Final Exam - An Agenda for Action

A. Graphic Organizer (analog)

B.

1. It's so hard for me to visualize teaching. For some reason, it feels about as fun as it would to look into a black hole. But, I recognize this discomfort as a type of "Novice Syndrome" and when I think of my personal vison as an educator in the 21st century, I begin to grow peaceful. So I want to be a mentor for students potential careers. I want to be a life long-learner and someone who continues to grow professionally, individually and collaboratively. What does that mean for a student? The more I learn, the better I become, the richer their environment will be. I want to work with them some how in their digital domain. Something as easy as a free blog, like this might be a start. Maybe it could cut down on my English paper work as well.

2. I'll be doing research papers with my English 11 students most of this semester, speeches the last two weeks (the papers track a trend over the course of the 20th century as it was defined by war, civil rights or women's issues). I hope to get them turned on to their work with inquisitive caps as opposed to being pulled down by Drudgery's harnesses. As I plan the unit I'll try to incorporate inquiry based methods so they become the researchers who find the answers to questions they want to ask, not mere recipents of research that's already been done. We'll be in the library for the first 3 weeks combing through databases. Over that time I plan to help them find what turns them on by guiding questions back to them and what interests them. AS for an example off the cuff?
For my honors students with whom I'll be reading "To Kill a Mockingbird", I hope to share current articles, and theories that show that yes, we've come a long way but there's many civil rights issues in our society that need to be questioned critically. I hope to instill in them, a group of elite college bound kids, the courage to follow their conscience and be agents of change for social justice.

3.I don't know. I want to say, in 2 years, that I'm part of closing the acheivement gap. I want to become a damn good teacher who teaches in a place where it's needed and wanted. So, what I mean by that is, I'd like to come on board to a place that has the passion for innovative teaching like KIPP academy but I wouldn't want to be in a school that is a sinking ship and I'm the only person who feels optomistic. That could be a case for burn out.
Let's just say, I'll start out small. I won't plan on going into a school, filled with ideas of social justice, and start pounding my fists to make change. But there's some quiet things I can do. I can simply implement group work into my class. I can start the year off taking some time out to introduce my students to a few exercise that will model the desired behaivor I'm looking for in my classroom--collaboration, consensus building, listening skills, personal and group accountability. Something as small as implementing group work can quietly bring about social justice.

4.Eventually, after my two rookie years, I want to be on a team with people who share a common vision and would be interested in collaborating thematic units and ideas to run through our curriculum. I'd like to implement my idea for having a thematic unit that explores food as it relates to sustainablitiy and self-sufficency. I can see getting kids to learn how to garden or even become actively involved in CSAs. With the right colleagues, this could be an amazing ITU which has no problem encompassing science, health, English and history. It could be as long as 2 weeks or 6.
The fear I have is that I'll get to a school and people will be so wrapped up in their own daily grind that any Utopic visions I have will fizzle by the wayside.

5. The ITU I envision is an example of a new curricular path because it teaches holistically and with a theme. Many of the assessments that come out of an ITU are authentic and project based. As an educator, this marks a new professional role because of the amount of collaboration it entails.
The quiet group work is a way to create comprehensive accountability. Comprehensive accountability is an easier way to make sure no child is left behind than any grand bill that is not a panacea for our educational problems today.
And for my immediate goal this semester. I hope to start now with the idea of being a powerful teacher and that means asking powerful, inquiry based questions. So, on ward and up, I ask myself, "What questions will make my kids want to become curious and start to make them generate their own powerful questions?"

Post Modern Maelstrom

Chief, the newly adopted German Shepard, throws his slimy Kong at my feet. Back and forth, gathering the artifacts I'll need in a day--phone, bag, keys, jacket, glasses, bangs dried okay? What next? What to say? Did I tweet in my non-sequential day?

Crimey, so I'm not a post-modernist but the dog is driving me crazy, chomping, whining and slimming his Kong. I appreciate Postman&Weingartners' Pollackesque approach to pedagogy and would like to have guys like them on my side when I start teaching. What I love about this type of investigating is that it does get you questioning and never finding an answer, for "right answers terminate thought."

See guys, like these never shut down thought which is why they're subversive. Their shtick is constantly morphing so it's difficult to pin down, and that worries those who don't like change. The need to be flexible can be threatening. And the desire for holding on to a model, a routine, a definition is comforting. Stasis is a syllabus, answering the question of the day and concluding a lesson. But if we, students and teachers, seek to perpetually keep the question ongoing, like a game of hot-potato, then the learning never stops for either player. The subversive teacher sees the terminal answer, the immovable response, as something akin to "death." As reflective practitioners, we don't want to die in our teaching. We want to keep it fresh with interminable inquiry and investigation. It only stands to "increase competence as learner".

