A disruptive technology is one that changes a paradigm completely.
Reading Steve Jobs' biography several weeks ago was a reminder of just how disruptive a technology the personal computer was in so many ways, fundamentally changing communication, the creation and distribution of media, and the sharing and availability of information. Just think of all of the fields impacted by these changes!
Curiously, the classroom remains essentially untouched by this disruption, even classrooms with one-to-one devices supplied by the school or BYOT ("Bring your own technology"). Classrooms still tend to be teacher-centered and organized in much the same way that they have been for the past century. Instead of turning the classroom on its head, computers have awkwardly settled into seemingly unbending classroom environments that are ill-equipped to use them to their full potential.
For all the disruption it has caused to so many other areas of life, the computer has failed to make a substantial difference to how education is done.
Perhaps the burden for disruption is now on those who design software and applications, since the hardware itself has not made the difference it should have.
Perhaps the disruptive technology has already arrived, and has simply not taken told yet.
Personally, I wonder if Google Classroom might be that disruptive technology. I was struck by a revelation this morning as I worked away in my quiet spot near the window at Tully's. My task on this cloudy Saturday morning was to virtually "drop in" on each of my students' unit one essays, which they began writing in GoogleDocs on Wednesday. GoogleDocs are nothing new, of course, but it used to be an unmitigated hassle to get an entire class of students to consistently write essays in GoogleDocs, much less share them with me, and then keep them all organized.
However, using Google Classroom, I simply created a template for the students, and when I posted the assignment, had that template go out to each student as their own editable copy. Additionally, Google Classroom organized the essays in an intuitive manner--no more searching through my Google Drive or my email to find a student's GoogleDoc: everything is right there in the assignment folder on Google Classroom. The teacher's draft of the essay is not due until next Thursday, and ordinarily that would be the first time that I would be able to read through what my students had written; my first opportunity to see how their introductions turned out, how their topic sentences and transitions turned out, how their support and commentary shaped up.
This morning, I am reading through my students' work for the second time. I read through their thesis statements on Wednesday evening and gave them feedback. Each thesis took five minutes or less to read and comment on. This morning, most students have their introductions completed, and again, reading and commenting is taking five minutes or less. Some students even had their essay open while I wrote my feedback, and began to make changes right away!
On Monday, I will workshop topic sentences with the students, and then take another pass through the essays that evening to give more feedback on the topic sentences that they come up with. I'll do the same with transitions on Tuesday and conclusions on Wednesday. By the time the students submit their teacher's drafts on Thursday, there should be no surprises--I'll know who is behind; who is struggling with what aspects of their writing. This will have two impacts on my reading of the completed teacher's drafts next weekend: 1) It will take me less time to read them since I'll have already been reading them in installments over the course of the preceding week, and 2) It will enable me to provide more substantive feedback about their content and logic, since I'll have already given feedback on the technical aspects of their writing and given them opportunities to revise.
Essentially, this technology is enabling me to treat revision as an ongoing process, as it should be, and not something that happens only in huge waves after each draft is submitted.
This, I think, is where there is real potential for disruption to the way we do education. The ability provide real-time feedback in a clear and efficient way that allows students to adjust and revise immediately has major implications for how both teachers and students spend their time, both in and out of the classroom, as well as implications for how students may be able to collaborate with one another in the future.
Currently, this sort of real-time feedback is most convenient with GoogleDocs, but what if it could be extended to other types of projects and assignments as well? I saw a glimmer of this potential earlier in the week. Last Friday, my students submitted their rhetorical fallacy videos--projects they had completed in groups to teach their classmates about different rhetorical fallacies. I posted the videos on Google Classroom so that the students could access them easily. Three of the groups had made otherwise good videos, but had forgotten a key element of the prompt: explaining why each example they had shown was a fallacy. I encouraged these groups to add in explanations and re-submit by this Wednesday. I was pleased when all three groups opted to do so, and I simply replaced the old links on Google Classroom with the new ones that the students had sent me.
Of course, I had not caught these errors until the students submitted their videos on the due-date, and after catching the mistakes, the students had to go back to iMovie or other editing software to make their changes--platforms I did not have access to--but this would have been far more difficult to do two years ago without Google Classroom, and frankly, impossible to do five years ago.
I wonder if this is a glimpse into the future of education: ongoing projects and essays in which the teacher coaches the students through a constant stream of feedback, and perhaps even peers can coach one another, too. This may or may not be the change that is coming, and any change is bound to take time, but I do feel, for the first time, like we may be on the brink of a technological revolution in our schools and classrooms... and that is exciting!
Friday, September 23, 2016
Friday, September 16, 2016
Standing at the Intersection
Giving my students time for silent, sustained reading has had the unintended benefit of giving me time for silent, sustained reading, too. I do walk around the library a few times to see what students are reading and to nudge the occasional student who has dozed off, but I figured that the best use of my time would be to model a love for reading to my students. And although my students only get one period of reading time each week, I get three :)
This week, I finished Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. It was a fascinating read about a fascinating, mercurial and truly innovative man, but my biggest takeaway from the book was one of the goals that Jobs carried through his career. In his youth, Jobs was inspired by a quote he had read from Edwin Land, one of the founders of Polaroid. Land had emphasized the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of science and the humanities, a call which resonated with the young Jobs. Apple--and each of its products--was the result of Jobs trying to unite these two fields, and one of Jobs' desires, to his dying day, was that the products he helped to create would facilitate a closer marriage between science and the humanities.
Like Jobs, I was similarly struck when I read the quote from Edwin Land. The culture at CAJ has shifted in recent years, with more students pursuing higher levels of math and science. When I first started, classes like AP Chemistry and AP Calculus were populated by only a few of the most dedicated juniors and seniors, but this year, these upper-level sciences, as well as AP Biology, AP Physics and AP Statistics, are full classrooms.
More students than ever before are interested in pursuing careers in the maths and the sciences. When I first noticed this shift starting to happen a few years ago, part of me worried--what would become of English and History? Would I still be able to get my students to buy in even if they felt that the humanities were outside of their wheelhouse?
