For the first episode of the podcast we spent a cup of coffee with Harvard Graduate School of Education student Megan. Over the course of a grandé, we discussed Megan’s drive to implement a truer inclusion program for special needs students as well as the difficulties of professional collaboration when new teachers meet existing systems.
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Three different sources sent me news of Sebastian Thrun leaving Stanford in favor of literally bigger, if not better things. I dig Thrun’s move for the moment because it throws light on the idea of moving outside the currently restricted system of education delivery. It’s not new, what he’s doing, but it’s new to him, and likely most of the readers who are flabbergasted by the move.
Today was a moment where I experienced first-hand some of the conundrums possible if disruptions like Thrun’s take hold.
For the moment, I’m cross-registered at the Kennedy School of Government in a course called Solving Problems Using Digital Technology. While the title may not be incredibly sexy, the course is. Forged in a partnership with Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s New Urban Mechanics office and the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), the class is pretty much everything I could hope for in a learning environment. Studying tech tools and open government practices, students are charged with partnering with the DSNI to help shape the neighborhood’s plan for continued urban renewal.
The learning and work of the class will have a direct impact on improving the lives of those we study and make the learning immediately practical in our lives.
Today was the course’s first meeting.
The room was packed.
The course is capped at 32.
I am a cross-registrant.
When such popularity happens in a Kennedy School course, registration moves to some strange bidding process akin to an academic auction I am not completely clear about.
Cross-registrants need not concern themselves, the process pretty much precludes them from obtaining spots in the class.
My hope at this point is teeny.
The course will be made public in many ways. Sessions will be aired via a Google+ Hangout and their recordings posted on youtube for viewing. The course has a twitter handle and its site lives on Google (outside of the Kennedy School’s walled system).
Each of these is a reason I want to take the course and ostensibly a reason it shouldn’t matter that, like Thurn’s students I’m not actually present or enrolled for credit in the course.
Except, I’m looking to complete my program of study this academic year, and no matter the proof, attempting to show informal participation in a course in order to obtain credit means that learning won’t move me closer to that goal.
Without the credit, I miss the diploma. Without the diploma, I lose the blip on the CV still valued by the majority of the world.
Learning matters.
Credits and accreditation matter.
While both are important, the combination of both is more powerful than either could hope to be on its own.
I’m not sure what I’ll do if I don’t make it into the class. If I say I’ll follow along as an outsider, I imagine it’s only a matter of time before the work of my for-credit courses creep in. I wonder what the rate of creepage is for registrants in Thurn’s courses when whatever qualifies as their “for-credit” commitments begin to creep in.
At the end of May, I’ll be doing something different with my life than I was doing in October and different still from what I was doing 365 days before that. This promises to be a year of change to rival the changes of years past.
As I was working on my resolutions for the year, I kept this in mind. I want to document the year with the same spirit as last year, and I know another daily writing project will run the risk of draining me and distracting me from experiencing what’s going on as the changes take place.
As such, I’ve arrived at the following resolutions:
1. Run every day for at least 10 minutes. This one was clearing inspired by last year’s project. I understood the why better through explaining it to someone else. I came to know myself as a writer last year by putting myself in writing each day. In the same way, when I get to know people, I think of myself as a writer and a runner. So, I’ll be running. It’s a new approach. I’ll be running for 10 minutes some days, though my mind will want to go farther. I like that. I like actively working to shift my paradigm and experience as a runner. I’m also knowledgeable enough as a runner, at this point, to know to listen to my body and be mindful of the injuries possible in such an undertaking. If this year is to include the geographic changes I anticipate it to, experiencing where I am and who I am in those places through running will be interesting.
2. Make one photo each week that represents that week of the year. I thought briefly about a photo-a-day project, but my sister, Kirstie, helped me make up my mind. Kirstie is, as I have said, a brilliant photographer with a keen eye. She completed a 365 project last year to tremendous results. When I asked her if she would be continuing it this year, she said no. The goal of a photo each day meant she wasn’t creating shots of the quality she wanted. I can appreciate that. This year, she’s surveyed 52 friends and family members for inspirations quotations and ideas. Each week, she’ll be creating a photo each week around one of those guiding ideas. My project will be less global and much more self-centered, but I hope it to be a catalog of life this year that pushes me to think more visually. The photo above was my first week’s attempt.
3. Go vegan. I’m still a little sketchy of the details on this one. I wrote last year of my month-long go at eating vegan and the cultural and personal quandaries it inspired. Since then, I’ve continued to consider my role as a citizen, the effects of what I eat on who and what I am, and the footprint of all of this. I’m starting to think of this as a biological retirement plan. More on this later.
