Paradoxical (K)NOT

The 1st semester of the 2009-2010 school year has come to completion.  It’s now time to begin the next semester.  This is very similar to a swimmer who is pushing off the wall to complete his final lap, or in the case of my AP students, I feel like I’m beginning the final trek of a triathlon.

I do like the new beginning of the 2nd semester.  It’s an opportunity to right old wrongs and to plot new courses.  As I prepare for my 3rd semester at P.O.B., there are several goals I need to set going into 2010:

• There needs to be a greater balance between the teaching of facts and the teaching of skills (such that the facts primarily create a context for the use and development of skills).
• There needs to be a more thorough teaching of rhetoric and composition in all my classes.
• There needs to be more peer review such that the students and myself achieve more from their work and time.
• There needs to be more PBL aligned assignments.
• There needs to be more “student action” and less “teacher talking” in my teaching.

Just looking at the above list seems overwhelming when I consider the ramifications this list will have on my teaching, and I look forward at implementing these goals one day (and each new year) at a time.

It’s not a new idea.  I read it several years ago in Fred Jones Tools for Teachers.  Learning happens in the doing.

Fred Jones provided an excellent teaching schema in order to help support doing in the classroom.  All good teaching has the following routine: say, see, do.

I believe in this routine.  It coheres with brain based research.  More importantly, it confirms my personal experiences as a learner.  Learning requires action.

But activity does not mean meaningful learning.  Just as people can say – in an explosion of verbosity – a whole lot of nothing, activity can act in the same way.  Consequently, I’m rethinking the activity in my classroom.  I wonder if it may be a whole lot of nothing, and for me, this is a painful activity.

It is not that my students aren’t active.  We do a lot.  We say a lot.  We think a lot.  I enjoy discussion, and I believe my students would agree that I encourage them to think deeply.  But I need to move them from discussion (one form of action) into deeper and more deliberate action.

As I contemplate my class, the discussions in my class are important, necessary, and vital to the academic health of my class, but discussion without further action is not good.  I need greater action – not more action, but acts that are purposeful beyond words.

Purposeful beyond words – isn’t this indeed the substance of all substantial education?

Process writing is a buzz phrase.  It’s the rave of what it means to properly teach writing.  But in the last few weeks, I’ve thought less about how to teach process and more about how I learned my process, and I’ve realized a vital fact about my writing – no one really taught me how to write.

I learned to write by imitating.  My teachers provided examples and a semblance of structure and then pushed me upon a blank expanse of paper.  I was required to do the rest.

Some might argue that this is teaching, and I would agree in part, but I believe the whole of teaching should offer more than examples or advice; it should teach.  Sadly, I think most teachers do not know how to teach beyond a list of directives: write a thesis, create a body, put a conclusion at the end of the paper.  What do these commands really mean?

I’ve begun to reevaluate my writing and writing process.  How did I learn to know what these directives meant both in theory and in practice?  Where did I learn to place the command, “Write a thesis,” into a formulated chain of words that functioned as the central statement of my essay?  In essence, how and where did I learn to write, and the answer is right where I began this blog – I learned by doing.

The good teachers of writing teach the craft of writing through the practice of doing.  No surprise.

But I think they must do more than this, and I think they must do more than educate students on the processes of writing.  Good teachers of writing bombard students with an understanding of the patterns of writing.  This, if I were honest with myself, was how I learned to write – I imbibed writing patterns.

I suppose this is the irony of all good writing – the imitation of patterns precedes the exploration of originality.

It seems that patterns strike the perfect balance between process and post-process teaching – a pattern is needed equally in both.

And so, at the end of this nine weeks, I am evaluating my process, and I feel responsible to these insights; I see the need to change my teaching in order to allow the practice of patterns to become more central to my teaching in order to increase the learning and writing ability of my class.

I’ve been working with Wordpress for the past couple of days.  This material can be overwhelming.  I’ve already invested several hours into understanding Wordpress-MU, and although I like the product, it is a little over the top for me (at least for right now).  But thankfully installs can’t get much simpler than they are with the “basic” version of Wordpress.

Now, as I’ve worked with Wordpress, I’ve been amazed to discover the multitude of plugins offered with this blogging utility.  And with the right plugins, Wordpress becomes way more than a simple blogging forum.  It can become a chat forum, a messaging forum, a place to put grades with secure access for only the student and parents forum, a audio and video portfolio forum, and the list continues (forum).

