Learning from Mistakes

This really should be a permanent series of this blog - mainly so I remember these past mistakes and don't repeat them (and if others can benefit, all the greater).

I almost titled this piece "The World Isn't Flat", but that might have had the effect of demeaning my students through comparison with others, and I promised myself when I started this that I would never post anything negative about my students. I think people will be able to make their own conclusion on the flatness questions, though.

But anyways - the mistake: Today was scheduled to be my big "How to evaluate information on the Internet" lesson - one that I feel is probably the most important one I teach each year for reasons that are obvious to those who frequent the edublogs. It's the first lesson I've got the chance to teach for a third time, so I'm finally feeling pretty good about it - both in terms of my delivery, my ability to help the students understand its importance, and the learning that results from it. It's the lesson I always use to kick off the first research project of the year. But the problem is that the lesson is meant to be a case of "unlearning". It assumes certain habits amongst students that I'm trying to unteach. In this case I assume that students, when looking for information online, just go to Google or Yahoo! and type something in and start clicking on search results. Even more basic, it assumes that students have a clue as to what to type into a search box to get results. I don't mean meaningful results. I mean any results.

However, in many, if not most, cases in my first period class, there weren't habits to be unlearned. For many, this was probably the first time students were asked to do historical research online. The first class of this unit (which I haphazardly put together for the subsequent periods in the day) is about where to begin the search. I shouldn't have been unteaching anything. I should have simply started with how to go a good search, and then tomorrow, added in the part about evaluating the information we find.

Visiting Beacon - What We Can Learn from Beacon's Senior Year

(This post may not make sense to those who have not been part of the planning process at BLS for our inaugural senior year next fall. This conversation can be observed at our 12th Grade Experience Blog).

I had the chance to observe both a senior English class and a senior History class. I talked briefly to about a dozen students about their senior experiences, and in depth to a young man named Dan for a good fifteen minutes. Thanks to him for that time and the insight he gave. First the good news: When I asked Dan what is the one thing he wished he could change about his senior year, it is that he had started earlier really thinking about the college (in his junior year). The fact that BLS juniors are taking a college course seems to address this very issue. Now onto some random thoughts and observations:

• Seniors at Beacon have options for both senior History and English classes. Dan said this was probably the best part of senior year. I think we have already decided against this for our core, but something to keep in mind as we design the seminar option.
• Seniors at Beacon have a lot of free time built into their schedules (Dan has 14 hours free each week second semester, though I believe that includes lunch). Right now, the tentative plan is for Bronx Lab students to have 12 periods of the core, and 11 period of "Seminar". Maybe 2-4 of those "seminar" periods should officially be some sort of study hall (this of course could be more structured for some students). I think this could have a few benefits for our students: a) it will scaffold the transition to college where they have TONS of free time; b) it allows for some flexibility in teaching loads; c) it gives our students a tangible reward for making it to senior year; and d) it would give students the opportunity to spend time with teachers from whom they need/want extra help. (This time can always be claimed for field trips as well).
• Students said senior year at Beacon is not significantly different from their first three years, and this isn't a bad thing. We're designing a senior year significantly different from 9th-11th grade at BLS. I'm not insinuating we should rethink the path we're going for 12th grade, but rather that maybe some of the great things we're trying to implement for 12th grade should trickle down to the earlier grades.
• Seniors seem to have lots of leadership opportunities in Beacon's clubs and sports teams. I talked about extra-curricular activities in general in a previous post, but I think we need to give our seniors opportunities to be leaders for the school.
• Students at Beacon are allowed to leave the building. I don't know if this is even an option given the shared space and scanning at Evander, but should we consider giving seniors open campus privileges as another tangible reward for making it to senior year.
  

Visiting Beacon - What I Can Bring Back to My Classroom

I actually saw a lot of stuff going on that I was or am already doing, which was kind of nice to see. The project I mentioned in the last post was very similar to one I did with my students earlier in the year. In observing a senior 20th Century American History research seminar on Social History, I spent a lot of time talking to students about how they came up a good research topic. Most of them said it was based on the general survey of the relevant history they had done before choosing an independent research topic. This is the same structure I am using with my students at the moment as they conduct a research project for National History Day. But of course, there was much to be learned from what I saw that I want to bring to my students:

• I am most definitely a teacher of students first, and my subject second. I am certain this is a good thing. However, I also think it is very important to a) be knowledgeable about your subject and b) be passionate about it. Not that I didn't already know this, but in both Global classes I observed today I saw teachers way more knowledgeable about Global History than I am. I also saw teachers clearly passionate about teaching Global - a passion, I have to admit, I do not share. I need more knowledge (which I know will come over time) and I need to find more aspects of non-US / non-20th-century history I am passionate about if I am going to continue teaching Global in the long term.
• Granted this was for a senior research class, but one of the things mandated as part of the research paper was that they conduct an Oral History (or interview an expert) as part of the research. Of the dozen or so students I had a chance to talk to, the ones most into their topics were the ones with a personal connection (a young woman researching the marginalization of women in the Black Panthers who had an aunt in the Panthers, a guy researching the history of public housing who lives in public housing). However, the next set of students most excited about their projects were the ones who had already conducted their Oral History. I also think anytime students can interact with adults outside of the typical power relationship structures of parent/teacher/boss is a great thing. I'd love to find a way to help my students get more of these experiences.
• Also, the aforementioned desire for books and visual art could fit in here as well.
  

Visiting Beacon - What I Liked School Wide

School wide, three things stick out that I'd love to see more of at BLS:

• There is student art work everywhere. Now we at Bronx Lab have hallways filled with work from art classes. However, what blew me away about Beacon is that every class room I went to was covered with content-related, student produced visual art. Sure, I typically have student work up on my walls, but it is almost entirely text-based (which is representative of the work I assign). Not only is this beautiful to look at, but it is indicative of a strong integration of the visual (and from the sounds of it, also performing) arts into the academic curriculum. I don't know how to do this. I need to do this.
• I got the chance to talk to a handful of seniors about their experiences at Beacon. For all of them, they talked first, and most, about their experiences in clubs and sports. I have a VERY bad habit of forgetting that my class is only one of six my students takes, and that even if I taught all six, I would still only occupy a very small portion of what my students saw as the important part of their lives. In terms of the school portion of many students' lives, it is the after-school club and athletic portion that is most important to them, and probably in a good many cases, the most worthwhile portion as well. I know looking back on my high school experience, the most rewarding, engaging, and memorable experiences I had were all related to the time I spent working on our student newspaper, particularly when I was Editor-in-Chief. I am wondering how we can provide more of these opportunities to our students. I am well aware one of the trade-offs involved with a small school is that it limits the variety of extracurriculars we can offer. However, I feel that our limited after school resources are geared almost entirely to what we call Electives. These resemble classes more than a typical extracurricular. For one thing, our electives at BLS are almost all teacher run. Clubs tend to be student run and teacher sponsored. Are we providing our students with the after school experiences they want? How can we get closer to what our students would be excited to do, like the students at Beacon?
• All three history classrooms I spent time in were filled with course-relevant non-fiction books. I WANT! I WANT!! I WANT!!! One 10th grade class I observed saw students researching major 20th Century figures who opposed imperialism. This is nearly identical to a project I tried to do at the beginning of my year. The difference is the Beacon students were able to conduct real research using a variety of sources in their classroom on a person of their choosing. In our case, students read about an assigned person (since I had to prepare materials in advance) using the one or two sources I provided for them. I think it's a very safe conclusion that the students at Beacon were far more engaged in their work. Having a decent mini-history library at my disposal would open up a ton of possibilities and really transform the experience of my students. And I don't think I have it in me to write about the differences in our libraries. It is simply injustice. Beacon's library has at least three times as many resources as the library we share with everyone else at Evander Childs (Bronx Lab is a small school in a much larger building), yet we have three times as many students.
  

Visiting Beacon

I was scheduled to take a little road trip today down to Philadelphia to visit Chris' SLA with my principal. And while unfortunately that trip had to be rescheduled, since I already had my classes set for me not to be there and the sub had already been called, my principal sent me down to visit the Beacon School on the Upper West Side to learn what I could from observing their social studies classes, and also paying special attention to their 12th Grade classes, as we at Bronx Lab are in the process of planning our first 12th Grade Experience for next year.