However, I am becoming increasingly convinced that what the world needs is engineers, doctors, chemists, physicists, statisticians, mathematicians and biologists who have a strong background in the humanities; who are able to communicate clearly and effectively in both print and in speech; who understand the interplay of history--culture, politics, and economics, and the bearing that this has had on science and technology; who have an aesthetic appreciation for the pieces of creation that they are studying.
Too often, teachers (and schools) construct a false dichotomy between different subjects, and especially science and the humanities. What if, in reality, neither were complete without the other?
Every spring, I assign my Humanities class to read excerpts from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Carson, a marine biologist, was also an avid reader and writer as a child, and this unique intersection of gifts and interests led her to research and write one of the first, and perhaps the most popular, book about ecology that has ever been published.
As I watch more and more of my students graduate and embark on undergrad studies in engineering or various other branches of science, I cannot help but wonder: have I done my part to help them see the importance of the intersection between science and the humanities? Have I passed along my love for writing? Have I nurtured a love for reading?
The more aware of this I become, the more I can do to cultivate this relationship, and to equip my students to stand at this oh, so important intersection.
This week, I finished Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs. It was a fascinating read about a fascinating, mercurial and truly innovative man, but my biggest takeaway from the book was one of the goals that Jobs carried through his career. In his youth, Jobs was inspired by a quote he had read from Edwin Land, one of the founders of Polaroid. Land had emphasized the importance of people who could stand at the intersection of science and the humanities, a call which resonated with the young Jobs. Apple--and each of its products--was the result of Jobs trying to unite these two fields, and one of Jobs' desires, to his dying day, was that the products he helped to create would facilitate a closer marriage between science and the humanities.
Like Jobs, I was similarly struck when I read the quote from Edwin Land. The culture at CAJ has shifted in recent years, with more students pursuing higher levels of math and science. When I first started, classes like AP Chemistry and AP Calculus were populated by only a few of the most dedicated juniors and seniors, but this year, these upper-level sciences, as well as AP Biology, AP Physics and AP Statistics, are full classrooms.
More students than ever before are interested in pursuing careers in the maths and the sciences. When I first noticed this shift starting to happen a few years ago, part of me worried--what would become of English and History? Would I still be able to get my students to buy in even if they felt that the humanities were outside of their wheelhouse?
However, I am becoming increasingly convinced that what the world needs is engineers, doctors, chemists, physicists, statisticians, mathematicians and biologists who have a strong background in the humanities; who are able to communicate clearly and effectively in both print and in speech; who understand the interplay of history--culture, politics, and economics, and the bearing that this has had on science and technology; who have an aesthetic appreciation for the pieces of creation that they are studying.
Too often, teachers (and schools) construct a false dichotomy between different subjects, and especially science and the humanities. What if, in reality, neither were complete without the other?
Every spring, I assign my Humanities class to read excerpts from Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Carson, a marine biologist, was also an avid reader and writer as a child, and this unique intersection of gifts and interests led her to research and write one of the first, and perhaps the most popular, book about ecology that has ever been published.
As I watch more and more of my students graduate and embark on undergrad studies in engineering or various other branches of science, I cannot help but wonder: have I done my part to help them see the importance of the intersection between science and the humanities? Have I passed along my love for writing? Have I nurtured a love for reading?
The more aware of this I become, the more I can do to cultivate this relationship, and to equip my students to stand at this oh, so important intersection.
Monday, September 12, 2016
Weekly Quotes
Two years ago, when I decided on "Becoming People of Justice" as the overarching theme for my 11th grade classes, I decided on a whim to write famous quotes about justice up in the corner of the white board, a new quote each week. I used the website BrainyQuote and found hundreds of thought-provoking blurbs on justice and injustice.
I was, however, inconsistent in updating the quotes on a regular basis, and more than once left the same quote up for two or three weeks in a row before realizing it was time to put up a new quote. I never once drew the students' attention to the quotes on the board; as far as I was concerned, the quotes were part of the classroom decor, and not part of the curriculum.
And like so much of my classroom decor, the quotes were little more than part of the background in my classroom. Good insofar as they were not a distraction, but serving no functional purpose. Last year, in an attempt to remedy this, I drew my students' attention to the quotes at the start of the year, and told them to keep an eye on the corner of the board for a new quote each week. For my part, I stayed on top of updating the quotes, and there were indeed a few students at the end of the year who wove quotes from the board into their essays. However, most students did not notice the quotes, and were surprised when I reminded them about the quotes as they started on their final essays in May ("You mean you've been posting a new quote each week?")
This year, I decided that I would weave the quotes into the fabric of the class as a weekly reminder of our course theme; an opportunity to regularly "check our compasses". Each Monday, I will set aside the first 10-15 minutes of class for students to write down the quote and reflect on it in a double-entry journal. The responses to the quote can be gut reactions; they can be paraphrases or explanations of what the quote means; they can be questions or queries; they can be agreements or disagreements; they can be applications to other settings and situations. My hope is that this new classroom routine will expose the students to a variety of perspectives about justice from throughout time and all over the world, and encourage them to engage in the ongoing historical dialogue about what constitutes injustice and how we ought to respond. I also hope that it will develop a classroom culture where students feel comfortable discussing and contributing--certainly on a weekly basis we will have more discussions than this, but by making this a set part of our routine, perhaps even my shy students will feel supported in joining the discussion.
So far, we're off to a good start. Last week, for example, our quote was:
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
—Frederick Douglass
In the process of discussing the quote, the students touched on institutionalized racism, vicious and virtuous cycles, and the importance of education as a tool to fight against injustice. These are all topics that will come up in other units during the year in greater depth, but what a great introduction!
As with my decision to set aside a class period each week for silent, sustained reading, it can feel like a sacrifice to carve out time each week that is not directly connected to our immediate unit or lesson. However, I believe that the investment will be worthwhile. I'm looking forward to seeing how this pays off in future discussions and essays!
I was, however, inconsistent in updating the quotes on a regular basis, and more than once left the same quote up for two or three weeks in a row before realizing it was time to put up a new quote. I never once drew the students' attention to the quotes on the board; as far as I was concerned, the quotes were part of the classroom decor, and not part of the curriculum.
