservations.
In the article, Haggis’s daughter is cited regarding the helpful use of clay to model an atom. But this takes a complex, easily misunderstood and still not completely understood phenomenon—an atom—and renders it in crude material terms. Clay cannot hold an electrical charge, or act like a wave and a particle simultaneously, or evince entanglement, or demonstrate statistical probabilities or quantum states. Most of what’s important or interesting about atoms is necessarily left out, glossed over, or caricatured. Like those annoying silver balls and hoops on the credits for the amusing TV show, The Big Bang Theory, the clay is just sort of “there,” reinforcing our lack of understanding of the matter of the universe, or, more worrying, reinforcing a false materialism.
Similarly, dictionaries, while helpful, offer only a low-level consensus on conventional meanings with, at best, a historical look at word origins and usages. Definition is among the lowest order of understanding and interpretation, often necessary but rarely enough. Taken to an extreme, a dictionary or definition-based approach to learning yields knowledge as a sort of butterfly collection, each specimen pinned and identified. Something is missing here: life.
The concept of “too steep a gradient” seems the least objectionable; Vygotsky’s concept of a “zone of proximal development” may apply here, the idea that we start from where we are and then, with the guidance of teachers or of experience, move beyond our current state at a rate that is not so slow that it causes boredom and not so rapid that it causes confusion. There is probably “too steep a gradient” for each of us. On the other hand, we are only capable of learning “completely” within the limits of our developmental stage. How much science can, say, a 3rd grader learn completely? Clearly, very little, and with very little understanding of the actual creative work of a scientist. Effective learning clearly builds on what comes before, but, also, on anticipation of what is still unknown.
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?)
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Model Teachers
Our most highly paid, most highly regarded teachers have no training in education. None. They don’t have education degrees, teaching certificates, or even, at least at first, any teaching experience. They’re professionals in their fields, but amateurs in the field of education, even the best ones, and, for good reasons, no one seems to think this matters.
I’m talking, of course, about university professors.
What do they have going for them? They have great educations themselves—the hiring process ensures that those offered jobs and then tenure generally have the best credentials, have gone to the best schools—and they are experts in their fields.
But back up one year, from freshman year of college (where your teacher is likely to be a lowly Teaching Assistant, not a professor) to senior year of high school, and requirements and expectations alter radically. Your best high school teacher was likely a union member with a master’s degree in education and a teaching certificate, an amateur in the subject she taught but a professional teacher.
Should our goal in improving teaching then be to require more credentials and certifications, to professionalize something that we don’t really recognize as a profession? Or would we be better off if we figured out how to take what works in universities and make it work for younger students?
I’m talking, of course, about university professors.
What do they have going for them? They have great educations themselves—the hiring process ensures that those offered jobs and then tenure generally have the best credentials, have gone to the best schools—and they are experts in their fields.
But back up one year, from freshman year of college (where your teacher is likely to be a lowly Teaching Assistant, not a professor) to senior year of high school, and requirements and expectations alter radically. Your best high school teacher was likely a union member with a master’s degree in education and a teaching certificate, an amateur in the subject she taught but a professional teacher.
Should our goal in improving teaching then be to require more credentials and certifications, to professionalize something that we don’t really recognize as a profession? Or would we be better off if we figured out how to take what works in universities and make it work for younger students?
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Great Teaching
Amanda Ripley’s article in The Atlantic (Jan./Feb. 2010) examines data on thousands of teachers from “Teach for America” to shed light on what makes a teacher great (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/01/what-makes-a-great-teacher/7841/). The findings?
1. “First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students.”
2. [Great teachers] “were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when [Steven] Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: ‘They’d say, “You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.” When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.’ Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.”
3. Great teachers “avidly recruited students and their families into the process;”
4. Great teachers “maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning.” “For example, one way that great teachers ensure that kids are learning is to frequently check for understanding: Are the kids—all of the kids—following what you are saying? Asking “Does anyone have any questions?” does not work, and it’s a classic rookie mistake. Students are not always the best judges of their own learning. They might understand a line read aloud from a Shakespeare play, but have no idea what happened in the last act.”
5. Great teachers “planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome;”
6. Great teachers “worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.”
Some of the findings may appear counterintuitive: “Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve success in a poor school—like prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood—don’t seem to matter. Other things that may sound trifling—like a teacher’s extracurricular accomplishments in college—tend to predict greatness.” Presented with Farr and Ripley’s list, however, a lot makes sense. Who could really argue?
I don’t want to argue with the value of such a list, but I do want to point to its limits. Isn’t there—shouldn’t there be—a significant difference between helping “a new teacher achieve success” and achieving “greatness” as a teacher? Ripley—and, I assume, the “Teach for America” data—simply don’t make this distinction clear. Are we examining master teachers, or are we finding statistical correlations among practices regarding really good new teachers and other, not-so-good new teachers?
More important is the distinction between a great teacher as found in statistics and an actual teacher facing an actual student. What this research defines as a “great teacher” is one who assists a class in achieving better scores on standardized, grade-level assessments than other, less great teachers do. This is beyond reproach. Although standardized tests are execrable political tools and standards themselves are often very low (in order to allow a significant percentage of students to pass them), who wants a teacher who can’t do a good job of this? But is this measure enough to define greatness?