If I were to get a principal, who is rooted in a Victorian model of teaching, on board to listen to my post-modern colleagues like Postman&Weingartner, I'd have him read "Interactive Professionalism and Guidelines for Action". Fullan and Hargreaves propose more or less the same ongoing question and desire to stay "a learner". But they aren't as stylistically inaccessible. They don't require a degree of hipness to get what they're saying yet their message is every bit as subversive and fresh.

Survey We Made on Tiff's 'Puter

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dElfNUNuUXB2SG5adlg0Tmx2amtFMkE6MA

Reading Reflection 5 - I'm Thinking . . .

Not like I wasn't convinced before. After all, a master teacher friend of mine has been telling me about the power of group work for over a year, "Put it on the students. They do amazing things and group work ends up taking care of 80% of your class management -- grading, discipline, homework etc. After all a kid can explain to another kid better than an adult ever will."

Linda does not mean to abdicate all her responsibilities; it's more so a proper delegation of authority. When I observed her I never saw such a task master keep a class moving. She really means that we need to tap into our students to make them part of the learning AND teaching responsibilities. This is what I'm hearing from CSUSM and Cohen. This is what is sinking into my head and when I start teaching I suspect that my little yellow Cohen book will become my bible.

In Chap 7 "Letting Go and Teaming Up" Cohen addresses this very trust in telling us not to "hover". You need to be there to observe, especially from a safe distance so they don't gravitate to you. (Lawler, I've witnessed you do this quite often). And you have to know when to move in if the group is floundering (I've seen you do this too when we floundered over the Ethnography).
Letting the students go, however, all hinges upon whether or not you, (I the teacher) created an atmosphere where group work isn't a mystery.

Perhaps the most important foundtion in group work lies in setting our students up for success. For example, assigning certain roles that will keep the project moving along is just a start. A facilitator, a reporter, the leader. All these roles will keep a student engaged, part of the group. It will give them a sense of belonging to the group. Most importantly, every single one of these roles is designed to give the students a chance to take a crack at "asking questions, requesting justification, predicting, hypothesizing, inferring and concluding." (92) This might be the single most compelling reason to teach our kids how to work in groups successfully. To give our kids the gift of this higher order thinking and in such away that is super inclusive (I mean they are empowered to guide their practice!) is a very powerful teaching tool.

Another reminder of successful group work resurfaces in chapter 8. Yes, we do have to insure that everyone gets a chance of becoming an expert, even the "low status students". A step I've taken in this direction already (and I never really understood why I did it) was a question that I put in my "Get to Know You Survey". I ask my new students to tell me something they are good at and then in parenthesis I state,"this can be anything, whistling, skipping, skateboarding, singing, etc" Maybe my regard for what Dave Letterman calls "stupid human tricks" might be my ace-in-the-hole when I start to teach. I am in awe at the things people can do and how the way in which they discover to do them. I've always recognized people's multiple intelligences. I will, however, be sure to keep in mind what Cohen says about not bolstering intelligences that don't carry heft in Western Civ--such as being good w/ your hands. Hmmmm, in writing this, I don't totally agree w/ her. I believe that if you point out how good someone is, especially coming from the position of a teacher, then you can sell these intelligences on the students as well.

A Neophyte Teacher's Website

http://sites.google.com/site/koberlander9/

My wish of the day is to stay in touch with my cohort after our credential program opens the doors and throws us into to the wild world of teaching. You all kind of feel like long lost brothers and sisters to me.

Reading Response to chap 4-5, Preparing & Planning

Something has occured to me. Many of the skills we're learning from engagement to class management come from tried and true interpersonal and coping skills. Group work not only provides an effective forum in which to teach, but it prepares our students for the workplace and to be good parents and partners. Overall, the communications skills they get from group work can be parlayed into every day life. Many parents and partners could be spared the money and time of having to go to therapy or take parenting classes if they had received good fundamental group working skills in school. Skills such as sending an "I" message instead of blame is something many adults could be spared of having to learn later on in life. Learning to reach consensus also isn't as evident as it seems. We know this when we witness congress in daily gridlock.

An additional benefit of effective group work is that it really is an effective way to hone problem solving, analytical thinking and decsision making. By striving to verbalize, summarize and analyze studnets are exercising higher order thinking. Mostly they create a space where they learn how to talk to each other. They exercise a dialectic where they recognize that the world is not black and white and that "there is often more than one legitimate perspective on a problem" (pg 57) The bottom line is that the other byproduct of effective group work is improved test scores and deeper understanding of the subject material.

