The Edible Schoolyard

After a coffee-filled weekend at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, CA, I went to visit my friend Ben who helps run a school garden program at Martin Luther King Middle School in Berkley. This program is so neat and so needed! It was Saturday morning so I didn’t get to see students in the space, but it takes little imagination to see how such a well-run garden provides ample learning opportunities.



It was a volunteer workday and I got to help prepare lunch for the weeders and pruners. Ellen was in charge of the kitchen that day—an efficient woman who left her catering business in NY to fill in for the kitchen head here on sabbatical. “I’m interested in more school-garden programs,” she said while stirring lentils with her right hand and reaching for the salt with her left. “The kids go home after eating here and tell their parents ‘we are supposed to be cooking our own food. We are supposed to eat at the table as a family.’”




The program serves sixth through eighth grades that visit the garden and kitchen four times a month. They learn kitchen skills like using a knife correctly and get to experiment with ingredients; last week they made frittata; next week might be curry.

Ben, who works mainly in the garden, told me the space provides a needed outlet for students from different cultures to share their expertise. MLK middle school receives all of the ESL students from the district and its diverse student body has a wealth of experience related to cooking and gardening. Just last week while they separated barley wheat from its shaft, a quiet boy from Nepal said, “I’ve done this before.” Ben asked for tips on technique and the student taught them all how to toss the grain in the air, allowing the wind to blow the shaft away while the grain lands back in your bowl. If the garden hadn’t been there, this cultural exchange would have been unlikely.

“That’s why we try and plant a lot of grains from other countries with similar climates,” Ben said. The sixth graders start with the grains, seventh graders tend vegetables, and eighth graders focus on kitchen skills. More info at edibleschoolyard.org

Challenge-Based Learning (CBL)

I went to a conference held by Apple computers about challenge-based learning. The concept is simple: creativity and enthusiasm thrive on challenge. Think of the popular tv show Iron Chef: you get an egg, cottage cheese, an ice-cream cone and thirty minutes to produce something amazing--now go! Educationally, this is effective because students feel they are breaking ground and creating something new rather than "discovering" the quadratic equation for the billionth time or writing a research paper that could easily be copy and pasted from the internet.



So often teachers have taken the challenge upon themselves--engage students in my subject and allow their creativity to shine-- by create amazing projects for students to carry out. That is great, seriously, and that is pretty much all I do. (For example, I might assign students to make an imovie about a scene from a Shakespeare play we just read, or memorize a poem of their choice and present it to their peers.) But isn't making up the project the funnest part? Actually carrying out the project is important, but it is like running the football play after the coach drew it on a clipboard--the strategizing and thinking has been done.

Challenge-based learning says don't steal the kids thunder by over-managing. Do less arranging. Create a good challenge and the kids will bite.

Some example challenges might be:
--Increase appreciation of poetry on your school's campus.
--Decrease paper waste in your library's printer.
--Identify discrimination in your life and address it in some way (after we read "The Merchant of Venice" as a class).

It is hard to catch yourself as a teacher when you are over-scaffolding, but it can be done.

Tell them your teen-stories

One of Annie Lamott’s favorite authors once wrote that there are three stories she uses whenever she wants someone to fall in love with her: one around-the-world sailing trip, one cooking fiasco, and one lover’s quarrel that ended well. Somehow that makes sense to me--we tell stories with a purpose. Each personal story emphasizes a flattering side of yourself: the daring, the funny, the bold, the traveler, the voice of reason in a world of chaos.—all the things we wish we were 100% of the time but aren’t.

Last year I tried to tell some personal stories about living in Chile to freshman. Oh look at me, aren’t I the cool teacher taking time out of class to share a little slice of my personal world with you? Isn’t this fun? Aren’t you lucky to get to know me? Oh please Ms. Davis tell us more about lollygagging across the Chilean countryside!

Well. Their eyes glazed over a bit and some started packing up bookbags pre-maturely. Besides feeling the wounding blow to my ego, I was perplexed: over pizza and beer my peers generally enjoy this particular pack of backpacking adventures—why didn’t it resonate for teens?

It is easy to forget that most teens go home every weekend, hang out around their houses or the mall, watch videos on youtube, go to school dances, and sleep. Travel stories of complete freedom and possibility can be difficult to relate to, hence the droopy eyes. Instead, tell them about yourself when you were their age and your plights were more similar to their own.

(This is dorkey, I admit) but I made a brainstorm of stories from when I was a young teen with morals or lessons attached so I can figure out when they might be useful. Some of them can be writing triggers. Some of them illustrate a point. They are not the same stories of bridge jumping and skinny-dipping that pepper so many of your adult stories; it is a different genera altogether. Try lots of stories about pets and trying to look cool but failing, and maybe even a first love if you can make it about acceptance and moving on rather than just smooching.

They listen differently to stories and remember them much longer.

