Throwing students off the deep end.

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My experience as a high school student of English often consisted of being given complicated material, being told it was Very Important or A Part of The Canon, and muddling through it as best I could, with some vague notion that this experience would mean something later.

On the whole, I find this approach silly. It was too much of the now-you-will-sound-cultured-at-cocktail-parties mindset.

However, there were a bunch a moments when, upon entering college or “real life,” that the lightbulb went off in my brain: so that’s what they were talking about. Tough literature seemed less daunting after having slogged through “Absalom, Absalom!” my senior year of high school.

It is with this in mind that I occasionally throw my students something that will take a maximum amount of effort to unpack. For example, take the very first paragraph of James Baldwin’s “If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, What Is?”

The argument concerning the use, or the status, or the reality, of black English is rooted in American history and has absolutely nothing to do with the question the argument supposes itself to be posing. The argument has nothing to do with language itself but with the role of language. Language, incontestably, reveals the speaker. Language, also, far more dubiously, is meant to define the other–and, in this case, the other is refusing to be defined by a language that has never been able to recognize him.

We read it twice. We talk about what the original argument is, and theorize as to what Baldwin’s trouble with it must be. We define “incontestably” and “dubiously,” We discuss the academic meaning of “the other.” We talk about who that other is, and what reasons “he” might have for refusing to be defined by it. This takes a while. It’s not easy work.

As the reading continues, we pull from African American History class in 9th grade, we pull from our geographical knowledge (quick, who knows where Martinique is? Or the where the Basque live?) I ask them if they know why Malcolm Little chose “X” as his last name. Somebody explains that. We get to this line:

To open your mouth in England is (if I may use black English) to “put your business in the street”: You have confessed your parents, your youth, your school, your salary, your self-esteem, and, alas, your future.

Who knows something about British Accents? Who talked to the exchange students from Liverpool when they were here last year? Next time, ask them about how they sound different from Londoners; you’ll get an earful. Maybe we put “ask” on the board, and see whether people pronounce it “ask” or “axe.” We talk about that, too.

We hack our way through the whole thing, and by the end we’ve gone in a dozen different interesting directions regarding language, identity, and power. Great set-up for a benchmark essay. Throwing students off the deep end is okay, as long as you jump in with them.

And then, to cap off the class, I show them the goofiest photo of James Baldwin I can find.

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Inquiry To Action Groups in Philadelphia.

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How do you get your professional development in Philadelphia?

I’m not talking about the stuff that your school provides — maybe that is excellent, but in many cases it’s a bore. Hopefully you attend EduCon, and participate in your discipline’s #edchat, and follow the news. But are you registered for an Inquiry to Action Group?

In case you need a reminder from Paolo Freire via the Cooperative Catalyst, teachers must be activists. And educators do this best in networked groups, exploring issues on their own, and making plans for positive change, no matter how big or small.

Anybody can participate, and the programs are free. Last year, I participated in an ItAG called “Context for Change,” which connected me with a dozen motivated educators I had never met before, and it helped me figure out what I was doing with this blog.

The topics this year are Democratic Teacher Evaluation, Linguistic Bias Against Students of Color, Online Activism for Education, Social Justice Math, and Social Justice Unionism.

Oh yeah — and Project Based Learning, which I will be facilitating with help from everybody at SLA.

The kick off is Thursday, February 7th. Sign up here.

Storytelling on the sly.

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Ah, the conundrum: what to do the last day before break? You’re all kind of spent, the kids are hopped up on sugar, but you don’t want to do nothing.

At times like these, I break out my semi-secret weapon: exquisite corpse.

“All you need is a piece of paper and writing utensil,” I say. “We’re going to play a game.”

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I don’t bother explaining that we’re all creating surrealist works of art — students are too busy spinning tales around my prompts like “Your story must include a student in this class, in a place outside of Philadelphia.” Or “An SLA teacher, in a fictional place.” Three minutes and then pass clockwise. Three minutes more, do it again. Fold your paper back so only what you wrote is visible. Make the story work as best you can. Or don’t even try — the weirder, the better.

I’m strict about unfolding the papers — we have to wait and have everybody do it at once. The laughter trickles in — snickers, hand-over-mouth giggles, oh-my-gawd-they-did-NOT-write that expressions, straight-up howls of delight.Image

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After five minutes of reading and passing at tables, everybody wants to share. This year, we had students playing music for penguins, teachers wandering into their own imaginations, and I turned into a pony at least once.

We do a solid hour of storytelling, get hand cramps from all the writing, have a good laugh, and then throw the papers away. Happy holidays!