Not that I didn't know this walking in, but the first thing I noticed is that Beacon is a different world from Bronx Lab. Bronx Lab is 98% Black and Latino, with 86% of our students getting free lunch and 47% of our entering 9th graders reading at grade level; Beacon is 53% White and Asian, with only 24% getting free lunch and 70% of their entering 9th graders reading at grade level (statistics from insideschools.org). Add that onto the fact that one has to go through an extensive interview process to even be accepted to Beacon, they have their own building, have been around ten years longer than we have, and have most of their students exempted from the history and science Regents exams, and some might think that there is little to be learned for a teacher in my situation from a place like Beacon. But from all I have previously heard, and saw today, Beacon is a different world not just from Bronx Lab, but from most other high schools as well. It is a special place - the type of place that, as a left-learning-middle-class-white-guy, I would dream of sending my kids (if I ever have any).

My principal sent me with three questions:

1. What do I like about Beacon school-wide that we could bring to Bronx Lab?
2. What do I like about Beacon that I want to bring into my classroom?
3. What can we learn from their senior year?
   

For the sake of readability, I'm going to address these questions in three separate blog entries.

New Year's Resolution: Do Less, Better

Over my (way too short) break, I thought a lot about what I learned in my first 4 months at BLS. This isn't my first year teaching, but in many ways it has felt like more of a first year than my actual first year did. I find myself working harder than I ever have before wearing more hats than I had in previous teaching jobs. I knew this coming in, but I didn't really understand just how many different ways I'd be pulled.

I came to a relatively new school (we're in our third year) because I wanted to chance to be a part of building something permanent that will serve our community. I was eager for the chance to be a part of creating something new and getting opportunities for leadership that I never would have had at a larger school. And I bit off more than I could chew.

All teachers at my school are both classroom teachers and advisers. So I had my 12 new advisees and my four sections of Global History II. I decided to create a Global curriculum from scratch (reinventing the wheel). My first trimester teaching load left me with some extra time obligations to the school, so I also became one of the technology people at the school. Eager to demonstrate the great potential uses of Web 2.0, I tried to start some sort of pilot of blogging in advisory. While the initial idea of doing this with two other teachers fizzled out, I still began it with 3 of my advisees (1 of which has yet to post 2 months later). I also began exploring implementation of moodle and elgg into our school. As the first Trimester moved on, it was clear 3 days of Global was not going to get our students ready for the NY Regents exam in June. So we added an extra period a week, moving my teaching load above a typical full load. And though I was off the tech team officially, I still had/have people coming to me for help. Around the same time, the 3 Social Studies teachers at my school decided we weren't benefiting from the Humanities Department meetings, so the 3 of use started running our own weekly Social Studies Meetings (in the 1 free period we all have off). And I also jumped at the chance to join the committee planning our schools Twelfth Grade Experience for next year (and soon set up a blog for that). Meanwhile, back in my history class, I am preparing my students to participate in the National History Day contest, part of which will mean holding a first ever History Day Fair at BLS in February. In order to support the research, I'm giving all my students e-mail accounts through the newly registered bronxlabstudents.org, which means piloting a major new initiative and worrying about worst case scenarios on that front. And oh yeah, I have a lesson to teach Monday morning...

I do too much. And by doing too much, I'm not doing anything that well. Which is why my resolution for 2007 is to do less, but do it better. I need to do less in my global class, but do it better (I have over-planned every unit so far this year). I need to do less outside the classroom, but do it better (12th Grade Experience, or bust). I need to do less with technology, but do it better (I think blogging in advisory has to go, though good quick uses in class has a place - check out my students' blogs from our recently completed unit).

I loved Dan's post about his Important Ratio #1 (Worth of Instructional Decision = Instructional Value / Minutes Expended). It's a great post, and an even better discussion of it in the comments. The philosophy major in me thinks of this less as a ratio, than as a philosophical set of questions:

1. By making this time commitment to Activity A (instructionally, professionally, personally), what activity B ( and C, etc.) am I not spending time on?
   
2. Is the time not being spent of activities B of lesser value than the value added by committing time to Activity A?
3. Do I have the time and energy to sustain activities A & B?
4. Will doing activity B better be less valuable than doing activities A & B with less than a full effort?

Conclusion: Unless the answer to questions 2-4 are all "Yes", activity A is not worth doing.

So here's to a year of doing much, much less, but hopefully doing something exceptionally well. Happy 2007 to all!

Finding Time, Finding a Voice

Just finished up my first trimester of teaching in the Bronx Lab School. I'd like to think I've made some progress -- though I'm only really sure that I've made progress recognizing how much progress I have to make to be the teacher I want to be. I know this is the biggest challenge I've ever faced, and I know that in order to serve my students I need to be much, MUCH better than I am now.