I had a few great teachers. One was my high school German teacher, Dr. Macht. He was a low-key raconteur, easily distracted. He was a World War II veteran, and chose to study German on the G.I. Bill in order to read Nazi documents in order to understand the atrocities he had witnessed. He had endless interesting stories about the war and his life. “Boys, let me tell you a story,” he’d begin, looking out the window. And that was that. No more German grammar or vocabulary for that day. But, in the end, I learned a tremendous amount from him, and received my highest achievement test (now called an SAT II) score in German. My point here is twofold. First, a lot of students didn’t think he was a very good teacher, often for the very reasons I liked and appreciated him. And, second, on the list of six qualities from “Teach for America,” he probably scores well below 50%. He was great for me, not so great for others, and, statistically, maybe not that great.
Another teacher, Mr. Tomlinson, a science and math teacher, was frequently acknowledged to be a great teacher, but I just never found that I learned that much from him. He was likeable and clear, but also slow-paced and methodical. For me, any sense of the value of the study as a whole, how the parts fit together, was largely missing. And yet astronomer and professor William Kaufmann III so loved Mr. Tomlinson that he dedicated his book, Discovering the Universe, a well-known astronomy textbook, to him. Another student, a highly successful lawyer, now retired, credits Mr. Tomlinson with literally saving his life as a teen, giving his life sufficient meaning at a time when he was seriously contemplating suicide. Mr. Tomlinson certainly scores more highly on the “Teach for America” criteria than Dr. Macht would; I’d give him, minimally, a strong 4 out of 6. But, for me, he wasn’t that great.
I have written elsewhere on this blog about a third great teacher, Howard Gruber (see "Howard Gruber, Practical Idealist”). But the man whom I met as a great teacher, toward the very end of his career, endlessly frustrated other students with his repetition and with his (beautifully) open-minded refusal to define things too clearly that he believed should not be defined too clearly. Great for me—top two or three—not so great for some others.
My main point is that, as a student, it simply doesn’t matter whether or not anyone else—or some set of statistical criteria, however accurate and admirable—define a particular teacher as “great.” Malcolm Gladwell, in “Most Likely to Succeed,” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell), based on research from the University of Virginia, describes the importance of an emphasis on teaching instead of an emphasis on schools. (“Your child is actually better off in a ‘bad’ school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher.”) Amanda Ripley writes about great teachers according to valuable statistical correlations. But we can go further, at least in our imaginations and in our ideals, and picture not some abstract “great teacher,” but the teacher who will be great for us, or great for our children, who will help them set their lives on course, or, sometimes, save them.
1. “First, great teachers tended to set big goals for their students.”
2. [Great teachers] “were also perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness. For example, when [Steven] Farr called up teachers who were making remarkable gains and asked to visit their classrooms, he noticed he’d get a similar response from all of them: ‘They’d say, “You’re welcome to come, but I have to warn you—I am in the middle of just blowing up my classroom structure and changing my reading workshop because I think it’s not working as well as it could.” When you hear that over and over, and you don’t hear that from other teachers, you start to form a hypothesis.’ Great teachers, he concluded, constantly reevaluate what they are doing.”
3. Great teachers “avidly recruited students and their families into the process;”
4. Great teachers “maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning.” “For example, one way that great teachers ensure that kids are learning is to frequently check for understanding: Are the kids—all of the kids—following what you are saying? Asking “Does anyone have any questions?” does not work, and it’s a classic rookie mistake. Students are not always the best judges of their own learning. They might understand a line read aloud from a Shakespeare play, but have no idea what happened in the last act.”
5. Great teachers “planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome;”
6. Great teachers “worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.”
Some of the findings may appear counterintuitive: “Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve success in a poor school—like prior experience working in a low-income neighborhood—don’t seem to matter. Other things that may sound trifling—like a teacher’s extracurricular accomplishments in college—tend to predict greatness.” Presented with Farr and Ripley’s list, however, a lot makes sense. Who could really argue?
I don’t want to argue with the value of such a list, but I do want to point to its limits. Isn’t there—shouldn’t there be—a significant difference between helping “a new teacher achieve success” and achieving “greatness” as a teacher? Ripley—and, I assume, the “Teach for America” data—simply don’t make this distinction clear. Are we examining master teachers, or are we finding statistical correlations among practices regarding really good new teachers and other, not-so-good new teachers?
More important is the distinction between a great teacher as found in statistics and an actual teacher facing an actual student. What this research defines as a “great teacher” is one who assists a class in achieving better scores on standardized, grade-level assessments than other, less great teachers do. This is beyond reproach. Although standardized tests are execrable political tools and standards themselves are often very low (in order to allow a significant percentage of students to pass them), who wants a teacher who can’t do a good job of this? But is this measure enough to define greatness?