And like so much of my classroom decor, the quotes were little more than part of the background in my classroom. Good insofar as they were not a distraction, but serving no functional purpose. Last year, in an attempt to remedy this, I drew my students' attention to the quotes at the start of the year, and told them to keep an eye on the corner of the board for a new quote each week. For my part, I stayed on top of updating the quotes, and there were indeed a few students at the end of the year who wove quotes from the board into their essays. However, most students did not notice the quotes, and were surprised when I reminded them about the quotes as they started on their final essays in May ("You mean you've been posting a new quote each week?")
This year, I decided that I would weave the quotes into the fabric of the class as a weekly reminder of our course theme; an opportunity to regularly "check our compasses". Each Monday, I will set aside the first 10-15 minutes of class for students to write down the quote and reflect on it in a double-entry journal. The responses to the quote can be gut reactions; they can be paraphrases or explanations of what the quote means; they can be questions or queries; they can be agreements or disagreements; they can be applications to other settings and situations. My hope is that this new classroom routine will expose the students to a variety of perspectives about justice from throughout time and all over the world, and encourage them to engage in the ongoing historical dialogue about what constitutes injustice and how we ought to respond. I also hope that it will develop a classroom culture where students feel comfortable discussing and contributing--certainly on a weekly basis we will have more discussions than this, but by making this a set part of our routine, perhaps even my shy students will feel supported in joining the discussion.
So far, we're off to a good start. Last week, for example, our quote was:
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."
—Frederick Douglass
In the process of discussing the quote, the students touched on institutionalized racism, vicious and virtuous cycles, and the importance of education as a tool to fight against injustice. These are all topics that will come up in other units during the year in greater depth, but what a great introduction!
As with my decision to set aside a class period each week for silent, sustained reading, it can feel like a sacrifice to carve out time each week that is not directly connected to our immediate unit or lesson. However, I believe that the investment will be worthwhile. I'm looking forward to seeing how this pays off in future discussions and essays!
Friday, September 2, 2016
My Experiment
Confession: I was not a reader when I was in school.
I always loved writing--that was my reason for enjoying my English classes, not to mention my reason for maintaining relatively high grades in my English classes.
Because I had parents who were readers, and who both had extensive vocabularies of their own, I was able to develop a vocabulary that probably made me seem like I was a reader.
But I wasn't a reader.
Sometimes I would begrudgingly read the literature assigned in class, and sometimes I would find myself profoundly moved by what I had read, as I was with To Kill a Mockingbird in my sophomore year. And, although Mockingbird remains one of my favorite novels to this day, it was not enough to make a reader out of me. It was not enough to keep me from watching Pride & Prejudice (the BBC version) instead of reading it, or frantically flipping through Crime & Punishment the weekend before it was due, both of which were transgressions I committed in my Senior AP English class.
I didn't become a reader until the summer after I graduated from high school. I had avoided Harry Potter for six years, and although it had been recommended to me by at least three eager school librarians on as many occasions, I firmly refused to try it on the grounds that it was "a book for nerds" (which must have been confusing, coming from a scrawny kid with large glasses not unlike Harry's). However, on one family car ride in which my then-11-year-old sister was listening to the audiobook of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I found myself unable to either tune out the story, or mock it sarcastically. Jim Dale was narrating the scene in which the Weaselys visit the Dursleys to pick up Harry during the summer holiday. Harry's loutish cousin Dudley had just eaten a bewitched toffee which had caused his tongue to swell to a grotesque size, and I found myself laughing out loud at Rowling's vivid and clever descriptions of the chaos that followed. My resolve shattered, I picked up Sorcerer's Stone that evening and did not resurface until I had finished Order of the Phoenix (the fifth, and at that time, the newest, book in the series) six days later.
After that, my world was never the same. I devoured Ender's Game, then the rest of the Ender series, then the Shadow series. I consumed the Shaara Civil War trilogy. I laughed as I read The Princess Bride, and wept as I read The Kite Runner. I tried Crime and Punishment again, and found myself captivated. Emboldened, I ventured into the Brothers Karamazov and loved that, too. I revisited Narnia and Middle Earth, Toad Hall and Mole End. I rode along with James Herriot to farms all over the Yorkshire Dales. I tore through weighty biographies of John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Harry S. Truman. This past summer, I picked up a book that had been on my shelf for two years: Book Love, by Penny Kittle.
Kittle, an English teacher, emphasizes the importance of modeling and nurturing a habit for reading and a love for reading to students, particularly adolescents. This, Kittle maintains, is crucial to empowering the students to successfully read classic texts, and to develop critical reading skills in general. Before I had even made it halfway through the book, my mind had begun to overflow with ideas for the coming school-year.
I went through my calendar and set aside one class period each week solely for silent, sustained reading. I made sure to clearly mark those days on the calendar so that I would not forget, and then planned the rest of my units with those dates set apart.
Then, I contacted our school librarian, and in collaboration, worked out the following plan:
On the silent, sustained reading day, the students will meet in the library and not in my classroom. They will leave class-work behind and only bring computers or phones if they need music in order to focus, or require easy access to an electronic dictionary, with the understanding that they will be held accountable for the use of their devices, should they become a distraction.
Each week, a member of the library staff, or even other teachers, or coaches, will come in at the start of the period and share briefly about something they had read and enjoyed recently. Of course, I will also regularly share recommendations with the students, as well.
Students may read fiction or non-fiction, sci-fi or fantasy, action or romance; they may even choose a magazine from the library's publications corner--they simply need to find something to read that will hold their attention for an entire class period, so that they can get a feel for reading for pleasure, and at the same time, build up the stamina to engage with the readings (whether speeches, essays, articles or novels) that they will encounter in English and Humanities class. My hope is that they will develop a love for reading that will extend beyond this school-year and these days that I have set aside.
We had our first reading days this week--Wednesday for my first period English class and today for my Humanities classes. The students seemed willing, even eager, to give the experiment a try, and for three periods this week, I enjoyed the most blissful kind of silence, as high school juniors all settled down to read something they had chosen for themselves. After making sure that everyone had something to read, I picked up Steve Jobs' biography from the shelf and found myself absorbed, each class period ending entirely too soon. I wound up checking out the biography, and look forward to having something to read for fun, myself.
This is my great experiment for the year, and while this is only the beginning, I'm excited and encouraged by what I saw on our first day of silent, sustained reading. I will definitely provide updates as the year goes on about how this is working out!
