words in context

Last night I started reading “36 Children,” Herbert Kohl’s account of his first year as a public-school teacher in Harlem. Like Jonathan Kozol and Sylvia Ashton Warner, Kohl is constantly cited in my textbooks for his revelations on public education. (It’s surprising to me that classes don’t assign these trade books, since they are both more insightful and more engaging than our texts. But I digress.)

Something that jumped out at me immediately was Kohl’s account of how his sixth-graders were fascinated by his method of defining the word psyche by contextualizing it within Greek myth. Capitalizing on their interest, Kohl used the root psyche as a hook to introduce psychic and psychology, and eventually went on to replace the prescribed vocabulary curriculum with a study of the evolution of language. He writes:

Before we talked about language and myth the children, if they thought about it at all, felt that most words were either arbitrary labels pinned on things and concepts the way names seem to be pinned onto babies, or indicators as connections amongst these labels. These “labels” probably represented the way the adult world capriciously decided to name things. I doubt whether the children ever thought of adults as having received language from other adults even more remote in time.

Although he was referring to black children in the early 1960s, this observation strikes me as profoundly applicable to English language learners today. Especially for young children who have not yet learned to recognize parts of speech, English must seem like an arbitrary string of unfamiliar sounds; the direction to “write a complete sentence” as incomprehensible as asking someone who has no carpentry experience to build the frame for a house. A young student’s response is invariably a disjointed string of letters resembling words in groupings resembling a sentence. But missing are the foundation, the necessary supports, the correct type of nails…

This analogy makes me wonder if sentence construction could be taught within an ordered framework such as a plant, with subject as root, verb as stem, adjectives as flowers.

More relevant, since I don’t intend to teach elementary school, would be to introduce new vocabulary in context. I already planned to do this to some extent, selecting words for each unit from resource texts and key concepts. But in addition, we could inspect words’ applications, their etymology, their connotations. And there is truly no better subject than social studies in which to analyze the power of words on the collective unconscious! (socialism, anyone?)

Incidentally (and curiously), the WordPress spellcheck software does not recognize the word contextualize (which Merriam-Webster traces to 1934) and suggests that I replace it with conceptualize (which is not what I meant). Yesterday I learned that this type of search-and-replace spellchecking is called the Cupertino effect, which makes me happy because I love being able to assign names to specific annoyances, such as palimpsest. If you know of other terms that describe similarly insignificant irritations, please share! (For example, is there a word that adequately sums up “misuse of the I-before-E rule”? There should be.)

seeds of change

Obama said some things about teaching today. I heard a couple of news blips on NPR while I was waking up, and then I read some more in The Atlantic. I have some thoughts, which I will try to keep brief.

First of all, I recently got into a heated conversation with my aunt and uncle about gardening. I had to watch a video about communication for an assignment a couple of months ago, and part of it really stuck with me. The class in the video is working on a long-term project to grow a butterfly garden. They build raised beds, plant seeds, care for their seeds, and keep records of the entire process. The unit takes many weeks and introduces skills from math, science, economics, and language arts. There are clips of the kids saying “wow!” and getting excited about bugs and seedlings and butterflies.

Ever since I saw this video, I have been asking myself one question: Why isn’t every school in America doing this? Why doesn’t every school harvest rainwater? Why doesn’t every school keep a vegetable garden? Why don’t schools have fruit trees and compost piles?

(I’ll admit that maybe I’m getting a little carried away with the compost idea, since in some urban areas it would probably take on the role of rat buffet. But composting is easier than many people seem to think. The other day a new friend tried to convince me that composting is impossible in the Arizona desert because it’s too dry. But in my back yard there’s a $3 plastic storage bin full of rich black dirt that would suggest otherwise. Never underestimate the power of fly larvae.)

So, returning to my original topic, I was asking my uncle these questions. I wanted to know if there was any conceivable reason why we couldn’t take on a project that would conserve resources, repurpose public spaces, feed our communities, and educate and involve students all at the same time. Not only that, but this project would be affordable and aesthetically pleasing. It could involve community members of all ages and levels of education. It would promote metacognition as students learned from their mistakes and from each other. It would be interdisciplinary and relevant to students’ lives. Most importantly, it would show students that hard work pays off.

After a while he just shrugged and said “You’re right. I really don’t know.”

Somewhere in all that, I’ve hidden my response to Obama. In case you didn’t catch it, I’ll paraphrase it here: You’re right. Teachers do need to be held accountable. But that’s only part of the solution, because teachers are only part of the problem. If parents aren’t involved, it’s because school is not a welcoming place. Let’s make it one. If kids can’t focus it’s because they’re hungry. Let’s feed them. If they’re not learning skills it’s because those skills aren’t useful to them. Let’s make them relevant.

