Author: Mr. Chase

Flash Assignment: History

The Gist:

  • We have 1:1 laptops.
  • I’m using the laptops to have kids jigsaw an understanding of the world in which Henry V exists.
  • It’s putting their research and reference skills to use in a way that will prove valuable in the immediate future.
  • They’re owning the learning (wouldn’t November be proud?).

The Whole Story:

My Shakespeare course just finished up The Tempest. It was fun, they created audio versions of the play which will be posted for other teachers to use soon. (Silly editing process.)

Our next work will be the first Shakespearian history they’ve encountered whilst at SLA. We did a minute of historical interpretation of the other works we’ve looked at so far this semester (King Lear and The Tempest). For Henry V, I want to make sure they leave with a better understanding of what was what during and leading up to Shakespeare’s day. Here’s what we did:

  • One person from each table group came up and pulled a slip of paper from the Coffee Can of Fate.
  • They read the slip of paper aloud and either kept it or gave it up.
  • If they kept it, all was set.
  • If they gave it up, another team would steal it and be set and the team that actually pulled the paper would wait for the next round.

Eventually, everything worked out and each table group had a paper.

The topics:

  1. Theatrical History (1400 A.D. – 1650 A.D.)
  2. The 100 Years War
  3. Social Classes
  4. Daily Life
  5. Henry IV (the plays)
  6. Technology of Warfare
  7. Divine Right of Ascension
  8. Feudalism

They have today to use their laptops to research their respective topics.

Next class, they will teach the class about their topic for approx. 7 minutes. They’ll have to create something that allows the rest of the class to take notes, is a physical handout or is a digital handout. I’m planning of posting what they come up with for anyone to use.

Based on what they present, I’ll make a quiz and incorporate the new knowledge throughout our unit of study.

This assignment would be possible without the laptops, but it’s so much better because of the laptops. It will also be a better class for their uses of multiple platforms to present their lessons than if I were to attempt to put together the same material in a small window of time.

I’m going back to school

The Gist:

  • I got a scholarship to get my master’s degree.
  • It has me thinking about the kind of entitled, empowered learner I’ve become.
  • I wonder if the kind of learner I’ve become will mesh with this online program.

The Whole Deal:

I had something extra to be thankful for this year – I hope.

Tuesday, I received an e-mail from the Liberty Mutual Teachers Program. Through their Learn Return program, I’ve received a scholarship to pursue my master’s degree.

I’m psyched.

I’ve made a few starts at going to grad school. The furthest I’ve come was a program through Walden University just before I moved up to Philly. Turned out moving expenses and tuition expenses aren’t always compatible.

I resigned myself to the idea that I would be getting my master’s as soon as someone offered to pay for it. Who knew that would actually happen.

The folks at Learn Return have told me I’d be getting info. in the next couple of weeks about how to redeem my “scholarship through Pearson Education and its master’s degree partner.”

In a few weeks, the experiment begins.

Last week, while presenting with SLA colleagues and students at Digital is… the National Writing Project’s first annual conference, a participant from a college that will not be named commented, “I worry that we’re not ready for your students.”

I told her they should be worried.

I am a little bit too. SLA students are empowered and entitled. It’s a direct result of Chris empowering and entitling his teachers.

Thusly, I’m an entitled and empowered teacher / learner. I wonder if Pearson Education and its master’s degree partner are ready for me.

It will be a grand experiment.

New Rules

The Gist:

  • For a year of my life I lived by some pretty helpful rules.
  • I’m reviving the experiment in preparation for my next marathon and to apply what some of my students are learning about food.
  • Once a week, I’ll be writing about my progress here.
  • Many of the rules this time around are from Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food.

The Whole Deal:

When I turned 27, I set some rules for myself.

I’d moved to Philly in a whirlwind the Fall before and still hadn’t regained my bearings in life. The rules were social and wellness based. I eliminated high-fructose corn syrup, I pledged to run 27 races within one calendar year, I worked to cut my use of plastics as much as possible, etc.

It worked. I felt better and life gained some semblance of order.

That year, I ran both the Philadelphia and Chicago marathons within a few weeks of each other. That was a mistake.
Chicago was one of the sunniest, hottest races I’ve run. In Philadelphia, we had to be careful at the water stops because the spilt water had created ice patches on the course. I didn’t really run for a year after.