I think all this is worth mentioning because I wonder how many people realize Wordpress’s utility may be multiplied into more than a blogging platform, and because of its versatility to be “more” than just another blogging tool, it is well worth investing the time to consider how Wordpress might be instrumental in a class’s next portfolio. 

For myself, I’m going to begin looking at how I might use it as a platform to both deliver instruction and to maintain my students’ audio/video portfolios.

I have begun the process as an educator to learn more about my students world than they currently know themselves. That is to say, I’m learning a plethora of material about how the Open Source community works so that I can understand how to better apply technology to the academic environment.

Since my college course on the application of technology in the classroom, I have been intrigued with powerful possibilities of how technology could and would indeed influence my students. And so for the past five years I have been developing my website.

It has only been in the last three weeks that I’ve truly come to understand how to utilize technology….

I have been developing my website for awhile – for over five years. And in the developing phase, it has pretty much been a fancy display case and a cheesy attempt for me to say, “Look at me world; I’m using technology.” But Mrs. Kennedy said the magic word three weeks ago that has helped me to understand the full potential of technology in the classroom: Moodle.

I have never wanted my website to be just a display case, but I have never knew how to make my website interface with my students. Moodle is a virtual learning environment that takes any website beyond display case status into the realm of Constructivist Learning. It’s awesome, and it’s simple.

Actually, in the past three weeks I have learned a lot. I am not a programmer, but I have learned the basics of how programs function. PHP script is the go between that transfers information from the HTML script on the surface of the browser (the part the web-surfer sees) to the SQL database (the part only the programmer sees).

Systems that utilize PHP and databases in this manner are called Content Management Systems, and there are a lot of free CMS choices available: Joomla, Drupal, DrupalEd, Mahara, Moodle, Mambo, SCAM, PHP Nuke, etc.

I’ve tried a lot of these systems out, and here is my advice.

1. Decide which program will be your central hub.  I recommend Moodle.
2. Decide how many programs you want to integrate with your central hub.  I recommend only adding one other program and would strongly advise not exceeding three.  This is solely based out of respect for the student and to minimize confusion in the classroom due to an overload of options.
3. Lastly, find a good web host provider that offers access to an SQL database.  I recommend Yahoo!

One final thought: my recommendation on blogs.  I think Wordpress is the best blog service, but blogs can be very difficult to create because the service requires that all students have their own individual account in order to participate in the class blog.  That tallies to a lot of extra hours.  I know because I did it this year.  Wordpress is also Open Source, so next year I will just create my blogs and place them on my website.  All the data, passwords, and student profiles will be created by me, and because I only need to create one blog, this will save me hours and hours of work.  It will also make the blog experience more user friendly to my students.

Maybe the most important piece of knowledge to glean from this post is this: technology in the classroom must function as more than a fancy display case; it must be interactive, and Open Source options are the conduit through which an interactive classroom experience will most effectively occur.

Today I was sharing with a friend an idea that I gleaned from Jim Burke, a well known English teacher. I said, as Burke had written on his website, that ideas and thoughts have shape. Rajah, my friend, responded with a very natural, reflexive, and profound insight: thought has shape, but problems have texture – some are soft and easy while others are difficult, cold, and hard.

I truly appreciate this insight. I’ve wrestled for several months with the concept of thought having shape, but I haven’t considered its texture. As an educator, I think considering both the shape and texture of a concept is pivotal in packaging the learning process in such a way that students are able to handle it in an obtainable and accessible manner. But like all objects existent on earth, ideas also have a gravity that is accompanying them, and people likewise exert a gravity on the ideas that whirl in the world.

It’s interesting to consider the shape and texture of thought in simultaneous relation to the convergence of the gravity of an idea and the gravity of the individual (or the collective gravity of a culture). How do ideas “pull their weight”? How are people attracted to an idea? Do ideas come to us or do we come to them? And in relation to this gravitational metaphor, what really attracts people to think hard about hard things; or on the other hand, what causes people to become intellectually lethargic and mentally mush in their thought life?

I feel that if I could harness this gravity, then maybe I would be a better or greater teacher. But gravity is always there – at least, this is what scientist theorize. It radiates from everything: origin unknown. I suppose all desire is unknown.

But I think it’s really rather simple. I think it’s very similar to the idea of Pascal when he wrote that God has made every human heart to be a “God-shaped vacuum” that only He can fill. Or, as Solomon has written in Ecclesiastes, God has placed eternity in every man’s heart.