Gardening is not the only way to do this. There are so many other ways to involve kids in the community and to involve community members in the schools. And there’s no reason not to do it. It’s not like we have anything to lose.

belligerence, aka adolescence

The other day I ate dinner with an enormous group of mostly strangers in a fancy-schmancy restaurant in Laguna Beach. Because our group was massive and the restaurant was fairly busy, our service took about 4 hours all told, from first drinks at the bar to the arrival of the bill and our (somewhat tipsy) departure.

At one point I excused myself to the bathroom. I had just stepped into a stall when the door opened and two girls came in, talking loudly enough that I could not help but listen to their conversation. (What happened to piped-in restroom music? Was that a ’90s thing?)

The weird thing about their chatter — and the reason it gets a post of its own — was that it was impossible for me to tell how old they were; not from their topic of conversation nor their tone of voice. While they sort of sounded like young teenagers, they also sounded a bit like drunk twenty-somethings.

Then came the revelation: There’s no difference.

Here are a few things that tipsy college students and hormonal adolescents have in common:

1. They have a very short attention span,
2. They experience unpredictable moodswings,
3. They are irritable,
4. They have minimal control of their extremities,
5. They may experience a loss of inhibition,
6. They are egocentric,
7. They are resistant to authority,
8. They should be discouraged from drinking (more) alcohol,

etc. Genius, right? I’m excited to test this theory on some of our more rambunctious middle schoolers by treating them as I would normally treat a drunk friend: with patience, humor, and firm expectations.

notes on illiteracy, part 1 of many

I am reading Jonathan Kozol’s “Illiterate America.” I have a lot to say about it, but unfortunately I don’t have much time before dinner, so I need to keep this brief.

In Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan of the Apes,” the character Tarzan learns to read from alphabet books and other children’s stories he finds in an abandoned house in the wilds of Africa. His aptitude for language makes for a great story, but not a particularly realistic one. Kozol’s work has opened my eyes to the possibility that a person can remain illiterate even while he is regularly exposed to spoken and written language. In fact, illiteracy prevails in the some of the most populated urban areas, where residents are surrounded by street signs, billboards, graffiti…

We expect literacy out of too many people who don’t have it. We judge people too harshly for being illiterate to any degree. I have been guilty of believing others to be stupid because they can’t read, or lazy because they are uneducated. But now that I understand the forces manipulating literacy in this nation, I can no longer feel anything but sympathy for the illiterate; and anger for those who perpetuate policies of inequity.

as scary as ever

I am reading Jonathan Kozol’s “Illiterate America.” Needless to say, it is terrifying.

My used-bookstore edition of the book was published in 1985, so many of its statistics are sure to be out of date. But like many of the older education critiques I’ve seen, Kozol’s observations seem frighteningly familiar, and his concerns of 25 years ago are still prevalent today. In other words, they have been addressed unsuccessfully — or not at all. (More on that in a moment.)

According to a Salt Lake Tribune article, students’ ability to read by the end of third grade is a significant indicator of future success. That’s because the first several years of elementary school are spent learning to read, while success from fourth grade on requires reading to learn. We know this already.

Yet nationally, two-thirds of students are still struggling when they enter fourth grade. From then on, we can only expect the achievement gap to widen. The Tribune’s article cites the usual recommendations: improve early health and education, encourage family involvement, reduce absence rates, make schools perform better. My guess is that Kozol would shoot down most of these suggestions, arguing that the parents whose children would benefit the most from those suggestions are the same parents who will never know what resources are available because they are not functionally literate.

In keeping with Kozol’s 1985 calculation that about one-third of Americans are functionally illiterate, the U.S. Department of Education sets the national literacy rate between 65% and 85%, depending on where one sets the cutoff. Reading Seed’s figure of 80% literacy roughly fits this estimation as well. Of course, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that literacy rates are at 99%, based on the levels of literacy people report on their (written) census forms. (Pause for critical reflection.) Yep.

My other recent experience relating to unaddressed (read: festering) problems related to education was delivered in the form of a sitcom that first appeared in 1969. In preparation for convalescing from wisdom tooth extraction, I went to the library to borrow DVDs representing a variety of genres. Perhaps this strategy could be likened to facilitating channel-surfing without cable.