4. Journal each day (even if it’s only a line). My mom journals every day. Leading up to the new year, she spent her mornings on the couch reading through her life in years past and remembering the connective tissue of who she is now. For a long time, I journaled alongside my students in class. It’s different than blogging, and I want to remember why.
5. Read 52 books. That’s it. Similar to running, I count myself as a reader. As much as I could easily remain among the choir who chant solemnly they “don’t have time” to read, I know I can make time for this. To be sure, grad school will continue to help push me toward this goal. The other piece is one of genuine living. In the classroom, I told students over and over of the connection between reading, writing, and thinking. I insisted they would be better writers for reading and vice versa. If I am to stand by that and improve as a writer, I must read. Fifty-two is an arbitrary goal furnished by the calendar. Still, it’s as good a number as any.
I didn’t intend 5 resolutions this year. It just shook out that way. As much as I’m excited to work at each of them, I’m excited to find how my internal understanding and logic of the rules surrounding each resolutions shifts during the year.
I’m most curious to see how they shape me.
One of the reviews of this book faults Greene for writing about linguistics without being a linguist. I don’t find the same fault in the pages here. Certainly, this has the density one would expect from an Economist writer, but don’t let that fool you.
As an English major and English teacher who has been thinking about these things for some time, the initial introduction to prescriptivism and descriptivism did much to act as a refresher for the topics and lay the foundation of the different global perspectives of the book.
From a historical understanding of the resurrection of Hebrew to the formation of modern Turkish (an subsequent distance from pre-1930 Turkish texts), I’m walking away from this book with much richer and deeper understanding of language and it’s formation around the world.
Perhaps most helpful for me was Greene’s clear love of language. If there were any impediment created by his lack of training as a linguist, his love of language makes up for it handily.
Reading about language from the perspective of one who is so clearly curious and in love with language shapes the book as a tool for infectious love of language.
If you’re curious about language, read this. If you’re passionate about language, read this. If you are hungry for a appropriately-dense text acting as a primer to understanding linguistics, read this. It’s not a book for everyone, but it’s definitely a book for those who love and are fascinated by language.
cross-posted at http://goodreads.com/mrchase
MAKE IT HAPPEN
“Start with a reasonable goal, develop a plan, then record your workouts and progress,” says Martin. “If that’s not enough motivation to not skip workouts, find a coach or a training buddy who can help you keep your feet to the fire, and announce your goals to friends, family, and coworkers.” Social media is a good place to declare your running plans, too, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, dailymile.com, or runnersworld.com (Forums or The Loop). If all else fails, for every mile you run reward yourself with $1 toward a trip or something else you desire. Just don’t confuse consistency with rigidity. It’s okay to skip a run for a legit reason; it’s not okay to repeatedly skip them if your reasons are as thin as an Ethiopian marathoner.
DEGREE OF DIFFICULTY 6
In the march toward defining my New Year’s Resolutions, I was reading this article today. Bob Cooper of RunnersWorld.com does something simple and brilliant that works toward the argument of knowing your audience. After building a case for each resolution and providing starting steps, he includes one other piece of information – a degree of difficulty.
It’s a perfect example of writing with your audience in mind. The folks stopping by RW are looking for a challenge. They hit the road or trail each day looking for something a little more than they found their last time out. Cooper includes no explanation for his designations, but that doesn’t matter.
When we talk about creativity and approaching problems from new angles, it’s often implied that type of thinking needs to be gigantic and disruptive at all times. Cooper manages to be fresh and creative in his writing with the addition of a three words and a number.
Now, how do you teach this kind of thinking?
I had a car when this year started.
I had a car and a job and lived in the same state as my dog.
None of those things is true today.
For as much as the where and the what of my life have shifted, the who remains remarkably the same. I’ve spent the last few hours reading the first few dozen posts of the year, and of this series.
In many respects, they were some of the easiest posts to write. They came from the top of the pile of ideas and didn’t require me developing the now-constant habit of asking, “How could I write about that?” as I interacted with the world. They also speak to some of the core pieces of who I am and what I know. I am still a kitchen dancer who believes in the power of silly and understands the scaling power of boredom.
I still have questions for Michelle Rhee and like to listen in. I sit in wonder as I think about Sam and the Diatreme.
I won’t list them all. They’re here for your perusal and mine.
Here, just here, in this space and series I wrote and published around 150,000 words this year. Add to that my writing for classes, and this was my most prolific year linguistically.
As much as I’m looking forward to it, I’m nervous about tomorrow. Will I still write? Will I want to? Will I feel purpose?
