If you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose, I would say that I do not believe in astrology.
Of course, I would, in the same situation, say that I do not believe in a lot of things. I am of two minds on many things. Am I a fence straddler? No. I just prefer to not close doors. Possibilities are way more fun than then... definitities. (Shakespeare made up a lot of words. Why can't I?)
Back to astrology, and to the title of this entry. I am a Gemini. A born dualist. One of my favorite high school teachers once made the observation that I am like Kurt Vonnegut; I "like to put sour coatings on sugar pills." I like to see two (or more) sides to everything. The cubists really work for me. So... (digress much?) I've been digging some YouTube videos of one of my favorite bands, Cracker. They have a song called "Yalla Yalla" that is written (in songwriter David Lowery's own words) as an, "exploration and a celebration of a certain kind of bravado and swagger one finds in the speech of soldiers. I find it nicely matches the kind of swagger often exhibited by rock, blues and hip hop singers" (read the blurb below the video).
As YouTube is set up to function like Google, Amazon, etc, etc, etc, it steers you to videos based on videos you have already watched ("It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen..."). In my case, it lead me to a song by Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros called... "Yalla Yalla". Strummer's song (and--for those of you just joining this broadcast--they are two unique songs) is a bit on the electronica/pop-groove side, while the Cracker song is full-tilt Rawk 'n Roll.
"Ok, Whitey, what the flip does this have to do with education?"
Well... the very unique yallas got me thinking... Back in the day (and, in some classes, that was/is... um... today, and tomorrow, and the next day...), education was about The Right Answer, also known as the "Guess what I'm thinking!" game. Both of these songs take the Arabic yalla and run with it in very different directions. (And I'm not that ignorant... there are gazillions of songs in Arabic that use the word... I'm talking about two particular English language reinterpretations...)
What if the next time you teach something, you leave your mind wide open to the possibility (yay!) that one of your students is going to come up with an answer that bears no resemblance to what you were expecting (even if--progressive teacher that you are--you were ready for a few "right" answers). An answer that is the Martian version of the answers given by every other student in the room. On first glance, it might even seem like a goof answer, or an "oops... this kid needs way more 'wait time' before answering coherently" answer, or a "note to self: seat this little guy further away from the dry erase board... the fumes are getting to him" answer. Give it a minute (some wait time for... you) . Maybe it's just the cubist genius answer you never expected.
Yalla, yalla!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Why Am I Doing This?
If you're a teacher and you have never asked yourself that question... you're doing it wrong.
I hope I ask myself that question frequently over the life of my career. There are a million things that happen over the course of a typical school day that can drain you, stress you out, drag you through the knothole. I'm not going to say that the students are never on this list, but most of my stress comes from adults.
Don't get me wrong--I love my coworkers. My school is the jewel of our district in part because of the incredibly familial atmosphere amongst the staff. My principal and vice principal? Everyone should be so lucky as to have bosses like them. When it comes right down to it, though, the adult end of the equation is definitely where a majority of the hair-pulling originates. Meetings, paperwork, personality differences... the kids are where the positive energy comes from. That's how the ol' batteries get recharged--the students are the sun for my solar panels.
So why do I teach? I don't teach because I want to be remembered. I do, however, teach for an incredibly selfish reason: I believe with all my heart that I can make a difference. If, in my entire career, I only make a difference in one life, it will have been worth it.
Why are you doing what you're doing?
I hope I ask myself that question frequently over the life of my career. There are a million things that happen over the course of a typical school day that can drain you, stress you out, drag you through the knothole. I'm not going to say that the students are never on this list, but most of my stress comes from adults.
Don't get me wrong--I love my coworkers. My school is the jewel of our district in part because of the incredibly familial atmosphere amongst the staff. My principal and vice principal? Everyone should be so lucky as to have bosses like them. When it comes right down to it, though, the adult end of the equation is definitely where a majority of the hair-pulling originates. Meetings, paperwork, personality differences... the kids are where the positive energy comes from. That's how the ol' batteries get recharged--the students are the sun for my solar panels.
So why do I teach? I don't teach because I want to be remembered. I do, however, teach for an incredibly selfish reason: I believe with all my heart that I can make a difference. If, in my entire career, I only make a difference in one life, it will have been worth it.
