Category: TIK365

Things I Know 123 of 365: I teach students who learn

By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth.

– George Carlin

A friend recently told me about another teacher who was explaining the merits of her school and listed among them the fact that the faculty referred to the children in their care as “learners” rather than students. The implication was that such a shift in language meant the students were learning more now that they’d a clearer idea of their role in the building.

Thank goodness we’ve got that cleared up.

I like student and its history. Sure, a student is one who studies. The real fun comes from the etymology of study. Traced back, it finds its roots in the Latin studere meaning “to be diligent.”

I want that for those in my classroom.

I’m a fan of learner as well. Coming from learn, it finds its home in the Proto-Germanic liznojan meaning “to follow or find the track.”

I want that for those in my classroom as well.

To help them be both diligent and follow the track, I’ve drafted a schedule. Mondays and Wednesdays, I’ll use “learner when referring to my kids. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I’ll call them students.

Fridays will alternate. E-mails and other correspondences will adhere to the schedule depending on the date they were first drafted.

I’m sure that will improve the learning (and studying).

Or.

Maybe it doesn’t matter what I call my kids.

Or, it matters, but not quite as much as how and why I teach them.

I can see the draw of shifting the language of the classroom to learner. It provides modern window dressing to teaching. When the roof’s leaking, though, I’m not so certain how much time we have to admire the curtains.

I’ll put it in the same category as claims of wanting to good for children and reform education, but making no mention of pedagogy.

From time to time, I will call my students “writers,” “readers,” or “thinkers.” Sometimes, I’ll refer to them as all three in quick succession.

On particularly boisterous mornings, I will refer to them as “beautiful people.”

I’ve even been known to refer to a mass of 33 high school students as “hey.”

While I understand a close reading of any of my classroom rhetoric could produce some interesting theses as to my relationship with my kids, it won’t get you to an understanding of my pedagogy.

This was my worry as my friend told the story of the faculty and its learners. It is a gesture, and gestures can be funny things. Magicians will use gestures to divert your attention from what they’re really doing, and docents will use gestures to help guide you on the correct path.

I’ve no room for more educational magicians.

I’m all for those who are diligently helping our students learn.

Things I Know 122 of 365: I avoided the educational flea market

You can tell a lot about a person by what they sell at their garage sale. What kind of books they read, what kind of music they listen to …

– Wynetta Wilson

People are selling their old junk across the street from my coffee shop. Twice a year, whatever secret society organizes flea markets brings 100+ stalls to set up shop around Philadelphia’s historic Eastern State Penitentiary. I’ve walked the stalls a few times in years past, careful each time to leave my money at home.

I don’t need more junk.

In fact, I need less junk. My impending move to Cambridge is helping to hammer this point home.

As is usually the way with my brain, home-thinking has seeped into school-thinking.

At the beginning of the year, I told my G11 students we’d be conducting an experiment with our class reading for the year. Rather than whole-class text studies, students would have the choice of reading whatever they wanted.

As an experiment, I explained, this approach would be subject to refinement.

That’s how teachers collect junk. We try new things. They don’t work. We try all new new things. Rinse. Repeat.

The reading of books of choice was a bit rocky.

My initial plan was to have students meet in small groups with other students who were reading texts of the same genres.

They would do this once a week and report out on what they heard.

I hadn’t planned for just how many genres and shades of genres exist.

Coordinating genre groups each week as students of various reading speeds moved from one text to another proved a logistical nightmare.

I was making work for little return.

I could have given up, but instead decided to revise.

Students would meet in small groups once a week, but group composition would vary from teacher-organized to student-organized to random.

It worked much better.

As an unintended consequence, the depth of discussions was improved as well. Students were working to make connections across texts and challenging the assertions of those connections.

Experiment = Success.

Not so much.

By the end of the second quarter, I needed more information and evidence of student learning. The summaries of small group conversations were helpful in highlighting the ideas that came up in organic conversation, but I had no record of other key concepts that simply didn’t get discussed.

It certainly would have been easy at that point to junk the experiment and try something new. That would have disrupted class and meant adopting wholly new structures and procedures. Instead I sat down with my G11 counterpart and our two literacy interns from UPenn.

I explained the problem and we collaborated to find a solution.