So what was the best little drama of your life when you were 15?

Visit to Wahiawa Elementry

Just before my school started up I visited a public elementary school where my friend Mr. Duffy teaches. The grounds were beautiful and the students goofy and engaged: everyone was ready to sprint to the water fountain and several girls wanted to hold my hand--so welcoming to visitors!

Mr. Duffy and I planned to coordinate letter-writing between his public school and my independent school to encourage literacy in the younger grades. What third grader wouldn't love to receive a letter with a story from a high-school pen pal? However now that he has his schedule handed to him and the realities of prepping for state testing have hit, there is no time for such projects.

I left enthused by the students who wanted to stay after school on a Friday and disenchanted with the system that so limits teacher planning and creativity.

The flow of teacher-speak

I have committed to sitting in on a master teacher’s class for the semester to see if I can steal his moves. This term “master teacher” is obnoxious for many reasons, but I’m going to use it anyway because I don’t know what else to call people that have experience and charisma and student’s respect. In addition to these things, he also has a huge afro (which I find endearing) and a calmness in the classroom that I want to absorb like a sponge. So I go.
Some describe what Tim does as “magic” because he appears to make up things on the spot. However, the more I observe, it appears to be his train of thought and the transition from one concept to another that makes his teaching style so unique.
I know of 3 ways teachers appear to speak in class.

1. Lecture
“This is how you organize a paragraph” point A to B, B to C etc. I can be clear when I do this, but it is difficult to make entertaining and I sometimes bore myself as well as students by thinking I need to cover everything. What does it take to be a strong lecturer? Have personality and know your stuff? I’m not sure.

2. Storytelling
I just started giving myself license to share personal stories with my students. I brainstormed several stories that they would appreciate (stories about me when I was their age are usually the best to relate to) and now I use them as writing prompts and attention-getters; a way to ground the lesson in a tangible moment. Students tend to pay attention.

3. Giving instructions
“Ok, so what I want you to do is________.” I find myself doing this in class A LOT. This is an unwanted bi-product of student-focused, activity-based lesson plans: in order to set up the activity I spend time explaining what I want them to do. Often, while outlining the plan, I feel I am limiting their options and killing creativity rather than stoking the fires.


Tim talks a lot in class. His voice predominates the room 60-75% of the class time. Yet we are all engaged, all thinking, all on the edge of our seats. I feel exhausted from thinking so much by the end of the period. How does he engage us so much when we are just listening?

He interrelates the three ways of speaking in such a way that the listener jumps between hearing a personal story, getting a direction, and hearing snippets of lecture. For example today he put 20 poetry books on the ground and the plan was to ask students to page through them and find a poem that grabbed them. He would give them 30 minutes to do so and then they would come back into large group and share their favorite line found. Had I done it, this instruction would take 3 minutes and students would use 5 minutes to find something and be done with it. Task→assigned→ executed= we move on and wonder about the point of the activity.

Tim does not do this. He gives instructions in such a way that he doesn’t TELL you what to do, but rather makes you feel as though you are invited to participate. What is gained from each activity changes because of how he framed it.

He might say things like:
What I'm hoping to do is…
The kinds of books I have collected here are all poetry: some are more humorous like this one...
You can go outside if you trust you that you won’t get distracted.
Don’t hurt the books, the way I do, see how my pet bird chewed up the corner of this one? If not interested in one poem or one book of poems, pick up another.
If you read for a while and you get bored, try drawing an image that you see.
If you are reading for ten minutes and don’t find any poems you like, try sitting with one because you know how sometimes a song in your car is one you hate the first five times you hear it and then suddenly you’re like “man, that is a great song!” Poetry can grow on you like that too.
Does anyone have any questions?

Giving directions in this way the students appear to understand what it is that is asked of them. They all settle into the activity calmly and with purpose. No one needs to go to the bathroom or ask a question or be told again: small miracles.
Perhaps this post is more for me to process my observations, but in summary this observation raises new questions for me. What is my point and is a direct line actually the best way to say it? It may be clear, but is this the way that students process information? I'm starting to vary my style of speech in class.

Begin Again

A new school year has begun. I like the cyclical nature of it-- the ceremony, the similar faces that grew defined during the summer months. Braces came off. Baby fat was lost. Some of them I have had as students before and still their new stature can be intimidating.

My goals for this year are a bit different than for summer school:

I will strive to make my thinking more transparent to my students. (i.e. verbalize it)
I hope to create assignments that allow students to surprise me.
I hope to utilize class time in such a way that students feel busy and directed most of the time.
I want students to talk more.

The Ultimate Tool to Better Thinking

There is a non-profit called "The Foundation for Critical Thinking" whose purpose is to help people think better. This astounds me. The quantity of interesting and relevant information on this site boggles the mind. It is all free/ very cheap and packed full of examples and activities that allow readers to sharpen their critical thinking skills. The mind is a wily beast and this group believes that with practice and guidance, you can train it to think more rationally, deeply, and critically.

