Session 5: Connected

This week in class we watched a movie called Connected: An Autobiography About Love, Death, and Technology by Tiffany Shlain. I thought this was a great way to start off class this week, and really enjoyed the film. My notes are tiny and incomprehensible, as per usual,

My lovely notes

so here are some of the ideas that stuck out to me in a more organized fashion.

Interdependence: Basically Tiffany says that we are all connected and that each action we take has a chain reaction of other effects. She says, "All of our actions affect everything around us." She is especially concerned with the way technology influences this. She says that as we become more and more connected, we can see the effects of our actions in real time, and this will make us more thoughtful and conscious. This is a nice idea, but I'm not sure it's true. I think being hyper-connected can make us extremely selfish in some cases. Perhaps we need to teach our students how to use technology effectively?

Interdependence

Humans are social beings. We rely on our parents for care for much longer than other species, and thus we continue to crave and seek connection with others throughout our lives. Tiffany's mother once told her that our emotional connections drive everything we do, and I'm inclined to agree.

Why do we deal with everything separately when everything is connected? When did we start doing that? We shouldn't be studying each subject or idea as a separate entity, but rather accept how interconnected everything is and study those connections. This lends itself nicely to an interdisciplinary approach to teaching.


We need honey bees! The low number of honey bees on our planet is problematic. She starts off the movie explaining the importance of honey bees in our ecosystem. In fact, Einstein is quoted as saying that if honey bees went extinct, humans would die off within four years.

Albert Einstein and his honey bee

She circles back to honey bees at the end and uses the bees a metaphor for human connection. No bee can survive on his own, just as no human can survive on his own. However, our connections need to be deep and meaningful, not superficial. As teachers, we need to make our classes meaningful for our students, so they learn on a deeper level.


I responded to Marshall Kratter and Mary Buckley.

Session 4: Disciplinary Lenses and Ravitch Chapter 9

English is just one lens through which we can view the world

I like the idea that disciplines are lenses through which we look and interpret the world, not facts that we all must memorize. Through my content research so far, I have really come to see the value in teaching non-fiction in high school English. The more resources I find, the more I realize how interesting non-fiction can be. Plus, when you give students choice about their topics, all of the sudden everyone in the class is reading and learning different things that they can then share with one another. I see the possibilities of using non-fiction to drive home themes that relate to the fiction or other units of my class. I also see non-fiction pieces as stand alone texts, not just as supplements to the literature we are already reading. My classroom can be a lens into the world for my students to develop English skills, but also to learn real-life lessons that will help them in our ever evolving society.

This week we also read chapter 9 of Ravitch's The Death and Life of the Great American School System, in which she discusses teacher unions. Critics of unions say that they allow for unsatisfactory teachers to hold onto their positions, and are thus hurting American education. However, Ravitch notes that there is no hard evidence to support this assertion. She presents several important facts, for example:

• The Southern states typically have the weakest unions and have always had the poorest student performance on national exams.
• Affluent communities have higher student performance, regardless of whether teachers belong to unions.
• Finnish students score the highest on international reading assessments and their teachers are almost 100% unionized.

To sum up, Ravitch says, "Unionization per se does not cause high students achievement, nor does it cause low achievement" (175). I agree that the issue here is not with unions. Sure, there are probably places where bad teachers are being protected by tenure when they shouldn't be. But Ravitch also explains that there are still processes for firing incompetent teachers, regardless of tenure. We should be spending our energy somewhere else besides trying to oust teacher unions.

Also, with Common Core on the way, we have changes coming. I think this is a great opportunity for everyone in the profession to examine their own practice and make changes to better the education of our students.

I commented on Whitney Campi and Jeff Vangene.

Session 3: The Raising of America

The videos this week were interesting for me as a secondary school teacher, because I rarely think about early education in my daily practice. Yes I expect my students to have learned certain things, but I don't think about when they were supposed to have learned them, or why they may not have learned them. The most important thing that came up for me while watching these videos was the issue of action. It seems clear that we need better policies and more money for early education in our country, but the problem is acting on that knowledge. Other countries are implementing these programs and having success, so why aren't we? I think we need to come at this issue from the perspective of "where should we go now," because it seems pretty clear something needs to be done. That is my main question after having watched these videos: now what? More specifically, what should I, as a secondary school teacher, do to help? What should my action be?
I commented on DJ Bowen and Brandon Runyon's blogs this week. Brandon shared a story that then reminded me of the quote to the right. It seems to me that by the time kids get to secondary school we are just giving students the fish, when really we should be teaching them how to fish from the day they are born. So what are we going to do about it?