I always loved writing--that was my reason for enjoying my English classes, not to mention my reason for maintaining relatively high grades in my English classes.
Because I had parents who were readers, and who both had extensive vocabularies of their own, I was able to develop a vocabulary that probably made me seem like I was a reader.
But I wasn't a reader.
Sometimes I would begrudgingly read the literature assigned in class, and sometimes I would find myself profoundly moved by what I had read, as I was with To Kill a Mockingbird in my sophomore year. And, although Mockingbird remains one of my favorite novels to this day, it was not enough to make a reader out of me. It was not enough to keep me from watching Pride & Prejudice (the BBC version) instead of reading it, or frantically flipping through Crime & Punishment the weekend before it was due, both of which were transgressions I committed in my Senior AP English class.
I didn't become a reader until the summer after I graduated from high school. I had avoided Harry Potter for six years, and although it had been recommended to me by at least three eager school librarians on as many occasions, I firmly refused to try it on the grounds that it was "a book for nerds" (which must have been confusing, coming from a scrawny kid with large glasses not unlike Harry's). However, on one family car ride in which my then-11-year-old sister was listening to the audiobook of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I found myself unable to either tune out the story, or mock it sarcastically. Jim Dale was narrating the scene in which the Weaselys visit the Dursleys to pick up Harry during the summer holiday. Harry's loutish cousin Dudley had just eaten a bewitched toffee which had caused his tongue to swell to a grotesque size, and I found myself laughing out loud at Rowling's vivid and clever descriptions of the chaos that followed. My resolve shattered, I picked up Sorcerer's Stone that evening and did not resurface until I had finished Order of the Phoenix (the fifth, and at that time, the newest, book in the series) six days later.
After that, my world was never the same. I devoured Ender's Game, then the rest of the Ender series, then the Shadow series. I consumed the Shaara Civil War trilogy. I laughed as I read The Princess Bride, and wept as I read The Kite Runner. I tried Crime and Punishment again, and found myself captivated. Emboldened, I ventured into the Brothers Karamazov and loved that, too. I revisited Narnia and Middle Earth, Toad Hall and Mole End. I rode along with James Herriot to farms all over the Yorkshire Dales. I tore through weighty biographies of John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, and Harry S. Truman. This past summer, I picked up a book that had been on my shelf for two years: Book Love, by Penny Kittle.
Kittle, an English teacher, emphasizes the importance of modeling and nurturing a habit for reading and a love for reading to students, particularly adolescents. This, Kittle maintains, is crucial to empowering the students to successfully read classic texts, and to develop critical reading skills in general. Before I had even made it halfway through the book, my mind had begun to overflow with ideas for the coming school-year.
I went through my calendar and set aside one class period each week solely for silent, sustained reading. I made sure to clearly mark those days on the calendar so that I would not forget, and then planned the rest of my units with those dates set apart.
Then, I contacted our school librarian, and in collaboration, worked out the following plan:
On the silent, sustained reading day, the students will meet in the library and not in my classroom. They will leave class-work behind and only bring computers or phones if they need music in order to focus, or require easy access to an electronic dictionary, with the understanding that they will be held accountable for the use of their devices, should they become a distraction.
Each week, a member of the library staff, or even other teachers, or coaches, will come in at the start of the period and share briefly about something they had read and enjoyed recently. Of course, I will also regularly share recommendations with the students, as well.
Students may read fiction or non-fiction, sci-fi or fantasy, action or romance; they may even choose a magazine from the library's publications corner--they simply need to find something to read that will hold their attention for an entire class period, so that they can get a feel for reading for pleasure, and at the same time, build up the stamina to engage with the readings (whether speeches, essays, articles or novels) that they will encounter in English and Humanities class. My hope is that they will develop a love for reading that will extend beyond this school-year and these days that I have set aside.
We had our first reading days this week--Wednesday for my first period English class and today for my Humanities classes. The students seemed willing, even eager, to give the experiment a try, and for three periods this week, I enjoyed the most blissful kind of silence, as high school juniors all settled down to read something they had chosen for themselves. After making sure that everyone had something to read, I picked up Steve Jobs' biography from the shelf and found myself absorbed, each class period ending entirely too soon. I wound up checking out the biography, and look forward to having something to read for fun, myself.
This is my great experiment for the year, and while this is only the beginning, I'm excited and encouraged by what I saw on our first day of silent, sustained reading. I will definitely provide updates as the year goes on about how this is working out!
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Ten Reasons I'm Looking Forward to This School-Year
A former colleague of mine wrote a blogpost in which she explained why she was looking forward to the year ahead, and this struck me as a tremendously constructive thing to do. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but I also know it's far too easy to forget to reflect on what I'm grateful for, or what I'm excited about.
Obviously, the big event in my life this coming year will be the birth of my first child! This is so big, it bears mentioning at the outset.
However, my list of ten will revolve solely around my teaching. Without further ado, here are ten reasons why I am looking forward to the year ahead!
1) Year #9
This will be my 9th school-year at CAJ. Granted, I came halfway through that first year, but all the same--it'll be my 9th graduation to attend here. This is a strange feeling. I was still a kid when I came to CAJ, all of 22 years old and only three weeks out of college, and now I'm a veteran, just above the middle of the pack in terms of years of service here. Moreover, this will be my 7th year of teaching the Junior Humanities and English courses, and my 6th year in my current classroom. I know the rhythms of the school-year, and have a deep familiarity with my curriculum, as well as a deepening familiarity with the broader Social Studies and English curriculum. That intimate familiarity has freed me up to take risks and try new ideas--I'm looking forward to year #9!
2) Applying What I Learned in my Master's Program
Similarly, this will be my first year post-Master's. For the past three school-years, I have been a student as well as a teacher, and while there are definitely benefits to wearing both of these hats at the same time, I'm really looking forward to the mental space to digest what I learned in my Master's program and apply it to my teaching.