Using Google Docs, we would create a template spreadsheet that each student would access and create a copy of. Each column of the spreadsheet would be headed by a pertinent piece of literacy knowledge: theme, symbolism, point of view, setting, etc.

Once per week, the class would fill in a new row of their spreadsheets based on the reading they’d done since the previous week. Five categories were identified as needing to be filled in each week. For the remaining columns, students could choose three each week without doubling up on a category until they’d contributed to each one. By the end of the cycle, I’d have evidence of students’ learning across each assessment anchor identified by the PA state assessment.

These self reflections would be completed in addition to the small group summaries.

I needed a third component as well.

Asking students to reflect on their reading through writing alone wouldn’t give me a clear enough picture of what they were learning and experiencing as they read. Similarly, passive reflection wouldn’t push them to think more deeply the next time they picked up their books.

Back to Google Docs, we created another template spreadsheet.

This one included the standard identification number, the text of the standard and a series of discussion questions about each standard respectively.

My intern, my student assistant teacher and I split the class into three groups and planned to sit down one-on-one with the students in our groups to discuss whatever they were reading. We’d focus on a few discussion questions during each meeting and record their answers and our notes in successive columns headed by the date of our discussions.

These one-on-one conversations helped to model what it looks like when we talk about reading, and also gave us the chance to push students’ thinking on the topics being discussed. If a student offered only a description of the physical space within a plot when discussing setting, we could probe more deeply to generate a better understanding of how readers can think about plot.

The small group summaries, individual reflection logs and one-on-one discussions helped to identify the junk already present in the experiment – the empty space. Rather than calling the approach to reading instruction a failure because of all the things I hadn’t thought to think about, I stopped, sought help from my peers and adjusted course.

As we head to the end of the year, more needs to be adjusted. Implementing such systematic structures in the classroom requires a greater element of planning on my part. In the next version of this approach, I would set a schedule for one-on-one conversations. In the busyness of teaching, they were often the first piece to be pushed off until later.

I’d also do a better job of using the student reading reflection logs to guide instruction. After the first few weeks, it became clear where students were lacking the language to speak richly about some literary concepts. In the next version, I would plan holes in the teaching calendar for drop-in lessons designed to provide remediation as it became necessary.

The approach, unlike much of what is in my basement, wasn’t junk.

Like the stuff in my basement, the difficulty and work inherent in refining this choice-based approach to reading could have meant its discarding at several steps along the way in favor of something newer or shinier.

I’m glad I stayed with it rather than becoming the educational equivalent of the throngs of people picking over junk at the flea market hoping to find that one thing that will make their lives complete.

Things I Know 121 of 365: Parent conferences should be amazing

The institution of grading students on an A through F scale has done a horrible disservice to education. It has falsely given the impression to generations of students that the teacher or the professor has some ultimate authority over the value of their work, as if their own assessment of what they were doing was somehow secondary.

– Michael Winetsky

Teacher conferences at my high school included the teacher and my parents. As was reported back to me, my parents would travel from classroom to classroom listening and questioning as each teacher explained a semester’s worth of work and learning in about 5 minutes.

My part of the conference came once they arrived home.

“What do think Mrs. Henning-Buhr said about you?” my mother would say.

I’d fumble through an answer, and we’d move on to the next teacher.

Though I never saw them play poker, my parents would have run any table they chose.

As I explained my perceptions of a class and guessed at my teachers’ takes on our learning relationships, my parents sat in perfect stoic silence. Not once did they give so much as a raised eyebrow to indicate what I was saying was at least close to what they’d heard.

The things of which I was sure, like my grades, were of no help.

“I got an A in that class,” I would say.

“But what did the teacher have to say about your learning?” my stepfather would reply.

We would go ‘round and ‘round like this until I started talking about my actual experiences in the classroom without mention of my scores.

Grades have been on my mind this week as we wrapped up conferences at SLA. Twice each year, advisors sit down with advisory students and their parents to look over narrative report cards, discuss the previous quarters and set goals for the time ahead.

Because we have all an advisee’s narratives in one place, the conference can be about a larger picture than my parents’ 5-minute discuss-and-dash approach.

It’s not perfect.

For all of the community we’ve built and the lengths to which our students’ teachers have gone to qualify the learning for the term, we still have discussions where parents ask their kids, “Why did you get a B in Class X instead of an A?”

I hate these conversations.

I realize they come from years and years of the adults in the room being conditioned by grades, but I still hate them.