I had a few great teachers. One was my high school German teacher, Dr. Macht. He was a low-key raconteur, easily distracted. He was a World War II veteran, and chose to study German on the G.I. Bill in order to read Nazi documents in order to understand the atrocities he had witnessed. He had endless interesting stories about the war and his life. “Boys, let me tell you a story,” he’d begin, looking out the window. And that was that. No more German grammar or vocabulary for that day. But, in the end, I learned a tremendous amount from him, and received my highest achievement test (now called an SAT II) score in German. My point here is twofold. First, a lot of students didn’t think he was a very good teacher, often for the very reasons I liked and appreciated him. And, second, on the list of six qualities from “Teach for America,” he probably scores well below 50%. He was great for me, not so great for others, and, statistically, maybe not that great.
Another teacher, Mr. Tomlinson, a science and math teacher, was frequently acknowledged to be a great teacher, but I just never found that I learned that much from him. He was likeable and clear, but also slow-paced and methodical. For me, any sense of the value of the study as a whole, how the parts fit together, was largely missing. And yet astronomer and professor William Kaufmann III so loved Mr. Tomlinson that he dedicated his book, Discovering the Universe, a well-known astronomy textbook, to him. Another student, a highly successful lawyer, now retired, credits Mr. Tomlinson with literally saving his life as a teen, giving his life sufficient meaning at a time when he was seriously contemplating suicide. Mr. Tomlinson certainly scores more highly on the “Teach for America” criteria than Dr. Macht would; I’d give him, minimally, a strong 4 out of 6. But, for me, he wasn’t that great.
I have written elsewhere on this blog about a third great teacher, Howard Gruber (see "Howard Gruber, Practical Idealist”). But the man whom I met as a great teacher, toward the very end of his career, endlessly frustrated other students with his repetition and with his (beautifully) open-minded refusal to define things too clearly that he believed should not be defined too clearly. Great for me—top two or three—not so great for some others.
My main point is that, as a student, it simply doesn’t matter whether or not anyone else—or some set of statistical criteria, however accurate and admirable—define a particular teacher as “great.” Malcolm Gladwell, in “Most Likely to Succeed,” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell), based on research from the University of Virginia, describes the importance of an emphasis on teaching instead of an emphasis on schools. (“Your child is actually better off in a ‘bad’ school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher.”) Amanda Ripley writes about great teachers according to valuable statistical correlations. But we can go further, at least in our imaginations and in our ideals, and picture not some abstract “great teacher,” but the teacher who will be great for us, or great for our children, who will help them set their lives on course, or, sometimes, save them.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Electrochemical Superstition
No parent would want a teacher to teach a science course using a textbook from, say, 1910.
And, in 2110, no parent will want a teacher to teach science using today’s textbook.
In teaching science, then, to avoid a version of the presentist fallacy, it’s important to retain a sense for what is fact—and how we know it’s a fact—what is supposition or hypothesis, and what is plain unquestioned assumption (which, pejoratively, we may call superstition). And textbooks are generally not good at this; they too often present science not as a creative process, but as a finished product, as dogma.
Here's one example. If I had to vote for the greatest illusion or superstition of our age, I would say it’s the illusion that the brain thinks. (Not that you don't need a brain in order to think, but that you think; the brain is an instrument. And a metaphor.)
Assume everything we know of the brain and neurons and neural activity is true—it isn’t, it can’t be, and there’s a lot we just don’t even pretend we know. Picture a vast network of electrochemical activity among neurons, impulses racing this way and that. Picture it down to the smallest activity of an ion across a membrane. Picture it in its trillion-connection complexity. And realize that, if you want to find, say, a thought or an emotion, there’s no there there.
Eventually, for instance, if only in a thought experiment, we could draw all the connections and interactions in a brain, down to the molecular, atomic, or subatomic level; give us a whiteboard large enough, sufficient time, and any tools we need. (Yes, indeterminacy and entanglement might make our comprehension impossible, but these just substitute scientific magic for the old fashioned kind.)
Let us chart the “action potentials” of neural impulses, and the movement and effects of neurotransmitter fluids. (Did you know that the impulse along an auditory nerve is the same—exactly the same—as the impulse along an optic nerve? Watching the impulse pass, you simply cannot tell if this chemical activity relates to vision or to hearing; the impulse is void of quality. Why do we suppose that following it down the rabbit hole of complexity into which it vanishes will yield insight?) What we won’t find is a single thought, emotion, or memory, although—and even this is supposition—we may find the correlates or material or organizational traces of these. We may well be able to look at a configuration of neurons or molecules or particles—now represented in marker on our whiteboard—and correlate some brain configuration with some emotional state or thought, but it should be clear that the configuration is not and can never be an emotion or a thought or anything else that is fundamental to human experience or value.
(We can successfully perform this same thought experiment, however, with a computer. In the computer, if we know how to read the code, we can discover exactly what’s stored there, what’s calculated there, and so on. That’s because the computer isn’t conscious, isn’t thinking, isn’t feeling, isn’t anything but an apparatus, despite our science fiction fantasies. What’s in the computer is what we put there. The computer’s “activity” may yield startling and counter-intuitive results; it may “solve” problems of complexity beyond that of smart human beings in many lifetimes. But the thinking behind this work doesn’t reside in the machinery. It is available through the ingenuity and creativity of the programmers.
When we say that the brain is a computer—unless we are speaking metaphorically—we are not only making a category error, we have things exactly backward. One aspect or set of aspects of the brain is computer-like, but let’s not forget that minds and brains existed for a long, long time before the computer, and that the computer existed in the work and minds of those, like Charles Pierce and Charles Babbidge, who imagined the computer before the technology existed that could bring it to reality.)
