The Brain and creativity

I showed this video to my freshman class before we started a poetry unit. They enjoyed Taylor's storytelling and were shocked by her picture at the end. The 18 minute clip serves as a nice reference point for us now when discussing where poetry comes from, how to foster creativity, and what a grounded "sense of self" is in our writing.

You can’t skip my class

Something is going right in my freshman English class. It feels amazing. I look forward to teaching all three sections whenever they meet, which is rare for me the week before Spring break vacation.

What is working:
1. We spent time building a class culture. We used the first two weeks of the quarter to do activities that addressed the essential question of the course (who am I and how does voice shape my identity?) and students bonded. The payoff is better peer-feedback amongst students and more laughter in the classroom.

2. More large projects. Student feedback from last semester suggested that they prefer fewer large assignments over nightly assignments that count for a lot. Now they have Big Great Works, Little Great Works, and Process works which are the nightly assignments worth 5 points. The assignments build on one another, so after around seven Process works of writing different kinds of poetry, for example, they have a BGW of polishing three poems and submitting those with a reflection. They sense there is a purpose to the homework while it allows a little more space to play and fail (you can goof up your process works and still rock your BGW grades).



3. I spend more time planning class than I do grading. Last year I stayed up late to turn back papers the day after I received them. Now I may turn papers back two classes later, but I know class will be engaging (and I am well-rested!).

4. Start every class with them. Students can they read their free-choice paper to a neighbor, share a story of what they did after school yesterday, or write an overheard line of poetry on the board-- anything works. I just try to start class with something from them so we are all invested together. It’s a little scarier than starting with my example story or model-able essay; it requires adaptability and thinking on my feet. Their creation doesn’t always link seamlessly to the lesson of the day, but it adds an element of surprise for both of us that keeps things fresh.

A mentor told me that class should feel like there is some kind of plan, but anything can happen. I like that.

One strange result of this spontaneous, student-started class is that it makes it unpleasant to re-hash past classes with students who missed class for sports or illness. Last year I could easily upload my lesson plan to the website or email them what they missed because it was the same in every class: fueled by me. But now rehashing class is like dissecting a joke for someone who wasn’t listening. What is there to say? You had to be there.

Teacherly Goals for S'09

--Visit lots of other teacher’s classes
--Dare to have a discussion with students about the relativism of grades when they have grades in their hands (oh the potential wrath!)
--Give students more time to think and reflect before they respond.
--Spend more time in class reading aloud, reading silently, and practicing various reading skills.
--Use technology mindfully in my classroom and at home.
--Accept the fact that I am already the best teacher I can be.

This last one deserves some explanation. I am reading a book called Awakening the Buddha Within by Lama Surya Das and it posits an idea I find surprising: give up hope. You are already the best manifestation of yourself you can become. Stop trying to be something you aren’t; in this moment you don’t have thirty years of teaching experience so don’t waste energy wishing you did—just be the teacher you are in the moment you are in. The best teaching I have observed is simply an extension of the teacher’s personality. Great teachers share their whole selves with the students, not just a watered down phony version. I aim for that this semester.

What I learned from The “Apple” Challenge

I wrote four pages mulling over this topic but they read with a rather nasty tone, so I have condensed my thoughts to these four main, hopefully non passive-aggressive, points.

1. Collaborating with a for-profit business about curriculum was an interesting experience. I don’t particularly recommend it simply because in education teachers already have multiple bosses (students, department heads, school principals, parents etc.) and they don’t need another one who a) has interests independent of serving students as well as possible and b) is not present to adjust their demands when what they ask for is unreasonable. The next time Apple Inc. invites me to try their experiment, I will do it on my own timeline or I will say no thanks.

2. Collaborating with other teachers across disciplines is a wonderful professional development opportunity. However, it doesn’t make sense to engage in this illuminating yet time-consuming process unless you have the same students who will make connections between the thread started in Biology class and continued in English class. The block schedule at my school minimizes the chances of overlap and makes me question if this system is really the best schedule for student learning.

3. We need teachers. (What a relief!). Part of the Challenge Based learning model appears to suggest that teachers need to stop lesson planning so much and get out of the way. “Hand over the reigns to students,” CBL suggests, “and they’ll teach themselves!”. I was optimistic about this at first but discovered that the reality is that no, they won’t. It isn’t because of a lack of drive; I think it’s probably just a frontal lobe that needs to grow. Freshman aren’t there yet: they still need us to point them in the right direction, show them some cool examples they couldn’t find on their own, teach them the basics, and then invite them to impress us. Otherwise they sit there staring at one another for days.

4. Group work rocks. Students pay more attention to one another than they do to anything else and group work can steer that energy toward self-reflection. One student reflected after the whole project debacle came to an end:

During the course of the past three weeks or so, I had to overcome a lot, personally. It was very hard for me to keep my cool when other people in my group weren't cooperating, or if we were having communication problems. It was hard for me to be able to not take all the work myself, but to be able to trust the other people in our group to do some work as well. I was personally able to overcome this when people in our group really showed an interest in the project and wanted to help out, which was when I was able to hand over some responsibility to them.

That’s neat. So she learned more about herself than she did about English class content. Am I satisfied with that as a teacher? No.

In closing, I must say that this project left me with a lot of questions and one that even related to my identity as a teacher: How can I strike a balance between content-driven classes and experiential learning? Why do I so enjoy leaping at the risky, uncertain, potentially disastrous projects instead of just using my office-mates lesson plans that are tried and true? If nothing else happens in my classroom, what is the one thing I can’t do without? The creation of a class culture? The ability to use discussion techniques? The development of an appreciation for poetry? The proper use of a hyphen?

Each teacher answers these questions for themselves and it will take me a few more years before I am confident in my own responses.

To my students who failed this semester: I love you

So my grade book screams “D” and you earned it.
But in my book of life your name shouts “A” and you should know it.

I like you.
I believe in you.
Your simple being astounds me.

If only you knew how highly I esteem you, the eternal light inside you, the potential curled in your belly like a dormant walnut inside a shell awaiting his nutcracker, then you would not pout now. I see your own hand around the cracker’s handle some day, its teeth biting for grip, digging in to squeeze yourself out.

You are so much bigger than this little F attempting to shrink you. Don’t buy this crap.

And believe me, if I could get over the fear of being fired or called “ weak” or “easy,” if my ego could take the hit, than I would write you an “A” and stamp it loudly on the paper you never turned in because I love you like I love every human being and in you I only see rainbows.

Best of luck,

--Ms. D

I wrote this little poem/letter after a lunch conversation with one of my favorite colleagues. We are grading final papers and it is an incredible drain on our energy. Why is it so hard to spend hours grading? Because we have to focus on telling students what they did wrong rather than what they did right, justifying our "B" on their paper with a red circle here, a critical comment there. I fear they will misinterpret my comments on their papers for my assessment of their person, which makes me feel guilty for each red mark on the page, like I'm hurting a beloved with my pen. I know it sounds overly-self important to think my comments affect students that much, but I do worry about it. I wish I could just write "I love you!" on every paper, and give a little feedback about their work and leave it at that. What a bleeding heart right!? What to do what to do.

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.