If a student was completely lost in the tall grass of algebra at the beginning of the semester, earning C’s and D’s on work, but found his way through it with support and guidance from the teacher and peers, a grade based on the mean average from the quarter is not going to denote that progress.

Depending on any number of factors, that student final grade could be a B or a C.

The dangers of grades are reflected in the conferences.

In an attempt to put more ownership of the process on the students, my co-advisor and I ask our advisees to lead their own conferences.

The look through their narratives and their report cards, take notes on what they want to highlight and then, on the day of the conference, lead us through a discussion of their learning.

Some are rockier than others, but all of them have more student input than any conferences my parents had with my teachers.

What I haven’t quite figured out is how to help students move away from a defensive posture when speaking about their grades and learning.

To a student, whether straight A’s or report card potpourri, every advisee takes on an almost apologetic tone as we wind our way through the conferences.

Often, I’ll interject.

“Learning is difficult. Meaningful learning is even more difficult. You did a lot of work in the last quarter to learn, you should be proud of yourself. I know I am.”

I’ll get a faint smile and sometimes a “Thank you,” then we’re back to defense.

Maybe I should be taking my parents’ approach, but with a minor tweak.

Maybe I should keep the narratives and the report cards from the students and start every conference with the same question, “What good things did your teachers have to say about you?”

Things I Know 120 of 365: I’m pretty sure we meant to build schools

America is the land of the second chance – and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.

– Pres. George W. Bush

Think back to your school. Elementary, middle or high – it doesn’t matter. Picture the structure, the hallways, the classroom, the layout. I’m guessing you had a central location where you could stand and monitor the goings on in multiple hallways as you turned around.

Picture the materials. Cinder block. Windows that opened, but only a little. (If the room had windows.) A heating system that worked – sometimes. An air conditioning system that didn’t exist. Periodically throughout the day you heard a PA system that announced who should be where when. This was in addition to the bells or tones that sounded at regular intervals to move people from one place to another. The system was likely made complete with the addition of closed circuit cameras and metal detectors in the mid-90s.

Did I get pretty close?

Now add uniforms.

Now add 8-foot fences.

Now add razor wire.

Now you’re in a prison.

We’ve been building schools like prisons for a long time. Lately, we’ve been arguing the design has been about security. I’m uncertain if we’re protecting the students from the outside world or the outside world from the students. Either way, there’s not much about traditional school design that screams “Learning!”

Diana jokes that my classroom is more of a club house. Within my first weeks at SLA, the architects whose offices were directly under my room showed up at the door with a tape measure.

“You have the students moving around quite a bit,” they said, “We’re going to pay for carpeting to help soften the noise.” Since then, I’ve been adding to the room the way large families store things in their garages or attics.

Most recently was the addition of desks whose surfaces operate as dry-erase boards. Throw in the bean bag chairs, icicle lights, and bright paper from lessons past and the club house description becomes apropos. Oh, and their’s a picture my students drew of Neverland on a 14-foot sheet of butcher block paper. It’s hanging from the ceiling.

Levity aside, my classroom is a constant effort to build a comfortable space where people would want to read and write.

Many of my students’ initial literacy educations were in school lockdown. Seated in rows of desks facing a teacher desk, they compliantly learned how school readers read and how school writers write. They did as they were asked to do.

It was incarceration-based education.

A part of me wonders whether the education community should be looking for leadership in the work of L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca who is beta testing his new Education-Based Incarceration Initiative designed to prevent recidivism once inmates are released.

According to NPR, “Baca wants his prisoners to accomplish more than academic achievement. He wants the program to equip inmates for a better life outside prison walls. Courses in life skills like leadership and decision making give time in prison a constructive purpose.”

Not unlike the description of the physical space, replace “prison” with “school,” and you have a decent explanation of what I want for my students.

Things I Know 119 of 365: Report cards can be so much more

It is difficult to imagine a more potent lever for changing the priorities of schools than the evaluative measures we employ.  What we count counts.  What we measure matters.  What we test, we teach.

– Elliot W. Eisner, “The Meaning of Alternative Paradigms for Practice”

Writing narrative report cards is difficult. It is time-consuming and difficult.

At the end of the first and third quarters, SLA teachers write narrative report cards for each student.

Narratives don’t replace traditional report cards, they augment them.