The answer to each of these, I hope, is yes. Still, the worry is perched in my brain.
In a year that brought more change to my life than most any I can think of, writing here was a constant. At each day’s close, it was what I did. The rules changed and shifted according to my needs, but I was always committed. In the throes of change, this was something I did.
I’ll miss it.
Reading through the posts, I am sad to leave them here. They are the thoughts I found most worth sharing, and now they will sleep as an archive. I’ll miss the conversations. They’ll stay here for my children to find some day when they go looking to know better who I was, and that makes me happy.
In my first post, I mentioned Robert Fulghum. From boyhood, I’ve admired the dances he choreographs with words. Many of his are words I wish I wrote. While I’m still waiting for his reply to my letter so many years ago, I’d like to think I’ve done something here of which he’d approve. I’ve gone on a journey, an adventure of the every day, and left a map for myself should I ever want to return.
Knowing that makes it all worthwhile.
That’s what I know – for now.
Illiteracy is rampant. People are out of communication.
- Karen Black
On a plane for Atlanta.
The row ahead of me includes, from aisle to window, dad, mom, 3-4 year old.
While signs suggest this isn’t junior’s first flight, he’s also not quite ready to take over for the captain.
He cannot help moving. He is driven by the energy of a pre-schooler multiplied by the idea of actually flying – up there – in the planes. They look so sky when they sore over his house.
I sit at a safe observation distance in the aisle seat with a sleeping elderly couple providing suitable insulation between my flight and this kid’s frenetic energy.
I’ve other work to complete, but can’t tear my eyes and ears off of the scene.
This little guy cannot stop investigating. He’s got questions, and his compact size allows him to wiggle to vantage points I’ve never enjoyed in flight.
I am loving the story he’s writing of the flight.
The flight attendants, all big hair and drink rations, are having none of it.
“Ma’am? Ma’am! He’s got to sit. He’s got to sit down. The captain’s got the fasten seatbelt sign on. Ma’am?”
The line is delivered with a smile reminiscent of the one the evil queen must have flashed when meeting her stepdaughter while courting Snow White’s dad.
Not above attempting help, the flight attendant tries to buy compliance from the little guy, “Do you like chocolate milk? I think I’ve got some chocolate milk in back.”
Motion stops in the seat, and the flight attendant turns toward the tail of the plane. To no one in particular, she flashes a face of “OH. MY. LORD.”
After the milk is delivered, our rows enjoy a period of relative calm.
“Uh-oh, mommy,” I hear.
Mom’s head looks toward the window seat and then turns to dad, “His armrest is broken. We should tell them.”
Dad, stereotypically non-communicative, nods his head and heads back to sleep.
Twenty minutes later, mom and kid work their way to the restroom. He’s gotta go. Plus, peeing on a plane sounds like an adventure.
While they’re away, flight attendants begin collecting trash. One meets another just behind my row.
“He broke the armrest,” she says.
A heavy, all-knowing sigh.
They continue on their way.
From that point, until we exit the plane, a quiet battle takes place between the flight attendants and the family seated in front of me. It’s as thought mom, dad, and kid have shown themselves to be incompetent as passengers. Several times, they are questioned as to the upright and locked status of their seat backs as we prepare for landing.
The kid has broken their plane and they will take it out on this family in the only way they know how – by flight attending them to death.
As I watch the situation turn from cute to funny to sad, I wonder at the seconds of miscommunication that shift how these two groups understand one another. An event took place for which neither was responsible, but both were party to, and it defined how they came to know one another.
It took only seconds.
Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
- Pres. Woodrow Wilson, “Fourteen Point Speech,” Point 1
This is the fourteenth post I’ve written today. It is the penultimate post of the series. Tomorrow’s post will be all, “Here’s what I’ve learned by looking at what I think I know.” Today was clearing out the closet of ideas I’ve been stowing in the corners of my computer and my brain this year. And I’ll happily admit feeling some strange, nerdy camaraderie with Wilson’s 14 Points as I wrote.
I’m a little surprised I’m still up writing, that I didn’t head to bed half a dozen posts ago and decide to finish the rest of the bunch tomorrow.
It became clear to me around today’s 4th post that I would be writing all 14 today. I needed to wake up tomorrow knowing the 365th day of this endeavor meant I needed only to write the 365th post. I needed the last post to have its own day, the way it all began.
For anyone following along this year, or simply by looking at the title of the series, it would seem as though I would only need to write one post each day anyway.
That would be true, had life not gotten in the way. The changes and moves of this year (stuff I’ll write about tomorrow) meant some days (quite a few, in the end) didn’t include blogging as a priority.