I was a student (like you) for 18 years of my life before I became a teacher and as I read through this site I see flashes of what Dr. Lightfoot and Mr. Dolger were trying to do. Is more extensive than what these teachers were able to do with limited time and therefore completes the task more thoroughly: Digest it in small pieces.

One critical thinking idea from the "How to study and learn" section:

Idea # 12: Seek to find the key concept of the course during the first couple of class meetings. For example, in a Biology course, try explaining what biology is in your own words? Then relate that definition to each segment of what you learn afterward. Fundamental ideas are the basis for all others.

It took me two years of studying the vague major of "Politics" at Whitman College before I discovered what is was exactly we studied. Politics is the study of power: how humans get it, retain it, and wield it over one another. Writing is about the skill of artful and clear communication in written form.

What is English as a subject?

English is about skill and appreciation of beauty of words (reading, writing, listening) which provide a window into human ethics (how we should behave) and psychology (how we think).

Some other subjects summarized by the Critical Thinking folks:

Mathematics as learning to think quantitatively

Economics as the study of “who gets what, when, & how”

Algebra as arithmetic with unknowns

Sociology as the study of human conformity to group norms

Anthropology as the physical and historical study of humans in light of their evolution from non-cultural into cultural animals

Physics as the study of mass and energy and their interaction

Chemistry as the study of elementary substances & the manner in which they react with each other

Philosophy as the study of ultimate questions with a view to living an examined life

Biochemistry as the chemistry of life processes in plants & animals

Science as the attempt to learn through quantifiable observations and controlled experimentation

Theology as the study of theories of spiritual reality

Ethics as the study of principles to be used in contributing to the good of, & avoiding unnecessary harm to, humans and other sentient creatures

Art as the application of skill and judgment to matters of taste and beauty (as in poetry, music, painting, dance, drama, sculpture, or architecture)

Professions as ways of earning a living through the skilled and artful use of knowledge in everyday life

Check out this site! www.criticalthinking.org

Synapses ready? Fire!

I'm reading a book called Teaching with the Brain in Mind by Eric Jensen. Stale as the raisin-bran that struggles to stay fresh in our Hawaiian heat, this book is still worth my time just because it is so applicable to teaching. I'm clearly not lapping it up since the bookmark lies a meager 43 pages in, nor do I grok much of the neurology described (why can't they make a layout and choose images based on the research they have done about how brains digest information? Arg.) However, the book has affected some change in my classroom.

First, I started playing music in the classroom between breaks that sets the desired tone for the lesson. This is really easy using Pandora.com, an online radio-station that plays any genre of music you invent. In the morning when I want them awake and focused, I play an upbeat latin-music station. During the first break before we do a close-reading of a text, a Mozart-centered station pops on. They seem to appreciate the added stimuli--when I forget to hit play they say "why don't we have music today?". In theory, it is priming neural pathways to increase the speed, sequence, and strength of the connections they will make about poetry.

I change what is on the walls about once a week because change is stimuli for the brain.
I am careful to eliminate threat (verbal abuse, mockery etc.) because a scared brain is not absorbing anything.

According to the brain book, enrichment is all about challenge and feedback. Allowing students to choose their own books for class should insure that they read at the level challenging for them. Right now we are in the process of choosing free-choice books that students will read individually and write about on their blogs. This is instead of reading the Odyssey as a class (the debate is still open as to the validity of this, but lets just wait and see). Today we visited a junior-filled composition class to hear about their book recommendations. These students are reading such interesting books! just a few of the suggestions were Faster than the Speed of Light by Joao Magueijo, Eragon by Christopher Paolini and 1984 by George Orwell, This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff, and The Atonement Child by Francine Rivers. Just hearing these students do a Reading-Rainbow-style plug for books raised my confidence in students today.

So in an ideal world, challenge comes via the free-choice book, and feedback comes via blog when they write about what they are reading.

Finally, one last change regarding feedback. In college, I recall slipping away excitedly to read the feedback on my papers (dork!) as soon as I got them. But not everyone does that, and not all comments make sense, even if you do manage to read the teacher's terrible handwriting. Lots of students make similar mistakes, and having them corrected in relation to work they have recently done apparently makes a different. So lately when I return a batch of papers I choose 2 issues that came up for almost everyone. Perhaps it was weak verb usage. Perhaps they mis-punctuated dialogue. I do a mini-lesson the day I return their papers and it seems to sink in.

Edutech conference models toys, not teaching

I left the Kamehameha education-technology conference last week both disheartened and unaffected. There were sessions on all the latest technology toys (twitter, blogs, del.icio.us, skype, etc.) that might have wowed a newbie, but most teachers there had at least tinkered with them. In fact, I think many teachers there could have given the talks they paid to see. The reality is that once you tap into the edutech world, conceptualize student-directed learning, and become fluent in moodle and blog navigation, it takes little upkeep to stay abreast of the multiplying resources. Presenters and conference organizers hear me: we know about the toys.

