Author: Mr. Chase

Play by any other name would be as fun

NYT Columnist Rob Walker writes about Amar Bhide’s new book The Venturesome Economy, stating:

American consumers have long shown an “exceptional willingness” to buy, for instance, technology products before their utility is clear. Such “venturesome consumers” help spur companies and entrepreneurs to take the risks that lead to innovation because they know there is a market willing to take a roughly analogous risk that the next new thing will turn out to have been worth buying.

Aside from harkening back to Mrs. Hurie’s 11th grade history class, this makes sense on its own, only it’s much simpler than all that. What Bhide refers to as “venturesomeness” is really just play. What do kids do when they don’t have to consider resources or schedules or usefulness? They play. That’s what’s key here. Playing.
An SLA student recently interviewed me about being a member of our community and what, specifically, set the school apart. To my mind, it’s play. The teachers and students at SLA have the freedom to play with their learning and their ideas.
Dress it up however you’d like, but American venturesomeness is truly just play.
Perhaps that explains why, as Walker points out, iFart was one of the top iPhone apps for so long.

Photo Credit: http://flickr.com/photos/marittime/3165130963/

I like Tom Hoffman’s brain

Hoffman writes:

If the terms of the argument include “if we simply focus on something and spend more money on it, it will get better,” then can’t we focus on something more direct than tests? Why can we improve testing but not teacher preservice education, for example?

Yeah.

I’ve got potential stuck in my craw

Surfing trash television tonight, I accidentally landed on a rebroadcast of the School District of Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s January 21 meeting. It’s the sort of thing that makes one long for TiVo.

The Commish was patting its collective back for updating SDP’s “Declaration of Education.” The way these people were carrying on, you’d have thought it was the other declaration. At one point, Chairwoman Sandra Dungee Glenn actually attempted to compare the two.

I’d not heard of the Declaration of Education, which surprised me given the District’s usually crackerjack communications department. Curious, I went looking. And, I found it.

The thing that hit?

We believe all children can reach their learning potential and that the achievement gap can be eliminated.

Now, I had taken potential to be an ever-moving goal, furthered by each productive step one took toward it. I’ll never reach my potential because I’m always building on what I can be. I’ll always have more potential.

According to the Commish, though, we’re going to get kids a whole lot closer to self-actualization than Maslow ever expected. I wonder what that moment looks like, “Well, Johnny, I know you’re in sixth grade, but our tests show you’ve reached your learning potential. Scurry along, now. Good luck.”

No, exactly.

What kind of interesting person tells people she’s reached her learning potential? “Yeah, I finished the latest Doris Kearns Goodwin and realized I’d reached my learning potential. It’s a shame too, I really enjoyed reading.”

I know this can be boiled down to semantics, and the easy counter-argument is that this really doesn’t matter. But that only saddens me more. This is our Declaration of Education – a document wherein we establish what we believe and want for the education of those entrusted to us. No better place exists for us to carefully craft a message to inspire and invigorate a sleeping profession.

Let the document read:

We believe all children can build upon their potential and achieve more than they ever dreamed possible.

If we’re making declarations, let’s not ignore the pursuit.

Tether your ideas or history will ignore you too

Chris made a comment the other day to the effect that buzzwords are more than buzzwords in the hands and minds of people who can play with big ideas. It was a statement that had been buzzing around in my brain for quite some time.

Here’s the exception – 21st Century Learner/Teacher/Skills/Anything. Imagine if teachers had said at the outset of the 20th Century, “Let’s develop a skillset we believe important for all students in the country to master, and then build schools around those skills.”

Wait a minute! That’s exactly what happened, and we’ve been fighting against it since the start of the panini effect that Friedman guy’s been yammering on about.

I understand how calling there things 21st Century _________ makes for some sexy packaging, but two things happen:

  1. We risk looking more stupid than we need to a hundred years from now.
  2. We create the false illusion that the things we need to be doing in education now are somehow different from the things we’ve needed to be doing in education forever.

New Zealand’s Interface Magazine has the ridiculously named “Eight habits of highly effective 21st century teachers.” Andrew Churches lists the habits as:

  • Adapting
  • Being Visionary
  • Collaborating
  • Taking Risks
  • Learning
  • Communicating
  • Modeling Behavior
  • Leading

You think naming them “Eight habits of highly effective teachers” would be misleading?

Churches opens with:

What are the characteristics we would expect to see in a successful 21st century educator? Well, we know they are student-centric, holistic, and they’re teaching about how to learn as much as teaching about the subject area. We know, too, that they must be 21st century learners as well. But highly effective teachers in today’s classrooms are more than this – much more.

Now, that’s just silliness. Yesterday’s teachers needed those skills as much as today’s teachers need those skills as much as tomorrow’s teachers will need those skills. Again, I get the temptation to package these things in something a little more attractive that lends itself to highfaluting rhetoric where we talk about the loftiest of ideas.

Problem is, when teachers leave these discussions and return to their students, they need tangible examples to get them where they want to go. Finding out you’ve been sold nothing more than a big idea can lead to abandoning the idea for its lack of curricular tether. Man, I love a good tether.

Photo Credit: Jeff Monroe http://flickr.com/photos/43856553@N00/340408585/

‘Sex & Tech’: What’s it mean?

It’s a snow day, so I thought I’d read a bit about sex and technology. Luckily, The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and Cosmogirl.com were there to provide me with some light reading on the subject.
The basics:

A significant number of teens have electronically sent, or posted online, nude or semi-nude pictures or video of
themselves.