Four years ago, my first round of narratives snuck up on me. I joined the faculty midway through the first quarter. I’d barely learned the students’ names and was being asked to write a few paragraphs about their strengths and weaknesses as well as set a few goals for the remainder of the school year.

While each student got a couple personalized sentences, that first round of narratives included a lot of copying and pasting.

It wasn’t until I sat in parent conferences with my advisees and read what my colleagues had written in their narratives that I started to understand what narratives could be for the students.

My second attempt was much better.

In year two, I learned that writing the narratives to the students rather than about the students helped me to feel I was connecting with them as I wrote. It also helped me to remember I was writing about a person, fighting off the slight tendency to write about my students in a dry and clinical manner.

In years three and four, I felt the greatest shift in my classroom practice as influenced by narratives. While looking at my grade book helped inform what I wrote to my students about their learning over the course of a quarter, the data it provided quantified students’ learning when I was trying to qualify it.

I began to use the note function with assignments in the grade book to track thinking that was particularly poignant. The use of Google Docs in the classroom made almost every piece of written work instantly searchable. I could copy and paste again, but this time it was excerpts from student work or comments I’d left that illustrated areas of strength or weakness in the quarter.

This past quarter, I asked students to keep longitudinal records of their thinking regarding the books they read in class. Each record had a section dedicated to a key literary concept. When writing narratives, I could track students’ abilities to articulate how a book’s author used figurative language to tell a story. If the records were blank or incomplete, I could comment on that as well.

Because narratives can be time-consuming and difficult, I’d created systems and structures throughout the quarter that could feed my reporting to offer a detailed assessment of student learning.

Because I’d built these systems and structures, my students and I could track the learning, reading and writing happening in the classroom. Not quite a portfolio, I’d built a web of data.

Writing a good narrative requires detail. I built assignments that supplied that detail. Multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, true-and-false, and matching assessments won’t work in my classroom. They don’t provide me with the deep understanding of my students’ progress I know I’ll need when sitting down to write narratives.

I changed my approach to teaching because I needed a better way to write about my students’ learning. Because I changed my approach, I came to better know about my students’ learning.

Writing narrative report cards is time-consuming and difficult.

I’m a better teacher for it.

Things I Know 118 of 365: I object and everyone else should too

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

– Howard Zinn

I wonder how often teachers encourage their students to disagree. For all of the talk of student-centeredness, I think we miss it by miles.

Disagreement or discourse strikes me as a hallmark of a truly student-centered learning environment.

As I wrote a couple days ago, I submitted a course reflection Saturday that voiced my dissent from the learning module I just completed.

In one section, I admitted to doing the opposite of what was asked of me.

I only wrote the reflection after some calculations revealed I would still earn an A in the course even if I didn’t complete the assignment at all.

Only when my dissent couldn’t be held against me did I feel comfortable voicing it. This within the bounds of an academic institution.

In a place of learning, dissent should be welcomed. It should be encouraged. It should be expected.

I’m tempted to qualify that expectation with terms of civility, but I realize dissent sometimes erupts from a place where the bridge to civil discourse has long since been burned.

Often, when I encourage my students to ask questions, I’m really encouraging only those questions that imply agreement.

“Question,” I seem to be saying, “but make them questions about how and not why.”

Though these implications don’t show it, I’m fine with my students questioning my authority.

I must be.

My hope is that they will move on to question those in authority on a regular basis. I can’t work toward that with the caveat of “Question authority, just not mine” and then hope for any kind of real trust.

It’s the kind of questioning I would have hoped for when Gov. Chris Christie spoke last week at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

To what the New York Times called a “polite and subdued” crowd, Gov. Christie said, “You are among the leaders of our educational future,” he said, “and if you’re not disrupted yet, I’m going to disrupt you now.”

I suppose that’s what I’m hoping for as a teacher. I want to disrupt and challenge the thinking of my students about everything from social issues to parts of speech.

Like Christie, though to a lesser extent, my rhetoric discourages my audience from working to disrupt me.

“Others, yes, disrupt others, but trust me, I’m the teacher.”

The crowd should have disrupted Christie.

They should have asked him the difficult questions that required him to be the most thoughtful and intelligent version of himself.