Now, I’m signed up for the Ocean Drive Marathon in my attempt to get to 10 marathons in 10 years.
Add to that the disjointedness of my eating habits since returning from Africa, and it’s time for new rules.

Not one to do anything boring, I’m adopting Michael Pollan’s rules from In Defense of Food:

  1. Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.
  2. Avoid food products containing ingredients that are A) unfamiliar, B) unpronounceable, C) more than five in number, or that include D) high-fructose corn syrup.
  3. Avoid products that make health claims.
  4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay our of the middle.
  5. Get out of the supermarket whenever possible.

I’ll also be running every other day w/ the ole Nike+ attached to my iPod to keep track of my ramp up to the race (and those that follow).

As of right now, that’s all I’m working with. I’m open to any suggestions.

The plan is to blog once a week on how it’s all working out. I realized it’s going to be a bit of an adjustment when I couldn’t put the pre-shredded cheese on my eggs this morning.

Tim Best and Matt VanK worked with our seniors on a food unit throughout most of the first quarter. I’m hoping to pick up where they left off and explore the applications of what they learned.

Weighty Words

One of my Grade 12 Students, Bre Bonner, brought me her copy of Eclipse today. As she handed it to me, I observed the relative ease with which I was able to hold it. This led me to pick up some other texts in the room and head down to the physics room. They have all sorts of cool toys. What’s below illustrates what I found.

Here are the standings:

Text

Pg. #

Weight

Dimensions

The Norton Anthology of Poetry 4th Ed. edited by Ferguson, Margaret, Mary Jo Salter, Jon Stallworthy

1998

3.1 lbs.

9.125”x5.625”x2.125”

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

629

1.3 lbs.

8.5”x5.75”x2”

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling

652

2.1 lbs.

9.25”x6.25”x1.75”

And, before you ask, I checked, the average length of a full line of text in Eclipse is a little over 3.75″. In Harry Potter, it’s approximately 4.25″.

There’s an easy joke to be made about the literal and figurative weights of these texts measuring up, but I won’t make it.

Why, though, is Eclipse comparable in size to these other texts, but weighing in nearly one and two pounds lighter than Harry Potter and Norton respectively?

Forget anything with an electric charge, let’s work this media literacy first.

And they protested Harry Potter?

The Gist:

Twilight Saga =

Cycle of Abuse

The Whole Deal:

I bought my younger sister Kirstie her copy of Breaking Dawn for her birthday. She was 15. It’s a hard life having an older brother as an English teacher – you’re pretty much guaranteed books as gifts for the rest of your life. She didn’t seem to mind. I would have bought my elder younger sister her copy too, but she was 18 when it came out and went with her friend to the midnight book release.

Today, I feel guilty.

I just got back from New Moon.

No other film in recent memory has reassured me of the necessity of my job teaching students to read texts critically.

I’ve stayed away from reading the Twilight series beyond the first chapter of the first book. It didn’t engage me (read – it was poorly written), and so I opted out.

I don’t remember seeing the first film. I remember leaving and thinking it was bad. I chalked it up to Melissa Rosenberg‘s writing or Catherine Hardwicke‘s directing.

Having seen New Moon, I realize I might have been wrong.

This series is dangerous.

If you’re in the dark, here’s the deal.

Girl falls for guy she can’t have. He can’t resist her. If he gets her, he’ll kill her. They decide to make a go of it. Things go badly, she sits in her room staring catatonically out the window for what the audience is told is three months. Somewhere after the three months, her father steps in and suggests that this behavior is possibly unhealthy. She takes his advice and decides to engage in risky behavior. Whilst beginning to engage in said behavior, she strikes up a relationship with a new guy. He promises to be different than Guy 1,  “I know what he did to you but Bella, I want you to know I will never hurt you.” Turns out she can’t have that guy either. Guy one breaks his promise:

I swore I wasn’t going to get mad, no matter what you said to me. But… I just got so upset that I was going to lose you… that you couldn’t deal with what I am…

Jacob Black, New Moon, Chapter 13, p.312

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Now, I don’t deny Twilight its right to exist. What I wish I could deny are early studio reports that New Moon has the third largest opening in Hollywood history.