What we need are models of classroom environments that use technologies to empower students and promote self-directed learning.

On of the presenters showed the image below as an example of slapping technology onto the current model of education. Note how the teacher is at the front of the room, still presumed to have all the control and correct answers stashed away behind her desk. Notice the glazed stares, the distracted looks at the laptop screens, and the fact that the students are seated (dormant) while the teacher stands (active).

This photo summarizes my experience at this conference.

If the conference hoped to promote teacher-collaboration, why didn't we tackle a problem, make a lesson plan, or create a resource with our fellow conference attendees? Instead we sat awkwardly at lunch tables, attempted "what have you learned so far?" conversations.

If web 2.0 technology makes everyone a publisher, presenter, and photographer, why weren't participants asked to document something from their own classrooms and present them to our colleagues?

If these tools' strength is that they empower the learner, why (as a "student" at this conference) wasn't I asked to move around, say something, present, create, draw, list, summarize, record, write, brainstorm, collaborate, or even draw a doodle? Why didn't the presenters model the usage of new technologies in a classroom setting rather than simply click through their del.icio.us folders hunting for eyecatchers?

I'm sorry to play the naysayer on an event that conference organizers would love to declare a success; I'm sure for many the fusillade of tag-able websites was a thrill. Presenter David Warlick blogged that the conference was full of teachers who were "excited, enthused, attentive, and asking a lot of spot-on questions...and I think that the reason why, is that we’re giving them toys. " Well, those that already had the toys wanted more. I would like to experience a classroom setting where these technologies are implemented so I have a model to strive for. (Alan November does some of this beautifully in his talks by the way). No one wants to send the students back to the same old metal desks with new toys to distract them, but that was (sadly) the take-away message of this conference for me.

Great classroom tips

Finishing up my first year of teaching high school felt like a massive train coming to a halt. I start teaching summer school next Tuesday (one week away!) and I didn't feel ready to start the train rolling again…until now.

I just burned through Annette L Breaux's "101 'Answers' for new teachers and their mentors: effective teaching tips for daily classroom use." OMG this book breaks down so many difficult scenarios (student is late, doesn't turn in homework, says sassy things about your carefully crafted lesson plan, mocks other students, crumples your worksheets etc.) and provides realistic solutions. Some of my favorite tips were:

1. Smile (it's contagious)
2. Take pictures of students working and post them on the walls
3. Dignify wrong answers "Thank you so much for making that mistake because we can all learn from it."
4. Say thank you often "thank you for understanding we don't chew gum in class" (to the student who is chewing gum.)
5.Write thank you notes for gives from students
6. Notice new haircuts
7. Relate your lessons to student interests with metaphors (if Jun loves cars, then the verb becomes the "driver" of the sentence.)
8. Time student transitions between activities (they love to race to beat their time)
9. Encourage improvement, not perfection
10. Make a teacher report card when you are writing student report cards: you will get amazing feedback.
11. Give constant positive feedback ("I really appreciate the cooperation I'm observing in this group," "Thanks for raising your hand").
12. Treat you students the way you hope they will behave ("You look like someone I can trust, could you take this note to the principal?).

The list goes on. The tip I plan to implement first is "set teacher goals" for each semester. The idea is that this will help track the sense of development as a teacher rather than always feeling like you couldn't cover everything and moving on. My goals for summer school are:
1. Create a new classroom management plan and implement it consistently.
2. Make every student my favorite student
3. Connect my students with technologies and information that will put them in charge of their own learning.

No Child Left Inside

A fellow teacher at my school sent this short video link to the school list serve.
The basic idea is that teachers should base their lessons around the outdoors because we have so much to learn from the natural world. I usually teach a class with funny items (a wool slipper, an ipod song, a gummy bear) and ask students to practice writing with sensory details. It would be simple enough to take them outside the classroom and duplicate the activity with a flower petal, a lady bug, or a crunching leaf sound. As mentioned in the video, science class steps easily outside, but I worry a little about making the stretch from the English curriculum.

Acting for inspiration

Teaching Shakespeare at the end of the school year is a tough job. Several classes floundered. Some succeeded. In general, the classes that worked well centered around lifting Shakespeare off the page and slipping him into their mouths. Today I watched a group perform act 1.2 of A Midsummer Night's Dream set in a fantastical pub called "the wood." Students brought a cooler as a prop that produced blue soda in glass bottles to serve as a beer substitute. They strolled around the classroom, gesticulating casually with blue bottles, taking sips when appropriate, and reading easily off scripts. I was moved. Their intonation demonstrated an understanding of what they were saying--a striking student accomplishment considering the difficulty of Shakespeare's language
I had dreams last week about letting down students because they won't all close the play knowing how to wax poetic about themes of the moon and eyes. Hopefully positive associations with Shakespeare will linger with them and buoy them next year as they approach Merchant of Venice, another of Shakespeare's plays.