Whether they agreed with him or not, those in attendance should have demanded clarity when Gov. Christie referred to the NJ teachers’ union as “a political thuggery operation.” If they are the leaders of our educational future, then they should have asked the millions of questions they would hope to pour from students in any similar situation.

They should have asked more.

They should have required of him the same kind of explanation and thinking any math teacher requires when asking students to show their work.

They should have asked for the same reason any student should demand an explanation beyond, “Because I’m the teacher, that’s why.”

Gov. Christie, though, is not one to show his work, nor has he shown himself to be skilled in civil discourse. Instead, he wraps his opinions around bricks he throws through the ideological windows of those who stand in opposition.

It’s not enough to have an opinion, teachers (and governors) must be able to substantiate those opinions with something other than bricks.

Things I Know 117 of 365: I am going to Harvard

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

– Samuel Johnson

Mid-March, I found out I was accepted to the Harvard Ed School’s master’s program in Ed Policy and Management.

Toward the end of March, I had an idea for helping to overcome what appeared to be the largest hurdle to actually attending the program – paying for it.

While the idea didn’t make up the difference, it did subsidize approximately 11 percent of what I needed to attend.

As it became clear my audacious goal was just that, I started to become as knowledgeable as I’ve ever been about student loans.

Somewhere in there were more frequent phone calls home than I’ve probably ever made since moving out.

I’ve decided to do it.

I’m going to Harvard in the Fall.

I’ll be honoring my commitment to those who graciously donated to Chasing Harvard. I’ll also be proud owner of some substantial student loans.

I want this.

A great deal of my decision was made when I attended the open house for newly admitted students. Admittedly, I was (and still am) cautious about some of the rhetoric coming out of the school. I was worried I’d have no one with whom I would connect, that SLA and schools like it would be an impossibility in the minds of people I met.

I did meet and hear from some people with whom I adamantly disagreed. I also met and heard from people who thought deeply and passionately about many of the same ideas I hold dear.

That is the kind of environment in which I want to learn.

I’ve always sought a plurality of ideas. My most invigorating conversations are those with people who will argue against me just as ardently as I argue against them while both of us are seeking to understand.

I am not so naive as to believe I’ll be entering some sort of modern Lyceum. All I hope for is a program of study where my ideas will be challenged and where I am free to challenge the ideas of those around me. I’ve found that.

Also key to my decision is the ability to cross-register in the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard Business School, Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Law School – you get the idea.

I want that.

While I realize I’ll be limited to the number of outside course I’ll be able to take, I want a program that allows me to blend my learning about education’s ecosystem with learning about other intellectual ecosystems.

As those systems interact and blend more and more, I want to study and understand those interactions.

I want this.

What scares me, what I don’t want, is to leave SLA.

I’m sure I’ll write later about what I’ve learned and what it means to leave. This is about where I’m going, not where I’ve been.

Let me just say that it is a testament to the people I learn alongside every day how difficult it will be to leave.

In the end, I turned to Samuel Johnson’s thinking in “Rasselas.” Trying to understand happiness and how to acquire it, Johnson’s protagonist learns reaching for one thing means giving up another. In the end, one must make a choice and be content.

I am.

Things I Know 116 of 365: Something’s rotten at the Core

Pearson already dominates, and this could take it to the extreme.

– Susan Newman, University of Michigan Professor

You may have heard Mr. Gates and Pearson are working together to make teachers obsolete improve online learning. A less humble person would say he called it.

I’ve actually been working with Pearson since last summer as well. The university I’m studying with right now buys their curriculum from Pearson.

I wish they didn’t.

Last night, I finished the final assignment of this module-instructional-block-class. It was a course reflection. I dig reflection. I think the past 115 entries are a testament to that fact. But reflection should be about inquiring into your own learning. Some prompts should be provided, but not mandated.

A few times, I’ve called out my instructors as being ineffective or not modeling the very practices being pushed in the program. While I stand by those claims, this module-instructional-block-class’s instructor has been more present than the previous three. He consistently spells my name correctly, provides personal feedback other than copying and pasting the text of the rubric and sets a tone that implies a higher standard.

With improved instruction, I’ve had time to more clearly see the holes in the materials.

As I was completing the course reflection last night, I found myself hitting my head against the Core Propositions of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards.

1: Teachers are Committed to Students and Their Learning

2: Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.

3: Teachers are Responsible for managing and a monitoring student learning.

4: Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.

5: Teachers are members of learning communities.