Extra time, unfortunately, seems to have disappeared from my life. I wish I took more time to stop, think, reflect, and write; but it doesn't often happen and I can't imagine it will get any better with the start of the second trimester. My day to day technology responsibilities are officially ending as I will be seeing my students one extra day per week in order to gear up for the New York State Global History Regents Exam in June. I'm glad my mind can be in one place more often, but with four extra hours of class per week, I can't imagine time becoming more available.

I feel like I've posted a half dozen times right now about not being sure what role this blog plays in my teaching. I know I want to model for students (and hopefully, eventually, for other staff members), but I have no idea what that looks like. I'm not sure where I find the voice to keep this going on a consistent basis. I'd be curious if anyone has any recommendations for other teachers/administrators who are blogging without a focus on the intersection of technology and pedagogy (which is already done so well by so many others). Inspiration is always helpful. I am thankful for Chris and Doug each time I see a new post in my Google Reader account to remind me how valuable of a tool this can be.

To end on a more optimistic note, a few of my advisies just published their first pieces on their reading blogs. I want to give them a chance to find their voice (and the spell check tool) before sharing their writing with the world, but I am happy to share the link to My Reading Blog , which should hopefully have student comments on it within the week.

Also, this week, I am eager to be starting a mini-project with my history students inspired by BionicTeacher. My students will be putting together a brief page My Space-like page (unfortunately not actually on My Space, which is blocked even from our administrative computers by the NYC DOE, though no similar services are blocked) for a Renaissance, Reformation, or Enlightenment figure. I'll post to these when they're live in a couple weeks.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Just scanning through the dates of my blog posts on ecto, it seems that I've been really good at falling off the ball after a couple good months of blogging. Many others have written about blogging as a habit. It seems that both times my blogging has hit a major transition in my life (the beginning and end of grad school), I've fallen off the ball. I'm not sure to what extent blogging will fit into my next stage - teaching at a small school in the Bronx this coming fall (and some summer school in the interim). One of the really strong appeals blogging had for me was that it enabled me to connect with a group of similarly minded educators - something I was lacking in my previous teaching job. Moving to a school filled with like-minded educators eliminates that need. However, moving to a school run by like-minded educators means that formal reflection is not only encouraged, but required, which is a good sign that this space will continue to be filled come fall.

Very little of this is on the forefront of my mind right now though. I am getting married this Saturday, and am then off to Spain and Portugal for our honeymoon! I'll post some pictures when I get back.

Reality

Today is the first anniversary of my first blog post. For the past week, I've been composing in my head a new version of "Why I (Still) Blog", though I'm not really in the right place to do that right now (it will come sometime in the next couple of months).

As I've neared the completion of my master's work (it's actually done, I'm just revising a couple papers for publication, and will be giving a presentation this FRIDAY (not Thursday, as I accidentally typed last night) at Columbia University based on my thesis entitled, "LIteracy is Liberation: The Citizenship Education Program 1957-1965", which is open to the public if anyone is interested - info here), I've been spending more time in various roles at the school in the Bronx I'll be teaching at in the fall. I couldn't possibly be more excited and content with the match that's been made. In just two years, the school has built a real supportive community for both staff and students. In the past few weeks, I've sat in as a staff member presented a lesson plan to be critiqued by her grade level team as part of a weekly staff meeting, and been a part of a joint English/History 11th Grade planning meeting where two teachers with far more experience and success in the classroom than I've had eagerly listened to new ideas and decided to take their classes in a radical (and almost certainly more successful) direction. Both of these of these were 180 degrees away from previous school cultures I've encountered. I can't wait for similar support for my teaching (which is 99% certain to be in a 10th Grade Global History classroom), and a similar chance to explore new ways of thinking about education. I've also had the chance to get to know some of the students, subbing one day, and spending today shadowing a 10th grade through his full day. They're students I'm eager to work with.

However, one of my experiences today was a very strong reminded of just what challenges lie ahead (and what needs to be in the back of all minds when people talk about urban school reform). This afternoon at an all school gathering, students viewed a documentary against gun violence made by a 21 year old from Bed-Stuy in Brooklyn who witnessed his best friend shot and killed when they were 19. After the film, the documentarian asked the students two questions: How many of you know someone who has been killed by a gun? How many of you know someone who owns a gun?

Over half the students knew someone who had been killed. Almost all the students knew someone who owned a gun.

This is my students' reality - one that I have never known, and probably will never be able to fully understand.