Why are you doing what you're doing?
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Self Image
As we progress through the Historical Person Trading Cards, I am reminded of one of my favorite Picasso quotes:
"All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artists as we grow up."
(Having never seen the original source, I'm dubious about the actual wording, but the thought is clearly Picasso...)
Tonight, all of my little cherubs will be hand-drawing four identical 2.5" X 3.5" portraits of their current Historical Person... Them. They. Themselves. However, this task will potentially be a form of torture as, at the ages of 11-13, they've already bitten the evil fruit of self-derision. They "can't draw" or "look stupid" or a thousand other red flags that cue the observation that they're unhappy with their appearance, or at least uncomfortable with it, and/or they have lost the Artist Within.
This... is... tragic.
Read those three words like Captain James... T... Kirk. It will help lessen the pain of realizing that by age 11--possibly earlier--you, too, had let go of the hand of your Artist Within and watched it spin down the toilet drain of Growing Up. I watch beautiful, interesting, amazing, inspiring, heroic children who make me want to reinvent myself a thousand times over every day fall into this insidious snare and it breaks my heart.
What is Growing Up, after all, but conformity? We all need to conform to some extent - to be, in the words of Adrian Belew, a member of the tribe. I prefer, though, to learn the fine art of camouflage. I wear my camo--button up shirt, nice shoes, khaki pants--but underneath it all, I'm... not conforming. Just enough to slip by the security system of The System.
I think one of my great challenges as an educator is to pass that on to my students. It's a contradiction, just this side of hypocrisy. I expect them to line up at the appropriate times. I expect names on papers and pencils sharpened before class, if at all possible, for the love of Pete (and how come Pete gets all the press?). I ask those things to make the transitions of a public institution flow more smoothly, so that there's more time for the Good Stuff.
Or am I just rationalizing my part in the Great Crime?
"All children are born artists. The problem is to remain artists as we grow up."
(Having never seen the original source, I'm dubious about the actual wording, but the thought is clearly Picasso...)
Tonight, all of my little cherubs will be hand-drawing four identical 2.5" X 3.5" portraits of their current Historical Person... Them. They. Themselves. However, this task will potentially be a form of torture as, at the ages of 11-13, they've already bitten the evil fruit of self-derision. They "can't draw" or "look stupid" or a thousand other red flags that cue the observation that they're unhappy with their appearance, or at least uncomfortable with it, and/or they have lost the Artist Within.
This... is... tragic.
Read those three words like Captain James... T... Kirk. It will help lessen the pain of realizing that by age 11--possibly earlier--you, too, had let go of the hand of your Artist Within and watched it spin down the toilet drain of Growing Up. I watch beautiful, interesting, amazing, inspiring, heroic children who make me want to reinvent myself a thousand times over every day fall into this insidious snare and it breaks my heart.
What is Growing Up, after all, but conformity? We all need to conform to some extent - to be, in the words of Adrian Belew, a member of the tribe. I prefer, though, to learn the fine art of camouflage. I wear my camo--button up shirt, nice shoes, khaki pants--but underneath it all, I'm... not conforming. Just enough to slip by the security system of The System.
I think one of my great challenges as an educator is to pass that on to my students. It's a contradiction, just this side of hypocrisy. I expect them to line up at the appropriate times. I expect names on papers and pencils sharpened before class, if at all possible, for the love of Pete (and how come Pete gets all the press?). I ask those things to make the transitions of a public institution flow more smoothly, so that there's more time for the Good Stuff.
Or am I just rationalizing my part in the Great Crime?
Monday, May 3, 2010
I Love Parents, Art Cards Also
My last post might have made it seem like I am anti-parent. This is absolutely not the case - I love parents. Parents entrust me with their greatest treasure: their children. I have been blessed with some of the most supportive classroom parents. My point was simply that there is a cultural trend--culture-wide, not just with parents--towards finger-pointing rather than problem solving.
Okay... what I really wanted to post about is a project I'm currently starting with my students. I have done it for three years running now, and it always breeds enthusiasm for history! As a build-up to a huge end-of-the-year research/art project, I have the students troll through their textbooks and find ten historical people who interest them. I'm not interested in why; it could be that the picture in the book looked cool or that they liked that, "the guy was holding a sword." Whatever - they just choose based on their interest.