One of my selections was the first season of “Room 222,” a dramedy about an L.A. high school dealing with the typical issues: students, teachers, administrators, parents… Of the 7 or 8 episodes I watched, my favorite segment centered on a walkout staged by teachers in response to a failing school bond proposal. During the staff meeting preceding the strike, one teacher tries to drum up support among the others by challenging them to imagine what would happen if remedial reading programs were cut. Given the recent cuts to art, music and science programs, it’s not too hard to imagine anymore.

are kids meaner than they used to be?

This post was brought to you by PostSecret:

and by Probably Bad News.

I don’t have an answer, but I’d love to hear what other people think.

powerpointless, part II

Today is a great day because one of my favorite education blogs is addressing one of my favorite topics: PowerPoint.

In response to Wired columnist Edward Tufte’s assertion that PowerPoint “induces stupidity, turns everyone into bores, wastes time, and degrades the quality and credibility of communication,” the NYTimes Learning Network asks “Is PowerPoint in the Classroom ‘Evil’?“

In my experience, yes.

Disturbingly, U.S. military sources seem to agree with me. Just last week, a New York Times article revealed some commanders’ “serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making.”

“PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar in 2005, followed up at the same conference by likening PowerPoint to an internal threat.

“It’s dangerous because it can create the illusion of understanding and the illusion of control,” General McMaster said in a telephone interview afterward. “Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.”

In other words, PowerPoint targets the lowest and least valuable levels of the cognitive domain. Furthermore, the program’s fancy organizational tools and multimedia capabilities can make presentations appear more advanced than they are, ultimately sacrificing learning objectives to entertainment value.

Here’s a disturbingly accurate portrayal of my feelings on the matter:

(Edward Tufte, Wired)

Thankfully, the Times has followed through with a lesson plan intended to help students examine their experiences with PowerPoint (analysis), imagine a presidential address delivered as a presentation rather than a speech (synthesis), and to decide how the program could be used effectively in the classroom (evaluation). Critical thinking is still alive and well… on the internet, at least.

what are they thinking?

Part 1: Teeth

I got my wisdom teeth pulled on Thursday. Beforehand, I had fun joking about using my wisdom while I still could. Now that they’re gone, I prefer to think I’ve freed up some room for overflow from my brain. Just in case.

The topic of pulling teeth is not particularly amusing to most people, so I’ll just conclude this feature by saying that I have taken this opportunity to eat as much pudding as possible and to make frequent use of the word “socket.”

Part 2: Whiskers

When I adopted my cat, I was hoping she would be a good influence who would make staying home more enjoyable and consequently prompt me to do more homework and less wandering around not accomplishing anything.

Unfortunately, my cat doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo. Rather than purring sweetly on my lap while I write lesson plans, she prefers to chew on the corners of my laptop, lie on top of whatever book I’m trying to read, or march back and forth across my keyboard, leaving a trail of sabotaged spreadsheets in her wake. If I try to push her off or ignore her, she will whine at me in her most pitiable voice until I shut the screen and give her my full attention.

Needless to say, blogging is more difficult under these conditions.

Sometimes having a cat feels like having a toddler… but maybe that’s a good thing. After all, managing a room full of middle-schoolers is no piece of cake.

Lately, my cat has been teaching me about trust — and why she shouldn’t get it. She went at least a couple of weeks without escaping, spilling anything, attacking my feet in the middle of the night, or trying to unravel any blankets, and I was beginning to think she might finally have transitioned into being grown up.

Then on Wednesday morning I was out back watering my victory garden when I heard a squeak of surprise and saw Winter streak by me to the opposite end of the yard. Thrilled, she plopped herself into a pool of dust and tossed about on her back before racing into an adjoining yard to play under an abandoned car.

I wouldn’t expect seventh-graders to go so far as to hide on their bellies in the school parking lot, but they are surely opportunists, constantly on the lookout for open doors, neglected snacks, and adults who can be taken advantage of. As the saying goes, give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile. Better I learn this lesson from my cat leaving dusty pawprints around the house than from a room full of rebellious 13-year-olds.

It’s impossible to be angry with this face for long:

Now for the part you’ve all been waiting for:

Part 3: Claws

Ok, actually just laws. But crazy, crazy ones!

Here in Arizona, our state legislature has been passing all sorts of nutty laws. Everyone knows about the new immigration law. It turns out Gov. Brewer has tried to suppress criticism by amending it “to restrict police from basing their questioning on race or ethnicity.” Thank goodness, because everyone knows police never pay attention to race when apprehending a suspect.