Writing with lists

I have been experimenting with more directed assignments. Generally I ask students to write a 1 page paper a week about anything they want because a) it forces them to become creative about their topics and b) they invest themselves in what they write. Two weeks ago I saw a marked bump up in the quality of writing amongst my students and it appears to be related to writing with lists.

Here was the assignment:

Lists are powerful. Lists are a good-writers trick to get people to believe you know what you're talking about. Lists are basically a ton of examples. Examples are cool.

You have now entered into the last quarter of your freshman year. I expect you to show me you can do creative, thoughtful things with words. I expect improvement from last semester. Don't bore me.

For this assignment, you can write about whatever you want, but you must include at least one list somewhere in your piece. It should be marked with an asterisks*. Read the examples in the "examples of good lists" resource in moodle to get some idea of what good lists are capable of. Go nuts. Show me what you can do.

-1 point for having a lame list
-2 points for writing about something you don't care about
-1 point for making me eat fig newtons in order stay awake to read your paper
-1 point for punctuation mistakes
-2 points for turning it it late with no chance of re-write.
-1 point for an untyped paper.

Your paper should be at least one page single spaced. Print it and bring it to class.


Examples of good lists:

1. The room was, without the kitchenette, about twelve by fifteen feet, and, crowded as it was (in addition to the bed, table, and breakfront, it contained a dresser, desk, coffee table, end-table, and easy chair, a TV set, two stand-up lamps, two small bookcases, a green leather hassock, a newspaper rack, an old costumer for their coats), Sam liked it. [Jay Neugeboren, Sam's Legacy (NY: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973), p. 19.]

2. Here she was, seven years his wife, he thought he knew her inside and out, every quirk of her handwriting, inflection of voice; her passion for strawberries, her ridiculous way of singing; the brown moles on her shoulder, the extreme smallness of her feet and toes, her dislike of silk underwear. Her special voice at the telephone, too--that rather chilly abruptness, which has always surprised him, as if she might be a much harder woman than he thought her to be. And the queer sinuous cat-like rhythm with which she always combed her hair before the mirror at night, before going to bed--with her head tossing to one side, and one knee advanced to touch the chest of drawers. He knew all these things, which nobody else knew, and nevertheless, now, they amounted to nothing. The woman herself stood before him as opaque as a wall. [Conrad Aiken, "Impulse"]

"Do Schools Kill Creativity?"

In this short video Sir Ken Robinson argues that yes, schools do. He suggests that being successful means developing your natural talents. It takes some experimentation to figure out what those talents are, and schools should provide resources, mentors, and space for that kind of experimentation.
The video is funny, well-done, an ultimately made me want to buy ballet slippers for the repressed dancer in, well, all of us. Part of my brain insists students must learn specific skills for the job market that lies ahead, while the other half admits I have no idea what kind of job market awaits in 2016. It seems the only three things I know will help them in any profession are:
1) critical thinking skills
2) creative thinking skills
3) exposure to authors, books, and ideas that demonstrate the heritage of great thinkers that our students inherent simply by being human.
Sir Ken Robinson's lecture speaks directly to #2 listed here.

Should they all get A's?

I recently turned in grades for the quarter and was shocked to discover one of my sections of English had earned almost exclusively A's. Great Scott! I thought to myself: How can this be? Am I that easy peezy teacher that hands out good grades like breath mints?

What caused this drastic disturbance to the rigor of academia?
The largest single factor in student grades so far was a project in response to The Catcher in the Rye. Because I use moodle (an online class-organization tool) to organize class, I asked students to turn in many mini-assignments along the way. Browsing through their rough drafts on the computer I noticed they lacked meaningful introductions, so we spent a day on that. I noticed they struggled to wrap things up—we covered conclusions too. I asked a series of questions that applied to all of their projects to help narrow the focus and improve the textual references.
Surprise! Many of the final products were great. Some were even (gasp*) a little brilliant.

Technology appears to improve the communication between teacher and student. It allows me to peer in on their thinking process. I see where they need help; they do everything I ask of them on their self-directed projects. I almost felt, grading those projects, as if I had no choice but to give them A's because they completed every task I set out before them.

Or was I simply wowed by how quickly they mastered comic life and voicethread?

Clearly, as we ask students to take on more creative projects, we will need to find more creative ways to grade them. But on the other hand, as we set students up for success by providing the time, opportunity, and feedback to pursue their ideas fully, shouldn't we hand over the gold star when they emerge victorious? In an ideal classroom, wouldn't every student earn an A?