3) Three Sections of Junior Classes
This year, for the first time ever, I get to teach three sections of Junior classes instead of two. The 11th grade class is large--one of the largest classes to come through CAJ in quite a while, in fact--and so rather than dividing them between two sections that would pack my classroom to the gills, my schedule will look like this:
1st period: English 11
2nd period: Prep
3rd period: Humanities A
4th period: Humanities B
5th period: Humanities B
6th period: Humanities A
7th period: Prep
Bear in mind that each Humanities is a two-period combination of English and U.S. History, and Humanities A is one section of students, while Humanities B is the other. For the first time in six years, I will have class sizes under twenty. While my daily schedule will be busier and I'll be on my feet more than I was the past two years, it's an ideal trade--I'll gladly take a busier schedule if it means smaller class sizes!
4) New idea for Guided Outside Reading.
I mentioned in #1 that my familiarity with my job has freed me up to try new ideas. This is one of those ideas. I'm currently halfway through Book Love by Penny Kittle, and suffering from more inspiration than I know what to do with! Kittle's main claim is that many students don't read assigned texts effectively, if at all, because they've never learned to read for fun, and missed out on those valuable opportunities to build up the patience and perseverance to tackle increasingly more difficult texts. This in mind, I've committed to setting aside one class period per week solely for silent, sustained reading. I have been in communication with our school librarian, who has agreed to let me bring my students to the library for one period a week to read. I felt like this setting would be crucial--too often in the past when I've given the occasional reading day, students have forgotten their books at home--meeting in the library will provide access to not only books, but also magazines. My main goal is to get them reading regularly just for fun, and the library seems to me the ideal setting to achieve that goal. Moreover, our librarian suggested that perhaps we could have various staff members come in and briefly recommend books each week so that the students could get a sense for what their teachers are reading, and possibly find a new book to read in the process. I've had such struggles with Guided Outside Reading in the past, and am excited and invigorated by the potential that this new idea holds to cultivate a love for reading among the students (or at the very least, plant the seeds by getting the students to read on a regular basis).
5) Unit adjustments
Another risk I'm taking is re-shuffling the order of my units. My main course theme has been, and will still be "Becoming People of Justice", but I want to create a more logical narrative flow to the how this theme develops over the course of the year. This goal in mind, I have shifted a unit on worldview from second semester to first semester--I feel like discussing humanity's quest for meaning is foundational--and then second semester will focus more on the injustices that can arise when people pursue wealth, land, or power, as well as the appropriate response to injustice.
6) Teaching debate students
It has now been four years since I last taught 9th Grade World History. This means, for better or worse, that I'm teaching students for the first time when they get to 11th grade. Fortunately, I already know a sizable chunk of this incoming 11th grade class very well, having coached them on the debate team. Nine students from the Class of '18 participated on the debate team last year, and consistently demonstrated to me a curiosity about argumentation, a willingness to work hard, and a willingness to step outside of their comfort zones. Of course I'm looking forward to getting to know all 55+ students in the class, but I am definitely excited for the opportunity to work with my debate students in a slightly different context in English and Humanities class, and to help them develop and refine their research, speaking and argumentation skills, as well as helping them to grow as leaders both within their class, and also on the debate team.
7) Coaching Debate
On that note, I'm looking forward to another year of coaching debate. Debate has become part of the school culture at CAJ, and I have had a number of students who weren't on the team last year express interest in joining this year. The program is thriving, and it's exciting to be a part of it. I'm also grateful to have a co-coach this year (a colleague who was on leave in America first semester last year), not only because the team is growing but also because two of us will be able to provide better support and guidance for the students than just one of us on our own.
8) Departmental Duties
It will be my second year as the chair of the English and Social Studies departments, and this year, I will be working with a colleague so that he can assume leadership of the English PLC, while I focus on Social Studies. We are continuing to work on Scope and Sequence, and I look forward to many good discussions about curriculum not only within our PLCs, but also within our Research & Development Team (the curriculum coordinator, department chairs and principals).
9) Clean Classroom
After six years in Room 306, I finally worked up the courage to purge the closets and file cabinets this week. I have a difficult time throwing things away, myself, and it seems like this was also true of the room's previous occupants, stretching back at least as far as the early 2000s. I threw out what looked to be a classroom worth of dusty textbooks, outdated files, old student projects, and miscellaneous lost and found items, and am appreciating the fresh, uncluttered feeling of my classroom. I'm looking forward to another year in this space!
10) New Laptop
Last, but important all the same, I received a laptop upgrade at the end of the last school-year. My previous laptop was four years old, and could no longer enter full-screen mode when I would show YouTube videos to the class without crashing. I'm excited for a year with a still-new, fast, and strong computer!
These are my reasons for looking forward to the school year that is now just over a week away. What are you looking forward to?
Obviously, the big event in my life this coming year will be the birth of my first child! This is so big, it bears mentioning at the outset.
However, my list of ten will revolve solely around my teaching. Without further ado, here are ten reasons why I am looking forward to the year ahead!
1) Year #9
This will be my 9th school-year at CAJ. Granted, I came halfway through that first year, but all the same--it'll be my 9th graduation to attend here. This is a strange feeling. I was still a kid when I came to CAJ, all of 22 years old and only three weeks out of college, and now I'm a veteran, just above the middle of the pack in terms of years of service here. Moreover, this will be my 7th year of teaching the Junior Humanities and English courses, and my 6th year in my current classroom. I know the rhythms of the school-year, and have a deep familiarity with my curriculum, as well as a deepening familiarity with the broader Social Studies and English curriculum. That intimate familiarity has freed me up to take risks and try new ideas--I'm looking forward to year #9!
2) Applying What I Learned in my Master's Program
Similarly, this will be my first year post-Master's. For the past three school-years, I have been a student as well as a teacher, and while there are definitely benefits to wearing both of these hats at the same time, I'm really looking forward to the mental space to digest what I learned in my Master's program and apply it to my teaching.
3) Three Sections of Junior Classes
This year, for the first time ever, I get to teach three sections of Junior classes instead of two. The 11th grade class is large--one of the largest classes to come through CAJ in quite a while, in fact--and so rather than dividing them between two sections that would pack my classroom to the gills, my schedule will look like this:
1st period: English 11
2nd period: Prep
3rd period: Humanities A
4th period: Humanities B
5th period: Humanities B
6th period: Humanities A
7th period: Prep
Bear in mind that each Humanities is a two-period combination of English and U.S. History, and Humanities A is one section of students, while Humanities B is the other. For the first time in six years, I will have class sizes under twenty. While my daily schedule will be busier and I'll be on my feet more than I was the past two years, it's an ideal trade--I'll gladly take a busier schedule if it means smaller class sizes!