Mind the Gap: Session 2

For our second class meeting, we began reading The Death and Life of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch. So far I am enjoying the book and learning a lot about the history of educational reform. In chapter 1, Ravitch makes a number of provocative statements. Here are two that stood out to me:

• "In my writings, I have consistently warned that, in education, there are no shortcuts, no utopias, and no silver bullets" (Ravitch 3).

  

  "School reformers sometimes resemble the characters in Dr. Seuss's Solla Sollew, who are always searching for that mythical land 'where they never have troubles, at least very few'" (Ravitch 3).

• I really liked what she says here about chasing rainbows and quick fixes. I think this is even more important to consider in our current society, where information is only an iPhone away. We are all guilty of confusing having information with being educated, and even very smart people are easily fooled into thinking the former is the latter. Someone might sound smart on a topic because they just read the wikipedia entry on it, but can that person think critically about the information in the wikipedia page? Can he analyze the quality of the data and have an informed discussion? As teachers, it is our responsibility to teach our students to do this, and to teach them not to take short cuts. But then again, if we are being given "quick fix" strategies to improve out students' test scores, it becomes more and more difficult to stay true to education for the sake of education.

• "We must be sure they are prepared for the responsibilities of democratic citizenship in a complex society. We must take care that out teachers are well-educated, not just well trained" (Ravitch 14).
• This also goes along with what I was saying above about being educated. It's not just about making sure students understand the symbolism in Lord of the Flies or that they can properly use the Pythagorean Theorem; it's about teaching them to be productive and worthwhile citizens. And that starts with having well-educated teachers who believe in the importance of a well-educated society. We can not expect more of our youth if we do not demonstrate what a "good citizen" is and instill its importance in school. This then raises the question "what is a good citizen," which is extremely difficult to answer, and not something everyone would agree on, so I'll save my commentary on that for another time.

In chapter 2, Ravitch expands on some of these ideas when she gives a description of a "well-educated" person. I loved her description, especially when she said, "Knowledge and skills are both important, as is learning to think, debate, and question" (Ravitch 16). Being educated is simply about learning how to think (see David Foster Wallace's This is Water speech in last week's blog). This means being able to absorb information from many different mediums; process the information; form  opinions; support opinions by drawing directly from the primary source, as well as other outside sources and personal experiences; communicate these opinions coherently and concisely in a respectful and open-minded manner; and finally, listen to others who may have different opinions and recognize the value in peoples' differences. Not an easy task, but one that we should all strive for every day.

Overall I found the class discussion of these chapters to be productive. I appreciated everyone's thoughts on determining teacher salaries, and think this is a really interesting issue that we could probably talk about all class period if we had the time. I made a quick comment about teacher evaluations and I would have liked to have talked more about how evaluations go at other schools and districts. I think the evaluation process at San Ramon is flawed and would have liked to share more of my experience and hear from my classmates about their own.

After our discussion of Ravitch, we moved on to brainstorming about gaps in our subject area. Jessica and I agreed that two main areas we could work on as high school English teachers are grammar and informational texts, especially "US seminal documents" as listed in the Common Core Standards. Here are some resources I found to help me with my knowledge of informational texts:

• Here is a website called "100 Milestone Documents," which is a list of 100 important documents in American history, and a link to each.
• I also found an article about how although common core is a set of standards, it is not necessarily a curriculum. I thought this article was really interesting and relevant because there is so much buzz around common core and teaching non-fiction texts, but there isn't a lot of talk about what texts to teach. How do I know which informational texts are going to be best for my students? Are these texts going to be provided for me, or do I need to find them myself? And if I need to find them myself, when am I going to find time to do that? Don't get me wrong, I like common core and am excited about the new direction, but I think this article brings up a good point. The blog teaching to the core has a nice beginning breakdown of what texts will be required.
• This is a book that was recommended to me by our school librarian. She thinks that text sets are going to be a big part of common core, and that they are a great way to incorporate informational texts in a relevant and meaningful way.
• I also found this powerpoint document on how to teach this standard in both English and History classes. Made and presented by two veteran high school English teachers, it has some good pedagogical ideas on how to incorporate these texts into the classroom.