I’m not disputing the association and correlation of brain activity with thinking, perceiving, emoting, breathing, heart-beating, or running. You need a brain to do brain-associated things. A pianist needs a piano, and preferably a well-functioning one. But when we say, for example, that “the brain thinks,” we indulge a supposition that not only has not been demonstrated, we irrationally indulge a view that loads what is essentially an electrochemical flowchart with impossible hopes, dreams, and assumptions.
The consequences of this thinking—or should I say, this lack of thinking, this assuming—are dire. Where, in fact, are consequence, morality or ethics, creativity, or humanity in this picture? The answer is, nowhere.
None of this is to argue against brain research. Far from it. Someone near to me is recovering from a closed head injury, and I am in awe of and grateful to the doctors and researchers who have helped with his recovery and helped us to understand what has occurred and what is occuring. I wish them all speed and good fortune in learning more and more about how the brain works and, when necessary, how to help it heal. But medicine is not (or not necessarily) meaning.
To bring this back to the education of students in a school, we have to acknowledge that we do not serve them well if we freight them with our superstitions, no matter how fervently we believe them.
And, in 2110, no parent will want a teacher to teach science using today’s textbook.
In teaching science, then, to avoid a version of the presentist fallacy, it’s important to retain a sense for what is fact—and how we know it’s a fact—what is supposition or hypothesis, and what is plain unquestioned assumption (which, pejoratively, we may call superstition). And textbooks are generally not good at this; they too often present science not as a creative process, but as a finished product, as dogma.
Here's one example. If I had to vote for the greatest illusion or superstition of our age, I would say it’s the illusion that the brain thinks. (Not that you don't need a brain in order to think, but that you think; the brain is an instrument. And a metaphor.)
Assume everything we know of the brain and neurons and neural activity is true—it isn’t, it can’t be, and there’s a lot we just don’t even pretend we know. Picture a vast network of electrochemical activity among neurons, impulses racing this way and that. Picture it down to the smallest activity of an ion across a membrane. Picture it in its trillion-connection complexity. And realize that, if you want to find, say, a thought or an emotion, there’s no there there.
Eventually, for instance, if only in a thought experiment, we could draw all the connections and interactions in a brain, down to the molecular, atomic, or subatomic level; give us a whiteboard large enough, sufficient time, and any tools we need. (Yes, indeterminacy and entanglement might make our comprehension impossible, but these just substitute scientific magic for the old fashioned kind.)
Let us chart the “action potentials” of neural impulses, and the movement and effects of neurotransmitter fluids. (Did you know that the impulse along an auditory nerve is the same—exactly the same—as the impulse along an optic nerve? Watching the impulse pass, you simply cannot tell if this chemical activity relates to vision or to hearing; the impulse is void of quality. Why do we suppose that following it down the rabbit hole of complexity into which it vanishes will yield insight?) What we won’t find is a single thought, emotion, or memory, although—and even this is supposition—we may find the correlates or material or organizational traces of these. We may well be able to look at a configuration of neurons or molecules or particles—now represented in marker on our whiteboard—and correlate some brain configuration with some emotional state or thought, but it should be clear that the configuration is not and can never be an emotion or a thought or anything else that is fundamental to human experience or value.
(We can successfully perform this same thought experiment, however, with a computer. In the computer, if we know how to read the code, we can discover exactly what’s stored there, what’s calculated there, and so on. That’s because the computer isn’t conscious, isn’t thinking, isn’t feeling, isn’t anything but an apparatus, despite our science fiction fantasies. What’s in the computer is what we put there. The computer’s “activity” may yield startling and counter-intuitive results; it may “solve” problems of complexity beyond that of smart human beings in many lifetimes. But the thinking behind this work doesn’t reside in the machinery. It is available through the ingenuity and creativity of the programmers.
When we say that the brain is a computer—unless we are speaking metaphorically—we are not only making a category error, we have things exactly backward. One aspect or set of aspects of the brain is computer-like, but let’s not forget that minds and brains existed for a long, long time before the computer, and that the computer existed in the work and minds of those, like Charles Pierce and Charles Babbidge, who imagined the computer before the technology existed that could bring it to reality.)
I’m not disputing the association and correlation of brain activity with thinking, perceiving, emoting, breathing, heart-beating, or running. You need a brain to do brain-associated things. A pianist needs a piano, and preferably a well-functioning one. But when we say, for example, that “the brain thinks,” we indulge a supposition that not only has not been demonstrated, we irrationally indulge a view that loads what is essentially an electrochemical flowchart with impossible hopes, dreams, and assumptions.
The consequences of this thinking—or should I say, this lack of thinking, this assuming—are dire. Where, in fact, are consequence, morality or ethics, creativity, or humanity in this picture? The answer is, nowhere.
None of this is to argue against brain research. Far from it. Someone near to me is recovering from a closed head injury, and I am in awe of and grateful to the doctors and researchers who have helped with his recovery and helped us to understand what has occurred and what is occuring. I wish them all speed and good fortune in learning more and more about how the brain works and, when necessary, how to help it heal. But medicine is not (or not necessarily) meaning.
