Tag: rules

Things I Know 313 of 365: I was a bit of a jerk

In cleaning out my box.net contents I found a folder containing my slidedecks from the first day of school of my fourth year of teaching. All was well and good until I found the class rules slide below.

Day 1 Per 3

Who wrote those two rules? When was I Severus Snape? The thing is, I had a decent idea what I was doing when I made this slide. I’d been in the classroom 3 years and came out of a decent teacher prep experience. The kids I’d taught the year before had taken the school from 47 to 81 percent passing the state writing exam. I had strong relationships with my colleagues, kids and their families. I’d headed up a partner student screenwriting program between our school and the local film festival.

Yet, there I was declaring war on cell phones and gum as though it somehow secured my power as teacher overlord.

Not only that, these were the first two rules I posted. Somehow gum chewing and the sight of a cell phone presented clear and present danger in relation to learning.

This list shows me what I told my students I valued on that first day of school, and it reminds me of how much what I said I believed stood in contrast with the beliefs I enacted as a teacher.

We do that, we get better at what we do, at being people with kids. If I had to guess, I’d say this authoritarian stance was a remnant of teaching students who were quite close to me in age and appearance. It was a stab at drawing a line between who I was and who they were. While I needed that line then, in the years that followed, I worked hard to erase it. I realized the way to teach was to connect, to become a person who mattered that asked students to do work that mattered.

It was a difficult lesson.

One I’m still learning. I’m grateful to younger me for sticking this slidedeck in the cloud time capsule to remind me how I’ve grown.

Things I Know 172 of 365: The container matters little if at all

Your essay should be typed, double-spaced on standard-sized paper (8.5″ x 11″) with 1″ margins on all sides.

– Purdue Online Writing Lab

In freshman English, Mrs. Miller would not accept any papers with “the fringies on them.” If we were turning in an essay from a spiral-bound notebook and hadn’t torn along the perforations, we were required to remove the “fringes” before submitting our work.

Not removing said “fringes” would result in the loss of a letter grade for our overall score.

Far beyond writing in a spiral-bound notebook, I find my current classwork governed by the exacting standards of the American Psychological Association. Margins, I have learned, are to be 1” at all times.

The quality of my writing will, of course, begin to degenerate were my margins to shrink or expand beyond the 1” mark.

A few months ago, unthinkingly, irresponsibly, stupidly, I submitted a multi-page document without changing the default margins from their 1.25” measurements.

Luckily, my stalwart instructor was paying attention to what mattered most and dutifully docked three points from 20 for my final score.

Each of these examples serves as a reminder of the standard training at the K-12 and collegiate levels meant to bring about an understanding of the importance of the container.

Sunday, I witnessed another example.

Following the demonstration of the systems and structures his state had worked to put in place to facilitate discussions of professional learning for otherwise isolated or siloed teachers, a presenter opened the floor to questions from the assembled masses.

“Who moderates the discussions?”

“Who hosts all this?”

“What’s the name of the program you’re using?”

“Who’s paying for the installation?”

One after another, the masses queried the fringes.

They wanted to understand the container, not the contents.

They were consumed by the tool, not its purpose.

For nearly half an our, we’d been privy to an explanation of how teachers were working together to share knowledge, build practices and deepen learning for their students. Where a road of conversation had been paved before us, we admired the curb rather than asking where it could lead.

I understand the fascination with the containers of our learning. We’ve been trained from the early years of our educations to believe there was a correct way and an incorrect way to store our learning – be it double spacing or indenting.

What few of us ever heard or were encouraged to learn was that knowledge and skills are not solids with corresponding intellectual tupperware in which we should store them for the correct moments. Instead, these things are the soup of learning. They are fluid and malleable – shifting to fit the shapes and structures of the situations to which we apply them.

While container certainly matters for audience. As it is important when considering the end goals, no situation has a set container. Some fit better than others.

A document margin of 4.5 on all sides would interrupt the transmission of message.

But no iteration of the communication of learning should preclude the next iteration of learning.

Containers, should fit our purposes, allowing thinking we pour into those containers should shift according to need.

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.