Closer to home, and by home I mean work, Arizona schools are now forbidden from teaching curriculum that promotes “resentment toward a race or class of people.” In an effort to highlight the insanity of such restrictions, Democratic Sen. Linda Lopez suggested that perhaps in addition to the Mexican-American curricula targeted by the bill, schools could also refrain from teaching about Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and the Holocaust.

Although her words were spoken with tongue firmly deposited in cheek, I worry what might happen if someone in the state house takes her seriously. These days, it seems like anything could be possible.

Finally, some Arizona schools are attempting to weed out teachers whose spoken English is flawed or accented. Maybe we can find replacements with neutralized accents… Indian telemarketers, perhaps?

on lockdown

I witnessed my first teacher-on-teacher fight today. The root of the debate was a topic I’ve been meaning to address on this blog: locked doors. Specifically locked library doors. The school where I tutor has very limited accessibility during the day, so that the only way to get onto campus is through the main office. Unfortunately, the school does not seem to have been designed with lockdown in mind, because the quickest way to proceed to classrooms from the office is through the school library.

The school strictly prohibits use of the library as a passageway from office to classrooms. To this end, the door from the main office to the library remains locked at all times. Unfortunately that’s not the case with the door at the opposite end of the library, which leads to an inner courtyard. (I suspect this has something to do with the fire code. More on this in a moment.)

The locked door creates several predictable problems:

• Visitors who enter the main office with the library as a destination (including the other tutors and myself) have to ask the secretary to let them into the library or bang on the door until someone notices them.
• Students have free access to the library through the courtyard.
• Students who enter the library through the courtyard get interrogated about why they are in the library.
• People who are trying to do legitimate activities in the library get distracted by the interrogation, which is often loud.
• Students view the library as a restricted area, which is unfortunate.
• (Apparently) students are discouraged from coming to the library (and activities that occur in the library, namely tutoring) because they get locked out.

The teacher brawl centered on this last point. One of the other after-school tutors, who also works as a teacher in the school, became upset with the library attendant (who I suspect is not actually a School Librarian) over the issue of student attendance. This tutor claimed her students do not consistently show up to tutoring because they attempt to enter the library through the locked door, give up and go home.

(I would add that motivation may also factor into such a student’s decision, but I was only an onlooker.)

The library attendant’s defense was that he was only following school policy. He also pointed out (legitimately) that all the students know the rule and should know how to get into the library by the back way if the main entrance is locked.

The conflict escalated as the tutor berated the librarian and expressed her disapproval of the policy, insisting that the door should not be locked in the first place, yada yada yada.

Although I agree that the policy is stupid and the students should be more welcomed in the library, I was thoroughly horrified by the tutor’s outburst. It was inappropriate for her to question the librarian’s authority in front of her students, especially when there was nothing he could do at that time to resolve the situation. Not only was she wasting her students’ time (and, by proxy, government dollars), but she was also distracting other people working in the library.

Not a particularly smart move.

I have to make a brief return to the issue of fire codes, because I cannot figure out how this school could possibly be in compliance.

I have tried a couple of times to leave campus through the courtyard adjacent to library, and both times I ended up at a locked gate and had to retrace my steps through the courtyard to the library, through the library to the main office, and through the main office to the parking lot.

The school grounds are completely surrounded by an iron fence. The gates in the fence are all chained and padlocked. Where the courtyard would join with the parking lot, a chainlink fence stretches from the school building to the iron fence. Unless you can fly, this campus is impenetrable.

I am honestly curious how this is legal. It seems that in the case of a fire, students fleeing school by the western end of campus would have to scale a fence and run all the way across the parking lot to leave school grounds. I can’t even imagine how a person in a wheelchair could be evacuated in this direction. Presumably he or she would have to enter the library (through an unadapted door, for the record) and exit through the main office.

Naturally, I am also concerned that students’ access to books is being restricted. But at least they still have a library. I suppose we should be counting our blessings where we can.

engaging

I’m taking a course on educational technology right now, and feeling generally ahead of the curve in terms of digital fluency. I’m somewhat frustrated by the call to cater to the unique needs of the digital generation. After all, not every student can grow up to make podcasts for a living. Some of them may need to know how to write legibly or (gasp) spell. Instead of completely rewriting curriculum, I think educators should focus on finding a happy medium: a bridge, if you will, between past generations and the digital technologies of the future. After all, we’d better prepare for some overlap in the workforce– or risk displacing an entire generation of experienced workers with technologically advanced youths! The information in this video concerns me, but the overall presentation is inspiring.

(thanks to Teach History for the link.)