Written instructions have so far been the biggest revelation in our group work. As we’ve used them, we’ve consistently marked up the page, mulled over a particular word and had them help us shape our project (re: Ethnography). For me, when I go to teach group work, I’ll remember this and be sure to stay PITHY. It’s my tendency to carry on, especially when I’m not clear. So I better be clear. The last thing I want is to seriously “misfire” well intentioned plans. Or worse confuse my students.

Reading Reflection 3 - Groupwork ch. 1-3

The power of group work as a strategy is that it provides multiple tiers in which students hone life skills and cover standards at the same time. Through the myriad group work scenarios students practice speech, reading, debate, acceptable failure, group skills, analysis, synthesis, independence from authority and dependence on the power of a group. All these skills in 1 tool make a compelling case against the sole use of traditional classroom settings which emphasize quiet compliance.

When wielded properly, group work veers away from simple recitation of facts and random bits of knowledge. It lends itself to designing lessons that require conceptual learning because it demands thinking, discussion, and intellectual discourse. While honing higher level thinking skills, group work also embraces the whole spectrum of learning styles. Students who otherwise would get lost in directions given from center stage have an arena where they can read them, hear them, touch them and see them modeled and repeated. At my last school each time we did group work the CELDTs who were at 2 or 3 benefited from having a classmate fluidly translate a couple words which ultimately opened up the entire lesson for them.

Group work is definitely not a panacea for all classroom situations. It has its traps and needs to be thoughtfully implemented. The danger is that the emergent boss, recluse, social butterfly and know-it-all will surface in a group of 4 in a matter of seconds if the parameters are not clearly defined. Proper planning and stressing group accountability is away to avoid these character types.

Cohen stresses that the advanced reader is often a coveted and revered member of the group. I think that as we go deeper into the digital era, those who have the cognitive, analytical and logical girth to be computer gurus or computational whizzes are the ones who emerge as the super hero.

School Reform @ Lunch

Funny how information comes full circle. Last year I read a great essay written by educator maverick Geoffrey Canada on "This I Believe". The other day I casually asked my dad who lives in NYC if he knew of any innovative secondary programs in town. Immediately he mentioned Canada and the Nobel Prize worthy Harlem Children's Zone. In 1970 HCZ set out to service one block in Harlem. Now they work over 25 blocks. The service "casts a net" on the community so no child can slip through the cracks. The idea is to start a bottom up approach to education from parenting classes, early childhood education, strong mentor-ship through to college. The best practices that HCZ schools (Promise Academy) practice which are similar to that of BPHS are mentor-ship, small classes, project based learning, and a positive supportive atmosphere where children "know they're cared for."
Canada firmly believes that if a kid fails it's because the teacher failed him.

Here are some sites of interest http://www.hcz.org/

http://thisibelieve.org/essay/52984/

http://www.hczpromiseacademy.org/group_profile_view.aspx?id=21e60fb5-ff40-419f-845f-066dcc786082

Reading Reflec tion 2 - BPHS

Funny, I never thought I would take such a wonky interest in “Assessment” but, seeing as though I almost became a 3^rd grade drop out because I was systematically abused by draconian testing, it makes sense the way we assess our students is of the utmost importance. BPHS and 2ndto0 both value the student portfolio because it reflects a body of work and cumulative knowledge. This authentic assessment gauges both “depth of understanding, good use of the habits of mind and the capacity to present” competence and mastery.” (BPHS, 223) Similarly, 2ndto0 rallies for a “comprehensive accountability system . . .based on student performance that is relevant to a student’s future.” (33, 2ndto0) To graduate a student needs to produce a portfolio which reflects a whole continuum of knowledge, not just one summative test. This type of assessment is professional in nature, like a curriculum, and prepares the students for the future.

Both programs felt strongly about integrating curriculums. They see both of them as concept driven not fact based. By integrating units the students get to explore a body of knowledge in depth and not superficially. Each program sees built-in relevancy in an integrated unit. The ITU also tends to be project based so many different types of learners get to exercise their expertise and apply their knowledge in a meaningful way.

The third way BPHS and 2ndto0 mirror each others’ ethos is that both systems recognize that small learning communities are paramount to success. The relationship between a teacher and student should be a hybrid of coach/mentor/support. With class size reduction, longer days or block schedule a class becomes more of a community and this ensures student success more than anything. BPHS points out that this is why parents with money have traditionally sent their kids to elite schools. One of the first reasons they always site are “small classes.”!