Judging only by audience reactions as the movie unfolded, we’ve got cause for worry. Few, if any, of my fellow theatergoers were experiencing the same churning stomachs as I.

Twilight to Girls: By being who you are, you make it hard for boys to resist what they want to do to you.

Girls to Twilight: Awwwwww.

Twilight to Boys: Girls will tempt you to lose control just by being themselves. Make sure you let them know they are leading you to lose control and that losing control will result in them losing their beauty, their souls and / or their lives.

Boys to Twilight: Cool…vampires.

We need to be teaching this book – or at least teaching our students to read this book with questions in their minds.

As I understand it, Girl becomes a vampire at the end of it all. She gets married, of course. So, once she’s lost herself, she loses her soul.

According to author Stephenie Meyer:

Breaking Dawn‘s cover [a queen chess piece] is a metaphor for Bella’s progression throughout the entire saga. She began as the weakest (at least physically, when compared to vampires and werewolves) player on the board: the pawn. She ended as the strongest: the queen. In the end, it’s Bella that brings about the win for the Cullens.

And all it costs her is her soul, her life and individuality.

“You’re overestimating my self-control.” I know the feeling.

Remember Facebook?

The Gist:

– Facebook is dying.

– Teachers are helping kill it.

– We need to respect public spaces.

– Content delivery on Facebook is like those people asking me to sign a petition in the park.

The Whole Deal:

Went with Tim Best to the Tech Forum Northeast conference last weekend to take part in a panel discussion of social networking applications in education. It was similar to our panel last year on the topic of wikis and google docs in education.
This year, though, we didn’t bring a slidedeck. In fact, we didn’t bring a single slide. Also, there were no handouts, no links, no wikis – nothing.

We were up after Peggy Sheehy from Ramapo Central School District in NY and Kristine Goldhawk and Cathy Swan from New Canaan, CT. (Here’s their preso.)
When it was our turn up, we diverged sharply from Sheehy, Goldhawk and Swan. In fact, we diverged sharply from the session title, “Social Networking in the Classroom: Tools for Teaching the Facebook Generation.”
Aside from a brief example of how I’d used twitter and adium to work with one of my students back at SLA during some guy‘s keynote address, we didn’t use any of the tools.
Instead, we asked what the room was thinking and what questions they had.
One of the participants mentioned using Facebook for course management. Goldhawk had said some of the teachers in her district were doing it, and this lady wanted to know more.
I answered with something I’d scribbled in my notes whilst listening to the other panelists, “We need to respect Facebook.” Actually, I started with, “Does anyone in here remember something called Myspace? Why hasn’t anyone in here mentioned it?” Someone in the crowd piped up, “Or Friendster?” (Aw, poor Friendster.)
Even if the prognostication of the NYT Magazine is wrong and ‘Book isn’t about to die, we need to respect it.
I say this knowing full well I designed a project last year using Facebook as the vehicle for the whole thing.
I wish I hadn’t.
The office at SLA has a conference room-style table at its heart. Though students are expected to give up their seats to faculty members, you can often find a mix of students and faculty at the table during lunch or before and after school. This is not the norm at most HS. The office is not a commons area in most HS. As a result, a slice of our faculty steer clear of the office and that table during lunch or before and after school.
It’s not that they don’t love our kids, it’s that they need a break from our kids. They need their space. They find it in their classrooms or our hidden faculty room.
As a result, I have less contact with those members of our faculty. Letting everyone in has meant that we’ve forced some of the people I’d most like to see out.
We’re doing this with Facebook when we choose it over creating a class ning or wiki or the like.
If my teachers had started trying to teach me to diagram sentences whilst I was hanging out in my clubhouse when I was a kid, I would have built a new clubhouse.

Let’s Plan

This semester, I’m teaching a senior English elective class called Sexuality and Society in Literature.
Our first text of the year was Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex along with several supporting documents including Helen Fisher’s TED Talk “The Brain in Love.”
The idea for the outline of the class is to take a look at sexuality and society in lit throughout the different phases of life. The idea behind reading Oedipus first was to look at the idea of how some society’s have interpreted our course in “love” prior to birth.
Rather than wrapping unit plans around a particular book as has been the practice of English teachers for time in memorium (with the possible exception of short story and poetry units), I’m approaching planning by theme. Oedipus looked like this, and I wasn’t satisfied.
I find myself asking “What do I want them to learn?” vs. “What do I want them to learn from this book?”
I know it seems like a simple thing. Look around, though. It’s not how most English teachers are planning.
Speaking of, here’s the point of all this.
This is my sorta blank unit plan for the “Childhood” unit which is next. If you’re reading this, then I’m looking for your input.
What can we build?