4) New idea for Guided Outside Reading.
I mentioned in #1 that my familiarity with my job has freed me up to try new ideas. This is one of those ideas. I'm currently halfway through Book Love by Penny Kittle, and suffering from more inspiration than I know what to do with! Kittle's main claim is that many students don't read assigned texts effectively, if at all, because they've never learned to read for fun, and missed out on those valuable opportunities to build up the patience and perseverance to tackle increasingly more difficult texts. This in mind, I've committed to setting aside one class period per week solely for silent, sustained reading. I have been in communication with our school librarian, who has agreed to let me bring my students to the library for one period a week to read. I felt like this setting would be crucial--too often in the past when I've given the occasional reading day, students have forgotten their books at home--meeting in the library will provide access to not only books, but also magazines. My main goal is to get them reading regularly just for fun, and the library seems to me the ideal setting to achieve that goal. Moreover, our librarian suggested that perhaps we could have various staff members come in and briefly recommend books each week so that the students could get a sense for what their teachers are reading, and possibly find a new book to read in the process. I've had such struggles with Guided Outside Reading in the past, and am excited and invigorated by the potential that this new idea holds to cultivate a love for reading among the students (or at the very least, plant the seeds by getting the students to read on a regular basis).
5) Unit adjustments
Another risk I'm taking is re-shuffling the order of my units. My main course theme has been, and will still be "Becoming People of Justice", but I want to create a more logical narrative flow to the how this theme develops over the course of the year. This goal in mind, I have shifted a unit on worldview from second semester to first semester--I feel like discussing humanity's quest for meaning is foundational--and then second semester will focus more on the injustices that can arise when people pursue wealth, land, or power, as well as the appropriate response to injustice.
6) Teaching debate students
It has now been four years since I last taught 9th Grade World History. This means, for better or worse, that I'm teaching students for the first time when they get to 11th grade. Fortunately, I already know a sizable chunk of this incoming 11th grade class very well, having coached them on the debate team. Nine students from the Class of '18 participated on the debate team last year, and consistently demonstrated to me a curiosity about argumentation, a willingness to work hard, and a willingness to step outside of their comfort zones. Of course I'm looking forward to getting to know all 55+ students in the class, but I am definitely excited for the opportunity to work with my debate students in a slightly different context in English and Humanities class, and to help them develop and refine their research, speaking and argumentation skills, as well as helping them to grow as leaders both within their class, and also on the debate team.
7) Coaching Debate
On that note, I'm looking forward to another year of coaching debate. Debate has become part of the school culture at CAJ, and I have had a number of students who weren't on the team last year express interest in joining this year. The program is thriving, and it's exciting to be a part of it. I'm also grateful to have a co-coach this year (a colleague who was on leave in America first semester last year), not only because the team is growing but also because two of us will be able to provide better support and guidance for the students than just one of us on our own.
8) Departmental Duties
It will be my second year as the chair of the English and Social Studies departments, and this year, I will be working with a colleague so that he can assume leadership of the English PLC, while I focus on Social Studies. We are continuing to work on Scope and Sequence, and I look forward to many good discussions about curriculum not only within our PLCs, but also within our Research & Development Team (the curriculum coordinator, department chairs and principals).
9) Clean Classroom
After six years in Room 306, I finally worked up the courage to purge the closets and file cabinets this week. I have a difficult time throwing things away, myself, and it seems like this was also true of the room's previous occupants, stretching back at least as far as the early 2000s. I threw out what looked to be a classroom worth of dusty textbooks, outdated files, old student projects, and miscellaneous lost and found items, and am appreciating the fresh, uncluttered feeling of my classroom. I'm looking forward to another year in this space!
10) New Laptop
Last, but important all the same, I received a laptop upgrade at the end of the last school-year. My previous laptop was four years old, and could no longer enter full-screen mode when I would show YouTube videos to the class without crashing. I'm excited for a year with a still-new, fast, and strong computer!
These are my reasons for looking forward to the school year that is now just over a week away. What are you looking forward to?
 |
| My clean, uncluttered classroom! You can't tell from this picture, but the cupboards and file cabinets have also been cleaned. |
Friday, July 8, 2016
Thoughts on oppression, injustice and reconciliation
It is quite a time to be a U.S. History teacher.
I must confess to a certain level of desensitization as I read the headlines: while my heart still breaks, a small, but growing part of me can't help but think, "yep, it's happened again... no surprise there." I grew up thinking of racial violence as being a tragic piece of our national history which was squarely behind us, securely bound in the past.
I now realize that this was an illusion--growing up in a school and town with no shortage of blond heads and blue eyes, but very few people with dark hair and dark skin, what else was I to think?
Racial discrimination did not end with the 1960s, as bulky, biased U.S. History textbooks might lead us to believe. It has been an ongoing reality for so many, and one which I cannot profess to understand first-hand. But it is undeniable that those tensions have flared over the past few years. The U.S. of 2016 is not the post-racial America that so many of us wish it were.
It is also quite a time to be a U.S. History teacher in an international school on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
The Christian Academy in Japan is home to a variety of cultural backgrounds, from Korean, to North American, to Japanese, to Filipino, to Australian, to Indian, or some mixture of the above, and even more. It was so very surprising when I first started teaching there, but over the years, this has become my definition of normal and normative.
While there are occasionally squabbles due to cultural differences, CAJ students are by and large quite sensitive to perspectives other than their own. It starts, quite simply, as a social skill necessary to survival and thriving in our school, but it ends up being a tremendous asset in academic discussion, debate, and of course, relationship-building well after the students have graduated.
As I process the events of this past week, a few take-aways come to mind:
1) Reconciliation starts with us. We know how tenuous a relationship is after trust is broken, and this is perhaps amplified on a societal scale. We cannot assume that reconciliation is someone else's job, and we definitely cannot assume the government will handle it. No policy, no law, no politician can fix the rift that exists in our nation and it would be both foolish and neglectful to pretend otherwise. Reconciliation is a calling that we must feel, personally.