Here are two additional resources I have included in my content wiki that have been helpful in deepening my subject matter knowledge:

• What the Dog Saw by Malcolm Gladwell
• NOTE: This book is not really about dogs, but here's a picture of my puppy Kona just for fun.
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• This is a great resource for non-fiction articles and to discuss types of writing. Every single article in the book is full of detailed, well-researched information and it is presented in a straightforward way that high school students can understand. He is the author of several best selling books and is well regarded for his poignant and interesting research.
• These articles could lead to more research on a particular topic, both for me and my students. I could have my students read and annotate an article, and then perhaps have them write one of their own in Gladwell's style. They could also be used as part of a text set to group non-fiction, fiction, and other sources together in a meaningful way.
• I would definitely seek Gladwell out for more articles and books.
• I highly suggest reading some of his work (his book Outliers is fantastic), if not for school then just for pleasure. He is engaging and everyone can learn something from his writing.

• 40 Model Essays: A Portable Anthology by Jane Aaron
• This is a great resource on different types of writing. Not only does it have sample essays, it also talks about the process for writing each type. This book could be used both as a content resource for teachers and students.
• The last section is Argument and Persuasion writing, both of which are very important as we move forward with Common Core.
• It really helps explain the key points for each style of writing.
• As I read the sample essays, I find myself looking up the authors to learn more about them. I think these could also lead to creating text sets. Perhaps I'll even find a fiction essay to go with one of Gladwell's essays!

I wrote comments to Mary Buckley, Anne Garvey, and Tara Smallman.

Session 1 Reflection

Our first session was an introduction in many ways. We introduced the layout of the course, discussed our views on educating teachers, and learned about the history of American education. I found our discussion of the Ball article called The Subject Matter Preparation of Teachers to be honest and engaging. A few things stood out most to me:

• Project based learning: Many people seemed to agree that project based learning is effective because it helps students visualize the "big picture" and "end goal." I definitely agree.
• Learning more than "substance": We also discussed a quote from the article about how students learn more than just the "substance" of the discipline. Teaching is not about rote memorization, but rather stopping and making sure that kids stop and think critically. To quote my sister's college swim coach, "F.I.O." or "Figure it out." Teaching isn't about spoon feeding students the answers; it is, in the words of the late and great David Foster Wallace, about "teaching them how to think."
 
Here is David Foster Wallace's graduation address at Kenyon College before he died, in which he adresses what it means to "learn how to think." A well spent 23 minutes if you have it.


• Another part of discussion centered around where we all learned our "subject matter." Most of us seemed to agree that we learned more from our K-12 education than our college education. I felt this way before the discussion, and I still feel this way afterwards as well. I regularly think back to my time as a high school English student and draw on my own high school experiences when planning my lessons and conceptualizing units.

Our discussion ended with some talk about how outside-school experiences have shaped our teaching. At first this seemed like a difficult question to answer, but then after some prodding from Joan, I found myself thinking of many examples. I think for me the most important is how much I read outside of school. I have always loved reading and I still regularly read books for pleasure. This improves my vocabulary, expands my mind, and gives me possible book suggestions for my students. I also find myself reading the popular teen books so that I can talk to my students about their outside reading books. For example, I read Paper Towns by John Green about a year ago. Last semester I had my students do discussion groups based on an outside reading book of their choice, and I had several groups choose this book. Not only was I able to more critically assess their discussion questions, I was able to ask intelligent follow-up questions while they were discussing. I found these groups coming to me before and after class to ask me what I thought of the ending when they got there. (Spoiler alert: Most teenagers find the ending disappointing. Sorry John). This helps make me relevant and it turns out a lot of these books are pretty awesome. Win/win!

 

John and Hank Green, the "Vlog Brothers" of Youtube

In reflecting back on my educational experience, I still find myself drawn to writing and technology as crucial components of modern day English classrooms. I see myself pursuing an inquiry of the most crucial and relevant types of writing for students to know as they make their way towards college and the enigmatic "real world." I have a lot of possible questions, but I think one major content question for me is, "Can students improve their writing through blogging?" This will involve research on writing in general (I'd like to look specifically at the writing process) as well as research on blogging. I've done a few brief searches for scholarly articles on blogging and have found a few articles of interest, but I have a lot more to do. There is a TON of material out there on writing and teaching students to write, but much less on the effect blogging might have on the writing process. Right now I don't have any concrete ideas on experiential learning sources, but I have a feeling I might have to branch out into a larger scope to find sources. Maybe a writing workshop of some kind? Does making my own blog count?

I wrote comments to Mary Buckley, Brandon Runyon, and Marshall Kratter.