The silent kid

I have a Holden Caulfield wanna-bee in my class. He refuses to turn in anything. He goes mute. He lost his book. He has no homework. In small groups he avoids talking. When asked about his work he just covers his face with his hands and pretends he is invisible. His football coach said Holden responds well to discipline so I tried taking a hard line (getting angry takes a bit of work for me but I tried calling him into the hall for a stern talk, threatening him with an F etc.). No dice.

Then I had lunch with Dr. Ruth Fletcher, one of the deans at our school who specializes in learning differences. She role-played with me over vegetarian lasagna. I was Holden incarnate. She was me.

Ruth: "We are going to write down some themes about the book."
Me: "…"
R: "Do you know what a theme is?"
M: "Yeah…"
R: "Ok, what is it?"
M: "It's like, what the book is about."
R: "But not the whole book, just some parts of it. What is one thing that The Catcher in the Rye is about?"
M: "I don't know."
R: "Remember the first chapter about Pencey Prep? What was that chapter about."
M: "School"
R: "Good, write that down. Now, what about school?"

Baby steps. It's all about the breakdown in to questions that they can answer. He is scared. He has "always sucked at English." He doesn't want to complete assignments that will just further prove that he "can't do English." I told Ruth I never would have thought of those questions. I didn't know what to do with him. She said, "You have to be a teacher."

You have to coax him into understanding that he can succeed.

Today in class our activities moved away from sonnet analysis toward some improvisation to get ready for A Midsummer Night's Dream. Holden didn't need encouragement; he read a steamy love sonnet aloud to the whole class and leapt out of his seat to do a theater activity. He is in love. He is passionate. He is a performer. Then he came to my office in the afternoon and didn't close down on me. More evidence that you can't demand a lot of work from your students until you know them.

Why do I love my job so much?

I love my job. It is the ying to my yang, the "pop" in my popsicle, the bag around my loose-leaf tea. However, as my job search for next fall begins, some questions about why I look forward to Mondays begin to emerge. Is it this school in particular that keeps me working until bedtime or rather enthusiasm for teaching in general that sets my alarm for sunrise? What aspects of this school are essential to perpetuate this giddy feeling towards work at my next job?

Firstly, there is the high of being in the classroom. I can't believe how quickly the minute hand ticks toward the hour. Only five minutes left? No! But don't leave me you are all so dear and wonderful. I'm serious; they keep me jazzed like an Art Blakely solo. Bapapatata! If I could teach a 2-hour block rather than one, I would.

Secondly, lesson-planning causes neurons to fire in my right frontal lobe in a pleasing way. As the freshman ramp up to start A Midsummer Night's Dream we dove into iambic pentameter today: what is that? How will I explain it clearly? What activities will allow them to manipulate the material and make it there own? Creativity abounds.

I love culling information on the internet, comparing various explanations, and piecing together one to call my own. I hop downstairs to chat with the Shakespeare veterans and they toss a few sonnets my way drizzled with wisdom of experience. Which must be reason number three of why I love my job: my co-workers impress me. I just finished a thirty-minute jam session with a Shakespeare buff in my department about the last two lines of sonnet 130:
"And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare"

The faculty I work with are bright, interesting, and kind. They create a sense of community by sharing materials and extending invitations to their lunchroom table; will I find that at other schools?

Reason 4: The laptop program (I love how it places students in the driver's seat).
Reason 5: Surprises. Students teaching me new things about a text I thought I groked completely.
Reason 6: Quality above the bar. When students lift the boards and nails of a loosely framed English project and not only erect a scaffolding, but pour a foundation and paint a wall as well, it just drops my jaw open.

Don't get me wrong, I get tired. I get burnt out. I go home after school and wake up in the dark. When no creative energy trickles through my spinal chord, I grade papers. Grading reveals the gaps in their understanding and I decipher what tomorrow's lesson plan is about.

Perhaps teaching is the perfect ADD profession: you get to hop between so many different activities (lesson planning, department meetings, student conferences, grading) there is one for every mood. But are "kids" the same everywhere or are the students where I work more enjoyable to be around?

Students pick their own books

A few weeks ago our freshman English sub-department discussed which texts to read for next year. A first-timer in such a discussion, I was dumbstruck to discover that such a small group of adults could so radically impact the lives of 425 fourteen year-olds.

This year all freshman had to read:
The Odyssey (Fagles translation)
The Woman Warrior
The Catcher in the Rye
A Midsummer Night's Dream

Together, seven teachers chucked The Woman Warrior for being "difficult to identify with" and had a quiet moment for the passing of The Odyssey and then cut it. In a way, we catered to the market. Students began to "misplace" their books about 200 pages into The Odyssey; The Woman Warrior led to more heads slumped on desks than is prudent to admit.

Should students only read books they like from the first page? Isn't it the teacher's job to help them through books that push their reading comprehension level? What if they love it by the end? If they don't read The Odyssey at school, then where? Does it really matter that they read that book over another?