The next step--the focus of this post--is that they make Historical Person Trading Cards. There is a movement within the art world for Artist Trading Cards; I actually didn't know about that before this year. I was going off of baseball cards, Pokemon cards, Star Wars cards, etc. The class collectively decides on ten facts that each card should include. Usually, they arrive at the basics (DOB/DOD, etc.), plus some interesting side categories.
Tonight's assignment: each student will create a rough draft of a Historical Person Trading Card. The twist is... they are the historical person featured on the card...
Okay... what I really wanted to post about is a project I'm currently starting with my students. I have done it for three years running now, and it always breeds enthusiasm for history! As a build-up to a huge end-of-the-year research/art project, I have the students troll through their textbooks and find ten historical people who interest them. I'm not interested in why; it could be that the picture in the book looked cool or that they liked that, "the guy was holding a sword." Whatever - they just choose based on their interest.
The next step--the focus of this post--is that they make Historical Person Trading Cards. There is a movement within the art world for Artist Trading Cards; I actually didn't know about that before this year. I was going off of baseball cards, Pokemon cards, Star Wars cards, etc. The class collectively decides on ten facts that each card should include. Usually, they arrive at the basics (DOB/DOD, etc.), plus some interesting side categories.
Tonight's assignment: each student will create a rough draft of a Historical Person Trading Card. The twist is... they are the historical person featured on the card...
Sunday, May 2, 2010
More Ramblings
The following is a re-post of some thoughts I left on the NHTLC forum. There were five discussion topics, ranging from digital citizenship and Internet safety topics to "friending" students on Facebook. Here is my blather...
“Is there a difference between the five topics?
My subject line is in no way intended to offend anyone, particularly [the discussion moderator]; I would not want the responsibility of moderating this group of riff-raff!
The point of my post is that these topics all go back to the trend of our culture's gradual transformation (descent?) in its outlook on the role of teachers. In short, we are now expected to not only educate, inspire, prepare, counsel, guide, etc, etc, etc, our students... we are essentially expected to parent them.
At the risk of sounding like a codger (I will be 38 in 3.5 weeks...), things have changed radically since I was a child. When I was a young whipper-snapper, bringing home a less-than-acceptable grade meant a pretty good grilling session with the 'rents. The first question was always either, 'What are YOU doing that has brought about this situation?' or 'What are you NOT doing that has brought about this situation?' Eventually, something MIGHT have come up about potential failings on the teacher's part, but even this would have been balanced out by the expectation that I find a way to make it work; as we go through life, we will all have supervisors that demonstrate failings... and we will still have to meet their approval in the workplace (as much as I HATE the classroom-as-analogue-for-workplace metaphor). This is NO LONGER THE CASE. A growing majority of parents shoot first (i.e. blame the teacher), and don't ask questions... ever. I LOVE many of the parents of many of my students but there is a growing mass of The Other Kind. (But don't even get me started on the topic of non-caring, incompetent teachers... please leave the profession if you are one of them...)
Speaking of shooting, Chris Rock had a great bit about Columbine that comes to mind every time the media latches onto 'cyberbullying' cases. I won't reiterate it here, but essentially he questioned the defense that those kids did what they did because of bullying, or because they didn't have friends, or that the school weren't paying attention (like their parents... while the students were storing munitions and building pipe bombs in the garage...). I FULLY SUPPORT THE IDEA THAT TEACHERS AND SCHOOLS NEED TO LOOK OUT FOR SITUATIONS WHERE STUDENTS ARE GETTING DOWNTRODDEN BY THEIR PEERS. However, I also believe that the current outlook on 'bullying'--cyber or otherwise--has at its roots much of the 'Look at me! I'm a victim!' mentality currently prevalent in our culture (Maury? Jerry? OPRAH?!!). Both victims and villains in these situations are completely sensationalized... leading to more attention-seeking victims and villains... everybody wants their 15 minutes, one way or another.
We SHOULD be friends ('a person attached to another by feelings of affection or personal regard') to our students--compassionate, caring, fellow travelers... we SHOULD NOT be their buddies and hang-out pals... in cyberspace or at the mall...”