To bring this back to the education of students in a school, we have to acknowledge that we do not serve them well if we freight them with our superstitions, no matter how fervently we believe them.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Kindness in School
According to Henry James, "Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind." If this were simply a sentiment striving for power through repetition, it would be worthy only of a Hallmark card. But there are at least three meanings of the word kind. The first and most common is as a simple virtue—sympathy, friendliness, or tenderness. We may practice simple virtues.
Kind also means alike or without distinction. When we draw invidious distinctions between parents and teachers in a school, or between those on the Board and those on the Council or College, or between those who are teachers and those who aren’t, or even between friends and critics, we indulge a harmful fiction. We are alike. We are one kind, and we do our best work when we take this likeness as a given.
Kind also means natural, innate, or native. In this sense it has the same derivation—and is spelled the same—as the German word “Kind,” child. “Except as ye… become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” For teachers, this entrance is a blessing and a curse. Teachers can more easily become as children—open-minded, reverent, and playful; they live with the best possible examples. They can more easily become childish, too. Teachers are those who have chosen to spend most of their time with children. They sometimes treat adults as they do students. (Parents often act like their children, especially within the walls of a school—petulant in preschool, aggressive in middle school, but that’s a different topic).
So Henry James’s injunction can be taken in its repetition in three ways: Be kind. Be one. And be as little children.
Kind also means alike or without distinction. When we draw invidious distinctions between parents and teachers in a school, or between those on the Board and those on the Council or College, or between those who are teachers and those who aren’t, or even between friends and critics, we indulge a harmful fiction. We are alike. We are one kind, and we do our best work when we take this likeness as a given.
Kind also means natural, innate, or native. In this sense it has the same derivation—and is spelled the same—as the German word “Kind,” child. “Except as ye… become as little children, ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” For teachers, this entrance is a blessing and a curse. Teachers can more easily become as children—open-minded, reverent, and playful; they live with the best possible examples. They can more easily become childish, too. Teachers are those who have chosen to spend most of their time with children. They sometimes treat adults as they do students. (Parents often act like their children, especially within the walls of a school—petulant in preschool, aggressive in middle school, but that’s a different topic).
So Henry James’s injunction can be taken in its repetition in three ways: Be kind. Be one. And be as little children.
Friday, November 13, 2009
Ancient history, Language, and Meaning
One of the greatest challenges in teaching or studying ancient history is to develop, even to a small degree, an appreciation for the consciousness of those who lived in ancient times. They simply didn't mean the same things we mean when they used (in their ancient languages) words like the words we use now.
Take any modern abstract word, as my dear friend Owen Barfield pointed out, and you will find an earlier concrete meaning. "Spirit," for example, which means hardly anything anymore (that is, it means lots of different things to lots of different people and is, consequently, difficult to use with meaning), used to refer to "breath." So the ancients had a concrete, literal consciousness where we have an abstract one.
But that's too easy. Take any modern concrete word, and you will find an earlier symbolic or metaphorical meaning. "Heart," for example, refers to a muscular chest organ, and, more strongly in the past, to qualities associated with heart--sympathy or courage, for example. So the ancients had a symbolic consciousness where we have a literal one.
This reversal is also too easy. Because it's not as if they weren't fully aware--even more aware than we are, as herdsmen, warriors and butchers--of the concrete meaning of heart, as well. So, in ancient times, the symbolic and literal meanings of words were more closely related than they are now. "Heart" meant simultaneously the organ and its associated qualities.
Now, we attach somewhat less meaning to each of our many words but speak our meaning more clearly. We are rarely confused, we are rarely required to examine our sense of ambiguity, when we hear the word "heart."
The ancients attached more meanings to far fewer words--the world was simpler, working vocabularies smaller. This simultaneous simplicity of language and concentration of meaning allowed them to tell and to write stories that were accessible on many levels, for example, stories to which a child could listen but that a wise man could ponder.
The facts of the physical evolution of human beings become ever clearer. But it may be erroneous--and it is certainly a logical fallacy--to believe that this physical evolution must necessarily be accompanied by an evolution from a brute lack of intelligence--a la the cavemen in all the cartoons--toward whereever it is we are now.
If we take seriously a movement of language and meaning back through time from more words and less meaning to fewer words each with more meaning, we may imagine an arrow pointing to the prehistoric past. This arrow points in the general direction of a word containing all meaning, if you will. And "In the beginning was the word."
Take any modern abstract word, as my dear friend Owen Barfield pointed out, and you will find an earlier concrete meaning. "Spirit," for example, which means hardly anything anymore (that is, it means lots of different things to lots of different people and is, consequently, difficult to use with meaning), used to refer to "breath." So the ancients had a concrete, literal consciousness where we have an abstract one.
But that's too easy. Take any modern concrete word, and you will find an earlier symbolic or metaphorical meaning. "Heart," for example, refers to a muscular chest organ, and, more strongly in the past, to qualities associated with heart--sympathy or courage, for example. So the ancients had a symbolic consciousness where we have a literal one.
This reversal is also too easy. Because it's not as if they weren't fully aware--even more aware than we are, as herdsmen, warriors and butchers--of the concrete meaning of heart, as well. So, in ancient times, the symbolic and literal meanings of words were more closely related than they are now. "Heart" meant simultaneously the organ and its associated qualities.
