This never happens in any other class. My desk is the base to a tower of books – brought in for me from my Science Fiction students. A sampling – “The Haunted Mesa” by Louis L’Amour, “My Favorite Science Fiction Story” edited by Martin H. Greenberg, “The Hard SF Renaissance” edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, “The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen, and “The Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Volume One, 1929-1974” edited by Robert Silverberg. Who. That’s about 3,000 pages of reading.
Not that I’ll get to it. I’m going to read the L’Amour book simply because it looks interesting and since I’m having each Sci-Fi student read an outside novel, I’ll do it too. I’ll scan through the anthologies to see if I can’t find some interesting short stories.
At least that stack of books looks good on my desk. It make take some attention away from the stacks of papers and scattered junk on my desk –Purel hand sanitizer, a soccer shaped Easter egg I found in the hall, stapler, tape dispenser, Buschinsms calender, two remotes for the VCR/DVD combo, several pens, markers, and hi-lighters, my Bengals coffee mug, a Diet Dew, a glass bottle of unsweetened tea, and a bottle of water. What a freakin’ mess.
******
I’ve been listening to contrasting podcasts from Education Podcasts with John Merrow.
One features Alfie Kohn, who is a progressive schools advocate and standardized test critic – check out his book The Case Against Standardized Tests – discussing what he thinks an excellent school should look like: desks in circles, students taking center stage with the teacher barely recognizable, assignments from all students adorning the walls, students genuinely discussing and problem solving, and finally, when the bell rings, students lament that the class is over and continue their debates in the hall.
The other features E. D. Hersch JR., who is a conservative education reform critic and advocate of testing, discussing too what he thinks an excellent school should look like: desks in rows is fine, students too should take center stage with the teacher guiding the discussion and monitoring the problem solving strategies. Of course, he doesn’t go so far into left field to suggest, as Kohn does, that all grades should be abandoned and that nurturing kids is just as important as teaching them.
All of this makes for a very interesting morning listen.
I like to think of myself as a progressive teacher, one who is not content on teaching students the same way I was taught or on placing myself at center stage. Nor am I content on doing the same thing every single year. Nor am I content to go to my cabinet and pull out a three ring binder that reads “College Composition” which contains my entire curriculum, planned out day by day for the entire semester, regardless of who my students are going to be or, rather, where there are going to be (in terms of skill and, more importantly, interest).
I like to think that I am in constant pursuit of making my classroom an excellent one.
After listening to Kohn’s depiction of an excellent classroom, I still have a looooooong way to go. Unfortunately, most of the time my classes resemble the traditional (or as Kohn calls them “just good enough”) classrooms.
I want my classroom to resemble Kohn’s ideal classroom described in the second paragraph, but I’m at a loss for how to transform it.
Now I could go on why my classroom isn’t an excellent one (having 35 kids sitting in a circle would call for one big damn circle . . .), but I’m not sure that will do any good.
Like any radical, and he seems to me to be pretty far out in left field on liberal education reform, I take most of Kohn’s ideas with a whole lot of salt. They are a little touchy feely for me.
But I like this belief that some things in our decrepit education system need to change: Namely “the teacher as the depositor of knowledge” concept. This is right in line with my beliefs about the importance of inquiry. However, the biggest obstacle is that my students have been so conditioned to viewing the teacher as the depositor of knowledge and have accepted their role of student as a passive one, that I cannot break them of this and get them to actively seek knowledge and meaning. I mean when the elementary and middle schools teach to the test (and who can blame them with the threat of YAP hanging over their heads) by the time the kids get to me they are just too indoctrinated.
I also agree with his belief that grades create competition. Kohn states that there are studies (and aren’t there always studies to show, really, whatever you want?) that show grades do, in fact, motivate students; however, they extrinsically motivate them. That means you do well just for the grade (or praise, or scholarships, or one of the bumper stickers Kohn loathes – “MY child is an honor student” – which really just serves to imply that YOUR child is NOT”) and not for yourself. According to Kohn, studies show that as students’ extrinsic motivation increases, the more their intrinsic motivation decreases. This seems to be the case for the five students Denise Pope Clark shadowed in the book Doing School.
What I can do immediately to try and get my class from a ‘good enough one’ to an ‘excellent’ one is to try and keep developing an inquiry approach, such as with the imovie projects where the students could really care less about their grades and they just become absorbed in the project itself. There I think they really were intrinsically motivated.
When I listened to the second podcast featuring E.D. Hersch Jr, I expected to disagree with his conservative views, but actually I agreed with a lot of what he said.