Last week a colleague suggested to me that it doesn't matter what they read as much as how they read it. In other words, you can teach reading skills with any five books you want. If practicing reading skills is the paramount goal, small wars should not be waged over which texts to assign. And assigned texts seem to invariably lead to the uncomfortable "did you do the reading?" / "No, because I hate this book" struggles.

As a student I had to chug coffee to choke down many assigned readings--and I love to read! Something about being told what to read takes some of the fun out of it and turns a pleasure into a chore.

So why not let the students choose? (Radical I know). Let the freshman sub-department make a list of fifteen recommend books and students read a new book every three weeks. A few students will read the same book to create discussion groups and they can report their findings to the class. They will practice speaking articulately about what they read and presenting themes to a larger audience. Placing the choice in student's hands mitigates their sense of being forced to read and opens up more interesting conversations about connections between books.

Why teachers should visit other schools

A friend of mine who works construction told me that his profession shifted his world-view.

"Now when I look around a room I don't think of the walls a barriers; everything can be moved. If you don't like the wall, we can knock it down, or cut a hole in it, or put a door there. Nothing is static—paint it, bevel it, hammer it—there really aren't any boundaries."

Today I visited another high school down the block from mine and received a similar reminder that everything is transitory. The teachers at University of Hawaii Lab School ask themselves the same questions I ask myself daily (should I prioritize skill over content? Should I seat friends together or separate them with a seating arrangement? What is the best thing I can do to help my students gain proficiency in writing? Should I wear this skirt with those shoes?) yet they answered them differently.

What I saw:

-Music class with 7th grades belting out traditional Hawaiian songs.
-A social studies class re-enacting the French revolution with all of the peasants sitting on the floor to show their status.
-A fifth grade class studying algebraic principles.
-A thirty-student orchestra practicing the string section in a satellite building with shiny new violas.
-Students waving "Hi Mr. Bricket!" to the principal as we walked the campus.

What a wonderful reminder of just how much we have to play with in this profession. We should all pop our heads in other school buildings once in a while and remember that the walls aren't a constant after all.

I Expected Resistance

Alan November visited on curriculum day and filled our heads with possibilities for the laptop in each freshman's bookbag. November modeled examples of different student-type jobs; this was the strongest aspect of his presentation. Many say our task as teachers is to prepare students for an unimaginable job market of the future and to teach them to head companies who services are not yet needed. November's list below trains students in skills of communication and information management--both are right-brain talents (see Daniel Pink).

1. Lesson review team. Students write, edit, and direct a podcast of past lessons they have learned (when to use the semi-colon, how to do long division for example).
2. Student-teachers. Students write lesson plans for the class and, as they present, record it with a screencast device (jing works) to make a movie of their lesson. Paste it on the class website for regular viewing later.
3. Daily class recorder or "scribe." One person takes scrupulous notes for the class. (I personally can never trust someone else to take notes for me because I learn as I write, but that's just me.)
4. Communal note review. All the class notes taken by the rotating scribe are pasted into google.docs. In or outside of class students edit (and elaborate on) the notes so they become incredibly complete.
5. Global community teams. Social network with other classrooms around the world using skype, wikis, del.icio.us. (Would my students benefit from reading The Catcher in the Rye along with a class in Tokyo and discussing it with them? Why not just talk to the person next to you? I have some doubts on this one.)
6. Research managers. Teach students how to research the backers of websites and find viable sources, then feed those sites (using RSS feeds) to their homepages so they get the latest updates on their research topics.

No teacher alive currently coordinates all six jobs.

The day after November's visit I tried some of the simpler techniques in class. I think I expected a fight—some kind of "who are you to mix things up?" attitude from the students.
"So I went to this talk and basically you guys are responsible for your own education and I'm going to get out of the way now…ok?" (rough pitch I realize…I don't know what I was thinking).
They blinked at me.
I turned to student A near the corner of the room. Student A has wide eyes and lips which turn down at the edges, like a bug flew into her mouth and she holds it there courteously until class ends.
"Student A, you are going to be our scribe for this class. Could you take notes for us on google.docs?"
She swallowed the bug.
"Sure." She typed away, engaged for the first time in a while.

The next day I tried a larger leap into the world of uncertainty.

"Today you guys are going to teach one another mini-grammar lessons and we will record them. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?"

"Yes!" They all turned to their partner and started drafting lesson plans with enthusiasm.
What? Have I really underestimated them so much? Was I a fool to think they needed to be spoon-fed comma rules when in reality they can just teach one another?
The presentations varied in quality. Some muddied the waters rather than cleared them; some taught the presenter something but not the audience. One pair leapt on the task and offered to go first. Here is the recorded screencast of their presentation:


.