Now, we attach somewhat less meaning to each of our many words but speak our meaning more clearly. We are rarely confused, we are rarely required to examine our sense of ambiguity, when we hear the word "heart."
The ancients attached more meanings to far fewer words--the world was simpler, working vocabularies smaller. This simultaneous simplicity of language and concentration of meaning allowed them to tell and to write stories that were accessible on many levels, for example, stories to which a child could listen but that a wise man could ponder.
The facts of the physical evolution of human beings become ever clearer. But it may be erroneous--and it is certainly a logical fallacy--to believe that this physical evolution must necessarily be accompanied by an evolution from a brute lack of intelligence--a la the cavemen in all the cartoons--toward whereever it is we are now.
If we take seriously a movement of language and meaning back through time from more words and less meaning to fewer words each with more meaning, we may imagine an arrow pointing to the prehistoric past. This arrow points in the general direction of a word containing all meaning, if you will. And "In the beginning was the word."
Monday, August 3, 2009
A Dissent on the Wall of Laptops
In the summer of 2000 I walked into a class for the first time to encounter what I came to think of as the Wall of Laptops. Two dozen doctoral students sat around a large conference table, and all but one or two had their laptops proudly open before them. We started class, and it was clear within a few days (maybe within a few minutes to more sensitive types) that this wasn't working. The core of my teaching, based on the methods of the best teachers I had in graduate school, is presentation and discussion. With the Wall of Laptops, presentation became a PowerPoint flogging, each bullet point another not-memorable nail in the coffin of engaged thinking. And discussion became a sort of lobbing out of the foxhole, then back to email checking or whatever went on back there behind the laptop. I put up with it as long as possible, giving the new technology time to work itself out. Then we derailed class for an hour to sort it out. Fortunately, these were adult students who quickly realized what they were doing to themselves and each other. The wall folded and humanity returned.
The following summer, I was pleased to have Ian Parker's "Absolute Powerpoint" from the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/05/28/010528fa_fact_parker) to wave when I requested in the first class that laptops generally be left closed. Here are the first few paragraphs of that excellent article:
I was reminded of this story today when I read "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom," by Jeffrey Young in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/) The second paragraph of that article reads:
Hear, hear.
And all this reminds me of a conversation from earlier in the summer regarding the high school at which I teach. A dad asked his son, a student who could have attended any high school he wished, more or less, private or public, but chose our small Waldorf high school, why he made the decision he did. His son answered something like this: "At every other school I visited, the teacher stood in the front and lectured the kids, who sat there with textbooks. I don't want that kind of learning. At the Waldorf High School, the students sit around conference tables with the teachers and have real discussions. You can ask real questions and get real answers."
I don't know that other Waldorf schools teach this way, but I'm clear that this is a good way to teach. We live in the information age; access to information, for me or my students, is simply not an issue. Conversation, interpretation, and discussion. Listening, thinking, speaking, and writing. These are the roots of engagement with the world, in a classroom or outside it.
For that matter, when I read Rudolf Steiner on education, I picture a much more collegiate model of education than I find in most schools, Waldorf or otherwise. In the U.S., perhaps largely for economic reasons, we have adopted what I call the "Mother Hen" approach to education (this might also be called the "Martyr" approach), in which teachers spend so much time in class, on the playground, at lunch, and even after school with students and colleagues that their focus narrows and so does their engagement with the world. To perpetuate this nurturing-to-the-point-of-smothering model, especially in high school, simply doesn't serve students, parents, or teachers very well. For a high school teacher to model herself after a college professor (the best college professor, that is)--engaged with students and subject and world, not one at the expense of the other--and to bring that engagement in a mature manner to her students, that's educational.
The following summer, I was pleased to have Ian Parker's "Absolute Powerpoint" from the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/05/28/010528fa_fact_parker) to wave when I requested in the first class that laptops generally be left closed. Here are the first few paragraphs of that excellent article:
Before there were presentations, there were conversations, which were a little
like presentations but used fewer bullet points, and no one had to dim the
lights. A woman we can call Sarah Wyndham, a defense-industry consultant living
in Alexandria, Virginia, recently began to feel that her two daughters weren’t
listening when she asked them to clean their bedrooms and do their chores. So,
one morning, she sat down at her computer, opened Microsoft’s PowerPoint
program, and typed:FAMILY MATTERS An approach for positive change to the Wyndham
family team
On a new page, she wrote:·Lack of organization leads to confusion and frustration among all family members.
·Disorganization is detrimental to grades and to your social life.
·Disorganization leads to inefficiencies that impact the entire family.
Instead of pleading for domestic harmony, Sarah Wyndham was pitching for it. Soon she had eighteen pages of large type, supplemented by a color photograph of a generic happy family riding bicycles, and, on the final page, a drawing of a key—the key to success.