So it IS a popularity contest

In his Sunday NYT column “An Echo Chamber of Boom and Bust,” Yale economics and finance professor Robert Shiller explained global finance thusly:

…[T]hink of the world economy as driven by social epidemics, contagion of ideas and huge feedback looks that gradually change world views.

So, basically, recessions, depressions, and tight-rolled jeans all have the same cause?

If you happen to be in Philly…

This has been living on the ‘Book for a while now, but I figured I might as well give it a shout here as well:

You are invited to come join six local teachers as they read from their co-authored book-Teaching Hope. (***currently #33 on the NYTimes Best-Seller List***)

Host: Philly FW Teachers

Date: Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2009

Time: 6 – 7 PM

Place: Borders Books, 1 S. Broad St. Philadelphia, PA

Books are $14.99, paperback. All proceeds benefit the Freedom Writers Foundation that continues to train teachers in innovative, tried and true learning methods as well as continuing to sponsor continuing education for worthy and deserving students.

About TEACHING HOPE:
“Think of that teacher, that one teacher—the one who made the difference, who saw you and pushed you to find out who you wanted to become. This book is written by 150 people who attempt to be that teacher in the lives of their students, every day.” Thus begins TEACHING HOPE: Stories from the Freedom Writer Teachers and Erin Gruwell; Foreword by Anna Quindlen (Broadway Books, September 2009; Trade Paperback Original). Marking the 10th anniversary of the New York Times #1 bestseller The Freedom Writers Diary, Erin Gruwell has gathered a merry, mixed band of fighters—150 teachers from across the United States and Canada trained in the Freedom Writers Method—to tell their stories of teaching students in and out of traditional classrooms and, just maybe, change the world.

www.freedomwritersfoundation.org

#33

One of the best books about teaching I’ve ever read is Holler If You Hear Me: The Education of a Teacher and His Students by Gregory Michie.

I didn’t read it until three years after I’d started teaching, and I needed it. In Holler…, Michie examines his teaching career in Chicago public schools and his attempt to connect with his kids in a way that is honest and frank without losing optimism.

Michie’s updates on former students helped me the most. As he wrote about catching up with them years down the road, not all of them were successful, not all of them had made their way to a better life.

I was teaching at Phoenix Academy in Sarasota, FL when I read Holler. At Phoenix, we recruited the lowest achieving students in the district and offered them smaller class sizes and intensive non-traditional instruction with the goal of moving them toward grade level and a successful transition to a traditional high school.

As you can imagine, it was a tough fight with many losing battles. Michie’s book was helpful because it helped me to redefine what success meant in education. Here was a guy who had made many attempts similar to the ones I was making at Phoenix, finding out he hadn’t saved everyone, and still remaining optimistic about his profession.

I bring this up because August 18 another book about teaching appeared in book stores across North America. The book is entitled Teaching Hope: Stories from the Freedom Writer Teachers, and I helped write it.

The book is by 150 teachers from across North America. Every state is represented as well as several provinces in Canada and teachers from Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

It’s not a how-to. In fact, it’s far from it. You’ll find no lesson plans or new pedagogical approaches within its pages.

It’s also not about teacher martyrdom or teacher messiahs. Yes, there are moments of success and moments or failure, but they sit alongside one another – as do the moments in a school year.

It’s not meant to preach or presume to have the answers. In the end of one entry, when a teacher asks a student whether he will attempt suicide again, the answer is simply, “Yes.” I don’t know what to do with that.

I hope that it is three things:

1) I hope it is a window for those outside of teaching into many facets of education that doesn’t try to be what Tom Moore or Dan Meyer hate about teaching movies, but instead offers something more complex.

2) I hope it is a conduit of connection for teachers who read it.

3) I hope it is a catalyst toward increasing community involvement in education.

As of today, Teaching Hope is #33 on the New York Times Best Sellers List for Paperback Nonfiction. I hope the people who put it there are finding what I found in Holler.