One quote stood out. When asked about whether or not he objects to a traditional classroom with desks in a row and the teacher up front relaying her or his knowledge, Hersch replied, “Desks in rows don’t bother me. It bothers some because it’s symbolic of the teacher as the boss and the students as the passive recipients of the knowledge, but as an old teacher once told me, ‘If I didn’t know more than you, why would I be here?’” I like that.
Now certainly knowledge isn’t the single most important factor in teaching. I think this is why some college teachers are so bad. They spend all their time researching and studying, yet they are never really taught how to teach.
Hersch is also very keen on finding a way to determine how competent a teacher is in their subject area. I don’t disagree.
In fact, I think excellent teachers have a way of combining the art of teaching (and the longer I teach, the more I am convinced that it is an art) and engaging kids with a great understanding of their discipline area.
I don’t think Kohn would disagree either. The trick, it seems to me, is to not only balance the two but to also never become content.
Both Kohn and Hersch agree that there needs to be ample time for teachers to sit down with other teachers and figure out what works best for them and share that (here I’m reminded of the National Writing Project which firmly believes that teachers learn best not from some anointed expert but from each other). This is one reason I can spend 45 minutes talking shop with another teacher during my prep or lunch period or when I’m in the library. I love my job and I want to get better at it. (of course, it drives me nuts when all I hear others blathering about is sports or badmouthing kids)
But how do I apply these things to my teaching.
Now that I think about it, this pertains exactly to what I’m doing with TKM. I don’t want the students to passively read the novel. I’ve done ‘just a good enough job’ with the novel in the past where I have presented it to the students. I’ve given notes on the elements of literature inherent in the text (plot, character, symbolism, yadda – yadda – yadda). I’ve related interesting anecdotes or facts about Harper Lee or the south. I’ve developed stringent tests. Then I expected the students to just absorb it all. But, like I said, that is what I would dub “barely good enough.’
So now I’m trying to do something about it. I think that literature is not only a window (to other worlds) but it is also a mirror (it reflects our own desires and beliefs and universal truths). This is one reason I stopped after chapter three and had my class devise the ‘ways’ of northern Minnesota. I wanted them to think a little bit like Scout did when she observed Miss Caroline floundering on her first day teaching.
If I can get the kids to look at northern MN that way, then I have made them aware of the ‘box’ they live in (by ‘box’ I mean the customs, beliefs, ideas, and morals we have up here that are unique to us). The next step is to keep encouraging them to explore how these stack up against the ‘box’ that Scout lives in (that of the racist, poor, deep south). By doing this, I hope students view the book as a window into a different time and place, yet I hope they also see it as a mirror, reflecting back some part of themselves.
Just today we had a little talk (and here I fall way short of even a ‘just good enough’ classroom) about Ch. 4, where Scout, Jem, and Dill create a play around the legends of the Radley family. We discussed how poor little Cecil Jacobs is so frightened of the Radley place and Miss Lafayette Dubose’s place that he walks a full mile out of his way to and from school in order to avoid them.
I asked the class if they could recall any mean old ladies or strange neighbors from their childhoods. Nods abounded. But only one students offered anything in terms of commentary (again, a result of years of teacher-centered learning). I shared a story about an odd family in our neighborhood (again, me blathering is a result of years of teacher-centered learning and teaching). It got a chuckle out of the kids and maybe made the obscure reference in the book a little more relatable to them, but it didn’t really open the book up to them like I wanted it.
So I devised a list of writing prompts for them to explore tomorrow –
A sampling –
Write about a mean old lady (or grumpy old man) in your neighborhood.
Write about some childhood games or antics you used to play or pull.
Write about a prank you played on someone.
Write about a neighborhood legend from your childhood.
Write about a childhood fear or superstition.
Write about a childhood lie you had to tell to your parents.
I’m hoping one of these will spark some narratives in my students. I’m hoping that will lead to them sharing some of their stories. I’m hoping the sharing will lead to some commonalities emerging among their stories. Then I’m hoping to ask them – here I’m doing what Kohn advises and having students make their own connections – to explore how their experiences are reflected in the events of ch. 4 and 5. I’m hoping students will do most of the talking and I can just monitor. But I’m knowing that won’t happen. But I’m hoping that what I’m knowing wont’ come true.
If that makes sense???
******
Kristie has an appointment tonight at 7:30 to get her hair done. KoKo and I decided this morning to make it a movie night. Now that she is a horror afficiando like her step-father, I’d love to watch “The Blair Witch Project” with her, but I don’t know if I’ll find it. We might watch “The Mist” instead. I’ve been dying to see it, and if it’s good, I’d like to show it next week to my Sci-Fi class.
(So much for that idea. KoKo had basketball practice. Maybe tomorrow night)
No comments:
Post a Comment