The propositions have been causing an itch in my brain since I first met them when completing the School District of Philadelphia’s induction program. Then, as in my program, the propositions were taken as dogmatically true. What’s more, the implication that these five statements make a quality teacher worries me.

At the end of each module-instructional-block-class, I’ve had to explain how the content of the prior 8 weeks has pushed me to grow as a teacher insomuch as each of the propositions is concerned.

In the previous three m-i-b-c I’ve not so much lied as stretched the truth, grasping at any possible evidence, not matter how circumstantial, to prove I’ve grown. I’ve been the good little student, “Look at me teacher. I’ve done what you ask – even though I don’t care.”

Last night, I decided to tell the truth. My grade hasn’t been posted yet, so I don’t know what the possible repercussions of said honesty might be, but I felt good clicking the submit button.

I’m posting my responses below.

Before I get to that, though, I want to make clear that I have nothing but the highest respect for any teacher who has completed the National Board certification process – successfully or not. It is arduous and life-interrupting. Only those who have fallen in love with teaching could find their way through it. Those friends I’ve watched complete the process are some of the strongest teachers I’ve ever met.

I tip my hat to them.

My beef is with the lack of inquiry and humanity I see in the propositions.

Prop.  1: Teachers are Committed to Students and Their Learning

I cannot say that my commitment to my students and their learning has improved in this instructional block. As with each instructional block reflection, I remain uncertain as to how one is expected to quantify or qualify his or her level of commitment to students and learning. The simplest and truest answer is that I looked beyond the course materials when completing the coursework. If the goal was to improve student participation, I visited peers’ classrooms during my prep periods to observe their methods of eliciting learner responses. I informally polled learners between classes to find out what was working, what was not working and what they wanted to happen in class. My commitment grew because I realized more than what was required of me would be necessary to improve learning in my classroom.

Prop.  2: Teachers know the subjects they teach and how to teach those subjects to students.

I completed each assignment alongside my learners. If they were coming up with exemplars and non-exemplars, so was I. In class discussion, I asked questions and offered answers. I told learners when I agreed and when I disagreed. If they disagreed with me, I found out why. I admitted I was wrong when I was wrong. I grew in my ability to teach my subject because I focused on teaching my learners, not subjects. The best evidence of this was my asking questions of myself and my learners every class period of every day.

Prop.  3: Teachers are Responsible for managing and a monitoring student learning.

I grew with regard to this proposition because I ignored it. Proposition 3 winnows leaners out of the equation of learning management. If a classroom is to be fully learner-centered, then the responsibility to monitoring and managing learning must be shared. In having my learners build an online artifact that was centered around their learning as they saw it, I was respecting their growth and giving them room to experiment and fail in their learning.

Prop.  4: Teachers think systematically about their practice and learn from experience.

The implementation plan drew from multiple models and integrated each one seamlessly with the next. It also used each artifact as learners created it and asked the learners to build something new. That was by design. A note on my answer to Prop. 3 compared to what I’ve just written. I did not know what the something new they would be creating would look like. I just asked the question.

Prop.  5: Teachers are members of learning communities

I learned alongside my learners. I asked colleagues to come view the class and I volunteered my free time to watch those colleagues teach so I could learn from them. I was asking questions all along the way and learning from what I saw and the answers to every question.

Things I Know 115 of 365: Fireworks are magic

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

– Tom Robbins

I sat in COSI working on on completing an assignment today when I heard a loud explosion. It’s really becoming something of a pattern with me. Last night, I ran a 4-mile race that started with the firing of a cannon. No countdown, mind you, just the firing of a cannon without warning.

I’ll admit it. I jumped. Then, I ran.

Tonight, I kept my seat. I was working under two deadlines. 1) COSI was closing. 2) The assignment was due.

Still, the explosions continued. I looked up for some indication of their source. Finally, I saw a reflection in the upper windows of a building across the street.

Fireworks.

Somewhere, to the east, near the Delaware River, fireworks were being launched. It continued for 15 minutes or so. Several times, I found myself craning my neck to get a better view of the display in whoever’s bedroom or living room window I was using as a mirror.

I wanted to go outside.

The 5 year old in me was begging 30-year-old me to pack up the laptop and go watch the show.

Thirty-year-old me held firm.

“You’re no fun now that you’re old.”

“I know.”