2) Reconciliation starts next door. We don't all live in communities, cities, states, or even countries where the tension between black and white has spilled over into violence, but this does not exclude or exempt us from the task. Reconciliation is so much bigger than the divide between two given groups--it's a task that involves repairing any broken relationship. We must be sensitive to who has been marginalized, whose voices have been silenced, whose dignity has been trampled, in our communities and then seek fellowship with those people. Maybe it will be the poor or the homeless, maybe the single mother struggling to make ends meet, maybe the migrant worker only living nearby for a short while--the "who" and the "how" depend on where we are, and the needs of those around us, but the heart of the task remains fundamentally the same. I find this particularly convicting, as my comfort zone too often falls short of people I don't interact with on a day-to-day basis.
3) We need to learn how to walk in the shoes of the "other". So many of my students develop this capacity as a matter of course, but for those of us who have grown up in homogeneous communities, it may take more active effort. We must recognize that the way we see the world may not be the way that our neighbors see the world. This is not to say that truth is relative--indeed, if that were true, the Scriptural mandate to pursue justice for the oppressed and the down-trodden would be utterly meaningless! All the same, we must recognize and attempt to understand such differences in worldview and perspective as we seek to build relationship with those different from us.
4) White guilt is not constructive. I know that this may not be a popular thing to say right now, but for real, substantive change to happen, we must learn to think more carefully about matters of disparity. Yes, we must be willing to acknowledge the privileges that we have had, and the opportunities which others have lacked. Yes, we must be prepared to admit that we have taken comfort and security too much for granted. But to wallow obsessively in guilt over circumstances we were born into is not only counter-productive, it is dangerous. We can no more change the circumstances of our birth than we can change the orbit of the planets! There is a vital difference between "fault" and "responsibility". The poverty gap, the digital divide, sweeping racial tensions--none of these circumstances are your fault or mine, but it absolutely is our responsibility to do something about them, if we are to take Scripture seriously! Instead of guilt, our response to disparity ought to be charity--a deep desire to provide those who lack it with a sense of security, comfort and fellowship; a desire to see them provided with opportunities we ourselves enjoy. All this being said, I offer this qualifier and warning: if you recognize oppression, poverty and want and do nothing about it, you are, in fact, choosing a side. As Elie Wiesel famously said, "Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim."
I close this blog-post so far removed and insulated from the violence in Louisiana, Minnesota, or Dallas, and still fighting the cynical feeling that nothing can be done... but I also feel a renewed call to the broader and ongoing task of reconciliation, a crucial ingredient in justice, and I hope that any who read this may feel similarly called; after all, we are not in this alone!
I must confess to a certain level of desensitization as I read the headlines: while my heart still breaks, a small, but growing part of me can't help but think, "yep, it's happened again... no surprise there." I grew up thinking of racial violence as being a tragic piece of our national history which was squarely behind us, securely bound in the past.
I now realize that this was an illusion--growing up in a school and town with no shortage of blond heads and blue eyes, but very few people with dark hair and dark skin, what else was I to think?
Racial discrimination did not end with the 1960s, as bulky, biased U.S. History textbooks might lead us to believe. It has been an ongoing reality for so many, and one which I cannot profess to understand first-hand. But it is undeniable that those tensions have flared over the past few years. The U.S. of 2016 is not the post-racial America that so many of us wish it were.
It is also quite a time to be a U.S. History teacher in an international school on the other side of the Pacific Ocean.
The Christian Academy in Japan is home to a variety of cultural backgrounds, from Korean, to North American, to Japanese, to Filipino, to Australian, to Indian, or some mixture of the above, and even more. It was so very surprising when I first started teaching there, but over the years, this has become my definition of normal and normative.
While there are occasionally squabbles due to cultural differences, CAJ students are by and large quite sensitive to perspectives other than their own. It starts, quite simply, as a social skill necessary to survival and thriving in our school, but it ends up being a tremendous asset in academic discussion, debate, and of course, relationship-building well after the students have graduated.
As I process the events of this past week, a few take-aways come to mind:
1) Reconciliation starts with us. We know how tenuous a relationship is after trust is broken, and this is perhaps amplified on a societal scale. We cannot assume that reconciliation is someone else's job, and we definitely cannot assume the government will handle it. No policy, no law, no politician can fix the rift that exists in our nation and it would be both foolish and neglectful to pretend otherwise. Reconciliation is a calling that we must feel, personally.
2) Reconciliation starts next door. We don't all live in communities, cities, states, or even countries where the tension between black and white has spilled over into violence, but this does not exclude or exempt us from the task. Reconciliation is so much bigger than the divide between two given groups--it's a task that involves repairing any broken relationship. We must be sensitive to who has been marginalized, whose voices have been silenced, whose dignity has been trampled, in our communities and then seek fellowship with those people. Maybe it will be the poor or the homeless, maybe the single mother struggling to make ends meet, maybe the migrant worker only living nearby for a short while--the "who" and the "how" depend on where we are, and the needs of those around us, but the heart of the task remains fundamentally the same. I find this particularly convicting, as my comfort zone too often falls short of people I don't interact with on a day-to-day basis.
3) We need to learn how to walk in the shoes of the "other". So many of my students develop this capacity as a matter of course, but for those of us who have grown up in homogeneous communities, it may take more active effort. We must recognize that the way we see the world may not be the way that our neighbors see the world. This is not to say that truth is relative--indeed, if that were true, the Scriptural mandate to pursue justice for the oppressed and the down-trodden would be utterly meaningless! All the same, we must recognize and attempt to understand such differences in worldview and perspective as we seek to build relationship with those different from us.
4) White guilt is not constructive. I know that this may not be a popular thing to say right now, but for real, substantive change to happen, we must learn to think more carefully about matters of disparity. Yes, we must be willing to acknowledge the privileges that we have had, and the opportunities which others have lacked. Yes, we must be prepared to admit that we have taken comfort and security too much for granted. But to wallow obsessively in guilt over circumstances we were born into is not only counter-productive, it is dangerous. We can no more change the circumstances of our birth than we can change the orbit of the planets! There is a vital difference between "fault" and "responsibility". The poverty gap, the digital divide, sweeping racial tensions--none of these circumstances are your fault or mine, but it absolutely is our responsibility to do something about them, if we are to take Scripture seriously! Instead of guilt, our response to disparity ought to be charity--a deep desire to provide those who lack it with a sense of security, comfort and fellowship; a desire to see them provided with opportunities we ourselves enjoy. All this being said, I offer this qualifier and warning: if you recognize oppression, poverty and want and do nothing about it, you are, in fact, choosing a side. As Elie Wiesel famously said, "Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim."