"What the world needs now..."
The title of this blog entry is an excerpt from Cracker's song, "Teen Angst" (teachers will recognize it as the end-theme music for the Bill Nye the Science Guy videos; nice job overpricing the DVDs, Disney...), the full line being "What the world needs now / is another folk singer / like I need a hole in my head." Does the world need yet another blog, particularly another blog from a teacher, particularly another blog from... me?
Frankly, the answer to all of the above questions (especially the folk singer one...) is a resounding "NO!" but I endeavor to endeavor anyway. I already write a blog about my independent music work. My readership of about three people seems to enjoy my ramblings on that topic. The dual nature of my life, however, has been nagging for an ed. blog. Add to that nagging force the fact that I am part of the New Hampshire Tech Leader Cohort Program. There are a number of New Hampshire educators establishing their presence in cyberspace. My views tend to be... different from many of theirs, so I thought I would balance out the scales a bit.
To begin with--and to return to my dual nature--I am both a tech addict and a tech hater. Technology, particularly as it applies to/in/with/about education, is just another tool. If you think like I do, you will see the redundantly repetitive redundancy of that last sentence; technology and tool are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. Computer=pencil=cave painting=finger-drawing-in-the-sand. If you survey most science fiction, you will find a major theme of humans vs. technology. The UAW would probably chime in on this as well (though they probably would not discuss their own role in the decline...). Technology of any kind is supposed to be a tool to make our lives easier or somehow better. The shoehorning of technology, as my friend and fellow educator Jason Lees terms it, is a bit ridiculous. Adding tech-related items into classroom lessons just for the sake of adding tech-related items into classroom lessons undermines the integrity of the student/teacher relationship, not to mention our integrity as professionals.
When the US space program began, we did not go out and find greenhorn nerds who we could pour into pre-made astronaut molds--we grabbed experienced pilots. Early American astronauts were successfully able to adapt their knowledge of terrestrial aircraft (wait...) to their new tools and environments. Did they need to be trained on the new technologies? Obviously. However, it was their prior knowledge and experience with a variety of systems that allowed them success.
If we really want to educate "21st Century Learners", we need to focus on creativity and higher-order thinking, regardless of what tools are in use. If the tools themselves become the focus, we might as well start handing out soma.
(posted in the Year of Our Ford 102)
Frankly, the answer to all of the above questions (especially the folk singer one...) is a resounding "NO!" but I endeavor to endeavor anyway. I already write a blog about my independent music work. My readership of about three people seems to enjoy my ramblings on that topic. The dual nature of my life, however, has been nagging for an ed. blog. Add to that nagging force the fact that I am part of the New Hampshire Tech Leader Cohort Program. There are a number of New Hampshire educators establishing their presence in cyberspace. My views tend to be... different from many of theirs, so I thought I would balance out the scales a bit.
To begin with--and to return to my dual nature--I am both a tech addict and a tech hater. Technology, particularly as it applies to/in/with/about education, is just another tool. If you think like I do, you will see the redundantly repetitive redundancy of that last sentence; technology and tool are, for all intents and purposes, synonymous. Computer=pencil=cave painting=finger-drawing-in-the-sand. If you survey most science fiction, you will find a major theme of humans vs. technology. The UAW would probably chime in on this as well (though they probably would not discuss their own role in the decline...). Technology of any kind is supposed to be a tool to make our lives easier or somehow better. The shoehorning of technology, as my friend and fellow educator Jason Lees terms it, is a bit ridiculous. Adding tech-related items into classroom lessons just for the sake of adding tech-related items into classroom lessons undermines the integrity of the student/teacher relationship, not to mention our integrity as professionals.
When the US space program began, we did not go out and find greenhorn nerds who we could pour into pre-made astronaut molds--we grabbed experienced pilots. Early American astronauts were successfully able to adapt their knowledge of terrestrial aircraft (wait...) to their new tools and environments. Did they need to be trained on the new technologies? Obviously. However, it was their prior knowledge and experience with a variety of systems that allowed them success.
If we really want to educate "21st Century Learners", we need to focus on creativity and higher-order thinking, regardless of what tools are in use. If the tools themselves become the focus, we might as well start handing out soma.
(posted in the Year of Our Ford 102)
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