“It’s fire…in the sky.”

“I know.”

“I hate you.”

“I know.”

In reality, 30-year-old me wanted to go outside just as much as his younger iteration. All wound up in coursework and a need for sleep, he exercised his judgement and stayed put.

When the noise subsided, I looked around at my fellow patrons. I wondered if I was alone in my battle between my selves. Surely, one of the four middle-aged couples on the double date across from me wanted to politely excuse themselves from their table to step outside to oooo and aaaaaah as we were taught to pray to the gods of magic and fire when were younger.

Instead, they all sat and talked about Rebecca Black and drank coffee as we’ve been taught to pray to the gods of small talk and caffeine now that we’re older.

I thought about it in my seat for a second and could not explain to myself how fireworks work. The same thing happens once in a while with smell. I know there’s an explanation. When it doesn’t come right away, I chalk it up to magic.

As I pondered fireworks, my brain started to put together the physics of the whole thing.

I felt 5-year-old me eyeing me with contempt, and immediately shut down my reasoning.

“You’re right,” I said, “It must be magic. And next time, I promise we’ll go outside to watch.”

Things I Know 114 of 365: I work without a net

Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security is the denial of life.

– Germaine Greer

I’m not afraid of heights.

Well, my mind isn’t afraid of heights. My legs, I was reminded Wednesday, are afraid of heights.

As part of a new collaboration, all of SLA’s G9 advisories are spending a day of of challenge-based education at Outward Bound Philadelphia.

It was fantastic.

It was hilarious.

The last time I’ve experienced high ropes or other such elements was when I was teaching in Sarasota. Through a partnership with the local YMCA, we took all of our G8 students to climb their Alpine Tower.

The difference between that experience and Wednesday’s was the kids. While not entirely urbanized, many of SLA’s students have seen more cement in their lives than trees. On the 15-minute bus ride to Outward Bound, several students asked where we were and whether we were still in Philadelphia.

“I’ve never been here, Mr. Chase.”

Though it’s not a part of town I visit often, we were riding through neighborhoods I’ve run to from my house.

It was a reminder of how foreign parts of the city remain to students who have lived here their entire lives.

If the neighborhood was foreign, the woods were downright alien to some. The discussion of checking themselves for ticks stopped a group of girls in their tracks.

“Don’t worry,” our guide told us, “They’re everywhere in the city.”

One girl scoffed, “Uh, not around my neighborhood.”

I chuckled to myself.

After some introductory challenges, our group of 40 students were broken in two and my co-adivisor, Matt Kay, and 20 of our students followed Lauren, our guide to the high wire element.

To complete the element’s challenge, two people in full-body harnesses climbed separate ladders to staples about 16 feet up a tree. They continue up the staples to about 25 feet above the ground and then step onto a wire.

The two people work their way down their respective stretches of wire using a robe strung between their two trees counterbalancing one another with their weight.

The two wires are in the form of the two arms of a capital “Y”, and the climbers meet at the access.

From there, the robe won’t stretch any further, and the climbers must count on the weight of each other to counterbalance one-on-one as they make their way along the stem of the “Y” to attempt to touch a third and final rope before being lowered to the ground.

Meanwhile, on the ground, teams of students were on the ground belaying, literally holding their teammates’ lives in their hands.

If I could take students to places like Outward Bound once a month or once a week, I would.

Some of the students made it to the top of the ladder and decided they’d met their challenge. Others made it to the beginning of the “Y’s” stem.

When each one was done, and said they’d gone as far as they wanted to, we encouraged just one step farther.

After that step, their resolve to come back to earth steeled, we lowered them back down and celebrated their victory in meeting their own challenge.

True differentiated instruction.

Back in the classroom today, I started thinking about the implications of a similar approach to teaching. I wonder what would happen if we took kids to where they thought they couldn’t do one more thing, encouraged them to complete that one final assignment and then let them rest, celebrating the victory of how much they’d accomplished.

Often, in my own class, making it one step farther means a student is asked to make it yet another step farther and another step and so on.

While I do all that I can to praise my students and celebrate accomplishments, I could take a page from Outward Bound and let the kids get their feet back on the ground before asking them to take on the next challenge.

I wonder, if we push out kids to new experiences and then offer them a recess of play and reflection if they might not be the better for it.

There’s much to be learned from challenge by choice.