I close this blog-post so far removed and insulated from the violence in Louisiana, Minnesota, or Dallas, and still fighting the cynical feeling that nothing can be done... but I also feel a renewed call to the broader and ongoing task of reconciliation, a crucial ingredient in justice, and I hope that any who read this may feel similarly called; after all, we are not in this alone!
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Curriculum Planning: The Never-Ending Story
I can scarcely believe it has been two years since I physically walked through and rearranged my curriculum on the floor of my classroom. That was also the point where I started blogging regularly to reflect on my planning, teaching and assessment practices.
One of the major lessons I've learned in the past two years is that my curriculum will always need work, and that's okay.
I used to think that needing to fix something in my curriculum was a sign of complete failure, and my instinct was to throw the whole thing out and start over. However, now that I am coming to better understand the principles of revision that I constantly preach to my students, I find myself invigorated and energized by the opportunity to patch things up over the summer.
My students' final essays and presentations were very helpful in that they showed me what units were sticking with the students at the end of the year. Those units--agency & victimhood, worldview, stewardship--likely need less attention from me. It's the other units that will need re-examination and effort, at least right now.
One unit that has constantly posed problems for me is the first unit of the year, most notable as the unit in which we read and perform The Crucible. This unit has suffered from tradition, in a lot of ways. There are a variety of activities in this unit that I like to use at the start of the year, but up to this point I have struggled to find connective tissue to bind the unit together. I lead off with a discussion of stereotypes and biases (which the students always get into), followed by an economic examination of colonization and conquest, and rounded out with a comparison of the collapse of Puritan society with McCarthyism in the 1950s. Finding something to focus these various components has been difficult: last year, the unit essay was about justice and mercy, but even that came into play fairly late in the unit and the connections were tenuous at best.
This past week, the pieces fell into place and I found myself with a unit I am really excited to teach: I chose to drop the focus on economics, which I will shift to a later unit. This freed me up to draw in an introduction to communication as a model, as well as rhetorical appeals and fallacies, which had fit awkwardly into units two and three, respectively, in previous years.
The premise of the entire unit is simple: the failure or refusal to understand the "other" is where oppression begins. We will begin the unit with an examination of communication as a model, a complex transaction which depends on both speaker and listener. We will discuss the "noise" that interferes with good communication, which will lead us naturally into a discussion of labeling, stereotypes and biases--often sub-conscious interference that prevents us from communicating successfully. We will then examine the obligations of both speaker and listener to be clear and honest on the one hand, and to be attentive and careful consumers, on the other hand. This will set us up for our introduction to rhetorical appeals and fallacies (which of course include scare tactics, ad hominem, and hasty or sweeping generalizations). We will finish the unit by looking at the factors which have led to scape-goating and oppression throughout history, and the role that demagogues have played in this (this is where The Crucible will come in), an opportunity to start practicing our identification (and analysis of the effects) of rhetorical fallacies right away. The students will finish the unit by writing an essay in which they engage with why it is important to understand the "other"--those who are different from us--and how we can strive to do so.
It's exciting when the pieces fall into place, and I am looking forward to spending some time revising the next couple of units, now that I've freed up some space by shifting the lessons on communication and rhetoric. Instead of being a hoop to jump through, I prefer to think of this as a puzzle needing to be put together!
One of the major lessons I've learned in the past two years is that my curriculum will always need work, and that's okay.
I used to think that needing to fix something in my curriculum was a sign of complete failure, and my instinct was to throw the whole thing out and start over. However, now that I am coming to better understand the principles of revision that I constantly preach to my students, I find myself invigorated and energized by the opportunity to patch things up over the summer.
My students' final essays and presentations were very helpful in that they showed me what units were sticking with the students at the end of the year. Those units--agency & victimhood, worldview, stewardship--likely need less attention from me. It's the other units that will need re-examination and effort, at least right now.
One unit that has constantly posed problems for me is the first unit of the year, most notable as the unit in which we read and perform The Crucible. This unit has suffered from tradition, in a lot of ways. There are a variety of activities in this unit that I like to use at the start of the year, but up to this point I have struggled to find connective tissue to bind the unit together. I lead off with a discussion of stereotypes and biases (which the students always get into), followed by an economic examination of colonization and conquest, and rounded out with a comparison of the collapse of Puritan society with McCarthyism in the 1950s. Finding something to focus these various components has been difficult: last year, the unit essay was about justice and mercy, but even that came into play fairly late in the unit and the connections were tenuous at best.
This past week, the pieces fell into place and I found myself with a unit I am really excited to teach: I chose to drop the focus on economics, which I will shift to a later unit. This freed me up to draw in an introduction to communication as a model, as well as rhetorical appeals and fallacies, which had fit awkwardly into units two and three, respectively, in previous years.
The premise of the entire unit is simple: the failure or refusal to understand the "other" is where oppression begins. We will begin the unit with an examination of communication as a model, a complex transaction which depends on both speaker and listener. We will discuss the "noise" that interferes with good communication, which will lead us naturally into a discussion of labeling, stereotypes and biases--often sub-conscious interference that prevents us from communicating successfully. We will then examine the obligations of both speaker and listener to be clear and honest on the one hand, and to be attentive and careful consumers, on the other hand. This will set us up for our introduction to rhetorical appeals and fallacies (which of course include scare tactics, ad hominem, and hasty or sweeping generalizations). We will finish the unit by looking at the factors which have led to scape-goating and oppression throughout history, and the role that demagogues have played in this (this is where The Crucible will come in), an opportunity to start practicing our identification (and analysis of the effects) of rhetorical fallacies right away. The students will finish the unit by writing an essay in which they engage with why it is important to understand the "other"--those who are different from us--and how we can strive to do so.
It's exciting when the pieces fall into place, and I am looking forward to spending some time revising the next couple of units, now that I've freed up some space by shifting the lessons on communication and rhetoric. Instead of being a hoop to jump through, I prefer to think of this as a puzzle needing to be put together!
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