The briefing was given only once, last fall. The experience was so upsetting to
her children that the threat of a second showing was enough to make one of the
Wyndham girls burst into tears.PowerPoint, which can be found on two hundred and fifty million computers around the world, is software you impose on other people. It allows you to arrange text and graphics in a series of pages, which you can project, slide by slide, from a laptop computer onto a screen, or print as a booklet (as Sarah Wyndham did). The usual metaphor for everyday software is the tool, but that doesn’t seem to be right here. PowerPoint is more like a suit of clothes, or a car, or plastic surgery. You take it out with you. You are judged by it—you insist on being judged by it. It is by definition a social instrument, turning middle managers into bullet-point dandies.
But PowerPoint also has a private, interior influence. It edits ideas. It is, almost
surreptitiously, a business manual as well as a business suit, with an
opinion—an oddly pedantic, prescriptive opinion—about the way we should think.
It helps you make a case, but it also makes its own case: about how to organize
information, how much information to organize, how to look at the world.
I was reminded of this story today when I read "When Computers Leave Classrooms, So Does Boredom," by Jeffrey Young in The Chronicle of Higher Education. (http://chronicle.com/article/Teach-Naked-Effort-Strips/47398/) The second paragraph of that article reads:
More than any thing else, Mr. Bowen wants to discourage professors from
using PowerPoint, because they often lean on the slide-display program as a
crutch rather using it as a creative tool. Class time should be reserved for
discussion, he contends, especially now that students can download lectures
online and find libraries of information on the Web. When students reflect on
their college years later in life, they're going to remember challenging debates
and talks with their professors. Lively interactions are what teaching is all
about, he says, but those give-and-takes are discouraged by preset collections
of slides.
Hear, hear.
And all this reminds me of a conversation from earlier in the summer regarding the high school at which I teach. A dad asked his son, a student who could have attended any high school he wished, more or less, private or public, but chose our small Waldorf high school, why he made the decision he did. His son answered something like this: "At every other school I visited, the teacher stood in the front and lectured the kids, who sat there with textbooks. I don't want that kind of learning. At the Waldorf High School, the students sit around conference tables with the teachers and have real discussions. You can ask real questions and get real answers."
I don't know that other Waldorf schools teach this way, but I'm clear that this is a good way to teach. We live in the information age; access to information, for me or my students, is simply not an issue. Conversation, interpretation, and discussion. Listening, thinking, speaking, and writing. These are the roots of engagement with the world, in a classroom or outside it.
For that matter, when I read Rudolf Steiner on education, I picture a much more collegiate model of education than I find in most schools, Waldorf or otherwise. In the U.S., perhaps largely for economic reasons, we have adopted what I call the "Mother Hen" approach to education (this might also be called the "Martyr" approach), in which teachers spend so much time in class, on the playground, at lunch, and even after school with students and colleagues that their focus narrows and so does their engagement with the world. To perpetuate this nurturing-to-the-point-of-smothering model, especially in high school, simply doesn't serve students, parents, or teachers very well. For a high school teacher to model herself after a college professor (the best college professor, that is)--engaged with students and subject and world, not one at the expense of the other--and to bring that engagement in a mature manner to her students, that's educational.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Taking Notes: A Mind-Splitting Practice
Habit's a funny thing.
I went through school and college like everyone else, writing down what teachers and professors had just said while listening to what they were saying now. My hand-brain lagged a few seconds behind my listening-brain. And my looking-brain kept track of what was on the blackboard... Like everyone else, I could do this, and I did it, decade after decade.
I noticed that this wasn't necessarily a good way to learn from my students, not from my own learning. I realized how much time I spent waiting: "Hold on, Mr. Sagarin. I'm not done copying from the board." "Yo, Mr. Sagarin, what did you just say?" "Can you say that again?" Not to mention the bizarre collection of misstatements and misunderstandings that crept into their work--less over time as I became more adept, but still...
So I've evolved a different approach. When I'm lecturing, I ask students to listen. Just listen. No note-taking. (Yes, they can doodle--see previous post.) My students started calling this "Storytime with Steve." One wrote a theme song.
The next day, I present a concise summary of the previous day's lecture. I write notes on the board, including proper spellings and dates and other necessary information. Students can copy without having to listen, without missing or mis-hearing. Sometimes, this process takes ten minutes or less. Sometimes it provokes a discussion that takes most of the period. In general, although I was worried that I'd lose time, I gain it. We cover more material more accurately. Student anxiety is less. Student attention is greater.
I don't use Powerpoint or email notes; I use students' memories to help me. Often, their phrasing is better--more concise, more accurate--than mine would have been. New angles and interpretations jump out of this review, insight that would have been lost if I'd simply rehashed yesterday's news.
What I've described is my ideal. Weekends, class time, project pressure, absence, and any number of other distractions keep the ideal at bay. Still, this way of working works for me, and I believe it's better for my students, for their comprehension, and for their retention.
I can't believe I didn't think of it years ago.
I went through school and college like everyone else, writing down what teachers and professors had just said while listening to what they were saying now. My hand-brain lagged a few seconds behind my listening-brain. And my looking-brain kept track of what was on the blackboard... Like everyone else, I could do this, and I did it, decade after decade.
I noticed that this wasn't necessarily a good way to learn from my students, not from my own learning. I realized how much time I spent waiting: "Hold on, Mr. Sagarin. I'm not done copying from the board." "Yo, Mr. Sagarin, what did you just say?" "Can you say that again?" Not to mention the bizarre collection of misstatements and misunderstandings that crept into their work--less over time as I became more adept, but still...