Truth and Storytelling: Connecting Vietnam and Iraq

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The first time I showed this photo in my classroom, it was four years ago, right after it had been published in The New Yorker.

I presented it without comment, and asked students to look at all the clues and figure out what the situation was.

There’s a lot here to process — the age of the woman, the items sitting in the grass, the heritage of that name, the code-like descriptors below.

I am always surprised at how many kids recognize where that gravestone must be, and how few of them can identify what the crescent and star stand for.

That year, I also talked about Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama, and how he cited this very photograph as an example of his frustration with people who “accused” Obama of being a Muslim — as though that was a bad thing.

The makeup of America continues to change, and individuals respond to that change — in both good and bad ways. (This links to our essential question for the unit — what is the relationship between the self and the changing world?)

Four years later, I brought it up again. “Do you remember during the last election,” I asked them, “when lots of people said that Obama was a Muslim?”

So many hands went up. I shared Powell’s commentary. In one instance, I put one of our Muslim students on the spot, asking for her personal reaction, and she graciously shared how she was watching some of her own Muslim friends go into the armed forces, and the complex feelings she had about it.

When students are lost in the storytelling and meta-narrative tricks of “The Things They Carried,” this photo is a nice grounding moment. In this image, both the characters and their feelings are painfully real.

This post is a specific activity belonging to the Truth and Storytelling: Things they Carried Unit.

From Chicago to Philadelphia?

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I was one of four members of the SLA Community who had the pleasure of presenting at this year’s Coalition of Essential Schools Fall Forum at The Met School in Providence, RI. I have more ideas swirling around in my head than can reasonably be summarized in this post, but I’m going to attempt a couple of them here.

First off, it was really eye-opening to visit another school that embodies many of the same principals as SLA. We didn’t have a chance to see classes in session, but just exploring the physical building gave us lots of clues about what’s going on and what we could steal. From what I explored, the schools rely more heavily on the advisory system than SLA, and have whole rooms devoted specifically to advisory groups, complete with their own names and cubby systems and tons of individualized support notes on the white boards. The place felt like home.

The sessions that really got me thinking, though, were all about Chicago.

I am a card-carrying member of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, and on the whole I’m grateful for the work that they do. However, I don’t feel particularly connected to my union. And I don’t think that’s my fault — they don’t work to connect teachers around Philadelphia, beyond the occasional rally. Though I appreciate their protecting my benefits, I also crave networking. What are the other people out there doing? What are their needs, their struggles, their skills and triumphs?

This is a part of what was so interesting about the story of the Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators, shared so eloquently by Xian Barrett at the conference.

Their movement, he said, started with an interested group of twelve people — folks who knew each other from the blogging world, or ran into each other at the annual conference hosted by Teaching For Social Justice, the progressive teacher organization in Chicago.

Over four years, they went from this seed of a group to nearly sweeping all elected positions in the Chicago Teachers Union. Their caucus also continues to organize and publicize as an organization independent of the CTU, and therefore free of some of the gag rules that are enforced around contract negotiations.

How did they do it?

First by listening, he said. Going to every possibly community meeting about educating, asking people what they needed, and acknowledging those needs.

(How did they find the time for this? By working a somewhat inhuman number of hours, including taking personal days and no-pay days to fit it all in.)

Then they found union members — we’re talking actual teachers — who were willing to run for the elected positions within the CTU. Virtually all of them running on the CORE slate were elected.

These folks recognized that they were disenfranchised from a massive behemoth of a system, and they took it over from the inside. Now, of course, they’re struggling with trying not to become the establishment they unseated. Still, they did it.

Could such a thing happen in Philadelphia?

I don’t know. But for the first time, I am seriously asking the question. I hope you will ask it with me.

Ed Note: If you’re in Philadelphia, you should definitely be at next Saturday’s Chicago Teachers Union Panel Discussion. Check it out on the Teacher Action Group website or RSVP via Facebook.

Truth and Storytelling: What Do You Carry? Letters

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This is one of a few “Performance Tasks” from my The Things They Carried UbD that I wanted to highlight. It corresponds with the title story of the book, which is the first chapter. It’s also a truncated version of a longer lesson plan I found on ReadWriteThink a few years ago.