It seems that God is the creator and origin of intellectual gravity – a massive, innate, inexhaustible desire to learn. And somewhere in this huge, complex galaxy of human complexion I must learn to craft ideas that gravitate toward my students and pull at their hearts and minds. I need to learn to speak to the curiosity that is greater than us. Imagine the gravity of well crafted structure and texture. And I suppose the structure and texture that all people are designed to gravitate toward is truth.

In the first few minutes of Professional Learning Communities at Work: Bring the Big Ideas to Life, a conference/seminar lead by Dr. Rick DuFour and Becky DuFour, Dr. DuFour inundated the crowd with a list of statistics attesting to the current failures of education: dropout rates, failure rates, the retention of teachers, etc.  And then, during that time of engaging his audience with the facts and the consequent need for change, he also inserted a very important idea from a very prominent historical figure.

Dr. DuFour quoted Thomas Jefferson in order to help the audience understand the historical nature of education.  The quote of Jefferson’s was essentially to take from the top echelon of learned society and educate that part of society in universities.

This is a simple thought.  It’s not new when considered within the historical drama of life: advanced education for the academically elite.

Whether we quote Thomas Jefferson or we quote from the writings of Booker T. Washington or the writing of W.E.B. Du Bois or look further back to the Babylonians or back even further, the same idea of higher education for the academically elite is perpetuated throughout history.

This is maybe not all bad.  In fact, history is certainly testifying to an innate human condition for knowledge and that not all people pursue knowledge with the same agenda, motive, passion, or ability.  Individual pursuits of education are as random and predictable as fingerprints.

So leaders like Thomas Jefferson or Booker T. Washington are left with a dilemma: How is it possible to create a system of equal education that legitimately and ethically provides equal education to all people?

This is a great question, but the next question is even better: Why is it important to create a system of equal education?

The importance of this question is that it gets to the heart of the dilemma.  Education must negotiate between social and individual concerns, between public and private welfare.  It’s not that these are mutually exclusive; it’s only that one must be given priority over the other.

I would argue that in the historical heritage of education the unsaid and unquestioned assumption is that the concerns of the civilization, society, nation, culture, or people must trump the concerns for the individual.  And once a society starts to think about how to glean from the best of society for the betterment of society, it must also start to think about how to create a hierarchy of education that will impel the academically astounding to the front rows of erudite elite.  It’s not a stretch to argue that the whole brabble of how to create an equal system of education turned into a stunning example of the first historical model for the current television series American Idol.

But here is the hope: The historical method of education is being challenged by a new ideology.

I don’t necessarily believe that the methods of education during past eras were necessarily flawed.  People did the best with what they had, and I think their vision was good (but many times at the expense of the individual).

Johannes Gutenberg did more than merely revolutionize the methodology for copying a text.  His thinking and technology radically revolutionized the ideology of who should and could and would read and write and think.  It took time for the ideology to take shape, but it did, and it didn’t take shape in isolation from methodology.

The Internet is causing an equally profound effect upon ideologies.  The methods for distributing and accessing and discovering information has radically changed.  Consequently, the ideology upon which education was initially built is changing.

And I wonder if the current ideology in education is this: Equal education is not the perpetuation of stratification in schools, classrooms, and society but is the constant attempt to destroy the barriers of stratification and remove the walls of impossibility.

Hence, the paradigm of education has changed from gleaning from the top of the academic pool to allowing everyone to jump into the water where everyone learns to swim in the ocean of academia.

I think this is a good shift in thinking.  In the end, there will be those who are more gifted, talented, or determined, and they will be in the top of their class, schools, and universities.  But no longer is everyone else disregarded, marginalized, and relegated to the periphery of life by an “American Idol System of Education.”

In order for modernity’s ideology of education to truly begin to emerge in society, it is important for leaders to recognize that modernity’s ideology of education is antagonistic to the historical ideology of education.  Modernity has new methods to teach (not necessarily better methods) that Thomas Jefferson, Booker T. Washington, or the Babylonians could have never imagined; consequently, modernity has different ideas about the purpose and scope of education.

I would contend that educators must now begin to build their ideas on both better methods and better ideas.  We must understand the antagonism of past ideologies upon the current ideology of education.  And I think this will empower the ideas behind No Child Left Behind with a structure and paradigm that is more than just pretentious heroics but is a journey worthy of every educator.  The idea that every child can learn and deserves the opportunity to learn and will receive an excellent education will be more than pretense; it will be reality.