So I've evolved a different approach. When I'm lecturing, I ask students to listen. Just listen. No note-taking. (Yes, they can doodle--see previous post.) My students started calling this "Storytime with Steve." One wrote a theme song.
The next day, I present a concise summary of the previous day's lecture. I write notes on the board, including proper spellings and dates and other necessary information. Students can copy without having to listen, without missing or mis-hearing. Sometimes, this process takes ten minutes or less. Sometimes it provokes a discussion that takes most of the period. In general, although I was worried that I'd lose time, I gain it. We cover more material more accurately. Student anxiety is less. Student attention is greater.
I don't use Powerpoint or email notes; I use students' memories to help me. Often, their phrasing is better--more concise, more accurate--than mine would have been. New angles and interpretations jump out of this review, insight that would have been lost if I'd simply rehashed yesterday's news.
What I've described is my ideal. Weekends, class time, project pressure, absence, and any number of other distractions keep the ideal at bay. Still, this way of working works for me, and I believe it's better for my students, for their comprehension, and for their retention.
I can't believe I didn't think of it years ago.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Teachers Teaching Well
Given the billions of dollars spent on ineffective school reform, reform that centered around everything that wasn't a teacher (and that included, among other idiocies, the concept of a "teacher-proof" curriculum), the idea that we may as a nation actually put teaching quality at the center of a discussion of education reform is revolutionary, no matter how "duh" it appears to those within the profession.
Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Most Likely to Succeed,” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell), is a step in this direction. Here’s what I take from his article:
What makes good teachers good? According to Gladwell’s piece, there are four basic, research-supported qualities of good teaching:
Despite my own experience, I used to try to stop students from doodling in my classes. A few years ago, I recalled my own experience, reflected on it, and decided to allow doodling—even to encourage it—in my classes. And, if students want to knit through a lecture or discussion, that’s fine, too. As long as quiet activity doesn’t disrupt the class, it seems actually to contribute to learning.
The point is, we all (I hope) had at least one teacher whom we revered, a teacher we remember as a bright light among the rest. If we ourselves are to teach, we do well to hew close to these memories, and to emulate those we remember so well.
We can also learn, of course, from those who treat us badly. I carry bitterness to this day for a 6th grade teacher who falsely accused me of something—I can’t even remember what—,kept me after school to write fifty times that I wouldn’t do again what I hadn’t done to begin with, and then doubled the workload when she, again falsely, thought I was giggling when I wasn’t. Her patent lack of fairness has remained with me, and I know that I try to be unfailingly fair to my students as a sort of immaterial memorial to her obtuseness.
Malcolm Gladwell’s article “Most Likely to Succeed,” (http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/12/15/081215fa_fact_gladwell), is a step in this direction. Here’s what I take from his article:
- Quality of teaching is most important.
What makes good teachers good? According to Gladwell’s piece, there are four basic, research-supported qualities of good teaching:
- Good teachers have genuine regard for student engagement. They allow a class to be active (learning is an activity) without becoming a free-for-all.
Despite my own experience, I used to try to stop students from doodling in my classes. A few years ago, I recalled my own experience, reflected on it, and decided to allow doodling—even to encourage it—in my classes. And, if students want to knit through a lecture or discussion, that’s fine, too. As long as quiet activity doesn’t disrupt the class, it seems actually to contribute to learning.
- Good teachers promote a “lively affect” in the classroom and do this, in part, by demonstrating high regard for student perspective.
- Good teachers give students immediate, personal feedback.
- Good teachers are “with it;” they attend to students and let them know, nonverbally, while teaching, that they know what’s going on. They manage discipline before it becomes an issue.
- Good teachers teach to the best students or the “top of the class,” and then work like hell to keep the rest of the group up to speed.
- Good teachers make crystal clear their expectations for behavior, classwork, homework, thinking, participating, and other aspects of their classes.
- Good teachers are fair.
- Good teachers are authentically themselves (you might be surprised how many adults—including teachers—find it difficult simply to be themselves in front of a group of middle or high school students).
- Good teachers change themselves and their own habits before asking students to do the same.
- Good teachers create a sense of anticipation for what comes next.
- Good teachers have a light touch and know what to overlook, and when to overlook it, in their classes.
- Good teachers have a sense of humor.
- Good teachers “see” their students for who they are and respect them completely and unsentimentally.
- Good teachers are organized and prepared for their classes.
- Good teachers know what they’re talking about and, if they don’t know, don’t talk about it.
The point is, we all (I hope) had at least one teacher whom we revered, a teacher we remember as a bright light among the rest. If we ourselves are to teach, we do well to hew close to these memories, and to emulate those we remember so well.
We can also learn, of course, from those who treat us badly. I carry bitterness to this day for a 6th grade teacher who falsely accused me of something—I can’t even remember what—,kept me after school to write fifty times that I wouldn’t do again what I hadn’t done to begin with, and then doubled the workload when she, again falsely, thought I was giggling when I wasn’t. Her patent lack of fairness has remained with me, and I know that I try to be unfailingly fair to my students as a sort of immaterial memorial to her obtuseness.
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