That is fine with me. I sad a hundred days ago or so, that I’d come to the realization that the rules of this enterprise were my own and that breaking those rules wasn’t cheating, but adapting.
So, as the Postal Service’s “Sleeping In,” plays on iTunes, that’s what I plan to do tomorrow, knowing today I handled the heavy lifting of holding myself accountable for meeting a goal I set for myself almost a year ago.
Today was a goal in itself – Find 14 ideas worth sharing and keep the writing cogent. I hope I’ve succeeded. I think I have.
I’ve just added another book to the to-read pile. Gary just suggested Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema, and the Transformative Power of Music by Tricia Tunstall. It came with this recommendation:
El Sistema is SO heavy on a million different levels. There are a bazillion lessons to take from it, not the least of which is that the compromises we make reflexively in the name of pragmatism, incrementalism or budget shortfalls are not only wrong, but unnecessary.
When Gingrich talks about learning the dignity of work, the first thing educators should ask is, “does their schoolwork have dignity?” Then we should look at efforts like El Sistema where a work ethic is developed while doing something complex, meaningful, beautiful and spiritually uplifting.
Don’t be thrown off by the prominence of Dudamel in the title. This book is about education, culture, children and transformation.
My interest is effectively piqued.
It’s also got me thinking of a course I’d like to see in every school in the country. For a working title, let’s call it Synthesis. The goal would be to give student the space and resources to develop deep understandings of the connections between the ideas they’re encountering in whatever other courses in which they’re enrolled.
It comes from frequent frustration last semester of not having a space to converse with other students on how the ideas from my different courses were melting together in my brain. I could write about it online and in papers for my professors’ eyes only, but I wanted discussion and, well, synthesis.
Each week of the course would require students to prepare a brief on their learning across courses in the previous week. The question guiding the brief: How did your classes intersect this week? From there, discussions would ensue with students introducing the nascent connections in their minds and asking for help from their peers in the massaging and upkeep of those connections.
Throughout the course, larger creations would also be asked for, wherein students pulled an over-arching idea that made up a decent amount of the connective tissue of his learning and presented the idea as he understood it to the rest of the class. Think of it as Aristotle’s Lyceum, but for credit.
Imagine the power in asking students to find and tease out connections between algebra, United States history, and biology. Imagine what listening to these discussions could do to inform teachers’ practice.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to imagine the structure and planning that would need to go into constructing such a shift of mind around thinking of learning as a continuous and connected act.
Nice! Compulsory feedback #fail
- Gary Stager
To register next semester, I (along with all other Harvard ED School students) were required to complete our Fall term course evaluations. One would imagine signing off on the student loan promissory note was enough to get the job done, but it turns out telling others how they did their job is one of those fine-print requirements.
I’m of a mixed mind about the process.
To not see the erosion of validity in mandatory course evaluations, I’d have to be blind.
Then again, my answers were truthful and honest, but I’d likely never have completed the evaluations if left to my own post-semester devices.
Realizing this puzzle, I’ve been trying to think of possible alternatives.
Evaluations for two of my classes were particularly frustrating because I’d been keeping a mental list all semester of comments and compliments about what worked and what didn’t. I’d been waiting for the chance to offer feedback. When the chance came, though, I couldn’t remember what I wanted to say. I remembered bits and pieces, but completing course work and getting assignments down on the page throughout the semester had taken precedence over keeping a running evaluative journal.
For another course, I wanted more than text boxes could provide. I wanted the chance to sit with the professor and say, “I know you’re brilliant. I know you understand more about this field than I can probably ever hope to understand. I’ve got a little game of my own when it comes to teaching. Maybe we could help each other out?”
I dig wordsmithing, but I just couldn’t find a way to put that sentiment judiciously in a course evaluation.
My thinking on course evaluations at any level runs parallel to my thinking on single-scoop standardized testing. The bulk of the work has been done, and the feedback is supposed to paint a picture of the learning and teaching as a whole. It just doesn’t work. Evaluations need not be mandated if they are meaningful to those on either end.
If students benefit from frequent and multi-faceted feedback, it stands to reason the same could be said of teachers.
It could be as simple as, “What would you keep, and what would you change from today’s lesson?” or “What are two things you would have done to make today’s class better?”
Not only would such thinking model a willingness for improvement, but taking the feedback seriously would likely improve the level of instruction in the class as well.
Few things are as lonely as those few moments after a class of students has walked out the door and a teacher is left in the vacuum between the lesson that has just concluded and the next lesson to be planned.
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