Duh.

Sending and posting nude or semi-nude photos or videos starts at a young age and becomes even more frequent as teens become young adults.

Tell me more.

Teens and young adults admit that sending/posting sexu-
ally suggestive content has an impact on their behavior.

But why?

Teens and young adults give many reasons for sending/
posting sexually suggestive content.  Most say it is a “fun
and flirtatious” activity.

Ah-ha!
Let’s sum this up: Teens and twenty-somethings are engaging in sexually curious behaviors that could lead to difficult and potentially dangerous choices. Their reasons are mixed, but can be broken down to the basic response of “It’s fun.”
The report might as well have been called, “Yup, it’s all pretty much the same. Adolescents like the sexy.”
Ignore the technology. This is about educating kids about sex. I’m guessing many will look at the survey results and argue the ghost is in the machine.
They’re right, if they realize the machine, not unlike soylent green, is people.

Might As Well Blog or My Map for the Quarter

Can't sleepI’ve honestly been trying to go to sleep for the past 45 minutes, but I can’t. No good reason, just restlessness.
I got much done today.
The book I’ve been waiting to teach, Dave Eggers’ What is the What, lingers in back order purgatory, so I’ve decided to move on. Not only have I mapped out the remainder of this quarter, I’ve a plan of attack for the third and fourth quarters as well. I’d been letting things live in my head for a few months now because the final three quarters of my year will be linked. Tomorrow, I unveil this triptic project to one class of 11th grade students. I’m expecting it to be a bit intense.
The outline is available here, but I’ll give you the skinny on Q3.
The essential question they’ll be investigating this quarter is “What causes systemic and individual change?”

Reading: The students will be operating in Lit. Circles, reading and analyzing texts related to the question. They’ll be organizing a timeline to complete the reading on schedule, having online conversations using moodle’s forum feature and having three f2f group talks about the book. Even better, I’m working to get at least one teacher SLA or not working with each book (spaces still available) to put more of a focus on the exploration of texts.

Book
 Author
Long Way Gone Ishmael Beah
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest Ken Kesey
It’s Not About the Bike Lance Armstrong
What is the What Dave Eggers
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou
When I was Puerto Rican Esmeralda Santiago
The Soloist Steve Lopez
A Room of One’s Own Virginia Woolf

Writing: The 2fers continue this quarter. This may be my all-time favorite assignment. A bi-weekly 2-page analytical paper built around an original thesis from each student with MLA citation. The frequency gives me time to provide each student individual feedback for the next paper and shapes my remediation or decision on which skills they’re ready for next.

Thinking: This is the long one. The students will be working with partners to identify a problem facing Philadelphia. From there, they’ll be responsible for researching the problem’s history, causes, impact and cost. They’ll be drafting annotated bibliographies on all of the above and then creating presentations in the vein of ignitephilly.org. The presentations will go up online where the world will vote for the problem and presentation that shows the most promise to be relieved. The top presentations from each class will create action plans in the third quarter and the fourth quarter will be all about putting those plans into action.

It’s not how I was taught English. While Mrs. Henning-Buhr and Mrs. Miller were lovely women, I don’t remember ever completing an assignment in their classes and feeling connected to the outside world. The goals across the three are simple: 1. Examine various texts for insight as to how their characters help shape a possible answer to the quarter’s essential question. 2. Incorporate that insight into frequent analytical writing to deepen their thinking on the topic. 3. Carry that enduring understanding to application using literary ideas to inform real world problem solving. All right, maybe not so simple.
More later.

A Little Perspective

Never one for the “What are you thankful for?” essay, my students watched the Water Buffalo video in class yesterday. I suppose I’m now one of those teachers who watches videos on the day before break, but that’s my cross to bear.
The plan was to have them watch the video where a $450 water buffalo which equals an Indonesian family’s yearly salary is gifted to such a family and we all learn a little bit about life and maybe, just maybe, ourselves.
To hit the lesson home, the students were going to catalog the price of everything they had on their person. This leads to, “Ohmigosh, I am carrying around the salary of an entire Indonesian family,” and our very special episode of Blossom concludes.
In another instance of underestimating our kids, they got it.
First hand up, “It just made me think of how much I have and how much I take for granted. I mean, all that work they have to do just to farm…”
Well, my work was done.
The nods of agreement across the classroom told me I needn’t proceed with the cataloging.
“Look up here,” say I, projecting the Kiva.org homepage on the board.
After a 10-minute explanation, the kids are working in teams to find a loan to which they think we should contribute the $50 sitting in my Kiva account.
When we get back from break, the class will vote.
The judiciousness with which they approached the selection process was inspiring.
There’s your critical thinking.

Proving Kevin Costner Right

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/224/514534462_88894375a9.jpg?v=0A Canadian teacher friend of mine made an impassioned plea to a group of assembled teachers the other day to get them to stop buying bottled water. “It is wrong to charge people for something necessary to their survival,” he reasoned.
As much as we speak of the fact our students don’t know a world without an Internet, they don’t know a world where where it isn’t the norm to pay money for a bottle of water either.
And then, there’s this:

…[S]tarting today (Aug. 1), coach passengers flying aboard US Airways Inc. must pay for a drink of water.
This morning, US Airways began charging fliers $2 for bottled water and
sodas and $1 for teas and coffees. First class members, trans-Atlantic passengers and a select group of others are exempt from the extra fees.

If this is a harbinger of things to come, no one tell Kevin Costner. I’ll be picking up Bottlemania by Elizabeth Royte.