What I would do differently next time:
-Ask them to create a rubric for judging the presentations and give pros and cons to each presentation before and after.
-Visit each presentation beforehand and edit before they get up to present.
-Make sure to give them a small and teachable mini-lesson ("how to choose a good paper topic" was a broad one).

Where psychotherapy, Buddhism, and technology meet

From Thoughts Without a Thinker
Forward by the Dalai Lama

Recently, psychotherapists, with their background in science and medicine, have begun to explore the possibilities of employing Buddhist techniques in a therapeutic context. I feel this is entirely consistent with the aim of overcoming suffering and improving the welfare of all sentient beings. Living experience of Buddhist meditation has given practitioners a profound knowledge of the workings and nature of the mind, an inner science to complement our understanding of the physical world. On its own, no amount of technological development can lead to lasting happiness. What is almost always missing is a corresponding inner development. This is an area in which there is increasing evidence that Buddhist assertions and modern findings have to potential to be valuable to one another.

--December 1994

The school where I teach is currently in the process of choosing new laptops for the academy 1:1 laptop program. As I provide more freedom in my English assignments to take advantage of the laptops versatility, the projects that result are a multi-media extravaganza. These students don't just know how to write descriptively about dead tiger sharks that wash up on the beach; they can email internationally with shark specialists, assemble powerpoint presentations of tiger shark videos borrowed from youtube, or make their own movies based on interviews with marine biologists.

I'm just not sure if they know how to breath.
This concept of the inner development necessary to process the whirl of technological development intrigues me. For me, that processing come with rules about when to shut down the machine and go outside, correcting my work posture, and recognizing when my eyes are growing fatigued from looking at a screen for so long.

Like now.
There are many attitudes technology between the poles of technophobe and automaton. Are students aware of them?

Understanding by Design

Am I the last teacher on the planet to read this book? First printed in 1998, this redefinition of the priorities in lesson-planning took ten years to reach my desk. I am a late bloomer, alas...but better now than next year.

Wiggins and McTighe suggest that knowledge (regurgitation of facts) is distinct from understanding which requires an ability to manipulate information under various circumstances. To set up students for understanding, a teacher ready to lesson-plan must shy away from the temptation to leap for activities and first ask herself:
1. What essential questions does my class attempt to answer?
2. What smaller, more palatable, unit-sized questions can I ask to engage my students into the topic?
3. What kinds of activities will allow students to grapple with various answers to those questions?
4. How will I assess a genuine understanding of those concepts?
5. Will this assessment overly-reward students for 'plugging away' at assignments rather than demonstrating true understanding?

Old-hat to many in the education world, but this really rocked my socks off. This is the scaffolding behind the student-led projects, the reason to the action, the supportive branch to the entertaining tire-swing of a class, the ying to my yang!
Do any of you lesson plan in this way?

Story of Stuff

This is the most simple, illustrated explanation of globalization I have ever seen.
www.storyofstuff.com

I have passed this along to many friends and family, and I am surprised at the extent to which we all respond with the knee-jerk reaction "oh yes, everyone else in this country is wasteful, but not me."
Recognizing our daily roll in this cycle as consumers seems like the first step toward change and improvement in the system.

Waz up! with writing standards?

"Mrs. davis! What is teh homewokr!!!!???""
This is a standard line from a fourteen-year-old English student over AIM.
I support playing with words-- coining them and mushing them together in new ways earns gold stars in my class. However, these quoted lines don't scream 'creative license' to me: they shout sloppy.

A few months ago I was told that the reason students don't respond to my emails about homework is because they rarely check it. "They aren't into email. They are into Facebook and AIM," explained my tech-savvy colleague. Hoping for more frequent communication between teacher and student, I signed up for America's Instant Messenger, made a screen-name, and divulged it to my students.

"YOU have AIM!" they gasped in class; first worried about the overlap of boring school with their social lives, then excited that a teacher wants to be part of their lives.
"THAT is SO COOL!" they squealed, typing away and watching as their comments appeared on my screen projected onto the overhead.

"How r u??" they wrote.
"what r u doing???" they asked.
"I'm questioning your ability to switch between formal and informal writing," I wanted to respond.
Instead I just said "hi."

On the one hand I find it flattering that they are comfortable enough with me to let down their guard. Less stuffy, more open communication blossomed from our on-line banter. They work harder for teachers they respect and relate to, so why not make it easier to relate? However, I distain such extravagance as multiple exclamation points (doesn't one get the job done?) and with automatic spell-checker at their fingertips it seems reasonable to expect written communication to remain formal.

"What iss the dilly 4 tomorrow!!!!!?"

But how can I judge them when I myself slip into this tone with my friends on gchat? The reality is that their sloppyness results from an attempt at speed. It takes longer to make the proper letters into caps and stick a comma in the right spot. Should I, as their teacher, enforce this extra 'umph' or let it slide in our informal communication?