Carmel Mt. HS is very traditional in many respects. The day is not flexible. The bell rings. Kids jump up. Classes start. And it goes like this for 6 periods. The pace has grown more frenetic since they implemented the trimester. Now there’s even less time to foster a relationship with your teacher. And summer school? That’s been cut. Class size? Ballooned up to 40 (next year). I think this school does provide support for the ELLs. I’ve seen some sheltered classes and they receive full content. MCHS integrates the high needs community quite authentically as well. As for ITUs and portfolios, what I see are a smattering of teachers who take it upon themselves to get together to plan a unit (My English mentor and a History teacher team up when convenient.) I met one teacher who has her kids do a “life book” a scrap book, if you will., not a professional portfolio. What I got out of 2ndto0 was a general call to slow down. I see anything but. I see very devoted teachers who act on their own sense of what best practice means, not some top down mandated treatise.

I think, in BPHS and in many school districts, class size is always the first ideal to go. Let’s face it. There are lots of peeps in the world and scant money. A fact beyond my realm of comprehension: BPHS was “publicly attacked” because their class size reduction would “water down sports and arts programs”. It seems that many people in the BPHS community weren’t so concerned with a meaningful learning community. They were more interested in a competitive high school. Our country still values competition and the arenas that breed it—football, homecoming queens, class presidents, cliques. BPHS was mocked for wanting to create an atmosphere of inclusion. Sadly enough some of BPHS's funding waned once the community noticed it wasn’t “filing its trophy cases”.

Reading Reflection 1 - Rethinking High School

Early this morning, I heard an NPR report on the RACE to the TOP program. The Obama administration wants the largest school districts to sign up for this grant but SD Unified feels like there are still too many unanswered questions about long time funding and reform.

The reason I mention this program is that I’d like to hear BPHS’s point of view on Race to the Top. I’m unsure about it. Will boat loads of cash make a difference? Or do we need a different dialogue to take place? Arnie Duncan and Obama, both being from Chicago, are familiar with the charter high school model. What goes into a political overhaul such as the one they’re proposing? Like the authors of our book, it does seem that HS reform moves at “geological speed”. Not much has changed since the industrial model founded in the 20’s. So maybe this is what we need, a race, something to come in and shake it up. But I think I prefer the way Daniels, Bizar and Zemelman document their successes, failures and needs. It seems more like productive “Group Work to the Top” would be more beneficial than a race with teachers starting to compete with teachers. As they humbly note, in making a new school they “are much, much slower to judge or criticize anyone else who works in a high school.”

Several ideas appealed to me about this reading. Most interesting best practice that I wish I would’ve had in high school is this notion of making the educational experience relevant to the outside world in the form of internships, volunteering, and working at part time jobs. It seems, when I look back, that my high school experience was hermetically sealed off from the outside world. I came from a good family that gave me ample opportunities but I still didn’t make many connections between school and how I related to the greater society or the possibilities that were out there for me in the work force. My “voice and leadership” skills were never actively challenged or engaged. Community involvement was also something the schools addressed in Second to None. Linking kids to the professional world outside of school will give them a greater breadth of knowledge.

Another model for Best Practice, which we are exercising right now and a model addressed in Second to None, is the experience of working with our “disparate fields” brethren (pg 13). The cohort model is important to carry forth in our professional career. The input and the expertise my Math or Science friends bring to the table tend to bring a different angle to the dialogue, no matter what it may be.

Smaller schools should also be a priority. The masses that I see in some of these comp sites are impersonal. For the shy student, the multitudes can be like navigating through a foggy bog. The criticism of the teachers at Columbine that they weren’t aware of the bullying might have been true. However, it wasn’t necessarily a criticism of who they were or how blind they were to the issues. In a school of 3,000, classes of 36-45 students at 5 periods a day, it’s a wonder there is any student/ teacher relationship at all.

One minor criticism I had in BPHS took place in one little sentence. It spoke of "deep parent involvement." I’ve seen some outreach programs to involve parents, such as ELAC and attempts in the Escondido school district to have Parent Ambassadors. They are crucial. But the involvement also has to recognize the 2 working parent family. I’m shocked at the amount of time that my 1st grader has to put into homework. I agree with it and much of it is meaningful. However, at the end of the work day there is dinner, bath, requisite cleaning and then HW. It’s consuming and not for the faint of heart. There are parents out there who don’t have the same view on homework so how do you sign them up? I don’t see how you can possibly get a 1st grader through their “packets” unless you’re sitting right there with them!

From the Library

Another black blog. Let's give it a whirl! Thanks for the chance to blog some more, Dr. Lawler. My other blogs float around in the ether of some cold server cloud.

Hooray!