Before reading the story, I ask students to brainstorm a list: What do you carry? They handwrite their own short lists, and then we collect a class list on the board. Here’s one list from this year:

Grudges, hatred, sharp metal objects, fear, hope, money, pants, phone, laptop, ipod, a need to change things, food, electronics, emotions, knowledge, secrets, my cat, lies, friendships, stress, enemies, trust, the world, self-control, love, rejection, mental stability, rejection, what ifs, thoughts, purses, masks, mental instability, inspiration, self-doubt, chocolate, perfume, liquid, keys, MYSELF. Clothes, imaginary friends, conscience (good and bad).

 
We then read a few pages of the story and discuss what the soldiers are carrying and what the value or figurative importance of those items are.
 
After they’ve finished reading the chapter, we revisit the class list and they are given the following task, to be shared on a class forum:
 

This is your place to write a letter about what you carry.

Things to consider:

– Write the letter to somebody who cares about what you carry. It could be to that thing or person, or it could be to someone who made you carry it.

– It could be positive (thanking them) negative (complaining) or a mix. Or maybe you need to apologize to that person or thing.

– If you want to go funny, you could write about a physical object. If you want to go serious, what do you carry in your heart or mind that you have to tell us about?

– Don’t just write to the general public, pick someone specific.

One key aspect of this activity is that the peers will read their letter. Many students write to a specific person, sometimes thanking them, sometimes yelling at them. Often the person they are writing to remains anonymous. Other students write to their laptop or their book bag — these are funny, or angsty, or somewhere in between. A couple of years ago, one student wrote to Kanye West:

The thing that I carry is my ego. Now you see Mr. West, the ego I carry around is the greatest ego of all time, but there’s been a rumor going around that you carry around the greatest ego of all time. Now, I’m not one for competition of “ego,” but bring it on homey. 

Once they post, students have time to read and respond to each other. They also have a chance to nominate students to read their letters out loud.

This is an early empathy-building activity of the unit. It’s also the first time students are asked to tell a story in a mode similar to the book.

 

What to do when iPhones are the dominant narrative.

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When I was in seventh grade, I had a teacher that many of us adored, but many of us also thought was kind of crazy. Everybody knew he rode his bike to work every day (turns out he owned a car, but never drove it). Eventually we learned that he didn’t own a television, or a microwave.

These might sound like common choices for people who are trying to live sustainably, but in the affluent suburb I grew up in, this stuff was unheard of. What was really interesting was that he really seemed to like living this way. He seemed, you know, pretty happy.

I thought of this teacher the other day when I pulled out my flip phone during class and got a few surprised looks.

“Wow, I haven’t seen one of those in a while,” one student quipped.

There are a lot of boring, innocuous reasons that I’ve got an old “dumb” phone. I’ve never been an early adopter. I typically hold on to my phones until they die, sometimes years after I’m eligible for an upgrade. I’m not anti-smartphone, I just like my phone bill at its current price.

But a small piece of me clings to my phone in protest of the consumer culture that engulfs my students (and my peers), with iPhones as one of the top status symbols. If you’ve got the money for one, why haven’t you gotten one yet? And if you don’t have the money, then you definitely need one to make it look like you do.

I know this situation is not unique to SLA. (In fact, I suspect that handing the students identical free laptops cuts down on some of the gadget envy.) And I have no desire to tell students or their families what to do with their money. If you get judgmental on a personal level, this gets nasty real quick.

But I do want students to see that these products are designed to separate you from your cash by any means necessary. And that you don’t have to play that game if you don’t want to. Like so many things that society expects you to do, if you can recognize the system, then you have the power to opt out. It might be worth it to you. Sound like a good critical thinking lesson yet?

I know that eventually I’ll cave and get a smartphone. But I still plan on poking holes in our consumerist culture in front of my students. (Because when I grew up, I realized that life without a car or a television was actually pretty sweet.)

Truth and Storytelling: The Things They Carried

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In an attempt to follow Diana Laufenberg’s lead, I’m going to share my first full unit plan here.

At SLA we all plan using Understanding By Design, and in English that means thematic units. So when I first planned around “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, the obvious ideas that came up were around truth and storytelling.

Here are the essential questions for the unit:

•    How are we the stories we tell? What makes a story universal?
•    What is the difference between “truth” and “fiction”?
•    How can war change a person?

The unit also seeks to answer one of the three grade-wide essential questions, around the theme of change:

•    What is the relationship between the self and the changing world?

The book is a great one to start the year–it’s easy to read, but hard to understand, which makes for easy buy-in and killer class discussions. On day one, look at a photo of Tim O’Brien:

We then read the book’s dedication:

This book is lovingly dedicated to the men of Alpha Company, and in particular to Jimmy Cross, Norman Bowker, Rat Kiley, Mitchell Sanders, Henry Dobbins, and Kiowa.

and front matter quote:

This book is essentially different from any other that has been published concerning the “late war” or any of its incidents. Those who have had any such experience as the author will see its truthfulness at once, and to all other readers it is commended as a statement of actual things by one who experienced them to the fullest.