I had the privilege of attending Professional Learning Communities at Work: Bringing the Big Ideas to Life.  This conference, lead by Dr. Rick DuFour and Mrs. Becky DuFour, has been phenomenal.  I am sure, as I begin to wrap my mind around the substance of this conference, that I will be blogging again (and again and again) on the material set forth both today and tomorrow.  And I am very excited about tomorrow.  So from the outset, as always, I am grateful to all the people who invest into me as an educator – for every gem of insight passed along – so that I may teach at peak performance as I invest into my students.

There were a plethora of academic gems to consider at this conference, and the gem that I continue to thumb through my mind is the concept of ethics and education.  Even as I write, I am trying to polish this concept.

There seems to be a mesmerizing beauty in the reality that education is an action imbued with morality.  Moral consequences and rewards ripple outward from the act.  I would argue all things human have moral value, and all things relational are human.  Being a husband and father or a wife and mother or a son or a daughter are intimately human endeavors with moral value.  More than categories, each is an Act of Being that demands specific action and therefore makes all inaction morally reprehensible.  So it is with the educator.

Such an Act of Being also obliterates the category of “job.”  Not that I want to fail at anything, but a job is disposable – people are not.  And therefore all aspects of life wrapped up in the lives of other people are replete with moral value.  My profession, as an educator, has moral value, and I am an ethically responsible educator to the degree that I help others – colleagues and students – live in the full of their humanity.

The eternal repercussions for callously disregarding the life and potential of another person is reprehensible, and ultimately, choosing to not be a great educator is gruesomely hideous.  This idea alone helps me to appreciate the value of Professional Learning Communities because the reality is that I cannot and will not be a great teacher by working as the ‘lone ranger flying solo.’  I need others to make me better – to make me the best.

So here is a simple syllogism.  If the ethically responsible educator must always teach at the top of his/her game (i.e. peak performance), and if the educator needs the help of other people to be a great teacher who is teaching at the top of his/her game, then the great educator needs to participate in professional learning communities.

Hence I end where I began: I am grateful to all the people who invest into me as an educator – for every gem of insight passed along – so that I may teach at peak performance as I invest into my students.

I read a quote today by Jim Burke in which he expressed that he is a more visual teacher now than when he first entered the profession of education.  And then he added, “…thinking has shape…”

That thought stopped me in mid-sentence.  Thinking does have shape.  I forget this.  Maybe because I’ve grown comfortable with the shape of my thought.  Or maybe because I don’t consider the many assumptions that I make when thinking (mostly good assumptions, I might add).  And maybe I am egotistic enough to think that the shape of my thought is the shape of all thought (or the shape that all thought should be).

I am wrestling with how to better understand how to create the bridge between my students’ incisive minds and the concepts I need for them to comprehend and adeptly apply to all areas of life – not to mention the AP Exam.  I know that many different material, tools, and architectural blueprints must be used to create this bridge, but to realize that thinking has shape reminds me to consider who I am building this bridge for, and the consideration of cognition’s shape allows me to more effectively close the gap between information and knowledge.   

I didn’t realize this at the time because I thought what I was doing was purely “academic” and therefore didn’t necessarily qualify as a universal method for good teaching. I was college learning about education, and outside of class I was talking about education and applying what I learned to real life situations (which is much more than a scenario). In fact, toward the end of my college experience, class time always lead to authentic discussion and experience beyond the classroom walls.

I realize now that this is not just academic. In fact, it’s really quite the opposite. Anything that is purely academic is maintained within the purely sterile environment of the class or the lab or the seminar. Pure academics never move beyond textbooks, theory, or the abstract.

But true education must always move people beyond the classroom. In fact it pushes, shoves, pulls, entices, beckons, and motivates discussion and experience beyond the classroom. The classroom in which students are learning is the classroom in which the discussion in class is carried on outside of class. The classroom in which students are learning is when the discussion in class leads to further and greater conversations outside of class.

More often than not, there will almost always be a discussion about the class. And more often than not, it probably sounds something like this: “Can you believe that teacher? I can’t believe he did that. And I have all this homework. He is so…..”

Wouldn’t be awesome if students left class more provoked by their thoughts of the ideas in the classroom than by whether they like/dislike a teacher. And most importantly, wouldn’t it be great if class lead students into greater conversations with one another and with Life.