– John Ransom’s Andersonville Diary

Who are the two groups who will read this book, and what is the difference in how they understand it? That’s the set up that we return to several times throughout the unit. Sometimes with delightful student frustration.

Check out the unit plan here. I will also feature some activities with descriptions on the blog this week.

If I don’t know theory, I’m just a cog in the education machine.

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When I was in graduate school for teaching, a common gripe from some students in my program was that our coursework was too theoretical, that it didn’t give us enough practical info or concrete methods for working in the classroom.

I thought of those folks as I read Doug Lemov’s recent article in the Wall Street Journal. His description of a new teaching school stood out:

My colleague Norman Atkins, founder of the Relay Graduate School of Education in New York, likes to invoke the example of Michael Jordan, whose demanding methods of practice “reset” the habits of the Chicago Bulls and improved the team. Mr. Atkins adds, “Once you have good teachers who as a matter of course like to practice and rehearse and think, it’s the most professional thing you can do. It will raise the expectations of teams in their field as well.”

So his graduate school, in contrast to more theory-heavy programs, preps teachers for what they will do all day on the job. And he finds that they love it.

Back in my year of graduate school, when I was in my field placement all day and going to classes at night, there are moments I would have loved practicing my methods all day. But when people complained that our program was “too theoretical,” it made my skin crawl. These were the same folks who thought reading “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” was a waste of time. Even scarier was how they weren’t interested in encouraging any critical thinking on the part of their students. The kids were too behind on basic skills, they would argue. No time for literary analysis or theory.

And if we had studied at Relay? Here’s what we would have gotten, according to the Washington Post:

Degrees are earned by online video and reading modules, attending discussion groups and by the uncertified teacher’s students’ test scores. If the test scores are not up to snuff, the teacher does not earn her degree. There are no classes in educational theory or history, nor any indication that the candidate must complete a masters thesis requiring research and reflection. It is cookie-cutter training grounded in one vision of instruction — the charter school vision. Each candidate’s pail is filled with the same techniques.

Just think, if I had been educated at Relay, I would be such a great team player. I would be an expert and enacting every new method and initiative handed down by my district or my administration, and I would never ask “why” or have the tools to explore what was behind it.  My students would never get riled up, because I would never incite them to question their world. I wouldn’t even know the phrase “critical pedagogy.” I would never have gotten hired at a place like SLA, joined Teacher Action Group, or started this blog.

If we don’t teach our students to look at the bigger picture, then we condemn them to live with all of the systemic problems that they can’t see. Same goes for teachers.

“What I’m really trying to say is…”

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Instead of starting class with our computers out, I handed them a one-page photocopy.

“I’ve been reading this book called Writing Without Teachers, and I think some of the advice might help you with your essay drafts.”

“Writing without teachers? Sounds great,” one student quipped.

“I know how you feel,” I said. “Sometimes, when I’m writing, I wish I wasn’t there, either.”

I read them a few key items from the list:

Avoid doing all writing or doing all sitting-back-thinking. And above all avoid being caught in the middle where you write only a couple sentences and stop and wonder and worry.

Don’t let beginnings be a problem. Write through them by brute force. I often have to use all-purpose beginnings: “And another thing…” “The thing of it is…” “What I want to talk about is…” “You want to know something?” At the end you can write better beginnings.

“Who writes their first sentence, and then immediately deletes it? Who does this half a dozen, a dozen times?” Much of the class raised their hands along with me. “This book says, try letting go don’t worry about getting it perfect the first time. Allow yourself to write the crap that will get you to the good stuff.”

Several students shook their heads emphatically no. That’s not how they operate, they said. They want to get it right the first time.

“I get it,” I told them. “I wrote a 15-page article this summer, and I probably wrote half a dozen different intros before I thought I found the right one. All the while there was a voice in my head saying, ‘this is not right.’ ”

“But when one of you is stuck in a writing rut, the question I always ask is, “well, what are you really trying to say?” And nine times out of ten, what comes out of your mouth is exactly what you should be typing. So, why not just start your writing with that phrase? And we’ll get rid of it later.”

We start with outlines, and we finish with peer editing and revision, but somewhere in the middle we need to set ourselves free in order to find our voice. I hope that “What I’m really trying to say” helps us get there.